text:
Why do I have the 2.80 API on blender 2.79
When I compare the latest blender api to the 2.79b API (based on the current link from https://docs.blender.org/api/), I see that the bake_action API changed from accepting start_frame and end_frame to taking a single frames iterable.
When I run blender --version, I get:
Blender 2.79 (sub 6)
        build date: 2018-12-25
        build time: 20:34:04
        build commit date: 2018-12-22
        build commit time: 14:10
        build hash: 2c0c1f494dcf
        build platform: Linux
        build type: Release

However, when invoking bpy_extras.anim_utils.bake_action, I get:
  File "/usr/share/blender/2.79/scripts/addons/io_scene_godot/converters/animation/constraint_baking.py", line 87, in bake_constraint_to_action
    do_visual_keying=True,
TypeError: bake_action() missing 1 required keyword-only argument: 'frames'

This suggests that I have the 2.80 API, even though I seem to be on blender 2.79.
What am I misunderstanding about blender versions?

Where did you get your blender?

See the comments on https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/127934/60829, I got it from the arch repos, and it turns out they aren't necessarily picking a stable release. I suppose I could answer my own question with that, but I'm not sure if it is on-topic any more, as it is more about distro-specific packaging than anything inherent to blender.

If you cloned the repo recommend building from. Prob too late to suggest a shallow clone.

I think I'm just creating more confusion here. By repo I mean the arch package repository, not a git repo. Shallow clone isn't really relevant.

Hmmm "trying to look at the repo to confirm, but blender takes a while to clone" kinda suggested to me git repo.    Anyway my suggestion on a linux system is build from source yourself.  Make a shallow git clone if bandwidth and or data restrictions apply).   My experience on ubuntu (where you dont use theit repos or you'll get the latest 2.4 version lol) is this is pretty simple.  If you don't want to do this fine, it is only a suggestion. Consider posting on an archlinux forum or repo site maintainer.

Ah, sorry, forgot I posted about cloning blender to look at it. The slow clone turned out to be a VPN (or possibly ISP throttling VPN connection) issue. Anyways, now that I understand the nature of the arch package, it makes sense, and does seem like the easiest way to keep a version of blender that is compatible with my other system libraries.

Blender version 2.79b is the one that you can download when you click Download Blender at the top of the download page at https://www.blender.org/download/ at the time I am writing this (05-01-2019).
If you however choose to scroll down to the bottom of that page and click the red button 'Latest Experimental Builds' in the section with the red background and a clear disclaimer in English:

 you will be downloading experimental builds (not unlike the disclaimer states) and may try latest changes that may include changes to the Python API.

I'm not sure it's clear how this information relates to what the OP is seeing. IE. it doesn't explain why the user is seeing 2.79 when running --version.

I'll have a closer look and see if I am not mistaken, however, I believe Blender release is built on 22-03-2018. At least the Windows version that I get from the official download link. The date indicated in the question(build date: 2018-12-25) would have to mean that it is an experimantal build. Am I mistaken and Linux release version is updated?

Ah, I see. I don't know about build dates. I think I just thought that if they had downloaded an experimental version that explicitly mentions 2.8 (as per that screenshot) they wouldn't have asked why they have 2.8 and that maybe they had built blender themselves.

I use experimental builds myself sometimes and I have noticed that the version information in them sometimes is weird - the numbers sometimes jump around, I think I saw 2.79.6 updated to 2.79.4 some time and then back again(don't remember exactly, it think it was like that), but I mean... They put a warning in red background there - what else could we expect. Experimantal means it is as it is and it can be whatever it is...

I installed blender from the arch repos via pacman. pacman -Qi reports the version as 2.79.b, blender --version as 2.79 (sub 6).

A comment in the PKGBUILD shows that the arch build isn't always taken from stable releases. I'm guessing the current build is taken from a point where the new API is implemented, but a 2.80 release hasn't been tagged yet. I'm trying to look at the repo to confirm, but blender takes a while to clone :)

The way I understand it 2.79b indicates that it's the third release, just after 2.79 and 2.79a. Release would mean that it was built and made available for download from blender.org website. I would consider absolutely anything that is not one of the builds available at blender.org should not be called 2.79b. The documentation you are looking at is specified very specifically to be for that precise build: "Blender 2.79b f4dc9f9d68b - API documentation »". So first thing to do here would be to make sure you are using the correct build if you wanted it to mach the documentation. It should work.

Blender as packaged in the archlinux repository doesn't necessarily use a stable version. A comment in the PKGBUILD says:

Due to our other rolling deps, it's sometimes not possible to build Blender stable releases.
  More often than not, a new openshadinglanguage breaks it and I could either backport fixes
  or simply roll with a new version. I usually choose the latter when the former seems
  unreasonable.

At one point the packaged version was a post 2.79b release that included the new API but presumably hadn't been tagged 2.80 yet.
Martin's answer didn't quite address my situation, but the following discussion helped me figure this out.


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Why do automatic bone weights paint distant meshes
I have created a simple block-person from a few cube meshes, as well as an armature. When I parent the armature to the meshes with automatic weighting, it seems like blender is assigning distant vertices to a bone while ignoring nearby vertices.
The docs on automatic weights say:

It calculates how much influence a particular bone would have on vertices based on the distance from those vertices to a particular bone (“bone heat” algorithm)

This doesn't seem to be what I observe. The calf.r and thigh.r bones are closer to the vertices in the right leg than the vertices in the left leg, yet they entirely influence the latter (visa-versa for the left side).
I realize that I can manually assign vertex groups if needed, but I'm wondering if this unintuitive behavior means I set up my mesh or armature poorly.

Yes, there are some issues with your work. Several objects have their origins misplaced, rotations and scale unapplied, non-uniform scales, ... You must always fix this before even creating the armature. And never scale your armature unless the rigging and skinning are completed and you really have to.
Also, automatic weight never does a perfect job, and it surely works better when you have your bones and meshes correctly placed, not set in a pause which may lead to confusions (like the arms stuck along the body) and with enough bones and vertices to make the assignations obvious.
In your case, you have a very simple mesh and with not mathematically logic needs for the weights, so you will be way faster by assigning your weights in edit mode or weight paint.

Thanks! It might help to link to the docs on apply, it took me a bit to figure out what you meant. Once I applied scale/rotation/location to each mesh the automatic weighting worked well.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

sort: votes


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How to edit a custom bone display mesh whose object has been deleted
I did the following:

Add a Circle named "BoneIcon"
Assign Circle as the "Custom Object" of several bones
Delete the Circle object

Now I'd like to edit that Circle mesh and have the changes applied to all the bones I assigned it to. "BoneIcon" is no longer in the "View Layer" panel, but both the object and the mesh are visible in the "Blender File" panel (though the object is shown in dimmed text).
Is there any way to restore the object so I can edit it, or create a new object so I can edit the original mesh data?

I realized I can click and drag the BoneIcon object from the "Blender File" panel into the 3D view, but that creates an object with a copy of the Mesh, not a link to the original Mesh.

Drag-and-drop the BoneIcon object from the "Blender File" panel into a collection in the "View Layer" panel, and it will appear in the 3D editor.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to flip normals that won't flip
I'm creating some low-poly terrain in blender by starting with a grid, then pulling vertices up vertically using a random falloff to affect nearby vertices.
I've ended up with some normals that face under the terrain, rather than above it:
Top

Bottom

When I Flip Normals, the normals change slightly, but still face under the terrain.
Bottom after flip

Recalculate Outside/Inside does not work either. how can I make the normals of these 3 faces point towards the top of the terrain, like all the faces around them?

You can hit ALT+N > F to manually flip the normals of those selected faces. Often when SHIFT+N to recalculate normals doesn't give a correct result, it can mean something is wrong with your mesh, especially if the solution should be simple and obvious as in this case. Check for non-manifold geometry or doubled vertices.

Thanks @Rekov. There's no doubled vertices or non-manifold geometry (had to look that one up). I just turned on backface culling and the faces render as expected. I wonder if there's just some visual glitch in the normals overlay.

Yeah that's really odd then. Anyways, if you want, you can always upload the blend file to https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ if you want someone to take a look.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/282322/is-having-2-or-more-faces-with-all-shared-vertices-a-bug-or-valid-geometry

First, to see the normal orientation for objects, at least in the Layout and Modeling workspaces, select the Overlays dropdown and then check Face Orientation. The Overlays dropdown is above the Transform panel. Blue faces are correct and red faces are flipped.
Next, go into Edit Mode, select all, then press ⇧ Shift + N. Or press Alt + N for a menu. If this works, great, stop here.
Lastly, if there are any Modifiers attached to the object, look for a Normals Panel and uncheck the Flip option.
Moreover, I know for sure that the Solidify modifier has this option. Perhaps other modifiers as well. And, if you have multiple modifiers attached to an object, be sure to look through all the Modifiers for a > Normals panel and uncheck the Flip option in each Modifier.
I am using Blender 3.6.2

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/282322/is-having-2-or-more-faces-with-all-shared-vertices-a-bug-or-valid-geometry

Know that this should not be possible as long as you merging verts. But when looking on your second picture seems looking like you had two faces on same verts, both facing different directions.
Could you make diagonal edge (J) on the vertices like this.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/282322/is-having-2-or-more-faces-with-all-shared-vertices-a-bug-or-valid-geometry


text:
Blender rendering differences when using CPU vs GPU

If you look closely at the two pictures, you’ll see the GPU render has ridge lines going through every object from half the width over to the end. The blender files used were exactly the same. Any ideas as to what’s happening?

CPU and GPU renders should be the same in theory, in practice though, differences are to be expected

But this seems like a substantial difference. I don’t think the GPU rendering is usable.

It might be a bug or driver issue, hard to tell without knowing anything about your hardware or system

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M

Try to share the file, to let others compare with your results


text:
Add Min and Max Values to Driver Expression?
I have a driver using a scripted expression: var*2. It's working great but the values it's outputting range from .005 up to about 1.5. I'd like to limit the range of the output to something like a minimum of .5 to a maximum of 1.25. Is it possible to do this within the expression itself?
Edit: A little more information, I'm trying to use a sound file to drive a particle value. "Bake Sound to F-Curves" provides me with a non editable F-curve so I'm trying to use a driver to increase the amplitude of the baked F-Curve.

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/39231/whats-the-range-of-values-on-a-sound-baked-f-curve

Thanks, I had looked over that. I'm just wondering if there's a simple expression that can be written that sets a min and max value.

Min max
Use the expression min(max(v, 0.5), 1.25) or its dual max(0.5, min(v, 1.25)) where v is the driver variable (sound curve value)
>>> v = 0.05
>>> min(max(v, 0.5), 1.25)
0.5

>>> v = 3
>>> min(max(v, 0.5), 1.25)
1.25

>>> v = 1.1
>>> min(max(v, 0.5), 1.25)
1.1

If you wish to double the variable v simply replace v with 2 * v in expression.
I would recommend you normalize the values in some way What's the range of values on a sound-baked f-curve?
Related
How to set driver distance max and min influence?


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How to make render toggle visible by default in 2.8?
I'd like to make the render toggle icon appear in the outliner by default - so I don't have to turn it on every time start a new project. Possible?

Open a new file and set up things the way you like and then save your start up file.
It's located under the file menu.
File > Defaults > Save Start Up File


text:
Is there a conflict between GPU rendering and the Firefox Browser in 2.8?
So I've noticed this strange behavior where Blender will toggle between taking 6 minutes to render a frame and 1.5 hours for the same frame. I had posted about it here but the moderators took it down.

I finally worked this out. If the Firefox browser is open on my computer, the GPU render time increases from 6 minutes to 1.5 hours per frame. The solution is to close that browser and then the render times drop again. Don't even have to restart Blender. And once the render is running, I can open up Firefox again although it does seem to add about a minute to the render time.

Thanks for letting us know. I'm pretty sure some people will find this info valuable :).


text:
Why is it I can move an animated model after importing but not later?
When I import a model, say an .fbx, I'm able to move the model and its accompanying animation anywhere in the scene I want. However, once I select something else, the model and its animation become set in place and there's apparently no effective way to re-select it (and everything about it) and move it somewhere else. I'm talking about a complex character model, not just a cube.
A related issue is that I have an imported, animated model (a dancer) and I want to duplicate it and move the duplicate. Same issue though, I can't drag the newly duplicated version without the model distorting like crazy.
Am I missing something?

Have a look at these two, could solve your problem?  -  https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/106609/appended-group-opening-in-original-location/107621#107621

and - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/99821/how-can-i-shift-or-move-an-entire-animation-to-a-different-location/99911#99911

Thanks, I tried that solution but it doesn't work with complex models in 2.8.

A complex animated character consists of two parts, a mesh object and a rig that deforms it. When you move one of these paired objects in object mode the armature deformation goes bad, you need to move both objects together. Usually the armature is made the parent of the object, so moving the armature keeps it all together but moving the mesh object will be an issue.
In 2.7x while an armature is in pose mode, we can select an object and the armature will be deselected. In 2.80 this changes, while in pose mode we are unable to select another object. The solution is to go into object mode to select another object. This is also true for other modes, we need to be in object mode to select a different object.


text:
How to Sculpt Toothpaste or Paint Coming Out of Tube?
I need to create blobs of paint on a palette that look like they've been squeezed out of a tube. Here's an example:

Any suggestions on how to model those blobs of paint?

yeah sculpting its a way to do it

just like this using a cube with dyntopo sculpting.

Thank you. Here's another image:
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/red-paint-blob-white-2915277.jpg
I'm having an issue getting the edges right where it meets the surface it's on. In this second image, you can see that there's this slightly bulging, surface tension effect where it meets the surface it's sitting on.


text:
Why does my UV unwrapping in a different way than the book?
I'm training on a model from a book. And the book tells me how to seam the model.
Now, I've unwrapped models before but just for training's sake I'm trying to do it his way.
Here is what the book tells me to do:

But when I do it, result is as follows:

Here's my own way to seam:

My question is why does the second picture produces that jumbled mess on UV and not the clean projection we see in the first?
What is the reason behind that?

Could it have been because the book is old and the new Blender release(I'm using 2.81) unwraps it differently?
Could it be that he is using some projection method without informing me?
Could it be that my mesh doesn't exactly match his, so the result is different?


text:
Blender 2.8 FBX export doesn't retain material information correctly
I'm using Cycles Node to create materials in Blender.
Material has four image textures connected to a Principled BSDF.
Base-color, Metallic, Roughness, Normal(through a Normal Map node).
Everything is fine in Blender.
Then I export it to FBX, setting Path Mode to Copy and Embedding Textures using the small button to the right.
Everything is fine up until this point.
I have my FBX file, then I import said FBX and that's when the problem starts.
It imports correctly, with Textures connecting to BSDF as they should be.
But all their Color Space settings were set to sRGB(which was to be Non-Color) and the Normal Map node's value(which was 1) becomes 0.14.
Why does this change in settings occur? I know that material exporting doesn't work splendidly from environment to environment, but is this normal? Or Am I doing something wrong?

I think the color space being switched to sRGB is because the FBX format doesn't allow to specify which color space should be used and sRGB is just the default that gets assigned when Blender imports the file. The deviation in the normal map strength sounds strange though. Can you share your .blend file (with packed textures)? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

The normal map strength seems to be caused by the conversion in line 1429 import_fbx.py. Since your strength of 1.0 /  7.142 = 0.14 it apparently stores the correct value in the fbx, but this "guess work" conversion returns a different value. I'm not sure when this conversion would be useful. Might be worth discussing on devtalk. Your project file isn't needed though.

Thanks, I think the receiving end of the FBX has to set up the material themselves, I just downloaded a free model with similar setup and it just has textures as files, setup not included. I was guessing that the customer would expect to see a complete result Voila! when they open an FBX, but that's not the case I think. I would be happy if you can confirm on this too since I'm just guessing at this point. Does the receiving person expect FBX to work without making any adjustments to it?

The answer is: It depends. FBX allows to define material properties, but both the software writing the file and the one reading it, need to put the information to good use. If the software writing the file doesn't add the information, there is no chance to import it like the original model. Likewise if the software importing the model doesn't support the whole FBX specification, then it will not be able to display it exactly the same way. FBX format is quite notorious, see: https://code.blender.org/2013/08/fbx-binary-file-format-specification/

That being said, there is no clear answer as to what the user expects when receiving an .fbx file. I'd assume that most people would think it should work out of the box.

This is currently treated as a bug. https://developer.blender.org/T70879


text:
Is this a valid retopology method?

I have here two similar meshes. Top is criss-crossed with edge loops and this is usually how I go about it.
But then I decided to minimize the tris by deleting the "needless" vertices resulting in the one below. Which looks weird to me.
This was an attempt in retopology and optimization which sacrifices the edge loop flow.
In one BlenderGuru video he cuts off an edge loop like this, flowing it into another vertex. That's where I got the idea but I'm not sure if I managed to follow it correctly, that's where the confusion came about.
My question is. Was this the correct way to go about it? Or should I stop trying to pass high-poly objects as low-poly and focus on doing low-poly designs?
I know that edge flow is important in animations and rendering performance and I wouldn't have done this if this was a human face or body. So my main concern is doing solid objects.

Hello :). This is one of those old old questions. Are n-gons good or bad? There is no definitive right or wrong answer, even between pros. Gleb Alexandrov has a very comprehensive video on it, concerning hard-surface modeling, like your example.

Because they don't disrupt the clean interpolation of normals on divisions of curved surfaces, ngons in bounded flat surfaces are absolutely fine, IMO.

I'll be sure to check the video out. I know about the whole debate but my concern is primarily on the number of tris generated for render or gaming. I'm willing to sacrifice "some" visual if the processing return is much greater.  @Robin, That's where I was going with this "retopo".


text:
Rigging: Is there a shortcut for reseting a single bone rotation?
How can I reset a single bone's rotation, what is the shortcut?

in Edit mode or Pose mode?

You can reset the transform by holding "ALT" and press the transform's shortcut. (In this case "R").

Thanks. ALT+R works.


text:
How to seperate a vertex?
There was a shortcut for seperating a vertex without "P".
You selected the vertex and when you , it got loose, seperating one face from another.
What is this operation is called, what is it's shortcut?

Found it, Press "V" to detach edges or vertices. This does not kick the selected parts outside the present mesh like Seperate("P") does.
It's edge seperation.


text:
Blender doesn't detect CUDA/TitanX
After updating to Blender 2.78 on my other PC it does not detect the GPU. It is running on a Win7 x64bit system, card in question is a Maxwell TitanX, which from the official Nvidia spec list is a 5.2 cuda supporting GPU.
Here are some screen caps after doing a clean driver install.

Did you install the Cuda Drivers installed?

Have you tried to even select it by yourself in Blender? It might not automatically enable it.

@SamirRahamtalla Yes, I have. installed them.

@Hendriks3D Do you mean forcing Blender to use it via the Nvidia control panel?

Honestly I think it's a Blender error. Try reinstalling Blender.

@Hendriks3D Yes, it appears to be a Blender error. Something appears to have went wrong with the files and Blender wasn't detecting the GPU.
After a clean install everything is running ok. Do not know why it worked now and before it didn't work.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How can I delete a large amount of Materials?
So I am doing renders of SolidWorks models in Blender. The models themselves do not pose a problem for me, however I have noticed that when the materials tab, to be precise the list of materials is opened Blender slows down almost to a stop until I reload the current .blend file.

This is from one of the models I have already setup and rendered. In the actual model I've cleaned up all those materials and setup my own which number 15-20. In spite of this these materials still remain in my file and slow down my work.
I have tried using the delete addon I've seen in some answers to this question but that only leads to Blender crashing. Manually removing them with the "Minus" is out of the question, I've done it before for single instances. Having 3-4 models with 5000-6000 materials is not timewise efficient.
Some extra info how I've setup the materials - ctrl+L Making material links to objects having the same material type.

a good addon watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDjjBVDydzk   hope it helps you

So, you had like 6000 objects? Couldn't you perhaps join them first and then use just one material instead? One non optimal way to get rid of all those materials would perhaps be join all those objects now and export the joined single object to a format that could be later imported as bare mesh (not linked to existing materials)

The script here will delete all materials.

@sambler it delete all material present in the object or file or unwanted material which are not assign

As far as I know, if no object is using those materials, they should disappear as soon as you save, close and re-open the file. Isn't this working properly?

That one will delete them all. Do you want to delete materials starting with "Shape" or keep ones starting with "MyMat"?

Let me clarify - I know about unlinking them. When I said "this is the setup model" I have already cleaned them out, saved, reloaded. This does not help in any way, because as you can see the materials are still in the file, even if they are all orphaned. For joining - not possible, we're talking about high poly SolidWorks models ~10mil polygons. I have previously tried that approach, but the amount of RAM and slow I get is too much. Plus they have to be animated, so joining them makes it harder later on.

There are two ways to approach this problem. There's a tedious easy one, and there's a programmatic complex one.
The tedious answer has been alluded to in the existing answer and a couple of comments. I.e. Blender is designed to delete (skip saving) any "orphaned" data block, like a material, anytime you save a scene. Consequently, if you remove those materials from any objects so that they're not being used by anything, then when you close Blender and reopen the scene, they should no longer be there. There is a way, though, to force Blender to keep an unused data block, by giving it a "Fake user" by clicking the 'F' next to its name in the object tab. This makes the data block seem used, so that it doesn't get deleted when Blender closes. The solution is to (tediously) remove all of those materials from any object that's using them. Then close the scene.
The programmatic solution is to write a Python script which will do a lot of this for you. Depending on what your objective is, you might have the script look at each material, find the object(s) it's assigned to, and replace the duplicate material with some other material, so that all your objects are using the same material. There are other ways to approach the design, depending on what your goals are, but all of them should be relatively simple. For example, this script is very short, and does some things sort of similar to what you're trying to do to... maybe.
I hope that helps.

About the easy answer - They are already "orphaned". As much as I know when I do ctrl+L - Material Link them, the old materials are orphaned. I have checked for single instances - yes, when saved and reloaded the material in question e.g "Shape 0001" is deleted, however when selecting a higher number of objects th materials are not deleted. About the Python approach - I have to look into it. Thanks for the idea!

Interesting... I wonder if that's a bug? If you can make a small, reproducible example, I'd recommend making a bug report at graphicall.org

Please follow the steps to clean that

Un link all materials form all objects, that do you want to get rid off
Save your blender file
Hit Ctr + Shift + O
It will show you the recent menu, open your file again by selecting file name form menu

Before:

After:

I have been doing this and what it does help with is the slow after opening the materials tab. As I clarified above, in single object cases it does work, but SolidWorks provides extremely high poly models (I know I can downscale, however I can not affor to do it because of photorealism. Most of the models are NURBs based from SW).

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Creating a wrapping animation
I am animating a plane which has to wrap around a cylinder. How can I approch this animation? The idea is the plane to be tape, which you put one end first then wrap the other around a cylinder.

I tried doing a shape key, however I cannot manage to make it good. I am thinking of doing armature, however I will do the vertex painting and bones.

Yes, I am looking for the same result, so duplicate.


text:
Not enough VRAM?
So I am experiencing the following problem for the first time - on my work rig I have a single gtx 1080 which is 8gbs of VRAM. On my current project ( I work with CAD files don't be supriced of the size) I have hit a vram limitation at 4,7gb.

Now, before being asked - I have nothing else opened other than Chrome and Spotify as I took this screencap. Yes, I have already tuned the render settings for light paths. The only thing I could think of being problematic is the HDRi I use for lighting, so I'll change it. First trying to reduce the "Map Resolution" did nothing, same as before, same vram usage.

Now I changed it from a 4k HDRi to a 1k HDRi. Only difference is in -40mb vram.
Can anyone give me advice on how to fix this? I have a TitanX I can test this scene on, however I wish to use my 1070s to render it faster.

Thank you for reminding me that! I know, however the question comes from "why is 4.7gb=crash when I got a total of 8gb?". Will try splitting and post my results.

I did try splitting in render layers. Yes, when doing stills there is no problem, but what I do are animations. As I mentioned before the large poly count is because of raw CAD files, SolidWorks to be precise, imported to 3ds Max with reduced quality and exported/imported as .fbx. I have found this approach very good, however - first time I run out of memory.


text:
Instantiating objects and applying different material to them
I have a scene with hundreds of cylinders of different sizes and colours, which I create with a python script. Needless to say that they take a lot of memory. I just learnt about object instantiation for this kind of cases (yes, I'm pretty new to Blender of CGI in general).
However, while I can scale them independently, I cannot seem to give each of them a different material (as they need to have there own colour). I find this strange, because, in my understanding, they are the same instance of a mesh, which could well be (in my logic) separated from the materials which are simply applied to them.
Am I missing something here? If instantiated meshes cannot indeed have their own materials applied to, what is the proper way to display hundred (and eventually thousands) of primitives in a scene?
Thanks!

If the material is basically a colour can use object color

Maybe this link is related

Both the Object and Mesh classes actually have place to store materials. For object it is Object.material_slots and Mesh.materials. This means that Mesh always has their own "default" materials but they could be overridden on Object level. I don't know the origin of this but it comes in handy.
Normally the settings are paired but to override material per object, you need to set the object's material slot from "DATA" to "OBJECT". This makes Blender store the material per object instead of reading it from the mesh data. It is easiest to set this up for the source Object, all clones will inherit this setting afterwards.

In python you can set this via.
object.material_slots[i].link = 'OBJECT'

After you make the change, you need re-assign the material slot as setting this clears any reference.
Here are links to official Blender python API in case you want to dig around some more:
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.Mesh.html?highlight=materials
https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.types.Object.html?highlight=material_slots
Depending on your case though, if you only want simple color variation instead of having completely different materials, it might be better way to set up your material so that you get a random per object color using Object Info > Random and color ramp for example. Or Object Info > Location plugged into textures like Musgrave or Voronoi for patterned variance.

EDIT: Expanded the answer with alternative way to achieve per object variance, using only one material.


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Shrinkwrapping moiré-like artefacts (blender-osm)
I'm having issues with getting a water polygon imported through blender-osm add-on to properly shrink-wrap on the corresponding terrain.
Here is what the artifact looks like (the black moiré-like effect):

Here is what the polygon looks like when it isn't shrinkwraped:

Any idea on how to deal with these problems when shrink-wrapping in general (or with the Blender-osm add-on in particular)?


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How to fix physics engine's clipping issues when modifying a mesh's shape
I have an active rigid body cube and a passive rigid body plane. The cube's mesh is modified with a displace modifier and a noise texture. When I play the animation, the cube shakes and falls onto the plane as it should, but once sitting on the plane, the shaky cube doesn't bounce around despite its spasmodic animation. Instead, the deformed cube clips through the plane.
Increasing the solver's iterations to 1000 doesn't help.
How to fix this in Blender?

I believe there is a design fault in the Mesh Source area.
As we switch source to deform, the checkbox deforming appears.

Deforming
  Mesh shapes can deform during simulation.

That's what we need, because right now, the simulation only utilizes the cube's shape of the starting frame. Enable the deforming checkbox.

Now your rigid body simulation will respect the change in deformation caused by the Displace Modifier and update the movement accordingly. (The cube bounces.)
Even when you switch the Source property back to Final the change in geometry is respected. I'm guessing someone forgot to display the Deforming checkbox as well when the Source is set to final. Even though it is not shown, is value is still used.
The difference with the two option can be researched in the manual:
Deform
Includes any deformations added to the mesh (shape keys, deform modifiers).

Deform
  Includes any deformations added to the mesh (shape keys, deform modifiers).
Final
  Includes all deformations and modifiers.

Since the displacement modifier is a Deform modifier, you don't have to switch the source property to Final. Leaving it on Deform makes no difference, but has the advantage of being aware of the Deforming checkbox.

Displacement is a Deform modifier.

Thanks! a lot! it looks like that was the issue, but I can't fix it in my scene, for some reason. Would you mind sharing you scene?

@Rod I could upload your scene, I literally only checked deform to make it work. There are two other things. Go to the rigid body world settings and increase the speed to 4 and the Steps Per Second to 1000. Do you see a difference now? Make sure to clear your cache.


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2.72 version manual
Is there a manual for Blender 2.72 anywhere.  I cannot use the latest version of Blender on my computer as the graphics card is not compatible. 2.72 appears to run OK but all the links to the manual point to the latest on-line manual for 2.79

They are probably similar enough that most stuff is the same still

The information you're after is all available, but it does cost a bit more investment of time & skills to get access to it.
You can access the repository of the manual at https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/BM/. You can do a checkout of the manual as it was at the time of 2.72, and build the HTML pages yourself.

Unfortunately, "the manual as it was at the time of 2.72" is not the 2.72 version manual. Maybe this is causing the misunderstanding. It is whatever has been written until that time, and includes a lot of info about even older versions. There are certainly a lot of reasons behind this, but imho lack of money or developers is not the only one. I could agree that BF cannot delay releases until docs are completely updated for the new version, but that could (imho should) be done before the next new version, then all pages tagged with version, and it should stay there, just fixed or improved.

What we have instead is a "rolling" documentation, which is never really aligned to any version, and this does not help Blender in professional environments in particular. They expect complete, reliable docs, for a specific version, even if they have to pay for it, like in most other software packages in the world. In this sense, imho, it's a choice. Favor faster development over better documentation.

Well, if people want to pay for that, they can hire someone to so this. It's easy to say how things should be done. Less so to actually get people to pay a full time documentation writer.

Unfortunately not.
BF never cared about versioning manuals (there were discussions on mailing lists, when they dismissed the wiki manual for the new one), so you could only hope nothing changes much between releases...
It would be not impossible, the current doc system supports it (and even PDF export, but they didn't add that anyway, discussions even here...) and many other FLOSS projects use the same system (readthedocs) and usually all have versioning, languages and pdf...
they just think, imho, that anyone should use latest versions only, and upgrade hardware if necessary. Always.
Of course it could make sense have version-specific docs, in particular when UI or tools change a lot, but I think there's no manual around about 2.4x version (very different UI and tools), too, even if someone could need it (!) because some addons are still not ported to 2.5+, today. Sometimes is asked here too.
The future 2.8+ versions will change a lot again (less in UI, more in tools), and since OpenGL requirements are increased again a lot, let's hope the 2.7x manual will be kept around for who can't run 2.8 at launch.
At home, I'm stuck at 2.76b (crappy old notebook) since it's supporting OpenGL 1.4 maximum. I guess that avoiding GPU computing, your card should support at least 1.4 as well... ?

Many thanks for that.  unfortunately 2.76 will not run, hence I went back as far as 2.72.  I have found a set of old YouTube videos that seem based on that version so am working through them.

"BF never cared about versioning manuals" -- that is not true. It's just that given the limited number of developers we can support financially, and the limited amount of time they have, there were more pressing matters.


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Replace textures with colors in OBJ file?
How can you use Blender to replace textures with solid colors?
Take this model: https://poly.google.com/view/aAp0r0v9D-t.
The model has defined geometries for eyes, but uses texture to add color.
1) If we instead want to use solid colors for the eyes instead of using textures, how could you accomplish this?
2) What if we want to separate each eye, i.e., let each eye be a different color?

What you're asking for is fairly simple in Blender.  Removing the texture channel is also just a click away in the texture properties at right.  Placing different colors  for each eye where geometry (faces) exist can also be allotted different material slots with little effort.  Will get back to you on this...

In Object mode, select the object you wish to change colours on and click on the little ball icon at right.
This opens up the object's material channels or 'slots'.

Each face on an object can have one material slot which can be shared by other faces in that same or even other objects. With your cursor in the 3D window and the object selected. (RMB)  you can then access it's material slot(s)
Get into Edit mode (press TAB) and select just one of the faces you wish to de-texture.
In the materials panel at right, open up the "Diffuse" tab  and scroll to the top to see the list of materials this object is using.
The one that belongs to the face you've selected should be highlited.
Go up to the icons at the top again and select what looks like a multicoloured square.  That's the texture panel that is attached to the currently selected material slot.

Open that and scroll up to the top.  You'll see a list of textures.  There can only be one texture attached to each material slot so the one concerned with the selected material should be highlited.
Underneath that list is a one line slot that dispays the same name as the highlited one above.
To it's right there's a big 'X' .   That's what you have to click on to delete this texture slot.  If there's more than one showing, they're stray entries anyway so you can delete any you see there.  It won't affect other material slots that may be using those.
Once that's gone you're back to the basic colour that's showing in the material slot.
You can change this by opening the materials again and opening the 'Diffuse' tab, clicking in the small coloured  window.  A colour wheel will present itself.  Choose the colour by dragging the tiny white dot around.  To exit, press ESC.
-===============-
To re-colour faces, select the object, then go to Edit mode, (press TAB) and then press ALT-TAB and selct "Faces".  This which will place you in the "Faces mode. (amazingly)
In the 3D window you will see the faces associated with that object, all with dots in them.  Right clicking on any of these will highlite them.  Hold Shift down to multiselect.
Once selected, press the Plus sign to the right of the uppermost list.  A new (blank) slot will appear up there.  Give it a name by clicking in the slot below with an X at it's immediate right.  It may well have the default name - "Material" already in there.
Once named, click the "Assign" button.  Those surfaces selected will all take on this new material slot.
So - you can have a different materials or colours for each face if you wish, or the same material can be shared by several faces.
-==========-
If you have queries about this particular answer just leave a comment here.
They will be emailed to me.
Additional Info -
Have come across a new question relating to your own...  The answer has an animated demo!
The link -
Question on reflections

Thanks so much! For some models (e.g., https://poly.google.com/view/dXYoN00Ng8j), the eyes are not defined as separate geometries but rather drawn in the texture. Since the textures have UV mappings, is there a way to write a script to automate the creation of geometries that match UV mappings? In other words, could a script create geometries from the texture UV mappings of this elephant and create the eyes?

Added as a separate question so you can earn points :) https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/105238/automate-geometry-creation-to-match-texture-uv-mappings :)

You're welcome  @Crashalot.  I wish I could draw like that. (elephant) Get those human expressions as well as artists do.  As for extracting the eyes, I'd have to agree with dave  on that one, not that I've been into Blender's scripting.

Thanks for the comment! The goal is to write a script and repeat the process for other models as well -- not just the elephant. How long do you think it would take to write a script like this?

Have no knowledge on scripting.  Not in Blender that is.  Best of luck with that.


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Remove subdivision surface?
Hello is possible to remove subdivision surface from object after applied ? In some history or something?
I applied a subdivision surface and saved the file.....
Thank you!

See if anything here works: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/troubleshooting/recover.html

Unless you haven't closed the file and you applied the modifier recently enough (in which case you may be able to Ctrl Z back to it), there is no way to "un-apply" a modifier.
A tool that may work for you though is the un-subdivide tool.  Go into edit mode, selet the entire mesh, hit Space and search for "unsubdivide".


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Flatten object without distorting it?
So I've been using Blender for a solid 20 minutes, I have no prior 3d modeling experience other than one time like 4 years ago i made a cringe worthy knife cause why not. Anyway I have a sword I'm making just for fun to learn blender and right now its like a giant pointy stick
now all i know currently is extruding, scale, and somewhat mirroring. Now my question is how would I flatten this to make it more... sword like without having to do some edward elric human transmutation ending up with some Atrocity.

   But yes. I know I'm most likely using the wrong tool, and that's why I'm here ^-^. pls help me not make an alchemy Atrocity.

A useful tool you need to use is Insert Edge Loop, in Edit mode, click Ctrl+R, this will help you get a proper blade for the sword.

Scaling by a factor of -3243 was probably a little overkill.

You can either scale the whole sword in object mode by selecting it and pressing S > X to scale along the X axis or,
If you prefer a little more detail select your sword, go into edit mode with Tab key, select only the faces corresponding to the blade part, and scale them along the X axis with S > X.
If you go with the first option of scaling in object mode don't forget to apply the scale afterwards by pressing Ctrl + A > Scale when you're done.
P.S. Scaling (and other modal operators in Blende) use the cursor distance to the center for the screen at the moment of invoking the operator for precision factor, so make sure your mouse is not too close to the center when calling the command or you may end up with an overly sensitive scaling factor that may yield weird results as in your second image.


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Can't get HDR's to work on my Mac
Hello I am really new to blender (just started a few months ago) and I can't get any of my HDR skies to work, at first I thought it was because my mac automatically unzipped my files but after turning that off, my zip files won't show up in blender.

Did you pack your files? If the images are just replaced by a hot pink color, this is almost certainly the problem

sorry I am really new to this what does packing your file mean? And how would I go about doing it

After trying a million things I finally figured out the problem, the HDR wouldn't show up in the render view but after I  turned the samples to 100 it worked!

Sorry for the slow response, Chick. Packing your files is when you command blender to save your files with the .blend file. I find it very useful and enable it automatically through File> extra files > Pack all into .blend. You could also do this individually for each image. Also, long comment, by to unpack an image, shift-click the X next to the file name in the image select box.


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How to add textures to a .obj file?
I am trying to make a hat for a game called Bloxcity. Anyway how to have textures on .obj files?

I believe the obj exporter includes textures by default. What have you tried and in what way did it not work?

It never shows the texture in 3D Builder.

Do other obj files correctly retain their textures in 3D builder?

It askes for a texture for other .obj files but i cant find the texture for em.


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Support for AMD GPUs for smoke rendering
AMD GPUs currently don't support smoke in cycles rendering - does anyone have any idea when they will? Or if this is being pursued?


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How can i change an animated mesh, with pose
I have an animation, but it is imported from ms3d file, the mesh is animated but the armature is not linked to the mesh
How can i change the animated mesh, is needed to link animated mesh with the armature ?

Are you sure there are no hidden armatures? meshes can only really move if paired to armatures or have shapekeys

yep, nothing hidden, just animation, but no conexions between them


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How to go to cycles?
I have these characters but I want to go to cycles but when I do the characters goes grey and purple. (Essentially The textures get removed from the character(s). Is there a way to switch to cycles without losing the textures?
I will leave one of the characters as a example. So can I go to cycles and keep textures?
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mb2by9y7d91q2t2/AACvhUDp_MZ7ZKHchibT9tlYa?dl=0
-Thanks!

I believe you will need to recreate all of the materials/textures.

there is one node in cycles that will solve most of your problems: the principled shader. it is the nearest your will come to the material system of blender render.
theck this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H5W6C_Mbck


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Cannot use tree addons on blender on mac
It has now been 3 hours that I'm searching and I cannot figure out why I get an error with the tree addons of blender :-( Someone can help please?
Seems some people already had this problem and solved it, but It was on windows. :-/

This is a known issue for a couple years now. I've find a way to get rid of this error. I first add a bezier curve and then I can add a tree ! Then I simply delete the bezier curve and It works :-)


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Weird problems when I extrude or try to shape vertices
So I start with a normal cube > I Extrude and it doesn't work right ( Grey faces and missing faces ) I try to move a face/vertices with G and right click but it selects some sort of ghost vertices. Help I can't solve this and it's making me want to give up Blender. I tried looking for solutions but it seems like it's a bug.

Ok, what version of blender are you using? Have you tried deleting the cube and starting over? It seem like you've got duplicated vertices that are conflicting.

@TechTornado I've tried starting over and restarting Blender. I'm using the version on Steam so it's most likely the recent version. Is there a way to fix this?

To clarify: have  extruded successfully, using prior or other versions of blender?

Yeah it used to work fine

It doesn't look like a bug to me. There are 3 types of selection modes in blender; Vertex, Edge and Face. You have to select them according to your requirements. If you select any of them and press 'E' to extrude, it extrudes along the normals by default. If you want, you can constrain your extrusion to a specific axis by pressing 'E' to extrude and then X, Y or Z for x, y and z axis respectively.
The second problem you mentioned is shading problem according to me. After you've finished your extrusion and modelling, select the whole mesh in edit mode by pressing 'A' key and then recalculate the normals.


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Can't get UV mapping on "back side" of plane mesh
I've created an object originally from a plane. I ended up solidifying it so it has two sides. I have an issue however when I UV unwrap it, only one side is represented. So in unreal engine 4, one side is lit, the other is just black though.
How do I unwrap it so it shows the front side, and the backside?
Thanks.

Possibly you simply need to Apply your solidify modifier. You should then be able to unwrap app faced of the mesh.

Wow, awesome. That was it lol, thank you. I'm not totally clear when it's necessary to apply the modifier, and when not to. Clearly, I should have tried that. Thank you.

@RichSedman if you want to add in your answer I'll upvote that.

Glad to help - I’ve added an answer.

The ‘unwrap’ operation works on the base mesh. If you have any modifiers (such as Solidify) these need to be ‘Applied’ before you unwrap your mesh - otherwise the geometry generated by those modifiers won’t be included. By applying the modifier the base mesh will be updated to include the new geometry and the ‘unwrap’ will include the additional faces.


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Water flow looks like drops
Im a beginner to blender, so some settings are a bit confusing to me, please be kind enough to guide me to sort out this issue.
In this animation, I cannot generate a water flow which looks realistic. It always falls down as drops. (velocity is not an issue, they are flowing fast) but the water flowing falling down as big droplets. How can i change this ?
Your support is highly appreciated :) Cheers

With fluid sim it is important to ensure your settings reflect the desired physical properties - in particular the Time and the Real World Size - in order to get convincing behaviour from the fluid.
Assuming you’re rendering 250 frames at 25 frames per second you should set End time to 10 (10 seconds for the whole simulation).
Also, it appears that your mesh is some kind of large scale water conduit but your Real World Scale is only 0.5 metres - set it to something more applicable for the scale of your simulation (it defines the real world dimension of the longest dimension of your domain).
Once you have this set you may also need to re-adjust the rate of flow from your Inflow to match the new scales.
The Time and Size setting will affect properties such as effect of gravity, surface tension/viscosity, friction, etc. Which will affect the behaviour of the fluid.


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animating on local axis
This could be a duplicate question, if so I do apologize for wasting your time. I did some research, but couldn't find the answer for my question. That's why I posted it here.
I've modeled an Archimedes screw for my undergraduate project. Now i want to incline the setup at an angle of about 30 degrees and add a rotation for this crew. but when I animate the rotation after re positioning, it does not rotate the way I want. It rotates around the global axis, but i want it to rotate around like a screw. what should i do for this ?
I want my setup to look like this, but when i progrramme the keyframes it does not rotate according to it's new position ( i want it to rotate like a screw)

Possible duplicate of Orbiting around axis at an angle

See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/56882/how-do-you-rotate-an-object-so-that-a-particular-face-is-parallel-to-the-ground/ and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/77224/change-object-pivot-point-orientation/

The simpler method to achieve the result is to animate the screw in vertical position, set the screw to be child of an empty and then tilt the empty 30 degrees (in this way you can even animate the tilt angle).


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Using a Character Mesh as a Fluid Obstacle
I'm trying to use an imported character mesh as a fluid obstacle. The only way I can get it to actually act as an obstacle is to select "Export Animated Mesh" in the fluid obstacle settings. (Selecting shell or volume or both produces no interaction.) However with that enabled, I lose the ability to set slip settings and the fluid ends up "sticking" to the model. Is there any way around this?


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Can I make character hold hands using contraints?
Trying to solve a problem here. I've got two characters, each with an already animated walk cycle. I want them to be holding hands:

I tried doing by hand but the result is too jerky:

Is there some way I can constrain the child's hand to the adult's to get a smooth result?
Thanks!

This is not a perfect solution, but it meets my needs for this project.

Created an Empty
Applied an Inverse Kinematics bone constraint to the hand bones of each character.
Set the empty as the target in the bone constraint and the chain length to 3.

This snaps the hands of each character to a single location. The chain length ensures that only the arms of each character move toward the empty.


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How to Add Render Slots in Blender?
I heard somewhere that it's possible to determine the number of render slots available in 2.8 but I can't seem to find the option to change it from 8....

Relevant: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/65912/number-of-render-slots If this is still the case, 8 slots has been hardcoded into Blender and cannot be changed unless you modify the source code and recompile it all. You can also try looking into other BlenderBuilds by the community here https://blender.community/c/graphicall/

This is done uder the Image tab in the Side Bar of the Render View / Image Editor


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Blender 2.8 crashes when entering particle edit
Blender 2.8 is crashing when I try to go into particle edit to comb hair.

In case it helps someone: if you have a baked hair simulation and try to go into particle edit (i.e., combing) without deleting the bake first, it will crash blender.


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How to map procedural bricks on a Pyramid Part II
I created a pyramid from a default cube and applied uv unwrap > cube projection. That works great for a flat pyramid, but in the setup shown below, it gives distortion on the bottom and inner faces:

If I switch the Texture Coordinate from "UV" to "Object" I get a much better result, but then I have the problem of one face being horizontal bricks and one being vertical. This was originally solved by using cube project and UV but then, as I said, the inside and bottoms get distorted.
The question is how do I get a workable, procedural brick texture that matches up on all surfaces? And the goal is to have the main face of the pyramid all display horizontal bricks. Guidance greatly appreciated!

I tried the "select all faces, UV projection cube" on your pyramid, while using UV texture coordinates, and it all worked flawlessly.

You just need to use the Cube Projection again.
Select > All
UV > Cube Projection
But to have more control, consider unwrapping your object using manual seams.

One method: Go to UV editor, and mark proper seams, then orient each face to show the bricks lined up the way you want, while using UV texture coordinates.

That's good. I'll keep that in mind. Thanks!


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How to Map Procedural Bricks on a Pyramid
I've created this pyramid from a default cube by deleting the top face and then merging the vertices at center. How do I get the bricks node to be horizontal on all faces?

Thanks!

This is rather easy to do :).
Just unwrap your object using Cube Projection and connect your UV map.

Select all vertices of your object.
Go to UV > Cube Projection

Connect nodes like in this image.
Use the UV output - this will connect your UV map (that you just made).

Add a Texture/Mapping (use Ctrl-T in Node Wrangler) and set the Texture coordinate to Camera.

Ok playing with that some more, I see that it depends on the camera location.  Is that going to work for you?


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How to get realistic dirt on metal?
I'm trying to create a stainless steel metal with dust on it. There' something I'm not understanding. I'm using a sun lamp in my scene and the effect is pretty weak:

Hoewever, if, under viewport shading, I uncheck "Scene Lights" and "Scene World", I get this - which is much closer to what I'm going for (although still not great):

The problem is that I want to use the sun lamp and not an HDRI. Basically, I'm looking for a good way to add dirt to a vehicle in a scene lit with a sun lamp.
So one question is, why does the second image look so much better? How do I get the first image to look more like the second?
More importantly though, how can I get some realistic dirt and dust on a metal vehicle?
Thanks for any help!

I don't think the problem is so much with the dirt, as with the metal. In order for the eye to perceive a material as metallic, the main visual cue is reflection of an environment. (If not an HDRI, then something else you provide for it)

Thanks for the responses everyone. I realize I was asking several things at once. Here's what I figured out:

The sun lamp was too dim. That's why the results were not comparable with the HDRI.
I had to really turn up the the "Strength" and "Distance" settings on the bump node to get some effect. And turning down the roughness setting allows the "Dirt" to look like it's sitting on top of the metal.

Unfortunately, the effect looks more like metal than dirt, but the questions I was asking in this thread are answered.

Edit: I found that inverting the Bump node, gave more of the look I was going for:

I saw your node and I would like to suggest you something. It is preferable that you connect your Mapping node into your other textures if they correspond to the same PBR material. This will make all images have the same coordinates in the mesh.
About the metalic appearence I would like to suggest you to use only the 'normal map' node and connect only the normal texture in it. The bump node will give the impression of depht. I don't know if this will work but would give a try.

Well, I'm not going to be able to answer all your questions, but I try to help a bit.
-Any metallic surface needs an environment to look its best. The material's reflectiveness needs to be able to interact with the surroundings, so even simply adding a ground plane can help a lot.
-The first image is simply just getting hit with flat hard blue lighting causing the cube to look blue. As I mentioned above, adding surroundings can help reduce that.
-There are many tutorials on adding dirt/grime to objects. I'd look through those as its similar to dust.

I would like to suggest some solutions:
1.You could look for some already made pbr textures that have dust or rust on it, like this one.

You could look for dirt PNG images like this one and put it on the top of your material, and going even further you could search for multiple materials (metal only and dirt only) and add them in a mixed shader to have of them.

And finally, the way I did it once here , you could paint your texture with dirt using the 'Texture Paint' tab. Thats how I make the name 'Capsule 341' name on this model. I wrote the name and added some brown dirt over a layer using photoshop. The green color is from the material and the almost invisible brown dirt is from an image.

I hope it helps :)


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Blender 2.76 Cycles texture baking strange artifacts
I am trying to learn texture baking work flow using Cycles, I checked the manual and a few forum threads on the topic.
So, I have a lowpoly and a highpoly objects, both are UV-unwrapped.
I setup some material for highpoly object with color and displacement, both objects have the same location, I use "Selected to active" option, tried cage settings etc. Tried scaling hipoly object down, so that it is completely inside the target lowpoly object. But no matter what, I get these strange maps rendered. can anyone advise what am I doing wrong?
I also noticed that objects are rendered with flat shading whether or not I select "smooth" option.
Many thanks in advance.

Did you try to recalculate the normals?
Ctrl+N

Did you set Smooth shading before baking ? Also try selecting all in Edit mode and remove doubles via W menu,

Thanks for suggestions, I will try everything (even though I believe I did all these) and post updates.

This can is resulted from two overlapped UV's or 2 linked objects.
make sure you only have 1 UV in place and remove doubles.

Usually, this happens when the two meshes are intersecting. Avoid this enabling the cage option into the bake panel and set a distance maybe 0.05 (5 cm) in your case should do fine.
A normal map has mostly a blue tint indicating the z direction that the faces are pointing towards, In your case, as the meshes are intersecting you get this strange variation of colors because sometimes the hires mesh is on one side of the low res mesh, sometimes is on the other side.
Creating a cage (and not choosing an object as a cage) is like inflating your low-resolution mesh and projecting towards inside from a certain distance to find the high res object.
If you have a complicated shape and usually the concave shapes that simply "inflating" it makes it intersect with herself might need a cage object ( with the same number of verts as the low res object).
Also, shade smooth your high-resolution object.
P.S. You might want also to give a bit more distance between the two UV islands as they might overwrite each other.


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Blender 2.79 cycles normal map bake artifacts
I am baking a normal map in Cycles and keep getting strange results, I do not know what am I doing wrong.
I tried baking in Cycles in tangent and object space, tried baking in BI in tangent and Object space.
The resulting map looks OK as far as I can tell, but I keep getting either completely or partially black render.
I tried all possible space options in Cycles material normal map node.
What am I missing?

Attachment: Blend file

Turn off Ambient Occlusion in World tab.

Damn, thanks! will do when I get back to PC. but why should AO affect surface normals? Is it a bug?

no, you just overexposure objects.


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How to connect and control a ragdoll?
I want to evolve walking creatures like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5xC80q69t4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFJkpVWTQVM
But have been struggling to set up physics of joints of a ragdoll. This is the best I got so far
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeWCDx7V60c (project link in the description of the video)
But you can see cubes are not really following bones and they even fall apart at some point. I connected those cubes through Rigid Body Joint constraints and made them follow bone orientation (cube.worldOrientation = bone.worldOrientation) through python which in turn must be controlled by neural network output but for now they are just controlled by some sinusoidal functions of time. There must definitely better way to do this or at least improve on this.

Related links: 1, 2

@Mentalist, I've seen 1 and it didn't help. 2 looks like it's made for artistic purposes, I however need it to maintain collision physics and be able to crudely simulate some robot which will evolve behaviors based on that.


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Parent with Automatic Weights fails, how to detect which bone?

failed to find solution for one or more bones

Is there a way to find which bones are failing so I can hone in on the problem quickly?

Here's the solution I come across, this might work for others so I'm posting here.
So you failed the automatic weighting and you have no idea where the problem might be. So what's the solution?
Well, it's to go around looking for real close or overlapping vertices all over your mesh. (I assume you tried normal fixing or merging by distance already)
It is not a pleasant thought if your mesh is complex.
So select all your mesh in edit mode, Select all vertices(or better the ones youre suspicious about) then keep applying Merge By Distance while increasing the Merge Distance value, then apply the auto-weight until it works.
Example
My Merge Distance was: 0.00001 by default.
I increased it to 0.00011 then applied and re-auto-weighted. Didn't work.
So I increased it to 0.00012.
Keep going.
I found my mark at 0.00022m.
Use this method at your own risk, there's always the off hand chance of your CPU going critical and causing a thermonuclear reaction in which half a continent can vaporize in the blink of an eye.


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Is there a way to mirror/symmetrize weight paint?
How can I apply one part of the weight paint on the other side of the mesh with symmetrized bones?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/9390/how-can-i-mirror-weight-painting

Here's how to solve this if you are bad at this like me. Do your weight painting, then select the vertex group you want to carry over. Do in order, copy vertex group, mirror vertex group, change name accordingly to other side, ie shoulder.L -> shoulder.R. If there are problems you can go back to edit mode, select the vertices and do Symmetrize(mesh dropdown menu) because mirror needs exact same mirrored vertices. Some vertices might still cause problems go remove those from VG and either blur or paint the broken parts on your new vertex group.


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Multires subdivide causes distortion, what can cause this?

Subdiv1

Subdiv2

Subdiv3

Already tried fixing normals and merging duplicate vertices. Any idea
why else this might happen?

Try to click Apply Base in modifier's settings. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/115661/2-issues-with-multires-modifier?rq=1

Here's how it worked for me. I clicked on apply base while in subdiv3, then deleted the multiresolution modifier and then re-applied it. On subdiv3 it worked.


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Is there a way to modify multiple curve slopes in Graph Editor at the same time?

How can I adjust several handles on one side at the same time?

Select the keyframe (which selects both side handles) press C for Circular Selection tool and de-select the side you don't want.


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Blender 2.8 Wireframe and Subdivision overlaps when seaming
I'm seaming the edges for UVing. It's a mesh with subdivision modifier in effect(not applied).
The wireframe mesh disappears inside the subdivision as expected, but this blocks my view from actually seeing the edge to select it properly.
Question: Are there any settings to help me out and prevent this visual impairment, or do I just go with it?
Is there some other method I don't know about?
XRAY is currently off but it makes a horrible confusion when activated(shows all subdivision edges), so I don't see it as the solution.
It would be great if the entire low poly mesh edges were to show significantly in XRAY mode, right now the XRAY shows me original mesh and subdivision result overlapping, creating a guess who game with sticks.
Do viewport gizmos have such a setting? I wasn't able to see any.

Is there any reason why you don't hide the subdivision modifier for the edit mode and then use x-ray?

That's how I worked around it I think.


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Texture Painting: How to not have jagged edges when drawing?
I'm doing texture painting. I get these horrible jagged lines when painting, I want straight lines, what am I doing wrong? How can I do it better, if I can?
Here's some info to help you out:
1. I let the blender handle UV the mesh, so you can consider it auto-uv'ed.
2. I paint straight from a side view but the line goes jagged anyway.
3. Smearing or softening doesn't help.
4. Playing around with "Project Paint" settings didn't help. IE. Occlude, Cull and such.
Can this be a UV issue where the islands are distorted so the paint doesn't go straight?

In the Tools panel > Stroke > have you played with the Spacing and Jitter values?

I did, doesn't fix. Here's an interesting thing I found, if I zoom real far and do the line from the exact same angle, it doesn't go jagged or at least go lessened to acceptable levels. I'm thinking it's something to do with texture or model size.

perhaps share your file (and pack the image before): https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

I think the texture map needs to be higher resolution.

 Hope it helps, not sure if I packed the image correctly tough.

@Susan, I figured it after I enlarged the texture to 2K, but wasn't sure if it's the solution or the workaround.

weird because it works fine here

@moonboots, I'm on some very bad hardware(i5-and-then-some), could that be effecting the drawing?

I don't think it has to do with your hardware   :/   do you still experience the same problem?

I scaled the texture to 4K and it got better. Thanks for the help.

Paint on an image that is twice the size you think you need, and you will get the better detail since this is about pixels, and downscale the image with an image editor to get the lower memory version. Make sure your UV mapping has allotted enough pixels for each island - unwrapping technique is critical for small details. In setting up your base image to paint to, perhaps consider checking the option '32 Bit Float' so that you have enough color depth to avoid jagged details, especially when painting bump maps.

Great help, thanks.


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How to turn face from existing mesh into new mesh?
This question is similar but didn't seem to solve this problem.
How can you turn a face from an existing mesh into a new standalone mesh, without changing the visual state of the object?
Let's use as an example the default cube in Blender that appears with new files.
How could you extract each cube face from the existing mesh and create a new mesh with only that one cube face?
In the end, the cube should look the same but you should have six meshes -- one for each cube face.

Step one: Give the Cube an Edge Split modifier and apply it. Now you have a mesh with 6 separate faces. If you have a mesh with less pronounced angles, you might need to select all faces and hit CTRLE 'Mark Sharp'.
Step two: Go into edit mode and hit P for seParate and choose 'By loose parts'.
Step three, optional: in object mode, select all the new objects and in the tools, use 'set origin to geometry'. All faces have the object origin moved into their middle. Depends on what you want to do.

I recommend saving before trying this with a mesh that has lots of faces. Separate can take quite some time and has no indicator whether it's still working.
P.S.: I scaled the object centers of the right Suzie's faces to illustrate the effect. If I hadn't, it would look identical to the left Suzie.
I eventually came up with a script. It uses the active object as its source.
import bpy

targetName = "new-object" # name for the new objects

def createNewObj(verts, faces):
    global targetName
    newMesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(targetName)
    newMesh.from_pydata(verts, [], faces)
    newMesh.update()

    obj = bpy.data.objects.new(targetName, newMesh)
    scene = bpy.context.scene
    scene.objects.link(obj)

def iterateFaces(sourceName):
    obj   = bpy.data.objects[sourceName]
    mesh  = obj.data
    verts = mesh.vertices
    faces = mesh.polygons
    total = len(faces)
    counter = 0

    for a in faces:
        newFace = [list(range(len(a.vertices)))]
        newVerts = []
        for b in a.vertices:
            newVerts.append(verts[b].co)
        createNewObj(newVerts, newFace)
        counter += 1
        if counter % 100 == 0:
            print(counter,"/", total, "done")
    if counter % 100 != 0:
        print(total,"/", total, "done")
    print("Separation finished.")

if bpy.context.active_object.type == 'MESH':
    sourceName = bpy.context.active_object.name
    iterateFaces(sourceName)
else:
    print("The selected object isn't a mesh")

Thanks so much! Is there a faster way to do this if a mesh has many faces?

The only other way I can imagine would be a python script that reads the list of faces and produces objects. Separating the mesh into objects a thousand faces each might help. Never tried it.

On my very slow pc, a 1000 faces took about 22 seconds. How many faces do you have to split?


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Automate geometry creation to match texture UV mappings?
In this model, https://poly.google.com/view/dXYoN00Ng8j), the eyes are not defined as separate geometries but rather drawn in the texture.
Since the texture has UV mappings, is there a way to write a script to automate the creation of geometries that match UV mappings?
1) In other words, could a script create geometries from the texture UV mappings of this elephant and create the eyes?

In short yes, but It could take forever to do so too. It could be much faster and easier to remove mesh faces at the eyes in the model and attach a modified sphere with UV Map/s (Duplicated) to display your details but ultimately depends on what your desired results are to be in the area.

Thanks for the answer, Dave. The goal is to write a script and repeat the process for other models as well. How long do you think it would take to write a script like this?

Hard to say exactly for me as I don't know that it has or hasn't been done before and far from a master programmer. With some knowledge, research and lots of attempts a willing body could be testing in a month or 2, or more depending on time available/applied. Could be much longer too even for  the experienced depending on testing, compatibility, glitches etc. etc.


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How to point and select mesh containing face if model contains many meshes?
Other questions like this are similar but don't address the problem of how to select a particular mesh if there are many meshes in a model.
For instance, this model (https://poly.google.com/view/6mRHqTCZHxw) contains many meshes.

One way to find the mesh corresponding to the helmet is to manually select each mesh in the Outliner editor (top of right-hand bar) until the helmet gets highlighted. This is tedious.
Is there a way to click on the helmet and identify the corresponding mesh?

What is not good enough about Ctrl+L (select linked) shown in the linked answer? Works exactly as described in your question (at least for now)

@MrZak thanks! because that didn't seem to work unless the right mesh was selected in the first place? in other words, if the leg mesh was selected, Ctrl+L didn't (seem to) select the helmet mesh.

Ctrl+L selects the mesh which is linked to the geometry already selected. So if leg mesh is selected Ctrl+L will select whole leg mesh, that's the general idea of this operator. To make it work on helmet in the same way select at least one vertex of helmet. Or use L operator and hover your mouse over what you want to select

@MrZak found the problem and posted an answer, probably obvious to experts but definitely not obvious to new users! Thanks again!

Now I see - you were talking about selection in Object mode. I was talking about Edit mode. In Object mode you can also Right click with Alt pressed and get pop up with names of the objects under mouse position. The reason I thought you were working in Edit mode is that you mentioned meshes, and in Blender terms mesh is a datablock in the object datablock. So mesh is available in Edit mode, object - in Object mode

1) Make sure you're in Object Mode.
2) Right-click on any part of the model, and the corresponding mesh should get highlighted.


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How to extrude vertex normals along an angle with an even offset?

I want to extrude all of the selected faces along their angle, at an even offset like so:

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/38877/how-to-extrude-equally-in-all-directions and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/7365/extrude-faces-along-local-normals

@MrZak They're related but do not answer how to do this at an angle.

The anser shown below works for the case shown in your question. "doesn't work" doesn't show what doesn't work. Doing the procedure on a rectangular plane (probably that you meant by rectangle) is not possible in general because there won't be any side faces to extrude. This all comes to the problem with your question - it is not clear what are you trying to do

You can use simple extrude and scale, however along custom Transform Orientation, in this case View, in order to lock scaling on non-desired axes.
Select the face which is oriented at an angle (which looks like parallelogram). In the case of cuboid on your screenshot the one which is formed with the top loopcut on the side.
Align viewport with it so you see the face from the top. Shift+Numpad 7 will do that.
Once viewport is aligned, select the ring of faces to extrude (Alt + Left click on faces near an edge).
Make View as transform orientation along which transform will be done - press Alt+Space and choose View.
Press E to extrude, cancel default extrusion and press S to execute Scale tool.
Now lock movement on axis you don't want to interfere. In case of described viewport position View X axis should be locked, so after enabling Scale tool press Shift+X (locks global X) and then again Shift+X (locks View X). Move to the desired offset.

Way better than doing math!  But, uh, hardly intuitive (not your fault).  It would be nice to have an extrude tool with a bunch more toolbar options in terms of axes (and also shrink/fatten option) . . . but I'm not sure even that would cover this usage case.

Okay, it is dumb to me that it involves so many steps.  If someone knows a simpler way that would be good to know!
First you will have to calculate the ratio between the x and y dimensions of your object.  (Edit: see at the end for a more correct/precise way to find the ratio.)

In this case, my x/y ratio is 4.349/2=2.174
You will also have to decide how much you want to scale by.  Here I'm going to scale my shorter axis (here my Y axis) by 1.2.  Proportionally, that means I'm going to scale my X axis by 1+((1.2-1) / 2.174), or 1.092
Now, in edit mode, I'm going to need to make a face.  Actually two faces.  What I suggest is that you select the faces as shown, then duplicate (Shift-D, then Escape).

Without deselecting anything, fill the empty regions with faces (type F).
Now select the first face, e.g. the top one.  Make sure your Transform Orientation is set to Normal.  This means your X and Y axes may get flipped for purposes of the transformations (as happened in my case).  So you will use the X axis scaling for the Y axis, and the Y axis scaling for the X axis.

Scale the X axis by typing S, X, X, 1.2, Enter  (don't forget to type X twice)
Scale the Y asix by typing S, Y, Y, 1.092, Enter (again, don't forget to type Y twice)
Now do the same scaling trick for your other face, the bottom one.
Finally, select both faces, and choose Mesh-->Edges-->Bridge Edge Loops to create your vertical faces.
Congratulations, you've extruded in what I truly hope is the fashion you were looking for.

Edit: on reflection, if you want to be precise I suspect you may need to determine the X/Y ratio not of the object, but of the face(s) you're going to scale.  Something something pythagorean theorem, I'll let you figure it out if it's important to you.  The above steps give something that looks roughly right.
Edit 2: or may I suggest the very handy MeasureIt addon that I just learned about, which tells me in this case that the Y axis of my face is actually 2.2 units.  That makes the true X/Y ratio 1.977, and the proper X axis scaling is 1.101.

Use custom orientation
1. Choose Normal orientation and select face with angle. Go to N-panel and find Transform Orientation rollout, press Plus to add custom orientation. Orientation called Face will be created.

2. Switch cursor to 3D cursor, and change orientation to Face. Select face with angle and press Shift + S (choose Cursor to selected). Select faces you want to extrude. Press E, then Enter, then S. You should get something like this:

Because face was used as scaling center, lower part of extrusion went far way below. To put it in the right place you need to select inner border of edges and press Shift + S (choose Cursor to selected).

3. Select outer border and press Shift + S, but at this time choose Selection to cursor.


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UV Texture doesn't show on my model
I seem i have put My Texture in the UV Map,but it doesn't show up In the Model itself
https://gyazo.com/0f3bd1087814d915fb5dd3d3a37d1df0
I don't really Know blender that well.

You probably need to switch your "viewport shading" mode to either material or texture. Then you probably will be able to see it.
http://blender-manual-i18n.readthedocs.io/ja/latest/_images/Viewport-shading-menu.jpg


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Blender rendered animation is not smooth
I rendered a 40 frame animation at 30 FPS with an output of avi jpeg but when I played the rendered video it cuts off and is slow and lags although I played it many times . I also wanted to know does the frame rate affect how smooth an animation is ?

It sounds like you are using the BlenderPlayer to play back your render. I think that's a tool that is meant to play games made with Blender. Using that tool (from Render>Play rendered animation), I get a lag, too. BlenderPlayer can be used for a preview of what the animation looks like, but it is unable to read image data fast enough to give you a smooth animation.
To get a smooth animation, you can encode it as a video clip. The second half of this video tutorial explains how you can do that right inside Blender. Other tools can be used for this, too.
Does the frame rate affect how smooth an animation is?
Normally, animations are rendered at either 24 or 30 fps and look smooth most of the time. Smaller frame rates might make your animation look blocky, but you don't need more than that, usually. If you have a lot of movement in your scene, you can use motion blur to make it look smoother. As far as I know, movies don't usually use frame rates higher than 30 - some games use 60 fps though.


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how to blend or diffuse two materials properly
As you can see in the image that I've attached, there are two materials used for the soil and the grassland. please be kind enough to tell me, how to make the boundary looks better ? how to make a proper diffusion or a realistic gradient between these two ?
Im so sorry if this is a dumb question, but im new to blender.
-peace-

This has been asked before frequently https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/49914/smooth-transition-between-2-materials and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/10453/how-can-you-smooth-the-edge-between-two-materials/ also https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/516/add-different-materials-to-different-parts-of-a-mesh/748#748

No need to apologise for a dumb question - there is nothing dumb about the question itself, however this is a very frequent question and it is extremely easy to find the answer just by searching this website. Some reasearch is allways a good idea before asking.

There is a point here though....  rather than a gradient, there might be a call for treatment of the edges where grass is churned up, and there's an abrupt change of texture between cultivated and uncultivated ground. Displacement? Dynamic Paint if animated?


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Cycles rendering stopped
Cycles render (animation) stopped without finishing. What could be the reason ? I didn't turn off the computer while its animating.
I'm a real beginner for blender, please be kind enough to guide me]1

You Must have pressed the cancel button in the render tab or Esc accidentally.

or pressed [ESC]


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changing rotational axis
this setup is rotating anticlockwise like a screw  (I've added the keyframes for the rotation) but now, I want to slant this set up a bit (30 degrees) when I do so, keyframed values are not working properly. I tried changing the pivot points and all, but nothing helped me. I did some research on the internet regarding this, but i cannot understand it clearly. I'm a very beginner to blender, please be kind enough to guide me through this.
-peace-

I think your question could be clearer. Please try to rephrase.

Create a controlling empty and use as parent.

Create an empty in a useful place.  Perhaps the base.
Parent the components to the empty.  You may choose to not include any object already parented to others. Do this by selecting the children first.  Select the parent last.

Press Ctrl-p
Select from the pop up menu

Rotate the empty which should rotate all the children in unison.


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How to invert object data?
I have a logo with transparent background and I want to print a form so I can cast a stamp with silicone. To do that, I need to invert the transparent background and the filled logo so that the logo is transparent and the background is filled. How do I do that?
Thank you!

This is easy to do with Gimp or photoshop, are you sure you need to do it in blender?

Well if it's doable in Gimp I'd be more than happy to do it there if I knew how.

I think I've got it wrong, could you maybe attack your .blend?

Method 1 -
Reverse the output render's alpha layer when rendering direct from a 3D model (logo)
This is simply a matter of reducing the model's material slot(s) "Transparency-->Alpha" slider to 0.008.
Also reduce both specular sliders to 0 otherwise you may not get full transparency.
If the logo isn't cutting a hole in the background, simply parent (CTL-P) the background plane (child) to the logo (parent) .  Use ALT-P to clear the parentage immediately.  If there's an outline around the logo, goto the logo's properties and open it's "Display" tab. (down a fair way) and tick the "Transparency" box.
In the render properties (at right) change the shading from Sky to "Transparent"
Output Format -
In the Render properties --> Output tab, set the output format to PNG and select it's RGBA button. (extreme right)
Render the result with OpenGL.  (Render menu at top of window)

Method 2 -
This is for when you're starting with an alpha layered image of the logo.
In Blender's 3D window -
Setup the background colour or background image plane.
Add another 2D plane just in front of that. This is for your logo image.
Make the plane's material colour a bright green or one that can be used for Chroma Key.
Set it's transparency-->Alpha slider to 0, and it's specular slider to 0.
Also set the main specular slider to zero or you may not get proper transparency.
In the logo plane's texture properties --> Influence tab, untick the colour box and tick the Alpha box.  Make sure the Alpha slider is at full. (1.0)  This will force the logo to take on the flat matte colour, namely the green used in it's material slot.
Set up the Compositor as shown and the flat green coloured logo will be converted to transparency.

Render it out as a .png image using --> Blender's Internal render <---   Make sure the "Compositor" box is ticked in the render properties.  (post processing tab)
Set the output format as in Method 1 above, including the RGBA button.


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Collision logic brick not detecting collision in BGE
I am making a game in the BGE and I don't want my character going off the platform. I have is set to quit the game when that happens (I am going to change that later), and the walls let him pass right through. How can I prevent that?

I want him to stop at the walls. Here is the logic:

What am I doing wrong?

Is your character have "Static" physics?
If yes,just change character's physics to "Dynamic"

yes. that worked. I don't know much about blender. Thanks