text:
How to twist multiple objects
How would you go about making these kind of twisted objects. The twist consists of multiple objects. Somehow I can't get the result using the Twist modifier.

maybe this will help? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/114563/how-to-create-twisted-wires-in-blender/114566#114566

Just as a note: If you twist both bundles of strands in the same orientation the strands will untangle themselves very quickly. Real ropes therefore twist each consecutive bundle of strands in the opposite direction.

Just for fun you can do this procedurally :)
Start with five circles and a bezier curve and add modifiers...

Screw modifier
Array modifier
Curve modifier and target the Bezier curve
Simple deform modifier > Twist
Simple deform modifier > Bend

Yea... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh8eb_ACLl8 ... and a cat can do it too https://www.cat-health-detective.com/images/cotytwisted.jpg

We're lucky there isn't a rickroll modifier...

Call that procedural? Pah! Give it some Gorgious goodness and start with one vertex .. :D

@RobinBetts Oh, I'll get there once... just gimme 200 years to practice... :D

@Robin "Gorgious Goodness" should definitely be a technical term in procedural modeling... :)

Challenge accepted :)

I used your method, thanks!

Here's but another one, with a simple vertex and a curve.
First, start with a single vertex on 0, 0, 0. (Create a cube, go into edit mode and vertex select mode, select everything and right click > Merge > At Center).
Add a displace modifier along X.

Add a screw modifier along Z to get a nice circle.

Add another Screw along Z, this time to get a cylinder. You might have to check "Flip" normals if the normals are inverted. (Viewport overlays > Face Orientation)

Add 2 displace modifiers, along X and Y, to offset the cylinder.

Add a Mirror modifier to X and Y, set to bisect along X and Y, to get this kind of clover shaped cylinder.

Add a simple deform Twist modifier. Set angle to 360°.

Add 2 Displace modifiers to X and Y, and set the offset to either 1.707 or type 1 + sqrt(0.5) to get the exact value. (which will be rounded anyway by Blender)

Add two arrays along X and Y, set the count to 2 and the offset to relative -1.

Add a new Simple deform modifier set to Twist along Z by 360°.

Create a curve. Scale it way up. Add an Array modifier to your cylinders object and set it to "Fit Curve" and select your curve. Check "Merge".

Tweak the curve. Add a curve modifier to the base object and select the curve. You might have to tweak the Axis of the modifier.

Result :

Here's another, using only the default cube and an empty. It is important that the origin is set to the 3d cursor for both cube and empty.

Default cube

Displace Modifier to shrink the cube
Weld Modifier to weld the cube into a single vertex.
Displace again to move it slightly
Screw Modifier (twice) to create a circle
Array Modifierto create a radial array from the empty
Displace again to space the circles out. (used to scale the circles with array offset.)
Array again to create a second radial array of the first
Simple Deform Modifier (twice). Twist, then bend.

Gif and sample file below :

Click to enlarge

Pretty cool starting with the default cube :). Didn't know you could use the Displace modifier like that. And thanks for sharing the file.

This one definitely appeals. I mean. Who wants all the hassle of reaching for the Shift-A Create menu?

Awesome trick ! I'm stealing it for the next one :)


text:
Make child object go along the same curve as parent
How can you make a child object automatically go along the same curve as the parent object?

A possibility is to parent the cylinder to vertices of the curved object:

Before adding the curve modifier:

in edit mode select 3 vertices of the object
come back to object mode,
select the cylinder
Shift select the object
then CtrlP and choose "Vertex triangle"

I tried your suggestion. Now the 'donut' moves with the large pole but it doesn't stay at the right place as your example.

Are the hook vertices you've used just the one inside/below the torus?

For some reason it didn't work because of the object already had a curve modifier. When I deleted the modifier and did parent the vertices it started working. Thanks for your help!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to model stylized Hoodie
How would you go about modeling a hoodie on a tictac shape model like the image below?
For example I started with a outline with a bezier curve but it just doesn't look good.

Wow - Dwayne uses Blender - didn‘t know that. He is really multitalented!!

@Chris what can I say... I'm a multidisciplinary artist

I'd say it looks good. Maybe it's too thick, but for cartoony look, it looks great - as if you modeled it using plasticine.

isn't the image the reference image?

I have an idea for this.
It is: the basic shape of a hood is a sphere cut in half  and squashed and stretched into more of an oval shape.  Kind of like an egg cut in half from top to bottom.
You just need to take that primitive mesh shape and add a little detail.
I like to start with an add an extra object add on called Add Mesh:  Extra Objects, I am not sure if it is  there by default but it is definitely free.  This gives you a sphere made out of quads instead of the default sphere.
Then I just take that object, delete the front faces.  Then solidify it, bevel it, and apply those modifiers.  This will make the cloth have a bit of a nice rounded rim.  Then I would add a subdivisions modifier to smooth it out, and maybe sculpt it a bit to add details.
I show all the stages of that in this picture here:

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


text:
Is it possible to blend meshes and have smoothed bevels
I just came across this image and was wondering if it's possible to recreate it in Blender. The goal is to make it seem like it's one mesh by having smooth bevels.

In general, combining two arbitrary objects with a smooth transition between them is tricky, and the best approach heavily depends on what particular shape you are trying to create. However, for the type of shape you show in your question, one relatively easy approach is to use Metaballs:

This only works for a fairly restrictive set of shapes, but for rounded, liquid-like materials like the one in your question, it can be a nice solution.


text:
My quad looks like two triangles
I'm a beginner and I don't know what's going on.
Some faces I've made look like two triangles glued together with different angles.
Removing doubles didn't do anything, nor flipping normals.

All faces (quads and n-gons) will be divided into triangles when they are rendered. Depending on the engine the solution for that triangulation will differ a bit. This is a normal thing. If you don't like how they are triangulated you will need to do it your self.


text:
How can I move/reorder a vertex group more than one spot at a time?
I have a model with a lot of vertex groups. I've found out that I'm missing one, or need to add one for a new reason, or whatever. However, to keep the list usefully organized, the new group should be near the beginning of the list. The problem is that all new vertex groups are added at the end of the list, and it seems that the only way to reorder them is to click on the "move up" button once per spot. I don't really want to be clicking the "move up" button a couple dozen times, especially if it turns out I need to (for example) add four new groups that all belong near the beginning of a sixty-long list for a couple dozen models.
How can I move a vertex group multiple spots at once?
I can't use name sort or bone hierarchy sort because that's not how the groups should be ordered. The "copy group" function also sticks new groups on the end rather than after the selected group. The intuitive "click and drag" doesn't exist. I'm not seeing anything relevant in any expected locations.

Quick vg move addon.

Debug run showing setter output to console. Move "Group" from top to bottom to top.  Add new group "Group.040" and move to top
Here is a script solution to set the destination index of the active vg.  To run copy, paste into text editor, run script and the slider will appear below the vg listbox.
Can install as addon.
bl_info = {
    "name": "Ouick Move Vertex Group",
    "author": "batFINGER",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 80, 0),
    "location": "Properties > Mesh > Vertex Groups",
    "description": "Quickly move vertex groups",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Object",
}

import bpy
from bpy.props import IntProperty

def vgmove(delta):
    direction = 'UP' if delta > 0 else 'DOWN'
    for i in range(abs(delta)):
        bpy.ops.object.vertex_group_move(direction=direction)

def get_move_to(self):
    return self.vertex_groups.active_index

def set_move_to(self, value):
    delta = (self.vertex_groups.active_index -
            min(value, len(self.vertex_groups) - 1))
    vgmove(delta)

bpy.types.Object.move_to_vg = IntProperty(
    name="Move to",
    get=get_move_to,
    set=set_move_to,
    min=0,
)

def draw_vg_move(self, context):
    layout = self.layout
    ob = context.object
    if ob and len(ob.vertex_groups):
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(ob, "move_to_vg")

def register():
    bpy.types.DATA_PT_vertex_groups.append(draw_vg_move)

def unregister():
    bpy.types.DATA_PT_vertex_groups.remove(draw_vg_move)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Should've specified I was in 2.79b, but it works. Thanks.


text:
Subdivision on mirrored mesh not connected
I'm following Blender Guru's chair tutorial and have arrived at a state where upon extruding, the mirroring of the mesh "disconnects". I've been working left-to-right here. I was mirroring the two halves by hand. Then I deleted one half of the mesh, and just mirrored it. After, I tried extruding the back face of the mesh and have this weird behavior.

Are you sure that there are no faces between the two part being mirrored?

Thank you @the-kalaakaar
There were indeed faces, as shown below. Removing them fixed the problem.
As a follow-up, how can I make sure to not create these faces when extruding?


text:
Underwater scene too "blurry"
I'm trying to make a small video presentation of an rc submarine that rotate 360 degrees for demonstration.
Therefore , I have my underwater scene set up and everything but the problem is that the submarine is blurry and lack contrast with its environment . And because it's a presentation video to show off the sub , it's very important to have it clear and sharp even underwater .
Here is a rendered image

You may want to post a screencap of your water volume material Shader nodes.  I would think that adjusting some Volume Absorption density lower or IOR if they exist -- but I can only guess with the minimal amount of information you have here.

Well, the blurriness and lack of contrast is of course due to your underwater environment, the density and color of the volume. Simplest thing would be to reduce the density. The question is: do you want/need the water density as it is? And if so, do you just want to reduce its effect on the submarine or should the submarine look like there were no volumetrics at all? Depending on what you want there are different solutions.


text:
How do I fix my outlines?
I am making a model of a TV man; I have decided to use a toon shader. This particular toon shader worked for me on another model, so I thought it would work fine with my TV man model, but the outline only seems to be working on some parts of the mesh. I separated the mesh into different parts and the issue persisted. I would like to know how to fix this issue.
Here is the tutorial I used for the toon shader: Toon Shader
Here is the model I am using:

Here is the blender file: Model

Have you checked if all face normals are pointing in the correct direction? Like using Face Orientation in the Overlays to show if they are all blue? Or going into Edit Mode, selecting all with A, then Shift+N to recalculate the normals?

This is 'Inverted Hull' outlining.. I think we need to see the topology of your original objects, and what the Solidify looks like, plain and simple, without flipped normals and the dark material. Possibilities include incorrect normals on the original, or split edges.. if you share on https://blend-exchange.com/, we can have a look


text:
Why is it assigning materials to unselected faces?
I'm trying to make a 2D face texture; the eye and mouth materials are separate for my convenience. But whenever I try to assign the mouth material to my intended part, it also applies the material to the previous selection even though those faces aren't selected. How do I fix this?
Video showcasing problem

Hello and welcome. While files, images, and external videos or links may be helpful additions they should not be the only way to obtain information about your issue. Don't make understanding your question rely on downloading a file, watching a video or visiting an external site. Use the builtin tools to upload images or gifs, along with thoroughly explaining the problem in written form so it can be indexed and searched for thus helping future visitors with similar issues.

In Blender you assign materials to material slots of objects, then assign those material slots to some parts of your model. If you only have one material slot for the object, it will be used for everything instead of only selection, because it's the only one available. Once you have more than one material slot, you can assign different material slots to different parts of your mesh.

Oh, there was a video... I hope I guessed what you meant without watching it. :D


text:
What are my options for automatically filling in a missing vertex weight group?
I have imported a pre-existing, fully-rigged model into Blender 2.79b. Unfortunately, the source model contains some bones that Blender doesn't appear to know how to import correctly, and thus drops them entirely. (I can recreate the bones correctly afterward, that part's not a big deal.) As a result, about 10%-15% of the mesh contains vertices with missing vertex weights. (I can't control the original model, I'm stuck with how it is.)
However, I know that all vertices must have exactly 1 or 2 vertex groups, and their weights are correctly set to sum to 1.0. I also know that the missing groups do not overlap. Therefore, I could go through every vertex near the bone in question and check its groups:

If the vertex has no groups, it must have a weight of 1.0 in a missing group.
If the vertex has 1 group that's less than 1.0, it must belong in a missing group with a corresponding weight (e.g. if it's already in "shoulder_R" with weight 0.35, then it must also be in "arm_R" with weight 0.65).

I could do this manually, but that's a lot of work with lots of potential for messing up.
Is there a way to automatically assign a bunch of vertices to a vertex group that "fills in" their total weights to 1.0?
I tried a few things with weight painting but I didn't find anything that seemed to be what I was looking for. I'm not averse to scripting but have no experience with it.

I managed to put together an add-on script that does what I want. It takes some tabbing between object/edit mode to "bake in" what vertices you want it to operate on (didn't look too deeply into it), and you can only access it through the spacebar menu, but that's fine by me.
bl_info = {
    "name":"Fill In Missing Weights",
    "category":"Object",
}

import bpy
from decimal import *

class FillInWeights(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Fill In Missing Weights"""
    bl_idname = "object.fill_in_weights"
    bl_label = "Fill In Missing Weights"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER","UNDO"}

    missing_group_name = bpy.props.StringProperty(
        name="Missing group name",
        description="Name of the group to fill in.",
        default="",
    )
    print_debug_info = bpy.props.BoolProperty(
        name="Print debug info",
        description="Output specific operations to console.",
        default=False,
    )

    def execute(self,context):
        obj = context.active_object
        if not obj.vertex_groups:
            self.report({"ERROR"},'Object has no vertex groups')
            return {"CANCELLED"}
        missing_group = obj.vertex_groups.get(self.missing_group_name)
        if not missing_group: # group must exist already
            self.report({"ERROR"},'Vertex group "'+self.missing_group_name+'" does not exist')
            return {"CANCELLED"}
        if self.print_debug_info:
            print('Begin weight-fill operation on group "'+self.missing_group_name+'"')
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")
        for v in obj.data.vertices:
            if not v.select: continue
            if len(v.groups) == 0:
                missing_group.add([v.index],1.0,"REPLACE")
                print("Added group-less vertex to group.")
            elif len(v.groups) == 1:
                g = v.groups[0]
                g_index,g_weight = g.group,Decimal(g.weight).quantize(Decimal("0.001")) # all known cases are 0.01, but just to be safe
                if g_weight >= 1.0: continue
                group = obj.vertex_groups[g_index]
                target_weight = Decimal("1.00")-g_weight
                missing_group.add([v.index],target_weight,"REPLACE")
                print('Vertex in group '+group.name+' with weight '+str(g_weight)+': adding to group '+self.missing_group_name+' with weight '+str(target_weight))
            # len(v.groups) >= 2: continue
        bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
        if self.print_debug_info:
            print("Weight-fill complete.")
        return {"FINISHED"}

    def invoke(self,context,event):
        return context.window_manager.invoke_props_dialog(self)

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(FillInWeights)
def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(FillInWeights)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


text:
How do I match old-style (Blender Internal) specular hardness with new-style (Cycles) Principled BSDF Roughness?
I am trying to match the specularity size of an old Internal material (controlled by a Hardness value) and a new Cycles material (controlled by a Roughness value).

As can be seen in the image, Internal Hardness is not nearly as linear as Cycles Roughness is. But I can't find out what sort of math to do to the hardness to make it match the roughness - the Blender source code from the 2.79 era is unsearchable because it's historical, and I can't find any other hints as to what the "Hardness" value logically represents that aren't dead links.
Notes:

I'm not going for perfect accuracy. I just need the average person to look at the two rows here and think "yeah the shiny part looks the same size".
The roughness numbers in the image are backwards because I'm actually working with gloss (the opposite).
The max hardness in the image is 130 because that's what the Hardness texture input does at 1.0 power. I used the default CookTorr, but if one of the others is easier to work with or more accurate for this, that's fine.

With what shader (Blinn, Phong, Cook-Torrence)? My guess is the 2.79 source code is this, which makes it look like Hardness corresponds to Phong shininess. Maybe see if this helps.

I mentioned using CookTorr in the notes, but that using something else is fine if the results turn out easier or better. That code looks weird because (if I understand it correctly) it seems to imply that hardness only takes effect in blocks of 2^n, I'll have to experiment with it. I'd seen that other question before but it's very generic and was hoping for a more Blender-specific answer.

If you mean spec(inp, hard), it's just doing inp^hard plus some clamping using unrolled exponentiation by doubling. I think you'll still have to do swatch matching though.

Ah so it is, this explains a lot. I might be able to self-answer this later.

Based on the code linked to in the comments, Hardness is basically applied as an exponent to the specularity value. So I started to try some formulas and got internal ~= 130*cycles^2, or cycles ~= sqrt(internal/130).

It's not all that close but it's a significant improvement - and because internal Hardness is locked to being an integer, I don't think it's possible to do any better on the rough end because no intermediate values exist.


text:
How would I get the full TBN matrix from just a normal map?
The Normal Map node provides the normal of an object in global space. I also need the tangent or bitangent (either's fine because a cross product will produce the third). This is a problem because the only ways I can see to get them - the Geometry node's Tangent output, or the Tangent node - only provide the tangents without any way to apply the normal map first.
I've tried to create a "bitangent map" node to basically fool the Normal Map node, under the logic that by manipulating the channels of the normal map, I can make the normal point towards the bitangent instead. It swaps G and B, and inverts R so the handedness is maintained.

But I'm not getting the expected result, so I'm wondering if my logic is flawed or not.

It sounds like what you want is the tangent, only rotated such that it is perpendicular to the modified normal.
To get that, you can take the cross product of your tangent and your modified normal, which gives you a vector orthogonal to both, and then take the cross product of this vector with your modified normal, giving you a vector orthogonal to your modified normal, that lies in the same plane as your modified normal and your unmodified tangent:

I'm not sure what you're doing with the nodes you're showing.  If we want the unmodified tangent, and we don't want to just use a tangent node, we can plug RGB 1,0.5,0.5 into a normal map node to get the tangent; likewise, if we want the unmodified binormal, and we don't want to just cross our unmodified normal with our tangent, we can plug RGB 0.5,1,0.5 into a normal map node.  But these vectors are unmodified by the normal map-- these are the vectors in which the normal map itself is measured.  There is no simple color swizzling we can do to get the modified normal or binormal.

This is indeed what I was looking for.


text:
How do I make this shader more accurate to the classic Blender reflection mapping?
Here I have a sphere in Blender Internal using the Reflection coordinate mapping.

The important characteristics of this are:

The center of the image is where the surface normal points directly at the camera.
There are four "poles" that correspond to the top-middle, bottom-middle, left-middle, and right-middle of the image. No matter the perspective, all four are always visible, and always match the same four points on the image.

I am trying to replicate this in the non-Internal engines. Luckily, I found the source code for how Internal did it, which is basically $ref = (normal \cdot view) \times normal + view$. So I came up with this:

(The result of this goes directly into the texture node.)

This is certainly progress: the four poles are visible in about the right places, at least. However, the problems are clear, and after trying a bunch of things I can't get past them:

The bottom-right corner of the image is where the center should be. I can't seem to get the center in there without breaking the appearance at some other angle (usually backside angles).
The poles are not equal to the edge of the image. In fact, they seem to be completely unbound, changing freely with perspective. The center goes with them and can easily be made to scroll completely off the surface.

A lesser problem is that it seems to be completely nonfunctional in orthographic view, in contrast to the Internal version which looks exactly the same. Rendering with an actual camera rather than just the viewport seems to be slightly better, but still pretty far off.

The source code is actually doing (note the factor -2)
$$\mathrm{refl} = \mathrm{view} - 2 (\mathrm{view} \cdot \mathrm{normal})\mathrm{normal}$$
which is the reflection of the view vector across the normal. The vector math node has a "Reflect" option that can do this for us.
Since the Blender internal reflection looks basically the same from any direction, it's probably doing this in camera space. So we'll try:

(Btw if you do this in world space instead, you get the same thing as the "Reflection" output of the Texture Coordinate node.)
This looks good, but it's going across the texture twice. The reflected vector components range from -1 to 1, while to go across the texture once we want to go from 0 to 1. We can remap [-1, 1] onto [0, 1] with $x\mapsto 0.5x+0.5$; let's put that on a Mapping node in between the reflection and the texture:

That looks pretty good to me. It still doesn't work the same in ortho mode though.

edit: Here's a version that works in ortho mode. The Geometry node's Incoming socket seems to be better behaved in ortho mode than the Camera Data's View Vector.
Note that the scale factors have picked up a negative sign.

I guess that's on me for seeing the "dot [product]" comment and not thinking the -2 was suspicious. I did try this mapping but must've not recognised it as correct because the rest was wrong. I'll leave this for a few days to see if someone has an idea for the ortho problem, then accept.

The Geometry's node's Incoming socket seems to work in ortho mode, so you can use that instead. See the edit.

Excellent. Must be some quirk of the camera data node.


text:
Saving/Exporting an Image (Directly from 3D View)
What if I want to save an image, but not actually render it?
An ‘unrendered’ image.
It’s important to note (I think) that the window captured in the screenshot was the UV Editor, containing the rendered image—as well as the option to ‘Save As Image’ (F3)—right up until I selected ‘3D View’ from the popup menu at lower-left.
Now that I’ve selected that, and have the image I want, there is no option to save or export it.
Please help.

Your only options are to either do an OpenGL Render (available via the Render menu at the top of the window) - which will re-render your image using OpenGL (which is what the viewport uses so is quick and should look the same as your image) - or you can tell Blender to take a screenshot of your current Blender window by pressing Ctrl+F3 (although once you've saved your screenshot you'll need to open an image editor (eg, Gimp) to trim off the rest of the window as the screenshot will consist of everything).


text:
Cropping background image when rendering region
I have this scene with a hand and a knife and I want to get an animation of blood sorta dripping (spraying) from it, but because of SSS I use in palm material it takes forever to render (over 4 minutes!), so I decided to render this image and use it as a background to free calculating space.

I managed to shorten the time of frame render to 25 secs by using the pre-rendered image of a hand and knife as background image and translucent render of current frame mixed by the alpha mixer.

It looked great and it worked just fine. But then I thought I can render only the region where the animation of blood flushing will be (marked it with red rectangle), so I turned on Render Region

Cycles cropped the background image in final render, though in the compositing viewer I see it how I thought it would look: whole and not cropped like this!
Could you kindly explain me what the heck am I doing wrong, is it a bug?

Are you trying to disable the cropping region ? The shortcut is CTRL + ALT + B

No, i am trying to render a region and then merge this region with the background image using alpha over.

I had the same problem.
I decided to render only one layer and only "render region" without checking "crop the render region" (output menu -> dimensions) to png so the output is transparent.
After rendering separate frames of animation I put it together with alpha over node in the compositor. I wonder if there is a better way.

@RayMairlot, fair enough, thanks for the heads up. It was actually in the original post so I didn't know if I could remove it or not. Now I know ! cheers

@Gorgious Ah that's my mistake, I didn't see that it was in the original.

Plug the Alpha socket of foreground as Factor ...

... but you are right, it is weird.
When rendered as Render Region enabled, it does what it say. Than when composite it should be up to render setup, so I would expect compositor's view is correct (and render result wrong keeping just region area composed.
I can understand someone could find it useful to keep render region also after composite, but that should be achieved by another way ... also it seems to be a bug if plugging Alpha as Factor solves this issue.
Probably good to try bug tracker, what devs say ...


text:
When I add new cylinder after right click I cant see primitive options
when I add new cylinder  after right click I cant see primitive options. For example numbers of vertices

the Operator box will disappear as soon as you do a new action, but you may be able to reload the parameters with the F9 key

Thank you! for answer

Try to do everything as in the screenshot or throw off your blender file or make a screenshot

Hi and welcome to BSE :) gifs will help you create clearer answers along with proper formatting of your images. Please try to explain a bit more detail as well, as short tips and comments tend to be removed as low quality.


text:
How come when I render my animation in Blender the active cameras do not change like they do in the viewport?
I have been using markers in the timeline and pressing Ctrl +  B to change the active camera throughout my Blender animation. When I press play in the 3D viewport it changes the active camera at the markers as I want it to, but when I render the animation, the view stays on the first active camera and doesn't change.

pls provide example blend file

Make sure that you don't have View > Local Camera enabled in the 3D Viewport. If this is the case, your animation will only be rendered from the camera which is selected there.
If you have a second 3D Viewport where the option is disabled, then this viewport will correctly show the switching between cameras. Only the Local Camera viewport will use just one camera.
The strange thing however is, when I test it, as soon as I have a second viewport where the switching works, it works in rendering, too. So if my answer doesn't help we maybe need your file to investigate further.

My local camera setting was off on both viewports and it still doesn't change int he render.

Then maybe you should upload your file as Chris suggested if all settings should be correct for rendering...


text:
Simple concatenation of video files without transitions
I'm an absolute novice with Blender, and video editing in general.
I have a lot of 1 minute long videos taken by an older D-Link security camera of a long test inside an environmental chamber of a new product that my company is developing. I'd like to concatenate several hours worth of those videos into a single video that is easier to scrub through with VLC (or other video player) to better understand the workings of this product. I tried using Windows Video Editor and that program just chokes on the quantity of files.
I looked into VLC and it seems from the tutorials that I've seen that I would need to build a command line argument that includes all the source videos as a final step. But the number of videos makes that problematic. So, some further searching I decided to give Blender a try.
I was able to figure out with some online tutorials how to load all the videos into a timeline and then render to a single video file. I was able to do one set of 87 videos. But, I'm not really happy with the results so I think I may be doing something wrong. I'm getting a sideways swipe between each of the videos. I want to edit each video such that the first frame of the next video is rendered right after the last frame of the previous video without any fancy wipes or transitions.
When I select menu : Add/Movie in the sequencer window here are my import settings with all the videos that I want selected:

Then when I render I get the wipes between each video. I don't understand the terminologies used in Blender, so please teach my what I'm looking for and how to remove the wipes? Is there a way to do that to all the transitions between videos at once so I don't have to painstakingly apply the change to all the videos? Set some sort of movie strip import default?
I've created some files and several screenshots. To start, the environment that I'm working in is:
Edition Windows 10 Enterprise
Version 20H2
Installed on    2021-08-12
OS build    19042.1526
Experience  Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4170.0

On this computer I downloaded and installed the latest Blender as of a couple days ago (specifically 2022-02-22, yes... "2's day"):

As far as I know this is the first time Blender has been installed on this computer so there shouldn't be any zombie settings. I did not go into the program preferences so to my best knowledge Blender should be working in "out-of-the-box" defaults.
So, when I start blender, I click on "Video Editing" from the splash window:

Then in the sequencer sub window I select menu : Add/Movie

I browse to the path were the source video clips are stored, select all with the "A" key, and change the import settings on the right to Fit Method => Use Original Size and turned off sound because I'm not interested in any recorded sound.

Then in the sequencer I select menu: Strip/Menu Strip/Set Render Size to change Blender's default 1080p output size to the size of my video clips (720p). I discovered this trick when looking through the menus to try to solve my issue on my own.

I then look at the strip time properties tab and manually copy the number to the render end frame number. (Is there a way to automate this with a menu item that I haven't found yet? I was looking for something like Set render range to sequence range or similar language.)

I set the rendering output filename and verify that the default output properties are acceptable.

And finally, I start the render.

The resulting video has a wipe (I'm not sure what this type of wipe is called) in between each source video clip where the new clip pushes the previous clip to the left. Stepping through the resulting video frame by frame there are 6 frames where the wipe goes about half-way across the screen before the new source video clip snaps to full screen. Here is the 2nd frame of the first transition:

I don't want that wipe, but I don't know what it is called so I can't find it in Blender. Here are a bunch of files:

Blender project file

filesize = 598 KB
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vrssxzk6gpln9a6/CombinedVideos.blend?dl=0

Resulting video file (check for the wipes at every 1 minute interval)

filesize = 291 MB
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8pt3pd5x8kux4p2/Combined0001-13890.mp4?dl=0

7z archive of the source videos

filesize = 205 MB
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yuqbdy7m24xdxv0/D-LinkCaptures.7z?dl=0

"I apologize can't share any of the videos (even a small subset) because of the proprietary information" -> sorry, but everybody can provide videos which are "free". example: download from internet. Create your own via Blender. ....and so on. So please don't hide behind your own laziness. And "normally" the video editor doesn't add wipes automatically".

What @Chris means is that, you don't need to share your blender file with those exact footage, you can reproduce the problem with a minimal file with other footages that you can share (just 2 footage so one can see the transition) and then upload the file.

And just for terminology's sake, you should say video editing here, not compositing.

Also, we really wouldn't be able to help you unless you upload some stuff or at least post some screenshot of your sequencer.

I'll make some videos tomorrow of non-proprietary objects tomorrow at work, probably of some of my desk ornaments.

@Chris Sorry if you felt I was being lazy. I don't have any videos on hand from that camera that are suitable. I'll actually be in the office (I work hybrid) tomorrow and I can generate some videos with the device that I'm using. (And, point of order, I did offer to generate some footage that isn't proprietary. A simple "yes please make some videos with your equipment" would be kinder to newbs like me.)

@mqbakamqbaka my apologies for not using the correct terminology. I'm such a rank amateur that I don't know the correct terminology. Please continue to be kind and help me learn the terms of this art. Hell... I want to use the term concatenate like I would for combining two text files, but that doesn't seem to be part of the jargon set. ;-)

Wrong Tool, IMO : This kind of bulk concatenation sounds more like a job for ffmpeg in a shell, than any video editor... see, for example, here

Don't know what you are doing, but when I import a selection of videos into the sequencer, I'll get just the videos one after another without any swipe or other transition by default...

Or share the link of tut you followed to let us understand what generates wipe effect ... BTW primarily you should share your blend file to let us see setup (movie files doesn't seems to be key here). https://blend-exchange.com/

If you only need to concatenate videos, why not use ffmpeg?

@RobinBetts RE: ffmpeg - I'm only vaguely familiar with ffmpeg (I think my OctoPi uses it for camera streaming), but I thought it was Linux/Unix only. Is it available for Win10? Also, how would I pass 87 or more filenames to it (again in Win10 shell)?

Ah, OK,  Windows, not quite as snappy as for a *nix user, and I can't test for you. But this link looks to be  ffmpeg built for Windows, and this link has instructions for Windows. The shell command writes a directory listing into a text file which can be passed to ffmpeg as an argument.

Quick netiquette question for this space. Should I link my files here in the comments, or update the top post after an edit tag?

Edit original post.

With provided sources I didn't get your wipe effect.

Your render contains 27 error frames of wipe
(I haven't seen such issue before :) )
Frame rate is correct (30) and end of the strip is fine as well

In my render I see differences in Blender versions.

Blender 2.8x - 7 black frames at the end of the first video strip
(frames 1798-1804) ... also in between others (output as movie or PNG sequence).
Blender 3.1 - is fine (without any glitch or black frame) for MP4, MOV or PNG output.

... even in both Blender versions are mentioned frames empty in Video Editor > Preview.
So ... the only one conclussion I have is AVI codec issue?
Tips:

Try View > Refresh All (and Rebuild Proxy)
Since your strips are arranged one after the other, your blend mode type Cross has no effect, but since you deal with some issue here try to change something like Replace or Alpha Over if does it take soem effect in your case.

First I tried View > Refresh All but couldn't find Rebuild Proxy. I don't know if refresh did anything (no status indicators of anything being done was displayed). Rendering still showed a swipe. I then changed blend mode to "Replace" and it then rendered without any wipes. Looks like changing the blend mode fixed this issue on my machine. Thanx all for the help, and if this looks like a bug (and someone can actually replicate the issue) feel free to use my data as a sample for the bug report. Please make a copy as I may delete the files from my dropbox at a random point in the future.


text:
blurry image in texture paint
when I use a stencil image in texture paint the image applied to the model blurs.
the same happens with stroke : anchored .
I have already increased the resolution of the model image and the stencil image has a 2K resolution.
is there any configuration to do?

the image on the left and the image applied to the model on the right.

maybe switch the Image Texture from Linear to Closest?

did not solve .

Even with closest it's blurry? Hm ... Share your simplified blend just with issue. Thanks ... Don't forget to pack stencil image.

What does the image result look like in 2d editor versus the 3d view? Is mipmapping turned off for viewport?

I turned it off and it didn't work. is the mipmap found in texture properties ?

How big is the image for the model and what does the UV map looks like? If the UV island for the inner area of this pan(?) is fairly small then a 2k high-res stencil helps not much.

I should have specified - what does the painting result look like in the 2d editor versus the 3d viewport? Mipmapping affects the viewport result appearance but the 2d editor should show the correct pixels without filtering.

the sharpness of the texture has to do with the subdivision of the model ?

Please share your file with textures packed ... To avoid a lot of guessing. Thank you ... BTW Blunder's comment sounds to me right.


text:
Trapeze profile for 3D letters, lines
Can somebody please help me? I should make fondant/marzipan stamp. I can make the 3D object - letters, lines (extrude from the svg) but I do not know how to set that profile where the top is narrower than the base (like a kind of  trapeze as you can see on the picture) So I can easier remove the stamp from the material... Somebody said that would be the bevel but I could not make it :-(

Thank you for your help in advance
Zsolt

Possible duplicate of How to make a metal emboss?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/58457/how-to-make-a-bevel-on-text

Possible duplicate of How to make a bevel on text

I made a textobject in Blender, but with svg curves this could also work. The bevel is the outer form of your geometry. Than I added a curvecircle and defined it right as bavel object (yellow) and got the result at the right sight. You should set the vektor handles (v in curve edit mode) of the circle to free to get sharp angles. Also you should use only one core as a contour. (Red in the exmaple)


text:
Normals not at centroids
Why aren't the normals for the two inner rectangles located at the rectangle centroids as are the normals for the two outer rectangles? The four rectangles are supposed to be identical.
I'm running v2.80.44.
Thanks.

probably you have to flip the normals.

Thanks for replying. When I flip the normal, it's still off center, just on the other side.

the faces arent cutted? can you put an image in edit mode?

The image in my original post is in edit mode.

this is weird then, try to remove doubles, or better just change back to 2.79 because 2.80 its still in development and it has still bugs.

Suggest uploading a blend to http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com

Solved. Reduced problem to four rectangles and noted vertex count in status bar. The two inner rectangles each have an extra vertex.
This also shows that the location of the normal is not the centroid of the area, but the centroid of the vertices.
Blend uploaded to .

I guess it has to work this way, to allow non-planar faces to have something you can call a 'normal'..

@RobinBetts hmmm this may shed some light on this one (re comments) https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/91161/calculating-estimating-the-normal-at-any-location-on-a-face

@batFINGER phew! .. and I thought today was a relaxing day off  ... :D


text:
How do I keep track of a bone across armature .join()s? (Or, is there a better way to write this armature-merging script?)
The premise: I have a script to merge multiple selected armatures into the active armature, based on the following requirements:

If two bones of the same name have the same local position and rotation (within a tolerance), the bones are "merged": the bone in the active armature is kept, and the others are deleted. Any parenting of the deleted bones should be transferred to the "merged" bone.
Otherwise - the incoming bone is not within tolerance of the active bone, or the active armature doesn't have a bone of that name - the active armature keeps the incoming bone, unaltered.
Comparing bones should be done in local space, but any "unmerged" bones should keep their position in world space.
Any children of the merged armatures should end up fully attached to the active one.

Example "before":

Example "after":

Bones 1 and 2 were "merged". Bone 3 was not. Bones 4 and Q are both present and unchanged.
(Based on this example, the world space requirement may seem strange, but it is indeed necessary. In most situations, the armatures will be in the same place anyway, so it won't look weird like this.)
The current script: (simplified a bit to remove irrelevant stuff)
def merge_selected_to_active_armatures(self, context, force=False):
    # assume all selected objects are armatures and there's more than one of them
    targetObject = context.view_layer.objects.active
    selectedObjects = context.view_layer.objects.selected

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
    targetBones = targetObject.data.edit_bones
    targetNameList = [b.name for b in targetBones]
    for otherObject in selectedObjects:
        if targetObject == otherObject: continue
        # move all the armature's children right now to get it out of the way
        for c in otherObject.children:
            c.parent = targetObject
            for m in c.modifiers:
                if m.type == "ARMATURE" and m.object == otherObject:
                    m.object = targetObject
        otherBones = otherObject.data.edit_bones
        keep = []
        toss = []
        for otherBone in otherBones:
            if otherBone.name not in targetNameList:
                keep.append(otherBone)
                continue
            targetBone = targetBones[otherBone.name]
            areTheSame = isBonePairIdentical(targetBone,otherBone) # the position & rotation compare
            if areTheSame or force:
                toss.append(otherBone)
            else:
                keep.append(otherBone)
        for schmuck in toss:
            otherBones.remove(schmuck)

    # at this point, we have removed all the stuff we don't want to keep, so join the rest
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")
    bpy.ops.object.join()
    return {"FINISHED"}

The problem: As-is, this script loses all bone parenting that's not in the active armature.
I tried a few things, but I can't find a way out of the Catch-22:

We can't re-parent anything until after the .join(), because parenting bones across different armatures (sensibly) doesn't work. So we must wait until after the .join() to re-parent.
As soon as the .join() runs, all established information about the current bones is either lost or worthless. Any references to the actual bones are still trapped in the old armature data block. Any references to the bones' names are invalid because we have no idea how the join may have resolved collisions. Furthermore, while the .join() very helpfully does the worldspace requirement automatically, we can no longer compare bones after it because two bones the same in local space no longer are. So we cannot wait until after the .join() to figure out which bones to merge, and thus figure out what re-parenting needs to be done.

So the question: How do I keep track of bones before and after the .join()?
Alternatively, I am open to getting around the problem by writing the script in a different way.

Custom properties on the bones appear to be preserved across joins.

scurest mentioned custom properties (something I haven't really looked at before) and that's exactly what I needed.
The solution: if a bone is to be deleted as merged, assign to it the target bone's name as a custom property. After the .join(), this can be read and used to get the parenting right. Since the target bone is of the acive armature, we know it will not be renamed after the .join().
New code:
def merge_selected_to_active_armatures(self, context, force=False):
    # assume all selected objects are armatures and there's more than one of them
    targetObject = context.view_layer.objects.active
    selectedObjects = context.view_layer.objects.selected

    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
    targetBones = targetObject.data.edit_bones
    targetNameList = [b.name for b in targetBones]
    for otherObject in selectedObjects:
        if targetObject == otherObject: continue
        # move all the armature's children right now to get it out of the way
        for c in otherObject.children:
            c.parent = targetObject
            for m in c.modifiers:
                if m.type == "ARMATURE" and m.object == otherObject:
                    m.object = targetObject
        otherBones = otherObject.data.edit_bones
        for otherBone in otherBones:
            if otherBone.name not in targetNameList:
                continue
            targetBone = targetBones[otherBone.name]
            areTheSame = isBonePairIdentical(targetBone,otherBone) # the position & rotation compare
            if areTheSame or force:
                otherBone["mergeInto"] = targetBone.name
            else:
                pass # the actual code will notify the user about this later

    # decisions made, do the join
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")
    bpy.ops.object.join()

    # go back for every bone on which we assigned "mergeInto" and actually do said merge
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="EDIT")
    joinedBones = targetObject.data.edit_bones
    for bone in [j for j in joinedBones if "mergeInto" in j]:
        targetBone = joinedBones[bone["mergeInto"]]
        bone.parent = targetBone # so the deletion will automatically pass along parenting
        joinedBones.remove(bone)

    # done
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode="OBJECT")
    return {"FINISHED"}


text:
Why can't I separate in the Object Mode

As the video did, the vlogger separated the door into parts, and I want to separate the desk which I joined before as he did, but I can't find the separate tool in object mode, it only appears in mesh/separate in edit mode, why? And if I want to unjoin the desk into parts like before, how can I do it? Thanks

The author of the video gives the answer in the comments, it's not available anymore in Object mode in the latest versions, so you need to switch to Edit mode.

Well, but it's true - this was possible in earlier versions. It's actually a pity this does not work anymore.

Oh OK I'm going to correct then

Of course it's unfortunate that the video is labeled "compatible with 3.6" and there are many things that do not anymore work like it's shown there (that's not the only thing), and especially when it's "absolute basics" and aimed at beginners... because they will have a hard time figuring that out. Someone like me watches tutorials on TV for example and there I cannot read comments and find out what he explains there. But well, that's none of my business and not relevant here on BSE. We are just giving first aid to those who struggle with these tutorials :)


text:
Why does my sculpture looked so vague

As you see in the images above, the sculpture that I made with brushes looks so vague that the final rendering looks the same, how can I solve this problem, thanks!

If you mean 'lacks high resolution detail' ? (Please be a bit more specific, if you can) then that's limited by the geometry.. you could supplement the basic form with a  painted height-map, for use with Bump or Displacement at render-time..

Thanks，@RobinBetts, what I mean is what you said, you can easily tell a lot of blocks there, and actually I've added a height map already before I upload the screenshot, I wonder if I can show the screenshot of the shader editor in the comment.

@RobinBetts and the problem is it happened before I rendered it, please see the first image.

Hello, Raymond. Thanks for the info. I think this question would be much clearer if instead of saying 'vague' (which is a bit vague :) ) you gave us a clear description of what you want, compared with what you've got, and how you got there. (including details like the shader editor screen-grab, which you can edit into your post, rather than a comment.  You can also share a representative sample .blend on https://blend-exchange.com/, keeping it as small and simple as you can, not forgetting to pack images into the file. If that helps.

Hi Robin, I can't upload the blender file more than 30M, you have any other idea to upload the file that more than 30M？


text:
Trying to use python API to output depth and normal images -- but no files are outputted
I've copied my script below. The script runs fine and it feels like everything is set up correctly but no depth or normal files are outputted ... is my renderer maybe not using the right output node?
Any guidance very much appreciated!
import os, math
import bpy

# Set up rendering
context = bpy.context
scene = bpy.context.scene
render = bpy.context.scene.render

render.engine = "BLENDER_EEVEE"
render.image_settings.color_mode = "RGB"  # ('RGB', 'RGBA', ...)
render.image_settings.color_depth = "8"
render.image_settings.file_format = "PNG"
render.resolution_x = 256
render.resolution_y = 256
render.resolution_percentage = 100
render.film_transparent = True

scene.use_nodes = True

nodes = bpy.context.scene.node_tree.nodes
links = bpy.context.scene.node_tree.links

# Clear default nodes
for n in nodes:
    nodes.remove(n)

# Create input render layer node
render_layers = nodes.new("CompositorNodeRLayers")

# Create depth output nodes
depth_file_output = nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeOutputFile")
depth_file_output.label = "Depth Output"
depth_file_output.base_path = ""
depth_file_output.file_slots[0].use_node_format = True
depth_file_output.format.file_format = "OPEN_EXR"
depth_file_output.format.color_depth = "16"
links.new(render_layers.outputs["Depth"], depth_file_output.inputs[0])

# Create normal output nodes
scale_node = nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeMixRGB")
scale_node.blend_type = "MULTIPLY"
# scale_node.use_alpha = True
scale_node.inputs[2].default_value = (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 1)
links.new(render_layers.outputs["Normal"], scale_node.inputs[1])

bias_node = nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeMixRGB")
bias_node.blend_type = "ADD"
# bias_node.use_alpha = True
bias_node.inputs[2].default_value = (0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0)
links.new(scale_node.outputs[0], bias_node.inputs[1])

normal_file_output = nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeOutputFile")
normal_file_output.label = "Normal Output"
normal_file_output.base_path = ""
normal_file_output.file_slots[0].use_node_format = True
normal_file_output.format.file_format = "PNG"
links.new(bias_node.outputs[0], normal_file_output.inputs[0])

# Create albedo output nodes
alpha_albedo = nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeSetAlpha")
links.new(render_layers.outputs["DiffCol"], alpha_albedo.inputs["Image"])
links.new(render_layers.outputs["Alpha"], alpha_albedo.inputs["Alpha"])

albedo_file_output = nodes.new(type="CompositorNodeOutputFile")
albedo_file_output.label = "Albedo Output"
albedo_file_output.base_path = ""
albedo_file_output.file_slots[0].use_node_format = True
albedo_file_output.format.file_format = "PNG"
albedo_file_output.format.color_mode = "RGB"
albedo_file_output.format.color_depth = "8"
links.new(alpha_albedo.outputs["Image"], albedo_file_output.inputs[0])

# Delete default cube
context.active_object.select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.delete()

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action="DESELECT")

################ START SCENE LOGIC #################
# Add cube to scene
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
cube = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
cube.location = (0.0, 0.0, 0.0)

################ END SCENE LOGIC ###################

obj = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
context.view_layer.objects.active = obj

# Possibly disable specular shading
for slot in obj.material_slots:
    node = slot.material.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
    node.inputs["Specular"].default_value = 0.05

# Make light just directional, disable shadows.
light = bpy.data.lights["Light"]
light.type = "SUN"
light.use_shadow = False
# Possibly disable specular shading:
light.specular_factor = 1.0
light.energy = 10.0

# Add another light source so stuff facing away from light is not completely dark
bpy.ops.object.light_add(type="SUN")
light2 = bpy.data.lights["Sun"]
light2.use_shadow = False
light2.specular_factor = 1.0
light2.energy = 0.015
bpy.data.objects["Sun"].rotation_euler = bpy.data.objects["Light"].rotation_euler
bpy.data.objects["Sun"].rotation_euler[0] += 180

# Place camera
cam = scene.objects["Camera"]
cam.location = (0, 10, 5)
cam.data.lens = 35
cam.data.sensor_width = 32

cam_constraint = cam.constraints.new(type="TRACK_TO")
cam_constraint.track_axis = "TRACK_NEGATIVE_Z"
cam_constraint.up_axis = "UP_Y"

cam_empty = bpy.data.objects.new("Empty", None)
cam_empty.location = (0, 0, 0)
cam.parent = cam_empty

scene.collection.objects.link(cam_empty)
context.view_layer.objects.active = cam_empty
cam_constraint.target = cam_empty

view_count = 10
stepsize = 360.0 / view_count
rotation_mode = "XYZ"

model_identifier = "cube"
fp = os.path.join(os.path.abspath("../data"), model_identifier, model_identifier)

for i in range(0, view_count):
    print("Rotation {}, {}".format((stepsize * i), math.radians(stepsize * i)))

    render_file_path = fp + "_r_{0:03d}".format(int(i * stepsize))

    scene.render.filepath = render_file_path
    depth_file_output.file_slots[0].path = render_file_path + "_depth"
    normal_file_output.file_slots[0].path = render_file_path + "_normal"
    albedo_file_output.file_slots[0].path = render_file_path + "_albedo"

    bpy.ops.render.render(write_still=True)  # render still

    cam_empty.rotation_euler[2] += math.radians(stepsize)
```

If you check your generated compositor setup, after moving nodes around, you'll see this:

The normal and depth output nodes are not connected to the Render Layers output. Add these two lines in your script after scene.use_nodes = True
scene.view_layers["ViewLayer"].use_pass_normal = True
scene.view_layers["ViewLayer"].use_pass_z = True

This is the script version of adding these layer outputs when selecting View Layer Properties > Passes > Data > Z/Normal.
The compositor setup should now look similar to this and output the files:

Thank you! That is exactly what I needed


text:
How to make a curve mesh created in geometric nodes dependent on tilt
I create multiple connected wires in one curve using geometry nodes. And I'm having a problem with how the geometry reacts to changing the shape of the curve. In the example, the geometry can be rotated independently of the curve shape using a tilt controller. But in my case it doesn't work. The geometry doesn't change at all. Instead, the geometry rotates as the shape of the curve itself changes.

Briefly about how nodes work. For the main curve, 2 more curves have been created. One curve is used as the cross-sectional shape of the wire. The second curve is used to form a line along which the wire copies will be distributed.

You are using Minimum as the curve Twist Method, in which the base twist depends on the structure of the curve.

UseZ-Up as the curve Twist Method, then adjust the tilt of all points. Now new points won't affect other parts of the curve.


text:
Blender fire simulation is jumping around randomly
Right now I'm trying to create a simple flame to create a flipbook texture to use in Unity. The only problem is that when I bake my simulation it seems to bounce all over the place. I'm not sure why this is happening, I thought maybe it had to do with the fact that I was caching the simulation, but even when I turned the caching off this was still happening.
Nothing is animated in my scene either.
This is the tutorial I've been following for the fir seem, which I've followed step by step:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzATaYyCf9Q
And here is a reference for what is happening:

And here are the settings for the fire and the domain:

Thanks for any help!

I figured out the issue. I noticed that the frames this behavior was happening on were outside of the cached frame range. When I adjusted that range this issue was fixed.
So in short it seems like if the end of your timeline exceeds the amount of cached frames weird things start to happen.


text:
Channel or email to report a security bug?
I recently identified a security vulnerability on one of Blender's subdomains and would like to report it to the appropriate team. Could you please provide me with the proper channel or email address for reporting security bugs?
Thanks in advance and lets keep the security and integrity of Blender's presence.

No-one here works for or has any association with the Blender Foundation and there are quite a few Blender websites with different web addresses so you're on your on there.

just search for github + blender, there you can open issues

Bur reports generally go to the official bug tracker, however as stated in the report page, security vulnerabilities should be reported privately.
See the Blender Wiki about Security Vulnerabilities

Security issues should be reported to {security[at]blender.org}. The security team will typically get back to vulnerability reporters within several days.


text:
Best Practices for Managing Complex Addon Registration in Blender 3D
Hello Blender addon developers,
I'm working on a complex Blender addon that has multiple components like panels, operators, properties, and more. As the addon has grown, I've found that managing the registration process has become increasingly challenging.
Current Approach:
I initially tried to pack everything into one init.py file, but it quickly became cluttered. To manage this, I've started using multiple init.py files that get registered hierarchically. The registration order is determined by the main init.py and the init tree in the folders and their subfolders.
Alternative Approaches:
I've noticed that some addons use additional register.py files and abstract the registration process in more intricate patterns. For example, I found an addon on the marketplace that uses a modular approach:
from .utilities.register import module_register_factory

base_modules = ["base"]
core_modules = [
    "handlers",
    "model",
    "operators",
    "gizmos",
    "keymaps",
    "workspacetools",
    "UI",
    "draw_handler",
    "registration_delayed",
]

register_base, unregister_base = module_register_factory(__package__, base_modules)
register_full, unregister_full = module_register_factory(__package__, core_modules)

Questions:

Are there best practices for dividing and managing the registration process in complex Blender addons?
Is the modular approach I found a commonly used pattern, or is it more of a "make it up as you go" situation?
If you know of any good patterns for organizing registration, could you provide a detailed description or example?

I'm looking for insights and best practices to make the registration process more manageable as the addon grows. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!

There are no Blender developers here, nor does anyone here work for or have any association with the Blender Foundation. Your question is off-topic here as any answers are likely to be be opinion-based. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask.

Not sure there is a "best practice", in the sense that there are plenty of ways to do it and the documentation doesn't tell much about it. But you can look up other addons to see how they do it. I.E. amaranth toolset.

The question is nor necessarily off topic here, though Blender developers don't come here often, and you are most likely to get answers by other scripters and addon authors here, rather than official developers. If those don't suffice, contacting official developers is probably best done through dev chat or developer forums


text:
Asset Browser default library behaviour (Change from 'All' to 'Current File') [Blender 3.5]
Is it possible to change the asset browser's behaviour when opening asset browser in a new context?
Problem:
By default in Blender 3.5, a new Asset Browser context will always open with all asset libraries listed (assuming you have setup your libraries)
What I want:
I want it to be set to the 'Current File' option instead
Why?:
I've set up multiple asset libraries and some libraries are lighter than others and I'd like to not load everything when I open a new asset browser context.
Thank you.


text:
Geometry nodes Bone controller
would love to control the isntances seperately by the bone controller, this controller is connected via a bone constraint "child off".
Now i want to instance this "Collection" on a plane (No difficulties doing that), But i want to transform the bone controller that i made seperatly using something like the proximedy distance, of one object to the bone object. E.x. When the "SPHERE" Comes close to the "Controller box", i want to rotate that specific "Controller box" with the bone includes, i added damped track to these bones so they "Wiggle" and actually want to delay that for every instance e.x. rotating the box. It's really hard for me to explain, but i hope i can be more specific with this screenshot
The reason i want to do this because i want to seperatly animate trees coming in that are deformed by the bone. Like a simple growing effect with a proximedy distance thingy, but that could just work i think with rotating and scaling the controllerbox of the bone

I hope someone thats working more often in geometry nodes can help this boi out :)
Thanks!

I think that, for your ultimate goal, the simplest solution doesn't involve GN at all.  Instead, use bezier curves with soft body physics; use spline IK on your bone chains to follow the curves; move a force field object around to affect the physics.  If this meets your needs, but you don't know how to implement some of that, I can make a detailed answer.

@Nathan this will slow down the performance right? i can def give it a try, i'll come back later !

It should be fast in comparison to typical physics systems, because it's highly simplified and because there's no collision.  It will require caching/baking, but that'll be true of any GN solution that involves "...actually want to delay..."


text:
How do you Export Just the .MTL file?
Is there a way to just export the .MTL file and not the .OBJ?

Do you need it so often that it is really necessary to find a solution other than simply deleting the OBJ file afterwards?

Not really. You always have to save the .obj file for .mtl file to be created.
You could try modifying the exporter add-on. It's code is in Blender's installation directory(something like C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.6\3.6\scripts\addons\io_scene_obj\ on Windows). It's one of the simplest formats there is so the add-on is not terribly complicated and that is doable if you really need this.


text:
Simulation problem
I am trying achieve a simple falling mesh on a plane, but when I start the simulation goes well until a certain frame where meshes seems "attracted" by something. My simulation solvers are in mesh, I've applied every transformsand modifiers, and it worked well with a cube. I deleted the rigod body world a bunch of time, I've try to import it in another scene, I've tried to delete every other meshes, I've try to increase the substeps AND the solver iterations, it still doesn't work. There is 2 planes because I've tried to create another plane from scratch to see if it changes something but it don't, the first work the same way as the second. Also, the solver for the table is convex hull, I've tried with the box solver but the meshes simply goes trough the cube.
Here is my parameters and the behavior in a video (click on the link)

Hi. Please use a title that matches the content of the question. It should be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the issue in such way that anyone searching for a similar problem is likely to find it. Use the [edit] link above, remove anything superfluous, avoid words like "this", "help", "issue with" or "question about". Remember, your title is the first thing potential visitors see, answers you get depend heavily on how insightful it is. See What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?"

Hello and welcome. While files, images, and external videos or links may be helpful additions they should not be the only way to obtain information about your issue. Don't make understanding your question rely on downloading a file, watching a video or visiting an external site. Use the builtin tools to upload images or gifs, along with thoroughly explaining the problem in written form so it can be indexed and searched for thus helping future visitors with similar issues.

If you share the blend file - I might be able to help.
Looks like either its retaining some old cache. Try deleting the sim cache, make a small change and re-sim.
See if you have any hidden objects? or Forces.

Hello, thanks for your help. I already tried to delete the cache (I'm not sure I did it right but I think). There is no other objects, I deleted everything, and I never used a force so maybe there is one hidden but I don't really know how it works.

here is the blend file : https://we.tl/t-cAuBlDFBIw

It looks like it's a problem with the spheres origin position, select all your objects and right click > Set Origin > Origin to Geometry. Also apply the scales of your objects.

THANKS A LOT YOU'RE RIGHT !! I complitely forget to reset the origin haha my bad


text:
How can I emboss a certain part of a label and change the roughness?

The first image is the effect I'm trying to aim for, the second image is what I currently have. I'm trying to apply the embossed, shiny effect to the word 'Elevit' and only the word Elevit. I have some text around that which I want to keep flat. In order to make the 'Elevit' shiny, I'm guessing I can play about with the roughness, but I'm not sure how to get to that stage, especially when I want to keep the other parts flat. The last pic is the nodes currently applied for the label design.

You can mix 2 Principled BSDF into a Mix Shader, use a b&w image of your font as factor. Decrease the Roughness of one of your Principled BSDF down to 0 to get full glossiness on your letter. Also plug the image into a Bump Map that you plug into the Normal input of your 2 Principled BSDF in order to get the relief:

If you want to emboss only some letters only, plug 2 different Image Texture nodes: one with all the letters into the factor of the Mix Shader, one with only the embossed letters into the Normal input of the Principled BSDF:

Thank you so much! It worked and it helped, but how do I do that while keeping my other writing flat? How do I do the UV editing? That's where I think I'm mostly lost at. How to do separate UV editing so I can add a bump node to one image texture, and keep the other part normal?

If you want to emboss only some letters only, plug 2 different Image Texture nodes: one with all the letters into the factor of the Mix Shader, one with only the embossed letters into the Normal input of the Principled BSDF

[4]: https://i.sstatic.net/fPCrC.png I've tried to do what you said, but for some reason it's not working (I know I'm clearly doing something wrong), also when the other text does appear, it comes out white even though the png is black. Would you be able to demonstrate it for me the way you did the previous one, I'd really appreciate it :)

I've edited my answer, I hope it's more clear

Thank you so so much! You've helped me so much, I've got the style I want. I just have one little issue. https://i.sstatic.net/u34LA.png As you can see, the bump makes the text pixelated on the inside and outside, how do I fix this? Thank you

you need to make sure that your bump image is png 32-bit float and has a resolution that is high enough, the Image Texture needs to be set to non-color, not sRGB

Thank you so much! You've been a massive help :)


text:
How do I fix the deformed text on the packet?

I sculpted this packet in blender, but the artwork got deformed a little. How do I fix this? I've had this issue before when it comes to packaging creations.

If you deformed you mesh after it was already textured, you can unwrap the distorted part again to fix it

Select the distorted area in the uv editor, invert the selection and pin the vertices with P

Then, unwrap again. It will fix most of the distortion

Omg thank you for this!


text:
How do I get rid of this parenting cross in blender?

How do I get rid of that weird cross and the weird lines? I understand it's probably parented but I don't know why or how to get rid of it?

The cross is an Empty which won't show up when rendered and the lines are Relationship lines which show that your objects are parented to that Empty. Again they will not appear when rendered, but you can turn off their visibility by unchecking 'Relationship Lines' on the Viewport Overlay menu.

thank you! I also figured out a quicker way which is ctrl + p and the options to removing them comes up

Yes, it is quicker to unparent them, but it was not entirely clear if you just don't want to see the "weird lines" or don't want the objects to be parented at all, since we don't know why there is an empty with objects parented to it, when you don't even know yourself how it got there... so if one day you should want to have objects parented to an empty but do not want to see the lines, follow the instructions by @JohnEason to deactivate them in the Overlays. And if you don't want to see the "weird cross", you can turn it off in the Object Types Visibility menu at the top.

To unparent it's Alt P, not Ctrl P, then Clear and Keep Transformation if you want to make sure that the objects won't move away (to their original location before they were parented)

To add to the other comments, it's probably been set up that way so that you can move all the objects at once while keeping their relative positions with one another by simply selecting the Empty and moving that.  This method of parenting is very common for models which are made of lots of seperate Objects  but need to be moved as one unit.


text:
How can I apply a material on a product packaging?

So the first image is the material I'm trying to apply, and the second image is what I currently have. It's been rendered in cycles. As you can see, the material is quite flat and plain, and doesn't have that realistic texture to it. The last image is the nodes applied to the box. So how do I go about applying that texture to my current packaging design?

Hello so how did you get the first material you show? You need to plug it into a Bump node that you plug into the Normal input of your Principled BSDF

I got the material from blenderkit. Once I apply the material, my current design disappears, so I'm unsure how to do have the design and material at the same time

please pack the images (File > External Data > Pack Resources) and share your file?

I've done that, but how do I sent it through here?

you need to copy paste the link here


text:
I need to slow down a video, including its audio
I need to slow down a video, including its audio, while maintaining the audio pitch and minimizing any loss in audio quality. I'm working in Blender v. 3.3.1.

Hello, I'm not sure audio pitching is even available


text:
Importing OBJ and exporting as FBX leads to reimported FBX having wrong texture mapping on faces, is there a solution for blender 3?
Issue is reproducible in Blender 3 while in Blender 4 it seems to be fixed, but I am working using older Blender so would be good to find a fix compatible with that.
The issue is that importing OBJ and exporting as FBX leads to reimported FBX having wrong texture mapping on faces (see above) even if geometry stood same as in OBJ. Importing FBX in Blender 3 shows problem, but not in Blender 4. So they seem to be importing differently, but touched some import settings and didn't find a way to get it to work on Blender 3.
Any ideas how to fix this in blender 3 please ?


text:
Procedural material orientation
I'm new here on Blender, so I create my procedural wood material and I applied it on four separate objects. I'm wondering if there's a way do give a different orientation on each object for the same material without to create 4 copies of the same material.
As you can see now they are all orientated vertical in the same direction, I would like to choose the orientation separately to follow the curve.

You won't be able to make the lines follow the shape with the Object or Generated outputs of the Texture Coordinate, instead use the UV output and unwrap your cylinder with the Cylinder Projection mode for example.

That's not actually what I want, if you imagine a bounding box on those objects it should be rotated not vertical. So I just would like to follow that rotation.

If you duplicate each object, keep them separate and don't apply the rotation, it should work the way you want no?

Unfortunately in this case the object comes from another software and I'm using Blender just for rendering so I don't have the object in the " 0 " position. I was checking if there's a possibility changing the texture space for Generated output, but seams I can't rotate it.

if you keep only one leg, the one that works, then duplicate and rotate it, you should have 4 legs that work fine, not sure what the problem is


text:
Blacked out textures
Can anybody tell me why my textures are showing up black?  I must have changed something because it wasnt always like this but I figure it out.

in the Viewport Shading panel (top left of your 3D view) choose Studio instead of MatCap?

@moonboots any lighting setting should be able to show the texture. AFAIK it's either the color setting that is wrong, or the material itself.

Yes I missed that he specifically wanted to see his textures   ;)

To see textures while in Solid shading:
In the Viewport Shading popover, make sure the Color setting is set to Texture:

Only the last selected texture node is displayed
Procedural textures are not supported and will show up as grey
Color and Shader Mix nodes will show the last selected texture node too
Any other node is ignored

If you want a more accurate representation of your materials, you need to set your viewport shading to either Material or Rendered, but at the cost of performance:


text:
How can I recreate this shiny chrome effect?

I need to know how this shiny almost wet effect with the text. It also appears to have a ring light of some sort seen in the letter. I've tried principled BSDF node with metallic all the way up but it just doesn't look right. I've also tried using an environment texture (studio 2 from polyhaven). The second time I tried to use it without the hdr. This is what mine currently looks like

With a metallic surface, all reflections get the tint of the base color - that's a characteristic of metallic surfaces. This way you cannot get the white reflections on the object. What you can do to have metallic and "normal" reflections is setting Metallic to 1 with a bit of roughness like 0.3 or so (as you like) and also set the Clearcoat to 1 with that low default Clearcoat Roughness. This way the metal surface gets a shiny reflective layer on top of it. Also, to have awesome reflections you need something in the environment that can be reflected.

are you need source files? hahaha carefully

For me it's more plastic that metallic, you could lower down the Roughness and increase the Specular, also mix the Principled BSDF with another one with a darker color, with a Layer Weight as factor in order to create a darker outline around the letter:

Thank you, what did you do for the lighting?

A studio hdri and 3 area lights


text:
How can I render animation frames transparent?
I'm trying to render a rotating logo frame by frame with a transparent background (80 frames). I've gone to Film > check transparent but it still shows up with a black background in every PNG.

I've also unchecked use alpha in compositing panel

it seems to be transparent in your Render Layer no?

Make sure to RGBA, not just RGB, also, you can save the alpha and use it as a transparent mask

@moonboots yes it is transparent

Fixed it, just needed to check RGBA.


text:
How to make Z axis straight again?
When pressing grab(G) and then locking it to z axis by pressing Z, the axis is showing up as slanted and not straight how it usually is. How to change it back to being straight?

Fixed it, the transform orientation must be global


text:
blender messes up materials when loading dae
i've been using blender for a few weeks now to mod beamng files.
all of a sudden, blender started assigning the wrong materials to meshes within the dae. i've checked with multiple dae files. i've also reinstalled blender twice, and have reset the settings to factory, but nothing helps.
can someone please help me?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

I run BeamNG - TerryMartinART on YouTube.
I was here looking for answers why I can not import in Johnson Valley terrain block into Blender, its close to a 2 gig DAE. Just stuck loading. No problems with 1024 maps being exported as DAEs and imported in though...
Happened to see your question when looking.
Make sure the meshes you are exporting do not have two UV names. When I bake textures, it will change the name to automap, and the UVmap is also still in there. BeamNG will not accept it and your UVs will be wrong in game. Delete the one that is not being used if that is the case.
Also, if you are trying to export anything from Blender, the only texture you can export is the basic color map. No procedual textures, those have to be baked into color maps, normals, roughness, ao. For example, you find a shinny new material in Blender Kit and put it on a model and export as is. Not going to work.
Also, every time you export a mesh, a dae, export it into its own folder if it is a track mesh/object. The game will write that first main.materials.json from the one color map from Blender. But seems to have problems exporting multiple things after the fact. Those you would have to manually add. However, you can have a mesh that has multiple textures, it will handle that. For car modding, something I do very little of, I just manually add the textures through notepad++.
Also never name a texture with a number for the first character.
example... 1_new_metal
Never name a mesh with a number after the name of the mesh.
example... New_whatever_you_created1
since it gets confused with the LOD system, where those have to have a_ preceding a number, and those have to be structured in the empties, Base00, Start01. But that is track object stuff. I still would not add any numbers to models for jbeams (the flexbodies) It just asking for trouble I have found.
Also, case sensitive is the textures names..
Something I learned from trial and error, Blenders texture paint does not work if using a DDS texture that is using compression. If you ever mess around with that. Use PNGS.
Hit me up on the channel, People ask stuff all the time in the comments. Though I don't see them all, and I always have a million things going on.
These are just the few things that come to mind.
I never use the texture cooking naming system so no suggestions if you use that texture.color.png for example... I prefer to convert my own in Gimp. I never had luck editing those textures after the fact in the World Editor.
Good luck with Modding, there is much I do not know, got about 2 years experimenting and pretty much learned what I know through trial and error. Was hard to get answers, and nearly as impossible to find info on things.
HavocNG is a great friend who also runs a BeamNG channel. Was the first channel that I found to help back when I got started.
Check out Filman86 channel too, guy has a lot of tutorials.

Parsing errors importing DAEs, I made a video recently on that, and a work around that sometimes works. Think the root problem is those DAE's were authored in MAX or Maya and use slightly different things for the texture info. The BeamNG folks, use a combination of programs so some of the in house DAE from the content folder will load, some wont without parsing errors.
It is still a royal pain in the a to get the textures on the meshes when they do import. Depending on the model.


text:
Denoise messes render
I am making a grungy, old style render and denoise just deletes all the details,i use principled volume and particles for dust they also get clamped.

i added noise on compositor to fix it but i am happy to hear any other suggestions for a faster workflow


text:
Removing intersection between instances
I made this with geometry nodes and I was wondering if there is a way to remove some of the sphere instances which are intersecting with each other? Tried to use delete geometry but it doesn't seem to be working.

Sphere intersections is actually an easy problem, so yes, it can be done…

But maybe you would want to e.g. clamp the size of the spheres so they are always there but never overlap?

@MarkusvonBroady hey man thanks for suggesting but i want the sizes of the spheres to be randomized, just trying to figure out a way to set a minimum distance between the spheres

One reasonable strategy is to use Merge by Distance node. Unfortunately this node moves (averages) positions (and all other attributes) of points, so you need to move them back - but after moving them back they may still overlap! Therefore you need to repeat the process a few times:

With the Merge Still group being:

And for completeness, Suzanne was hexagonized with:

thank you so much! this is what i was looking for!

hey man, just another question! if i would like to switch the spheres to another object instead, how do i plug the value node to the object info node for that object? @MarkusvonBroady

@xander you could use a "Transform" node, and plug it to the scale of it… Just keep in mind, this solution is only exact for spheres, for any other object it will be an approximation.

alright, thank you so much once again!


text:
Auto-fixing transform after enabling/disabling child of constraint
I don’t have a particularly specific problem, rather a common one and I have never seen anyone trying to solve it in this way.
Is there a way to automate the change in bone/object position when the child of constraint is turned off?
To make it clear, now in order to leave the bone in the position where it is with the modifier turned on, you need to click the “disable and keep transform” button.

What I want (roughly) is for us to create a keyframe with perhaps a driver that will automatically set positions for the bone where the modifier influence is 0.
For what? I'm an animator and every time I decide to change something in an animation where this modifier is needed, I have to do the same operation many times, so creating this method will make life easier for many animators and allow them to focus on the creative process rather than observing positions with a modifier.
As i know, there no drivers for keyframes, but maybe is there another way for this?

I'm not sure how this Disable and Keep Transform option works, you could create a keyframe > Visual Location, Rotation & Scale for the child object at the same frame where the Influence is keyed at 0, then keyframe the Influence at 0 (don't pay attention to the fact that the child will move, it won't once animated), but you probably already know it? Also there's an addon called Dynamic Parent but it just automatically creates the constraints and keyframes: https://github.com/romanvolodin/dynamic_parent


text:
How can I see the center of rotation of the 3D view?
Suppose I moved the center of the 3D view using Shift + middle mouse drag. Now the center of rotation is no longer in the center of the 3D view. Where is the center of rotation exactly? How can I see it?

There may be another way but once you move the view if you press CTRL+ALT+Numpad 0 that will center a camera to the current view. The cameras position should now be the center of the rotation as well and you can get that info in the Item tab.


text:
Problem with drivers value's statement

i set up cube rotation and movement by object near by cube,but i also want to set up its z location so it cannot penetrate through plane every time it move forward and backward,there is some problem in expression i use in driver.

You've got an extra closing parenthesis at the end of the line (or a missing opening one somewhere)

Use a python console

Recommend using a python console or a text editor to crunch in your expressions when they get too complex. See image in the way it has shown the error message.  Most syntax aware text editors have some way to highlight matching brackets, including blender.
Define any variables in your expression first with dummy values
>>> x = 1

Conveniently if using the python console, the math methods are already imported, .
>>> locals().keys()
dict_keys(['__name__', '__doc__', '__package__', '__loader__', '__spec__', '__builtins__', 'bpy', 'C', 'D', 'help', 'Vector', 'Matrix', 'Euler', 'Quaternion', 'Color', 'geometry', 'interpolate', 'noise', 'bvhtree', 'kdtree', 'acos', 'acosh', 'asin', 'asinh', 'atan', 'atan2', 'atanh', 'ceil', 'copysign', 'cos', 'cosh', 'degrees', 'erf', 'erfc', 'exp', 'expm1', 'fabs', 'factorial', 'floor', 'fmod', 'frexp', 'fsum', 'gamma', 'gcd', 'hypot', 'isclose', 'isfinite', 'isinf', 'isnan', 'ldexp', 'lgamma', 'log', 'log1p', 'log10', 'log2', 'modf', 'pow', 'radians', 'remainder', 'sin', 'sinh', 'sqrt', 'tan', 'tanh', 'trunc', 'pi', 'e', 'tau', 'inf', 'nan', 'M', 's', 't', 'x', 'bmesh'])

just as most are known to the driver namespace (can be used in driver expressions)
>>> bpy.app.driver_namespace.keys()
dict_keys(['__builtins__', '__name__', '__doc__', '__package__', '__loader__', '__spec__', 'acos', 'acosh', 'asin', 'asinh', 'atan', 'atan2', 'atanh', 'ceil', 'copysign', 'cos', 'cosh', 'degrees', 'erf', 'erfc', 'exp', 'expm1', 'fabs', 'factorial', 'floor', 'fmod', 'frexp', 'fsum', 'gamma', 'gcd', 'hypot', 'isclose', 'isfinite', 'isinf', 'isnan', 'ldexp', 'lgamma', 'log', 'log1p', 'log10', 'log2', 'modf', 'pow', 'radians', 'remainder', 'sin', 'sinh', 'sqrt', 'tan', 'tanh', 'trunc', 'pi', 'e', 'tau', 'inf', 'nan', 'bpy', 'noise'])

In the case you crunch in hit enter and the next line presents you with ... it most likely means you are missing a brace.
>>> sqrt(2) * (x - round(x, 0)) if (x % 2) < 1 else sqrt(2) * (x % 2
...
... )
1.4142135623730951

Test with different input values. The history (up and down arrows) saves retyping everything
>>> x = 0.33
>>> sqrt(2) * (x - round(x, 0)) if (x % 2) < 1 else sqrt(2) * (x % 2)
0.46669047558312143

And when you are happy with it, select it with the mouse  copy CtrlC and then paste CtrlV into the driver expression
See also defining a driver method and adding to namespace [Find Link]

thanx it is working now correctly.


text:
Greyed out shaders on linked asset. I can't animate shaders
This one is about Asset Library creations
I have a car where the brake lights are animated using a shader (it's a mix2color connecting 2 diferent textures. I want to animate the Factor to switch between one another)
I have added the car to my asset library and imported it to another scene as Linked. Then I've  overriden it so I can animate it's armature, but all the materials and shader nodes are greyed out so I can't animate the brake lights.
What have I done wrong?

Solved.
On the original scene where I created the car I've added a custom property that drives the MixColor factor.
The idea is going back to the scene where the car is referenced to, and even if the shaders are still greyed out, I can still animate this property.
However, I found that the property itself was also greyed out. When hovering the mouse on it a message appears:
'Can't edit this property from an override data-block'
The way to solve this is finding the object that contains the property and make it local as follows:


text:
Blender, PNG renders and Davinci Ressolve. How to extract data?
I am confused on how to render a mist pass from Blender that I can use in DaVinci Ressolve.
Everything I find is ussing that mist data to be comped within Blender.
I know I can use OpenEXR file format to export the data I want to use, but due to disk size limitations I have to work with PNGs only.
Is it there a way?

EXR can save smaller files than PNG if you get the right compression alorithm (i think dwaa does the best if i'm not wrong) Otherwise you can use the file output node in the compositor to do things like saving different passes in different files and formats, but again: EXR should be the most efficient.

Here some possible settings for a small sized, yet high quality .EXR export. You don't need to use .PNGs, when exporting images or image sequences, EXR is always better.

Also, when already in DaVinci Resolve you will have to fix the colours, so that you have them the same as in blender. If you're using AGX, this is a good LUT to Rec709, here, thank me later.
https://we.tl/t-dFWKmovLpu

Thank you, but these compression settings reduces file size by sacrifycing image quality (DWAA (lossy) means lose of quality, as it does Float (Half) instead of Full)
I guess we can not have it all and even with these settings I will still get an acceptable quality.
Thank you!

@Sumatra Yes, you're right, these compression settings are indeed not lossless, however, please keep in mind that there is no loss of quality noticeable by eye with these settings. The amount of data loss depends on the compression level. The default compression level yields a perceptibly lossless image but a drastic reduction in file size. I have been using them for 4K exports and exactly for my workflow with DaVinci Resolve. This is the best you get, smaller than PNGs and retain quality! It's amazing in my view.


text:
The items of Object mode tool bar
Why is the number of items in the toolbar in the Object Mode different? I followed a beginner tutorial of Blender, and I found that the number of toolbar of mine is 9 while the blogger's is 11, and I don't know how to get to the toolbar like his, anyone can help me with this, thanks.

Hello, could you please link the tutorial you're talking about?

it could be from an addon.

Yes, it's from addons which named Hardops and boxcutter


text:
How can I change the degree of bevel

As the image following showed, I always get a flat degree bevel while sometimes I need like 45 degrees bevel, what can I do for it, thanks!

... Object-level transforms take place after mesh modifications. While modelling,  always transform in Edit Mode. I do wish modelling tutors would not. ever. scale in Object Mode :) .. we could  avoid a lot of the puzzled customers here on BSE ..

Thanks for your help, it has been solved

@RobinBetts I'm with you on this one. I always roll my eyes when tutors scale in Object Mode and even worse, either not stress that if you do it that way it is important to apply the scale afterwards or just do it casually without mentioning applying it at all.


text:
Blender exporting not working
So, i was using blender and i was trying to export and obj. file. But it didn't work. It highlighted the file red and i put my mouse over the red and it said that (File name, overwrite existing) and there wasn't anything overwriting it, please help.

"and there wasn't anything overwriting it" I can see a file with the exact same file name right there

Where?? Please Show Me

The reason it says "File name, overwrite existing" and the name is in red is because you are writing over another file.
In this case, you are overwriting the already saved "Cathy.obj" because it has the same exact name as the text in the red box. To not overwrite the file, change the name of the file you are exporting.

I don't get it do you have discord add me :Jakashi#1878

i did change the name then when i went to the new one that i just saved it also said "File name, overwrite existing".

@Jayden change the name in the red text box and then just click Export OBJ, don't click any file or the name will change to that file's name and you'll have the error again.


text:
I made a model but when rigged it doesn't move correctly
So I made a model with a mirror modifier but realized that when I rigged it the arms would move in sync. So I remove the mirror modifier and copied the left side of the model to make the right side. but when I rigged it and started to move the bone that moves the neck and head the neck and head start to split in half. (Graphic I know, but I also made sure that both sides of the mesh where connected using Ctrl+J)
How to i make the rig move both left and right sides of the head and neck.
Here is a video of whats happening. https://youtu.be/R6cnYOal2Kw
The video is a little outdated so some of the problems where fixed like the T-Pose. But other than that I am new to blender and barely know what i am doing.

Ctrl J has the only effect to put all vertices (from two different "container"-objects) into one "container-object" only, but both half of the mesh will have thier own central line vertices. You can merge them selecting all vertices and using the "remove doubles" option.

Thanks! but i removed mirror modifier and the arms still move together...

You have to redo the parenting with the automatic weight assignement.


text:
Can't find the Shader/UVs tab
I have a very basic problem: I want to create a 3D-logo. Therefore I imported a svg from Inkscape an extruded it. I know, that I have to select it in Object Mode, go to Edit Mode and then unwrap it in order to map the imported image on the 3D model.
But: there is no Shading/UVs tab. If I create a cylinder or a cube, the Shading/UVs tab is there, if I want to use my extruded object, the tab isn't.
What do I have to do to find the Shading/UVs tab? Why is it sometimes hidden and sometimes not??

Curves object's type doesn't have that panel
That panel is available only for Mesh type objects like the cube or the cylinder. Unrwapping is an operation related to faces, polygons, which in the filled and extruded curves are generated "on the fly" and not directly accessible.
Curves are an object type on their own, so you'll need to convert the curve to mesh in order to access those operators.

Thank you so very much for that advice!!! I tied it - an it worked. I supposed, it had something to do with the type of object, but I couldn't find the solution in any tutorial...  And thank you for the screenshot - it helps a lot!


text:
How can I define the depth of my world?
I created an island with clouds hanging in the sky somewhere behind the island and a camera that approaches the island and moves around it, before moving away from it. When my camera begins approaching the island, the clouds are  not visible. When the camera is right in front of the island, the clouds are all visible. And when the camera moves away from the island, the clouds dissapear again. What is going on there? I think, it has something to do with the depth of my world or the depth of what the camera can see. Thanks for help!

Probably clipping. Both Viewports and Cameras have near and far clip settings. For the Viewports, they can be found in the 3D View Properties Region, 'View' panel. For cameras, they are in the Properties editor, Camera Data tab.

That's it! The Camera tab! I thought it's in the world tab, but it 's the camera tab.

Thank You !!!!!