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weighting a single vertices model?
enter link description here

I'm having trouble weighting this model that i pulled from an fbx file sight....the other hand seems to be okay but this hand seems to be a troublemaker...the blend file is attached if you want to disect my issue. if im doing the weight painting wrong...please tell me how to correct my issue.

The glove has thickness, that's probably why it struggles to get a correct weight when parenting With Automatic Weights:

To remove this thickness, select all the outer faces, invert the selection, delete:

Now unparent the glove object with Clear and Keep Transformation option, apply the scale (CtrlA):

Flip the normals in Edit mode, back to Object mode, select the glove, shift select the armature and parent With Automatic Weights and it will work.

Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.


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How to visualise overlapping lines and attribute color based on frequency
I would like to visualize the datapoints, or lines in this case, that are overlapping, and assign 1) a color based on how many overlapping lines there are.
Data is an import of a shapefile where i connected simple points, and the data has many inputs per line. Each line has , in many cases, "exists" multiple times.

In blender, everytime I import the points, or in this case the lines, even though the geonodes index matches my number of datapoints, it shows as one line or point in the viewport. I haven't figured out how to show multiple datapoints that stack on top of eachother in a way where it is visible there are differences in frequence between the existence of datapoints on that xyz (lines in this case).
While what I want is:

figure out how i can show a color for lines that overlap a lot, for instance based on a opacity level and a nice colorramp.
(optional) play with the named attribute country name to make multiple colorramps differ based on that named attribute.

But the first question is the thing i'm primarily stuck on!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Is there a way to highlight a face in the 3D viewport if you have its UV selected?
So I know if you have a face selected in the 3D Viewport, its UV will pop up in the UV editor. What I want to know is, is there a way to highlight a face in the 3D viewport if you have its corresponding UV selected in the UV editor? Sometimes it's hard to tell where exactly the face of the UV is if it's small or if you have a lot of similarly shaped polygons/uv islands.

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/33852/is-there-a-way-of-easily-identifying-which-mesh-face-a-uv-face-corresponds-to

Yes, you need to enable the Sync button here:

Wow thank you! That's really helpful. It almost feels like that should be enabled by default. It makes adjusting UVs way easier, at least for me.

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


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Blender is seriously broken for me all of a sudden? What is going on?
So I haven't used Blender too much in about a week or so. I decided to open up some of the last things I was working on and was horrified at what I saw. At first, it was hard to tell what was going on exactly, and I still don't know what is happening, but it looks like some severe rendering bug related to shaders.
I can't even really describe in words what is happening because it's so weird. But basically, when I go into Material Preview or Rendered View, my mesh goes completely broken and gets some weird, warped, transparent property. I've recorded a video with a new file.
Video of bug
I think this might be related to my updating my video card driver a couple days ago. I would revert, but the reason I updated it because otherwise Steam wouldn't launch. Has anyone else seen anything like this before? I've reinstalled already. Is this some severe bug or am I being really stupid here?

You are correct - It's caused by the latest drivers for your AMD GPU. The latest Adrenalin drivers are causing problems for many users. Roll back to an earlier driver version to fix it.

Thanks. I was kinda hoping it was related to this and not some severe fudge up on my part. It's still annoying though


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Four bones counted as one?
I'm somewhat of a beginner and I'm helping out a group of my friends by creating unity assets for them in blender. Recently I came across this avatar (made by Kevin Iglesias) and I've noticed its hand looks like it's made up of 4 bones, but is still considered by unity as a single bone (image below).

I can't find any mention of it anywhere; is it even possible to create something like this in Blender? Is it two different armatures that are parented with eachother?

I wrote to the author and he had explained it, I'll post the anwser here in case anyone else encounters this problem:

That's the representation in Unity of having 4 bone childs not connected.
In the picture below you will see that effect is achieved by having 4 not-connected-to-parent bone childs of the hand bone.


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Issue with oddly shaded faces in Blender 2.82
Hi everyone and happy new year.
Recently I have encountered a problem with some models in Blender (I use 2.82). When importing a model I have made in Sketchup, Blender "creates" these weird dark grey shapes on the model itself. I have gone back and forth between Blender and Sketchup to fix this - but nothing solves this. Please see the attached screenshots - I have circled the issues in red. There are no vertices or edges close to the problem areas.
What I have tried thus far:

Checked normals and ensured they are facing the right way.
Tried to add edges to the problem area.
Subdivided the model (makes it worse).
Tried various shading settings.
Tried exporting from Sketchup in various formats.
Tried importing the various formats of the model with various import settings.
Removing materials and reassigning them.
Cleaning up the mesh.

The problem persists even when I load it into Substance Painter to texture it...the rest of the model is fine, except for those annoying dark areas. Can anyone advise on what this is and how to fix it? Thanks in advance.

Given everything you've already tried, it's hard to tell without seeing your project. Any chance you could upload and post an example of your .blend file so we can have a look at it? You can do it here - https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

@ChristopherBennett - thank you for answering...here it is:

Ok, so I can definitely say what is going on is topology related, but I can't tell you how to fix it because there's a lot going on. To get an idea, grab the inner edge of the bottom windowsill(s) and move it around. You can see it's connected to the rest of the mesh in a large number of places, but are not properly connected via "vertex junctions". For example, some lines go straight past another edge, but there is no vertex to connect them - they are just "infinitely beside each other" Have a look at the linked image for an example - https://ibb.co/Q9dFRSy

After going crazy with button-pressing, I finally solved it. Under the Object Data Properties tab, I selected "clear custom split normals data" and voila! No idea why the model imported with that...but at least this was one issue that was solved by pressing random buttons! Thanks to everyone that viewed/was willing to help.

it's sometimes necessary to clear the custom split normals of imported meshes


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How to use flowmap texture for rotation instances
I wanted to use flowmap texture for direction / rotation of instances generated by geometry nodes.
I saw quite nice explanation of basics behind, but ... it says in one part - pure Green channel goes in up (Y) direction and later under color grid the same color is pointing to up-left direction. What I'm missing here?

Another story is ... When I tried to apply this grid texture to orient instances under GN it takes Red in X dir, Green in Y dir ... and completely ignores negative (dark) direction as shown in the grid texture.

What I'm missing in my node tree?

Basically I wanted to use awesome addon Flowmap Painter (of Clemens Beute) to paint texture let instances orient in a brush movement ...

Edit
Provided solution in answer works great ... Thank you guys :)

A color value is always positive, so you would have to map it to a range from $-1$ to $1$.

Even if @Crantisz was once again faster, here nevertheless my answer to it, because here also the directions are treated correctly:

Note that the colors play an essential role here, as already discussed in this question:Colour/color space option for image textures in geometry nodes

Thanks a lot :) Will test it more ...

I had an issue with flowmap painter wrong orientation, than I noticed my grid texture in sample blend file (I took from net) was flipped on X compare to standard UV coordinates (like black at bottom-right should be at bottom-left). So I edit my picture and switched Map Range value for Red channel at your image. Anyway works nicely https://imgur.com/KnLZKJB ... I have also issue with using on sphere object, so probably I will ask for additional help later :)

There are a lot of issues here. First one, we need to tell Blender that we need non-color data. So that open your image in shader editor and change color space to Non-color or linear

Next, as  quellenform sad, you need to change the range of colors from 0...1 to -1...0, Or subtract 0.5

You should also make a Z-component based on the length of X+Y components

Thank you, I appreciate your help.

Pedantic: I think you meant "...to -1...+1"?

Your node tree works for me for texture grid orientated with black bottom-left (that I flipped later). I skipped Z since it twisted instances a bit https://imgur.com/rXLGfLu ... what I can't figure out why bottom row (red) is slightly shifted down (and not 45 deg as quellenform's) https://imgur.com/FLgcB6N for uflowmap seems to be identical (or less noticeable?)


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Simple movie clip sharpening using Compositing - How to do this?
I'm a novice in using Blender and am looking for an easy way to sharpen movie clips.  I believe I have to use Compositing, but am not being able to find some simple step-by-step methods to achieve this simple goal.  I looked at various tutorials on Youtube, but they are for more advanced users and use images (not movies) as examples.  How does one do this?  I have never done Compositing before.
I could not even load a single movie clip in my compositing window in the 'render layers' node that I had created in my movie project, which I believe is the first step.  If I could use just one filter successfully using the 'add filter...filter...sharpen', and apply it to my movie project, I would consider that to be a success.
I'm probably overlooking a simple step that most users are familiar with already.
I am using the latest 2.90.1 version installed on my Windows 10 laptop. I was able to create and render a short movie by joining several short movie clips shot on my DSLR camera using Blender.  Although, I am pretty sure my camera technique and equipment used was good, the final rendered movie in 24 fps, at 1920x1080 resolution is not sharp.  The built in camera picture profile I used was 'flat' with no sharpening.  I know I nailed the exposure and focus, used a tripod, a professional quality lens, etc...
Thank you

Add an Input > Image node (or Input Movie Clip node) and set the video file there.
Add a Filter > Filter node and set it to sharpen mode.
Plug the output image to the composite input and render.

I was able to do what you suggested but only for a new VFX project.  How do I apply sharpening to a movie I made using a 'File...New...Video Editing' project?  I want to be able to apply sharpening to each movie clip in that project. Thank you

I think this will work:  https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/2105/color-correction-in-the-compositor-from-the-video-editor


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How to bake refraction/transmission as seen from a specific camera viewpoint?
I'm trying to adapt the OSL script from this answer, which allows baking of reflections as seen from a specific direction, defined as FakeCamPos:
shader osl_reflection_normal(
  vector FakeCamPos = 10,
  int IsCameraRay = 1,
  output normal ReflNormal = N)
{
    if (IsCameraRay)
    {
        // Normal pointing from FakeCamPos to here
        normal fakeCamNormal = normalize(P - FakeCamPos);

        // Reflect fakeCamNormal across the surface
        normal fakeReflection = reflect(fakeCamNormal, N);

        // For some reason I points towards the camera? Otherwise we'd use -I
        normal incidenceNormal = normalize(I);

        // The average of the incidence normal and the fake reflection normal gives us a normal that reflects one to the other.
        ReflNormal = normalize(fakeReflection + incidenceNormal);
    }
}

This works great for reflections, but not refraction. Is it possible? What would be the correct calculation to achieve this?


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How to change a mesh into light
Are there any way to change a mesh completely into light? If then are there a way to give it multiple colors.
Any render engine will work
thanks

Not sure this is exactly what you mean but you if you want a shader only approach, try something like this. Lights in Cycles are just Emission objects anyway.

That's exactly what I am looking for!

Note that if you use Eevee, the object won't emit light around it unless you use a Light Probe > Irradiance Volume. In that case you need to put the light probe where you want the scene to be affected, tweak the settings in the light probe object data settings, and in the Properties panel > Render > Indirect Lighting, press on the Bake button. Now the object emits light around it:

Another way would be to add a light Point at the same location in order to fake the emission around the object, in that case make sure that the light Radius is large enough:

Use an emission shader,

or in the Pincipled BSDF shader use the Emission color and Emission strength.

For multiple colors use a texture and plug it to the color socket of either shader.


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Giving the same keyframe to multiple meshes
A beginner here. I want to give the same key frame to multiple meshes. Are there any other way than selecting every single one and giving key frames one by one?

Please include a Blender screen capture to illustrate your question.  The choice is yours.  Currently I have a 50% understanding of what you wrote.   Maybe others have a 100% understanding.

Are you trying to change any of location, rotation, scale? Blender has modifiers and constraints that copy and coordinate properties such as location, scale, rotation.  You may copy and paste graphs of keyframes. There are drivers which are Python.  You may also want to write in your question how many objects are involved .  Do you believe you can coordinate all the keyframes once and for all correctly ?  Do you want to have more flexibility in how you coordinate.  Blender can also coordinate some properties directly .. by copying attributes .. such as materials.

There is also the concept of Parent Child in Blender.  I assume you have many keyframes per object you would like to coordinate.  Is that true?

Select to destination objects first, then the object with the animation.  Then menu to Object -> Make Links -> Animation.
However, this will "overwrite" any other animation you may have put on the destination objects.
Then if you don't want the object to continue to share animation, use the Object -> Relations -> Single User -> Object Animation.   This will make individual copies of the animation on each object, so you can further animate objects individually.

I can think of two ways: select all the objects you want to apply the animation to, then select the object whose keyframes you are copying last (to make sure that it is the active selected object) then press Ctrl-L to bring up the Link Menu. From there select "Animation Data", and all the objects you have selected should now have the same animation applied to them. Please note that if you have keyframed the active object's Location property that all of the selected objects will be moved to the same location as the active object.
If you don't want the other objects to match the location of the active object, but you do want them to "fly in formation" as it were, then select all your objects, again making sure the object whose animation you are copying is last, then press Ctrl-P for Parent, and select "Object (Keep Transform)" from the dropdown menu.


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How to make a mesh look like glass
I want to make a cube look like made out of glass. I know how to give it transparency but I don't know how to make it reflect light like glass in real life do
(Blender version 2.9)

Please [edit] your post to specify whether you want it to be realistic (in Cycles) or realtime (in Eevee)?

Use a glass shader.

The Glass BSDF is used to add a Glass-like shader mixing refraction and reflection at grazing angles. Like the transparent shader, only pure white will make it transparent
Color
Color of the surface, or physically speaking, the probability that light is ransmitted for each wavelength
Roughness
Influences sharpness of the refraction; perfectly sharp at 0.0 and smoother with higher values.
IOR
Index of refraction (IOR) defining how much the ray changes direction. At 1. 0 rays pass straight through like transparent; higher values give more refraction.
Normal
Normal used for shading.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/shader/glass.html?highlight=glass

For reflections, set something in the scene or the environment that will be reflected on the surface.
Read:
How to turn off reflections on glass


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How to blur in blender
First of all I am a beginner trying to make animations on my free time.
So now I want to make an that have to focus on a distant object first and blur the object that is closer how can do that. Any rendering engine would work.
Any help will be appreciated
(Blender version: 2.91.2)

I think you are looking for Depth Of Field settings. Select your camera, and enter camera perspective (Numpad 0) to see what it's doing. The options are in the camera settings. You can even pick a focus object:

Thanks Christopher I didn't noticed your answer at first.

You need to select your camera and in the Properties panel > Object Data > enable Depth of Field, then choose the object (or the empty) that will be the focus and play with the parameters:


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How to stop mesh getting into another mesh
I want to make a simple animation of a cube rotating and going to another place. But when it rotates the cube sinks into the mesh under the cube. How to stop it from happening.

Blender will not automatically handle these. One solution is to setup Softbody simulation. Another solution, simplest I think is to use Shape keys.


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Are there any simple way to animate other than by key frames
I am a beginner and I know how to make animations with key frames. What are the other ways to make animation?

Please be more specific on what you want to do. [edit] your question and explain further.

without keyframes. Can be used Scripted Expression. More depends on what you want to do.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/animation/drivers/workflow_examples.html


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Remove intersecting geometry for 3d printing?
just wondering if there's an easy way to remove intersecting geometry so I can have it ready for 3d printing?
I have pipes intersecting in my mesh (amongst other things) as you can see in the bottom picture if I hide the closest face. I tried this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kf16s5MPBLg but it's pretty old and doesn't work even if using the Boolean "Exact" solver and turning on the "self" checkbox.

Is overlapping geometry really a problem for 3d printing? At least for FDM printing intersecting solid geometry without holes and with correct normals is not a problem.

yeah this is for resin printing that needs to be hollowed out


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How to select/extrude all the upper faces of a lot of buildings in one only step
Hello to everyone (specially to Mzidare :D),
I found this blender tutorial How to Create a City Covered with Fog and I tried to do it.
The problem I have is that I can extrude a single building vertices/faces correctly but not all vertices/faces of all the building at one time by pressing A.
If I do it,the extruded part is shown above the old one. I switched the mode selection to face and also to vertex. But it didn't work.
The author of the tutorial,Gleb Alexandrov,did not explain it very well,because he talks very fast. At the beginning of the stage 2,he says :

"hit Ctrl + A" ; instead, I imagine that's "press A to select everything" and then he says
"press E to extrude". And finally he says
"press A and recalculate normal".

I'm stuck on point 1. If I select only the upper vertices or faces of one building only it works for me. But this takes a lot of time to select every upper vertex or face and Gleb didn't do it. Instead, he selected everything.
Is there a solution to make faster ? Check the attached short video to understand. Many thanks.
What I did

Your problem is that your buildings are already extruded as opposed to the flat 2D shapes imported in the tutorial. You can select any side faces for extruding, select only the upper faces

Your problem is that your buildings seem to have already been extruded once, instead of being flat 2D shapes as in the tutorial.
Either delete all but the bottom faces and star over. Select one of the top faces then use Shift+G > Normal option to select all faces pointing up. Then use Ctrl++ once to grow the selection and add include side faces too. Then delete them with X and extrude as per tutorial instructions.

Or select only the top faces for extrusion, don't select side faces like you did in your video or you will end up with a very bad dirty topology and a model full of errors.
Select one of the top faces then use Shift+G > Normal option to select all faces pointing up, then extrude

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


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The fastest way to recreate buildings from real world cities in Blender
I found a lot of interesting tutorials about how to import terrains from the real world into Blender.
For example,this : tutorial 1 or this : tutorial 2
What about the buildings of the cities?
A friend told to me you can use another approach to import your city map into Blender. You can make a screenshot of the place, you wanna use and using Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape turn it into vector graphic (.svg) and import into Blender.
I did something better than that. I used the tool Maperitive, selected an area on the OSM and then I converted the file to .dae format, this is the result that I get :

As you can see, there is no separation between the vertices, so when I extrude the points this is what happens :

It's not good at all. I know that I can go on the Open Street Map web site, select an area, export it to OSM file and then import it in Blender, but the problem is that a lot of areas (including the area where I live which is my biggest interest) aren't mapped; because when I try to import it I see only a small geometry.
So, what's the fastest and nicest way to do this?
Thanks.

Have you looked into Blender addon Import OpenStreetMap? If your area is not mapped or doesn't have any building iinformation around it you wnt have much success with that. Otherwise I was under the impression that OSM could export PDF files. You could them import them into Inkscape, clean them up and import the SVG into Blender

By the way that addon (called now blender-osm) can be downloaded for free at https://gumroad.com/l/blender-osm

Go to OpenStreetMap, and make sure you are using the default layer on the right-side menu.
Use the Share Option, then on the lower part use the SVG (or PDF) option to export the visible area. Adjust the scale before exporting if you want any semblance of metric precision or accurate measurements

Either import it directly into Blender, or if you wish do some cleanup in Inkscape and remove unwanted or unneeded parts.
You can then easily extrude buildings directly as curve or convert to mesh for more complex or detailed modelling.

Have in mind that it still requires the desired area to be mapped and have actual building information.

very thanks for your help,but on the Open Street Map website there are a lot of areas not mapped,also in Italy,where I live. So,this approach,that I knew partially,it is not useful for me. Anyway,I accept it as useful.

In that case I'd probably go with your friends suggestion, go to Google Earth and download an aerial view of the area and manually trace it with a mesh or curve objects

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


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How get view from 3 cameras in one screen - video for holographic pyramid
Videos to holographic pyramids need specific montage.
I have videos from 3 angles of the animation and i need to combine them in one in the way like showed on the picture below.

Is Blender movie clip editor able to do it like this?
I can do it in program like Sony Vegas but I need to know if it is possible in Blender and how to do it.

I tried to do it, but i didn't find if it is possible. Changed to other free program: HitFilm

On SE sites, the answer section is reserved for answers. Sorry you didn't get one here.. Glad you found a way through..


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Is Raspberry Pi 4 able to run Blender Game Engine games?
Ex. I have a game where my object is floating in some empty space and i can interact with it.
I can zoom in/out, rotate in every direction and do some clicks which cause some animations (for ex. when i click on my object it starts spinning)
Is RPi4 able to run this kind of a simple game?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/106972/what-will-happen-with-blender-2-8-game-engine

There is no official Blender version for Pi

But here https://upbge.org/#/download i can see Blender Game Engine for Linux

(I do not have experience with Raspberry Pi)
To answer your question kind of... in pieces:
Raspberry Pi 4 natively uses OpenGL ES 3.1, and natively supports OpenGL 2.2 (allegedly).
Although I have found resources that purport to unlocking the Pi 4 to versions of OpenGL as late as roughly 3.3.
It's not entirely clear what OpenGLs the Videocore VI chip is actually capable of, but it seems people are running Blender 2.79b, and games like Open Arena, just fine.

In terms of [does R. Pi 4 have the power]:           yes (Hardware meets spec)
In terms of [does R. Pi 4 have the software]:        yes (Hardware meets reqs)
In terms of [does R. Pi 4 have the firmware]:        it seems so (soft yes)
In terms of [does R. Pi 4 have the API/Middleware]:  it kind of seems so (maybe)
If you're using Blender 2.79b, and the old vanilla engine within it, and you also are not using any advanced shaders or Eevee (UPBGE), then all signs point to a... :
Soft Yes

References...

Raspberry Pi Engineer re: Officially reported OpenGL version conformance
Raspberry Pi official site reporting Open Arena performance
Blender 2.79b on R. Pi 4 (1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk0-bae-mDc
Blender 2.79b on R. Pi 4 (2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ5jU32sejQ
Blender 2.79b on R. Pi 4 (3): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ51Q9Kvz5s

As an additional: UPBGE 0.2x is built on the Blender 2.79b legacy engine, and MIGHT theoretically also work. But to re-iterate, UPBGE 0.3.0 being OpenGL 3.x will very certainly crash, or not work at all as intended.


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Y axis recorded when it's not supposed to be
So i tried to move the object on x axis only (g key,then x). But everytime, the y axis always get recorded. How can i cancel this?
Also, my blender has become strange, specifically for the graph editor. sometimes the movement stop in the middle of keyframes when usually it'll stop at the end of the keyframe. i don't know when this happened but it's really trouble me especially when i move across multiple axis.
Thank you!

delete the Y Location track afterwards in the Dope Sheet or in the Graph Editor? I don't know if there's a way to save only on one or two axis

Open the 'N' panel in the 3D view and go to Item. Move your model in the X direction, then right-click on the X Location in the Transform panel and select 'Insert single Keyframe'. For your other problem, I assume you don't have Auto Keying selected in the Timeline window? (White dot selected in the middle of the timeline header)

If I understand your question, this behaviour is related to how bones local space is working: every bone considers the orientation of its parent as its Local space; if the bone is the highest in hierarchy (root bone) it relates to the orientation of the Armature object.
This means that if the armature object and/or a parent bone is oriented in a different way than world orientation, moving a bone on X (World) axis will be achieved with a local movement of two or three (Local) axis, and this is reflected in the graph editor values.
Sometimes it can be useful to add a new control bone, orient it as needed in edit mode, set it as target of a "child of" bone constraint on the original controller, perform and edit the animation, then bake the result on the original bone (clearing the constraint), so that a movement happening on two or three axis can be edited using one curve only.
The second question is more difficult to understand, maybe it's simply related to the default ease in and ease out of the curves (you can switch them to linear interpolation, to test if it's the case). If not, you should upload your file, to be inspected.


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Shortcut to lock camera to active view in macbook pro
i been trying blender 2.83 on MACBOOK 2019 and I am not able to find replacement to numpad shortcuts. for locking to active camera view it is shift+ctrl+0, but it's not working on my laptop.

If you don't have a numpad, you can emulate it using your number keys (the ones above the letters on your keyboard) by going into Edit>Preferences>Input and in the "Keyboard" section, check the "Emulate Numpad" checkbox.
Not sure what you are trying to do with Shift+Ctrl+0 but if you are trying to bring your camera to your current view, the shortcut that I had work is actually Ctrl+Alt+0
Hope this helps

Hey thanks!! That works

You can mark my answer as solution and close the topic then


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Join partially adjacent faces to make a plane with a hole in the middle

I've got four cuboids placed next to each other in the following pattern to create a square with a hole in the middle. I have joined the four objects together already. How do I join the top faces to make each corner look like this?

I think you’re better off with a slightly different approach. What I would do is just make a cuboid, then inset a face on the top, extrude it inward through the other side, and then use knife intersect. I might also just inset faces on both sides, and then use Bridge Edge Loops.

@TheLabCat problem is that i already have a whole model with the right sizes and alignment and stuff that was built this way; i made a simplified example for this question.

I see. Well, IDK what’s joined and what’s not, but two things: First, the inner corner edges will not create vertices along the inner ring edges by themselves through any operator I’ve used. Second, 3D faces cannot have holes in them. SketchUp fakes it.

@TheLabCat ah well that explains it then. I didn't know faces could not be perforated. What I am trying is probably unnecessary in that case.


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Geometry tab missing when importing obj files
I could not find Geometry tab in obj import dialog in latest Blender (v3.4),
it was there in v3.0.
Since my model is generated dynamically, so sometimes I need to confirm vertex data in Blender, so Keep vertex order is important to me.
How can I get it back in latest version?
Thanks.

Looks as if it may have been removed after version 3.1. This is the blender manual entry for version 3.2 where it's not mentioned.

Hi, @JohnEason, Thanks for your reply.
So I need to use blender below ver 3.1 if I want to use that feature, right?

Looking at the release notes for 3.1 it seems that the obj importer was rewritten in C++, presumably for speed. However I've just searched the addons in Preferences for "wavefront" and it looks as if you may be in luck! The old importer is still available, being shown as (legacy). If you enable that you get an extra entry at the bottom of the File > Import menu and the file selector for that does indeed still have the Geometry tab on it and that's in version 3.4! :^)

Hi, @JohnEason. You saved my life!
Yes, after enabling it, Geometry tab is live again.
Thank you very much.

As @JohnEason said in the comment, after enabling "Import-Export: Wavefront OBJ format (legacy)" in add-ons, a new wavefront(.obj)(legacy) menu is added and Geometry tab is back again using that new menu.
Hope this can help people who need that Geometry tab like me.
Thanks again for your help, @JohnEason.

Glad to help! Incidentally, it's worth noting https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/281240/how-do-i-batch-export-meshes-into-obj-files-non-legacy?noredirect=1#comment483260_281240 for future reference.

Thank you @JohnEason. it would be very helpful to me.


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Galactic Gas Pockets - Rendering Real Galaxy Supercomputer Simulations in Blender
Node noob calling node gurus.
This is the second part of a hobby background project (first part here) to my dissertation focus, aimed at using blender to render a galaxy generated on my university's supercomputer. This stage of the project is a materials-based node challenge.

Every vertex shown here represents a bubble of relatively cold gas of the interstellar medium (ISM). I would like to use nodes to give each point a 'bubble' that procedurally merges with its neighbouring bubbles to create one eventual surface.
These bubbles are eventually to appear as transluscent clouds with an irridescent blue sheen (I'll play with the material in a bit, to maximise 'coolness' (drum noises). I'll then use the same node architecture to render the hot ISM, and then I can move on to generating the stars.
All aid / ideas welcome :)

Hello. From your description it seems like you may want to try instancing meta balls instead of your vertices. Although the sheer number of them will likely make Blender crash. Try with a low sample and see if it suits your need. Otherwise you can try using a native point cloud instead of a mesh and play with the point radius, although since they're not actual geometry they won't blend with each other. Another solution is to wait for the SDF volume nodes which should ship with then next release (I think) - or try it out now with the beta version

...A simplified blend file might be helpful.


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How to make points follow the path of a string curve geometry node?
I have the following where
this point i wanted it to follow the curve string position

This is the setup I have for it, the sample curve node is throwing an error saying Instance of input geometry are ignored which im guessing is causing an error, does anyone know wht I can do for this?

try realize instances before sample curve

Making a point follow the curve is a quite simple setup, what's more problematic maybe is getting it moving in a way you want it... for example, start at the bottom left and move to the top right.

What I did not incorporate in my answer was converting the curve to a mesh with a profile curve to give it thickness and then back to a curve... because I do not know if you want the point to move along the outside of the thickened curve? That will be a quite messy movement I guess with a high resolution profile curve.

Getting a point to move along a curve is quite easy. First of all it is important that you use Realize Instances as @Chris mentioned in the comments, because from the String to Curves node's output you only get instances from which you cannot sample any position.
After realizing, you can use a Sample Curve node to get the Position anywhere on the curve(s), just by setting the Factor from 0 (start of the curve) to 1 (end of the curve). The important thing here is to check the option All Curves, since the text is composed of multiple curves/splines. With this option enabled, the factor 0 to 1 goes from the start of the first spline to the end of the last spline. Otherwise 0 to 1 would only be start and end of the spline with a given index.
With a Points node plugged into a Set Position node you can now use the Position output of the Sample Curve node to place the point at a certain position on the curve, given by the Factor. Animating the Factor moves the point along the curve.

The only problem however is the way the point moves along the curves. Fortunately it moves along the characters from the first to the last, but within each letter the direction seems a bit weird (at least in my opinion), as you can see in the animation below. I'll leave this answer to be improved by anybody who has a good idea how to change the spline's direction, so that it maybe starts at the top left or bottom left of the H instead of the right side going to the left. On the other characters it start left, maybe it is dependent on the font so I will not bother a lot about it now, the general movement along curves is there.

Oh yeah, maybe it is the the font. With a regular Arial font the movement looks less weird i.e. it starts at the bottom left of a character.


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How to segment exported UV textures to be different colors?
I was wondering if there was a way to export unwrapped UV island to be its own color from the model itself,
something like this, where certain faces of the mesh can be of a certain color and that can be exported?

You can assign a different material to those faces, or use a texture to create a map. In your example, you could use the individual RGB channel. The only way to export colors though ist through vertex colors, since complex things like masks will likely not export to other programs

how did u mean for the vertex colors?

I had to use screenshots, so I can't comment, please don't downvote if it doesn't solver your problem entirely.
Use CTRL+ TAB to switch between modes

Go into edit mode and select all faces that are supposed to have the same color

2. enable paint mask option

Select your color and go to paint -> set color, or press SHIFT K
However you need to make sure whatever program you are importing with supports vertex colors. Unity for example does, but you need to find a shader that reads them.


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Cloth Simulation not following character movement
I am new to cloth simulation, especially for characters, I tried using a model from sketchfab, rigging and getting a simple animation from mixamo and tried using cloth simulation in it, I can't seem to get the cloth to follow the character at all. I tried watching a video that mentioned to first reset the character pose, then move the animation for a bit to help the cloth catch upto the animation, but in my case it just keeps on going. I have attached the model as well.
NSFW may be a bit NSFW, I got if off sketchfab, I have tried adding some censor

The coat won't follow the body with the cloth simulation only, it would be too complicated to calculate, you need to parent the coat to the armature With Automatic Weight and put the Armature modifier above the Cloth modifier, also delete the bake (and maybe increase the Simulation End frame if you want the simulation to go beyond 100 frames). You'll still need to tweak some parameters, clean the topology, create a pin group, etc. Here is a good tutorial about cloth.

Yes, that tutorial I wanted to recommend as well :) Apart from the cloth not being moved by the character itself, there are some other issues. The totpology of the coat is horrible, the coat mesh gets intersected by the body in multiple areas, and there are some loose parts on the sleeves which are not connected to the rest of the coat so they will simply fall down (well, maybe not if they get parented to the armature, but I doubt they will stay on the coat where they are supposed to be when being deformed by bones).

Sure, there are mutliple problems, I just wanted to point out the main one

No criticism, just adding to your answer which saved me from writing my own ;) And following the linked tutorial these additions will all become obvious anyway.


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How to curve a cylinder
I am new to blender and I want to curve a cylinder like in the image below
Any help will be appreciated

You might want to read: How to apporach the modeling of ducts, pipes or wiring

The basic way to do it is to switch to top view, select the edge, put your 3D cursor where the center of the rotation is supposed to be:

Select the Spin tool:

Rotate the edge, use Ctrl to constrain to 10° by 10°, tweak the Operator box parameters if necessary:

You could also use a Curve modifier but it will be a bit slower

can you copy your answer to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/42591/how-to-aproach-the-modeling-of-duct-work-piping-wiring to have an all-around post on pipes?

sure, done...  ;)


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Help! Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones
im trying to rig the character of Lol Ahri in Blender 2.9, i want her to walk and wave. I downloaded the object(ahri), and used the basic human armature.

But when i try to parent the model with the rig, it shows me the error "Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones". I tried to use automatic weigths

So i started looking for solutions, this is what i tried:
MERGE BY DISTANCE (or remove doubles), scaled up, decimate geometry, delete loose, remove all modifiers, any of the bones are showing off, just using a single bone, changed the merge distance to 0.002, and placed the root bone at the center of the model.

the link to the project is: https://pasteall.org/blend/af6843868fb648748cb9687925586701
if you could help me i would be very grateful :)

weird because merge by distance make it work, even though it won't be properly parented and you need to bring some corrections afterwards

You only used that option and worked? Maybe i have to reinstall the program? And if you could please tell me what corrections i have to make

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/69892/bone-heat-weighting-failed-to-find-solution-for-one-or-more-bones-error-message  Removing non manifold geometry from mesh (select non manifold verts & delete  to test) removes the warning also.   Also recommend making the rig scale unity (1, 1, 1)  by applying scale.

Thanks! I'll try it

It worked!! Thanks :)))

Thanks to  batFINGER! Im going to post the solution in photos, maybe helps someone who was a little lost like me :))
Select only the object and choose edit mode, there click in select, and then select all by trait. There select non manifold.
In the box that apears in the bottom, deselect Vertices
Still in edit mode go to mesh, select merge and click in By Distance

Now try parenting in object mode

And for me it worked :)


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Why is my mirror modifier deforming my mesh after I apply it?

I was using Blender 3.4.0 and installed 3.4.1. I am sculpting a base mesh for a bust I am creating using the multires modifier and for the ears a mirror modifier.  I started by scaling and rotation a cube that has a multires modifier. I applied scale and rotation to the cube and then shaped it using elastic deform and inflate brushes.  Once I was done I applied all transforms, added a mirror modifier and applied the mirror modifier.  I keep getting the result on the right half of the image.  Any ideas why this is happening?

You have applied a modifier out of order.
You would get the same result if you moved Mirror to the top of the stack (by grabbing its top-right corner).
Usually this isn't a problem, but MultiRes happens to work by referencing lower subdivision level data. Applying Mirror added/modified verts that have no corresponding data in MultiRes.


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Convert zBrush VDM to Blender VDM using VDM Brush Baker 1.0.2
I am attempting to convert some zBrush VDM brushes to Blender VDM brushes using the VDM Brush Baker 1.0.2 in Blender 3.6. I have run into some problems when attempting this.
In the image below is the zBrush VDM converted to a mesh and brought into Blendr is on the right and on the left is the result from the the zBrush mesh baked to a Blender VDM using the VDM Brush Baker addon. Note the flat area on the sphere on the Blender Brush when put on the sphere.

The resultant exr file form VDM Brush Baker creates a red area on the left side of the exr image as illustrated below.  The background should be black. I believe this red area is why the brush creates a flat area on the sphere when applied.

Has anyone else attempted to convert zBrush VDM brushes using the VDM Brush Baker got better results?

I don't know much about VDMs in ZBrush, or Blender really, but isn't it just an image that contains vectors instead of colors in its pixels? Why does it need converting using any baking process? Shouldn't it be possible to use the same image file in different software?..

The image is in color and is an exr file, which you can get from zBrush. However, the image when extracted from zBrush is not ready for Blender.

It's probably in different format. The first video I get in Google results for "ZBrush VDM to Blender" shows how to flip and scale color channels of the EXR. Of course Photoshop is unnecessary tool for this, you can use Blender's Compositor as well.


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Advanced settings missing from Tissue Tessellate panel
I am following a tutorial to learn how to create surface patterns using the Tissue add-on. However, the panel looks completely different than in the tutorial?
In the tutorial there is an additional "Advanced" panel of settings below the standard inputs that is simply not present in mine. It just says "More settings in the Object Data Properties panel..." however there are no additional settings in the properties panel.
I am certain this is just user error but can anyone point me to the right direction with how to use the advanced settings on the tool?
My settings:

Tutorial Settings:

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Select the Object Data tab (click the green triangle) on the Properties window and the Tissue Tessellate settings should be on that panel. You may have to open the section with the down arrow as shown below:


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IK Stretching Without Deformation
I was wondering if it were possible to setup an IK stretch on a bone so that it only extends along the Y axis and doesn't inflate/shrink the mesh, just extends it; as if I were moving the bone it were connected to in Edit mode. I was looking at a couple different similar questions/videos online, but none of them seemed to be what I was looking for.
I attached images of what it currently does and what I'd like the bone to behave like as it does in Edit mode.
Any help would be appreciated.

Related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/222261/stretch-to-constraint-with-uniform-scaling-instead-of-stretching-deforming/222264#222264

You'll need an extra deformation bone that has the same location, rotation and only the Y-scale of your stretchy bone. You can do this with a driver as well.

I also recommend this video which will explain more about how squash and stretch rigs can be made in Blender. This person recommends using separate control and deformation rigs, since that's better for games, but it's possible to combine the two like I've done for this post.
Rigging can get pretty complex and dependent on circumstances so I'll provide the file so that you can have a look at it and apply what's relevant to your rig.

Absolutely perfect. Thank you so much. Perfectly simple and does exactly what I needed. I saw that exact video but wanted to see if there were other methods, such as this, before I gave it a shot - so thanks again.


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Rigging with pre-existing Mixamo animation not working
I had a model that I wanted to use cloth simulation on, I have utilized a custom character with mixamo animation in them, for the jacket that I want the animation on, when I try to parent with automatic weights, it chagnes the location of it, I have tried doing it manually using the vertex groups and I still am having issues with it.

Original model before automatic weight paint
Post automatic weight paint

as you can see it messes up the location of the jacket even though automatic weight paint should have done a good job of preserving it, I needed it parented bc I want to apply a cloth simulation on that Jacket. Why is this the case, I never have had this issue when rigging from scratch

Put your armature in Rest Pose, apply the Mirror modifier of the coat, AltP to Unparent and Keep Transformation, put it at the right position, maybe apply its scale, parent to the armature With Automatic Weights, create a vertex group that will be the Pin Group of your cloth, also give Collision to the body, and it should work.

Ok will try that

as soon as I parent with the armature, it moves back in space

have you first unparent?

yes I unparented it, and re parented it same issue

Could you please share your latest version?


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Cannot see keyframes in Graph editor but can see them in timeline

I am going insane as I don't know what the reasoning is, I just wanted to make the last 2 keyfarmes have a different interlpolation than the one I had for the first few and i was trying to find it via graph editor but cannot seem to find the animation

That happens to me very often too , try : Click view , and disable Only keyframes from selected channels . Sometimes it works for me .

Maybe scroll down to a lower value than 40?

Try pressing the Home key while hovering over the Graph editor window.


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weird white artifact when trying to color using the sculpt mode
Here is an image of it:

I want to just overlay my color into the existing material color, but i get this weird artifact on it, is there a way i can fix this, also I did this because I couldn't find a way to texture paint, how do i texture paint directly on top of an existing material, the tutorials I tried never ended up working, I like the shaders/materials I have already but want to just add a few stylized trick by texture/color attribute pasting. I have included the file in the stack exchanged list but i had to delete few thingss out to make it less then 50 mb, its the fabric material from SouthernShotty's free pack, I just want to know how to not get this weird edge effect and how to paint just on top of the existing material with a new color

Your not painting into a texture within sculpt mode your painting the vertices this creates a vertex color group, the look of the paint strokes is determined by the resolution of your mesh. If you want to paint on a texture you'll have to unwrap your model.

right, even with vertices I am still getting the weird artifact, i subdivided the mesh like 10 times couldn't include on the blend sicne size was too high and i still had the issue of the white artifact, if i were to texture paint on an existing material how would i go about doing that? what is the node setup

@It'sJustChris in the model thats on the blend file why is there still the weird white artifact even with more vertices then?

I took another look at your file, the white parts are because your vertex color group also contains white, so it's showing up when you use the color group as a color input and as a mix input, try using it as a mix only. If your you are using a color group for mixing I would recommend using white and black.

Thanks a lot, what if i want to use multiple colors, then how can i juse use this setup?

If you want to just paint more color into it, it'll be better to just create a texture map and mix that with fabric texture otherwise create more vertex color groups and more mix nodes.

would u be able to get me an example for the texture map? or even the vertex color wit multiple gruops I am a little bit confused thanks a lot for the help


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I've been following this tutorial on making really cool 'Twisting Crystals' in Blender, but the Colorramp seems to be broken for some strange reason
I'm at 19:20 timestamp in this video tutorial, and while the color on the left side of the Colorramp seems to be working perfectly, no matter how I change the color on the right, it doesn't seem to be effecting my mesh at all. What could be the issue? (My project can be downloaded on this Google Drive link, you can set the viewport shading to rendered and try changing both colors).

As you can see, no matter how I change the color on the right side of the Colorramp, my mesh remains uneffected.

Polyfjord has pinned this comment already two years ago, have a look below the video:
Important update for Blender v2.90: The node setup with the gradient color at 19:48 will no longer move properly with the mesh in the updated version. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an easy way to fix this for beginners. However, there are still a lot to learn in this tutorial even if you have to skip the gradient colors! Try experimenting with colorful lights instead, and simply use a strong solid color of your choice. If you are a beginner and you absolutely love colorful gradients, you can always follow this tutorial in Blender v2.82 or earlier. Thanks for watching!
For advanced users: A UV unwrapping with projection set to 'project from view' (when viewing the mesh from the side) should do the trick. Use Edit Mode and UV Editor if you need to tweak it. The mapping of the texture can then be set to UV and should follow the mesh perfectly!

edit: actually it looks like it's the bevel modifier that makes the gradient fail, I don't know why...

Ah, so I basically have to skip it, then. Welp that's unfortunate. Thanks anyway! :)

@Tom Yes, it looks like it. Well, sorry this was no proper solution, I basically wanted to tell you it seems you haven't done anything wrong from the tutorial, it just doesn't work like that anymore.

@moonboots Ah I see, well I didn't have time to dig deeper into the tutorial and don't remember all from when I saw it. Maybe you can make it work somehow without the UV mapping that Polyfjord suggested in his comment?


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why is my "option+e" hotkey displaying a different menu in blender 3.3?
so i'm a mac blender user, and i'm having issues with option+e ("alt+e") hotkey. the first image is what i should be seeing, and the second is what i actually see. this is in faces editing mode, and i'm using blender 3.3.1. how do i get these options now?
sorry if i should be adding more info, i'm semi-new

Are you sure at least one face is selected before you press the key ?

i am pretty sure thibsert is right. Yes, you are in face selection mode, but you didn't select face. If this doesn't help you, pls make a short video what you are doing and so we can help you furthermore.

i've figured out the issue! technically the face was selected but it was having some weird clipping issues and had a bit of a freak-out lol, i managed to fix everything just fine though. thanks! and sorry for the super simple easy-fix problem lol


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apply (ocean) modifier in a gradient/
I would like to apply the ocean modifier in a non-uniform way. I basically want the edges of the are o the ocean to be flat and gradually increase in height towards the center of the tile. Could you give me some tips how to achieve this? Thanks!

Something like this?

yes, pretty much..!

you can use this node setup:

to get this:

Basically i just lay a grid "under" the ocean modifier and mix the grid vectors with the ocean vertex positions.
Of course you could use some cleverer math than i did to blend the value. I just used length (i prerequisite the your ocean modifier has the middle in 0,0,0 - but of course you could use a vector distance node from whatever point you want instead of length) to determine some mix factor for the both positions.
Note: i used a standard ocean modifier. If you change the spatial or resolution size, you have to adapt the sizexy/verticesxy accordingly.

thanks a lot mate for the alternative!

Nice one, Chris! Mixing a vector. That's crazy :D -- If you don't like the math calculations you also can plug in a vertex group or an image, and use it with GN. This should work, too.

Here is a solution with modifiers.
The Ocean modifier has no vertex group to control the influence. But you can use another larger plane and deform it with either the Shrinkwrap (1) or the Surface Deform modifier (2). Both support a vertex group for the falloff.

To create the larger plane just create a single face the same size as the faces of the Ocean modifier. Then add & apply 2 Array modifiers (in X and Y directions) to expand the plane.
In the Weight Paint mode paint the weights for the influence of the modifier. The created vertex group (Ocean Displ) is then used for the modifier.

The Shrinkwrap modifier must be set to Project mode with [X) Negative and [X] Positive axe directions enabled.
While for the Surface Deform modifier you need to specify the vertex group and press the Bind button.
Example:

+1 nice solution!

amazing, cheers for taking the time!


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How to set camera, to move every second frame, to get 12fps animation feeling, and keep 24fps grease pencil animation
I am quite new to blender and I would like to ask, if it's possible to set camera movement so that it could move every second keyframe(on twos). I have made 24fps grease pencil animation where one movement lasts for example 3 frames, other 5 frames, but it's just a sketch for now and I plan to make an animation on twos based on it. Therefore I need to make my camera also move on twos. I sincerely thank You in advance for Your help and understanding

Yes, it's quite easy.
Assuming you have already keyed motion for your camera, open up the Graph Editor.

With your Camera object selected you can use A to select all of its keyframes in the graph editor window.  Add a Stepped Interpolation F-Curve Modifier with a step size of 2.

This window is found in the N-panel, fyi.
This just adds the modifier to one channel, so you can use those two buttons in the top right to first copy, and then paste that modifier to all channels.

This does add an extra modifier on the currently selected channel.  I don't think you're allowed to have duplicates so it's disabled and doesn't matter, but for completeness sake I guess I should advise to delete it.
I suppose in the event that a new channel gets keyed you'd just have to remember to go add this modifier.  Or you'd remember when the animation looks off. ;)

Thank You so much!!! It worked :D


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VSE: How to add border to strip
I am trying to do a composition of two videos, one being full-screen while the second one appears as a small window in one corner, as in the following example:
Ideally, I would like to round the corners of the video at the corner and add some border to it:

I couldn't find information about how to achieve this result. I tryied to create a mask by
VFX->Masking but I only managed to create a rounded rectangle by combining rectangles and circles, but this solution makes it hard to adjust the settings.
If rounding corners has no simple solution, it would fi fine just to add a border to the video.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

You might try something involving blurring a mask and then doing a greater than comparison on it.

You could mix the 2 videos in the Compositor with a mask as factor?

version Compositor
TheLabCat's comment in images :) just ... I don't think VSE can handle this blur task, so ... version in compositor.

Originally I used Math node > Less than 0.5, but edge was jagged (without antialiasing) so I used ColorRamp node instead.
version Sequencer
For VSE you would have to use Mask (in a current version there is not an one click solution like in other apps, but on other hand with this system you have open a gate to endless and much more complex and animated masks.
It will be hard to create round corner in native blender's Mask system with rounded corners (seen under Paint Editor).
Would be probably more easier to create a "mask" object in 3Dviewport (or use bw image imported as a strip).
Here is example with mask from Scene ...
You already have one scene with VSE setup. Create another Scene in the same file and in 3Dviewport set Camera to Orthographic, Add a Plane at location you want to see Small Screen through Camera, add Solidify+Bevel modifiers, set white material and black world ...

Left camera is the mask for SmallScreen, right camera with Plane is duplicated + one more Solidify modifier. It will works like a stroke  thickness for Colour strip :)
So you should see something like this ...

In your VSE scene add two Scene strips (containing your masks) and under properties choose corresponding Camera object. Strips can be placed whenever you want (or hide them). We need them just for strip modifiers.
For Small Screen add Mask Modifier > Strip and choose Scene strip with mask done at the first camera. For a stroke add Color strip and ad Mask modifier > Strip > Scene with camera two ...

File contains both version ...

To be more flexible you can create a rounded mask for entire screen, and under VSE apply mask to "small" screen at size of full screen, group strips and transform (scale, translate) whole group (image with stroke).

There is a somewhat easy option that has helped me a lot:

Add and set a Color strip and above all you want to show as overlay

Select the main overlay and reduce a bit its scale, you can do it in the side panel or in the preview editor itself

Select all the strips of the overlay and group them in a Metastrip

Select the resulting Metastrip and adjust its scale and position where you want it, and that's it!

P.S. With some masking techniques you could round the corners


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Limit rotation of rigidbody?
I've been working on a drumset and I'm facing some trouble with the cymbals as I want them to move dynamically if hit. I tried setting them up as active rigidbodies and the joists as passive rigidbodies in the hope that that would make it physically accurate. Unfortunately, the cymbal always clips through the joist as the collision detection is probably not accurate enough. Also, it's most practical if the joist is parent to the cymbal, so the passive rigidbody idea wouldn't work anyway. So I decided to fake my way around it; I locked the location so it doesn't fall down and I tried to use the "Limit rotation" constraint so it doesn't spin all the way around.
Two problems:

If the cymbal is hit by another rigidbody, the constraint doesn't take effect, it just spins all the way around.

If the rigidbody that hits it is set to "Animated" (which would be a necessity for the drumsticks) the rigidbody simulation doesn't work at all and it just passes through the cymbal without affecting it in any way.

Thanks in advance for any help!

You should review some of the Rigid Body Constraints that are available -- may need an empty to relate the cymbal to joists.  e.g., https://youtu.be/YW_6WqFiAIw

Hello and welcome! For visitors as well as for people who could answer your question, it would always be helpful here if you additionally use images in your question to clarify what exactly you mean and where your problem lies. Thank you!


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UV unwrapping with size priority
I'm at the UV unwrapping stage of a model, and I've added a bunch of texture seams such that when I perform the automatic UV unwrap, the resulting UVs give me fairly consistent texel density across the model while making pretty efficient use of the texture.
However, the consistent texel density is less than ideal; there are many parts of my model which could benefit from a higher texel density, and other parts where it needs comparatively very little texel density (for example, surfaces that are rarely visible and not looked at closely). It would also be nice if I could give a density boost to sets of polygons within a part of it without breaking it into a separate island or introducing a texture seam (for example, on my character's face).
Is there any way to indicate to Blender that certain faces need more or less detail on average, so that the automated UV unwrap can automatically scale the respective islands (or even faces within the islands) up and down as appropriate?
Alternatively, is there a plugin where I can simply scale the already-unwrapped islands up and down myself and then have it automatically repack the islands without otherwise modifying them? This would be less ideal but it would still save me a lot of work.

Recent-ish changes (4.01?) have added the feature you're looking for into out-of-the-box Blender.
Scale islands as desired to create more or less texel density, then use a pack islands operation and disable scale:

Blender will keep the scale you've provided for your islands and try to pack them into the space.  (You may need to adjust the scale of all objects to get them to fit-- Blender won't maintain existing scale ratios, it just won't scale them at all.)

It would also be nice if I could give a density boost to sets of polygons within a part of it without breaking it into a separate island or introducing a texture seam

You can do it with a scale of some UV faces with proportional editing enabled:

I found a good semi-manual workflow, where I performed a standard UV unwrap, then scaled the islands based on requested texel density, and then finally ran UVPackMaster (paid, $39 at the time of this writing) on it, which did an amazing job of optimizing the layout and maximizing the texture usage.


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Changing the move/grab tool's multiplier
While working in Blender 3.3.1, I seem to have accidentally activated some mode where the vertex move tool is multiplying the mouse position by some extreme amount (like 5x or something), like it's in the inverse of precision movement mode. While in this state, holding shift to get precision mode is still moving the vertex faster than the mouse's natural motion.
I've tried searching all of the documentation I could find and I'm apparently not finding the right terminology for this, and certainly not figuring out how to undo it. For example, this isn't "increment snapping" mode, it's just that the motion seems to have some multiplier added to it.
How can I revert this back to 1:1 motion?
Whatever the tool setting is, it's saved along with my .blend file — other Blender documents do not have this happening, and saving/quitting/reopening this document still has the affected mode. It also happens whether I have proportional editing enabled or disabled.
This only occurs in perspective views; orthographic views are still following the mouse cursor 1:1.

I figured it out - it wasn't actually a tool-specific thing, but that I had my pivot point set to 3D Cursor, which caused it to scale the motions based on the distance from the 3D Cursor to the view, rather than the distance of the vertex I was moving.


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How can I make a shader that uses an Image Texture and results in a specific stained wood effect
I have taken photos of Birch wood planks, and used an Image Texture connected to the Principled BDSF node Base Color to model a bookcase.

I would like to try to visualize how it will look with different wood stains applied.
I applied these stains to one piece of scrap birch after having cut a 4'x8' sheet.

When trying to make the 'Dark Walnut' color (top right of the 4 samples) I tried using a ColorRamp node, but this ends up looking pretty bad, either becoming almost uniformly brown, removing the woodgrain, or with extremely bright spots with white tint.

I also tried using the RGB Curves, and this got a closer result, but I was mostly guessing and just tweaking at random.

I am only trying to get a close approximation, because the actual stain can be applied very different depending on how much I allow it to work into the wood. How can I create a shader, that may best approximate how a particular stain color could look on these textures? Alternatively, would it be better to do the work on the source images in a photo editor?

Sorry, but there is no general solution to "best approximate how a particular stain color could look". Especially on organic materials, you have to tweak the settings manually to get the desired outcome, this ominous undefined "particular stain". Sure, general advice like try to change hue and saturation, use RGB curves, a color ramp etc. can be given. But you have tried that and while this can lead to the desired result, there is no specific setting we can tell you that will work for whatever "particular stain color" you choose.

For your issues with the color ramp making it almost uniformly brown and making bright spots with white tint: why do you have bright white in there then? You can make it any color you like. Also you do not have to limit the color ramp to a start and end color, you can place different colors inbetween as well. And you do not have to leave the interpolation at Linear, you can change it to Ease or Bézier for different color distributions.

For the ColorRamp, it did not click with me how to change the colors. I don't practice computer graphics often because I don't enjoy it heh, and when the right-click context menu didn't provide any kind of specific settings for the node, I stopped exploring it. After your comment I checked it again and realized how to change the other end of the gradient.
"best approximate..." was a bad word choice, so I guess a better question would be, 'Are there any nodes that would further help, or are ColorRamp / RGBCurves good places to start?'

Yes, Color Ramps and RGB Curves are a good way to start, also a Hue/Saturation/Value node. On the RGB Curves node you can also manipulate R, G and B channels separately. I do not understand the problem with the Color Ramp... it did not click how to change the colors? You changed a color from black to brown... and did you not wonder what the Plus and Minus buttons are for or the dropdown menus? If you gave up exploring so quickly, you will have a hard time learning Blender and with getting help here as well, because it is expected people show at least some effort on learning the basics.


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Blender CLI does not work when blender is installed through Windows Store
In order to have a blender version manager I installed blender through the Windows store. When you install through the windows store it seems that they store the file in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\BlenderFoundation.xxx. When files are in the WindowsApps folder access to them is restricted. Just to have access to the folder I had to run the terminal as administrator. Still when I got to the folder and attempted to run the executable I got:
Program 'blender.exe' failed to run: Access is deniedAt line:1 char:1
+ .\blender.exe
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~.
At line:1 char:1
+ .\blender.exe
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ResourceUnavailable: (:) [], ApplicationFailedException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandFailed

I even changed my ExecutionPolicy to AllSigned. Still I do not have access. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong or if the only way to have access to the CLI is to download blender outside of the windows store.


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3D Inverted structure

Hello,
I want to create an inverse opal structure using Blender similar to the one posted here and put some nanoparticles inside. Any help would be appreciated.

but i am still not sure why my picture is still looking pretty different to your image - aren't the "holes" in the structure not perfect spheres?

you could use geometry nodes for this:

be careful: GN needs some time to calculate the boolean result, so be patient.
result:

NOTE: i started with a cube of these dimensions:

result, if you put 0.5 in z translation of transform geometry:

update: now with inner sphere:

Update 2: of course Vklidu's idea was way better in performance than mine, so if you do the boolean mesh before, it's much quicker:

Thanks so much Chris. I will give it a shot :)

@Chris Crossed in time&space :) BTW since boolean operation. is slow I wanted to switch order to boolean Sphere from Cube and instance on a Grid, that was way faster, but since OP-reference is cut at specific place it required one more boolean at the end  - so it didn't avoid heavy boolean math ... hm

Any idea how to add spherical particles inside?

i updated my answer


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How do I fix a distorted texture? (I'm trying to import a blender obj to join it with a sims 4 object mesh)
So I'm using blender 2.7 and I made a biscuit tin for sims 4 (picture 1) and exported it as an object. To work in the sims 4 it now needs to be joined with the mesh of an existing sims object.

Now I have opened the sims 4 mesh in blender, and imported my biscuit tin object. But, the texture wasn't appearing (image 2) So I pressed N and changed it from GLSL to multitexture. Now the texture is showing up but it is distorted and see through (images 3 & 4)
Does anyone know how I fix this?

Looks like the normals might be facing the wring direction. Go to edit mode, select all, then mesh > normal > recalculate outside.

Ahh perfect - that's it fixed! Thank you so much!


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How can I make realistic Bokeh shadows?
I saw a render (attached) with really realistic looking shadows. Any clue how to do this bokeh-style shadow?
Thanks in advance

use point light or a very small light source and have it go through a texture that occludes some of the light. In film is called a cuoloris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucoloris)
Here's a video that shows you how to do this in modo, gbut it cvan be easily done in blender. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaog4aL7AhM to soften the shadows make the source larger.

One way is to use geometry:

In the scene below, the shadow geometry is simply hidden to the camera in render time and has a grey transparent shader (the color controls the opacity).

Or you can use a texture for a similar effect like so:

Here is simply an image texture with transparent shader.
The light in the scene is a sun lamp.

I found a great tutorial by Shane Spence Design for Blender and Keyshot that used image sequences of real trees to create this effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYR0wlRmuZI
By using image sequences, you can even animate the shadows created. i assume that the bokeh circles can be achieved by using a larger spotlight.
It's kind of silly to come back here and answer my own question two years later, but I feel like other people would find this helpful. Take care!


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Color Ramp Particle System Not Working With Age
I am new to blenders particle system and I am pretty bad at texturing, but I decided to do a particle system anyway. I trying to get the color to change over time but every solution I find does not help. Am I doing something wrong?!?! I have tried the image below, adding another divide and changing view port shade mode but nothing is helping!

could you please share your file? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Nice, I was kind of looking for a result that sort of slowly transitions the color from one to another as its ages off.

You need to be in both CYCLES rendering engine and in RENDERED preview. I can't tell from your picture, but the material must be on the object being used as the particle instance. I made a test file and I'll post it here. I can confirm this is working 100% on my machine.

File is here --

FYI - Lifetime and End values both are set to 200.


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Is there a way to copy lighting to multiple scenes?
I'm slowly beginning to understand how to use Blender properly, so now I'm thinking about creating my own animated series. I want to create an efficient workflow in order to achieve this, well, efficiently, and so I have been using the "scenes" feature for test animations. However, in my desired workflow I want to focus completely on the animation first, and when that is done for each scene I could move onto the lighting and adjust that the way I want. However, I have not yet found a way to copy multiple lights (settings, location, etc.) to multiple scenes in a single .blend file. Is there a solution to this?

If you want to have objects linked from a scene to another, select your object and go in the header menu > Object > Make Links > Objects To Scene, and choose the destination scene:

Any change on the object on a scene will be replicated on the same object on the other scene. If you ever want the objects to be unlinked, go in the header menu > Object > Relations > Make Single User > Object & Data & Materials:

Thank you! I'll try it out and see what happens

Ok I tried it. However, it appears this tactic would seem somewhat burdensome, especially if I wanted to deal with more than a couple scenes. Is there a way I could select multiple scenes to link with at once?

There are many ways to do it.
One of the simplest is to move (press M on the 3D view window) all lights into a new collection, then append or link the collection into the production file. Using append lets you edit the lights in the destination production file, while using link, all edits have to be performed in the source file (useful if you want to use the same light set in many files, and you want to edit all of them in the same way).

Interesting! I haven't tried out the link feature just yet, but it sounds like it could be useful. Thanks for the response!


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How to prevent random movement in-between keyframes
I'm sure this question has been asked before, but I have literally no idea how to describe it (or I'm simply the first to ask; I really don't know).
I was trying to animate the "Rain" Cloudrig doing a backflip (using the blocking technique) and for the most part succeeded. However, when I switched back from constant to bezier, some of the bones, such as the head and pelvis, rotated in random direction before settling into the next pose. Here's a quick video showing my issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbEpsL-aX4U
Due to this, I had to go and fix the poses myself, which added even more keyframes for me to deal with. This issue makes things harder for me in the graph editor, makes the animation look very weird and choppy since it no longer follows a smooth motion, and once again the sheer amount of keyframes doesn't seem ideal. For future projects, how could I avoid this and save some time?

Try to check your frames on graph editor. Try to change easing, handle type to automatic or auto clamped, as well as "smooth keys alt+o" and "Discontinuity (Euler) Filter" - they are available in graph editor, top bar menu "Key"

Thank you so much! I'm so glad I know about the discontinuity filter now, it really helped!

When you switched from constant to bezier, the two sides of the bezier handle became effective. However each side is rotated now affects the animation. Unlike constant that stays on one value until it reaches a parameter and goes immediately to the next value. Linear moves from one value to another like a vector, it finds the quickest path between handles.


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Is there a dynamic light-amount dependent material change node setup?
I have a mountain scene and I want to reduce snow only from the bright areas of a plane.
Is there a way to do this dynamically, so I dont have to use vertex paint, and it reacts to light change?
Like is there a node setup that detects light amount or something like this?

Nice question.. could we ask you for some specs? Do you want the snow to have thickness? If so, would you be prepared to bake an image sequence to control it? (That would need a separate pass).. and do you want the snow to stay melted, even if the light has come off it?

My only goal it to simply make the snow disappear where the sun shines and I'm not planning on animation this time.
But if keeping the snow melted is possible, it would be nice to know for later.

In EEVEE, there's a Shader to RGB node, which lets you do anything you like with the light-response of a surface, but no displacement, so for thickness, you would need a bake.. there are other routes..


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How to draw sharp lines in texture paint?
I wanted to draw this kind of line, and adjusted Falloff as the manual says, but doing so just made the line thinner or blurry. I don't get the effect I want. What should I do?
My version is 2.82.

Hello, I think this is for Grease Pencil, not Texture Paint, are you talking about Grease Pencil? https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/grease_pencil/modes/draw/tools/curve.html

As mentioned by moonboots ... you paint texture, but your reference is pointing to Grease Pencil that is totally different thing (based as object).

Sorry. I made a mistake.
So is there a way to draw sharp lines in texture drawing?

To draw sharp line on texture you have to switch to "Constant" (last profile on right side at bottom) and use tablet pressure for fall-off.

Thanks, what I want is lines with thin edges like the picture on the left, and if I choose Constant, I can only draw lines with the same thickness as the picture on the right.


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How can I render a bloom coming from an object off screen
I'm trying to render the bloom coming from an object off-screen in Eevee but having difficulty. Any advice?

In the Render panel > Film, enable the Overscan value in order to take into account what's off camera view, you can type a value over 10% if needed:


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Export Malfunction & Error 13
I hope this post is more clarifying. I get the Error 13 when uploading to Sketchfab. Attached are my export settings for the model. This is a new issue for me, haven’t had any trouble in the past! THAeNKS for any help!
Original posts with other pics. Export Malfunction, Can’t Upload to Sketchfab

Hello and welcome. Instead of posting a duplicate question, you should update your original question at https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/287400/export-malfunction-can-t-upload-to-sketchfab

Hello and welcome. Please don't post the same question more than once. If your previous question was put on hold, address raised the issues by editing it so it can be reopened rather than post a new one, otherwise see What should I do if no one answers my question?


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Is it possible to merge two or more shape keys together?
I want to create a facial rig using shape keys since it will allow for more precision and would be far easier to make than an actual facial rig (with bones). I have yet to plan it out, but I know that I want to be as convenient to use as possible, so I want the mouth to be able to move into almost any expression with as few bones as possible. I've attached a couple examples of what I intend to do:

I want it to work as though there is an imaginary plane on the surface of both sides of the model's mouth, with a bone to drive the shape keys on both sides. Where ever I move that bone, the two (or more) shape keys will work independently in a sense, but ultimately would give a result as though the two are merged.
I know there is definitely some way to do this without struggling over good topology and, worse, weight painting. If shape keys aren't the answer, then I am more than open to other suggestions (other than good topology, obviously haha).
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

What you're describing is how shapekeys work normally.  Are you running into problems somewhere?

Not exactly- It's a little hard to explain. What I'm trying to do somehow merge two so that I could move the bone anywhere in the "plane" on the mesh. Kind of like an actual face rig, as I want to give the driving bone as much freedom as possible. A shape key has a start and end point, and I was hoping to combine that with another start and endpoint to create said plane (sorry if this is confusing idk how to explain).

You can drive one shapekey from a bone's X position and a different shapekey from its Y position.  (You can also drive from Z position, XYZ(W) rotation, XYZ scale, etc.)

that's kind of what I meant actually, but I want them to both move at the same time (for efficiency). That's what I meant by combining them. If it seriously isn't possible that way, the two separate drivers is also an option

They'll move at the same time, when you move the bone freely in both X and Y axes simultaneously, as you would with a 'g' grab operation.  It's two drivers, but you control both drivers with one operation.

oh I get it! I'll try that and see if it works out =) ty!


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How do I make a Decal look worn?
I have what seems like a simple example here.  I wanted to practice texture and lighting by making some simple M&M renders.  I used a NOISE texture for the surface to give it some "eggshell" quality in the render, I am progressing nicely.  Now I'm stuck...
I created the "M" logo as a PNG with alpha channel.  I applied it in the material using the image texture with mapping node and texture coordinates.  All basic stuff so far.
I can't for the life of me figure out how to use procedural nodes like Voronoi or Noise to make the stark white of the M Logo look "worn" so some of the color of the M&M show through, like it's scuffed.  Now the render isn't convincing because every M is too perfect.  I know I could use my image editing software to make some alpha transparencies in the PNG decal, but then they would be the same across all meshes, and I was hoping to use a NOISE node to randomize it a bit.
Can't I use a NOISE tesxture to a COLOR RAMP then make one of the colors ALPHA transparent thus having the M logo "Fade" and let the color show through?  I think I've tried 100 different things and I am not getting it.  (I am not a Blender expert but have an intermediate understanding of texture node setups...)
Here's a link to my .blend file in my dropbox, without ANY treatment on the M logo.  You can see they are too stark white and perfect.  I want to scuff just the logo up.  Any ideas?  Thanks in advance!  (Render is formatted for dual monitors so please ignore the odd render dimensions!)
Blend File in Dropbox


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Deform Mesh Subtly, randomly across many Objects
There are lots of good Q/A on the Blender Stack exchange about this stuff, but none of it has so far informed my decisions on the best way to do this, so apologies for any redundancy (I did look through all the recommended existing questions before posting!
I'm fairly new to Blender and pushing myself to learn by taking a simple subject and layering on complexity as I slowly begin to grasp Blender's capabilities.  My first project to push through was to try to make photo-realistic M&Ms.  It's been really fun and SO MANY lights have come on for me!  Ok on to it...
My M&Ms start as cubes, get subsurf mod 3x, subsurf is APPLIED, then "Transfrom > To Sphere".  After this textures are applied, etc.  (This step is probably not the most efficient but I'll work on that eventually).
I then duplicate the Object 5x, apply the five different M&M colors, then duplicate the Objects to create my composition on a plane.
All the M&M mesh objects are perfect squished spheres with no irregularities.  This is CLOSE to what I want but real M&Ms have subtle irregularities in shape.
I don't know how to approach:

What would be the best way to apply a defomration to a small mesh object with a heavily subdivided topology?
If my composition has many of these objects (with many of them having different textures applied) is there a way to apply the subtle deformation to ALL of them?
If there is a way to choose a subtle deformation method, then apply to all of them, how then could I randomize it so all the mesh objects don't have the same subtle deformation?

TL;DR
I have a bunch of small heavily subdivided mesh objects with different materials applied.  How can I subtly deform each one to give photo-realism?

Here's the latest version of the image I'm practicing on and the .Blend file.  Thanks to a few of you who have already helped me get where I am!  Thanks in advance to anyone who knows how I can tackle the next steps.
If anything I've done so far is a "rookie" way to do it and there's a better way, I am open and eager to learning the better way and changing my composition (or even starting over for practice)
My practice .Blend File

A few side comments.

You don't need very high subdivisions for such a simple shape.
You don't need to apply the subdivision
You don't need to Transform > To Sphere, you can use a Cast modifier.

To address you main question, if you want to add subtle variations to your objects your answer lies in a Displace modifier.
Now if you just add one to your M&Ms and duplicate them they will all have the same deformation and remain identical.
The trick here is to change the Texture Coordinates for your displace texture to Global so the texture is mapped using scenes world coordinate space, giving the impression of randomness across several objects.
Have in mind that this method is unsuited if you want to animate the objects, since the shape would wiggle around as you move them. You also cannot link as group/collection libraries since the coordinate considered for displacement is always read from the same static point in space the original was defined, not where each individual instance is placed at.

Thank you very much!  I’d love to know how to make a GIF like you guys did.  Is there a link to an article you can share that gives some insight to this?  I’m looking forward to trying these methods!

https://blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/522/placing-gifs-in-text

Ugh sorry I don’t mean to be a pest...  What software did you use to record your screen though!?  :)

You can add Displacement Modifier to them with Cloud texture.

First add Displacement Modifier to one of them.
Click New, set Strength, Direction and Texture Coordinates values as in screenshot below (you can set different Strength). This will make each of M&M's different.
Go to Texture tab, choose Displace texture, switch Type to Clouds.
Set it as you like (you can change it later).
Select all M&M's and Right Click on the one with Modifier to make it Active (yellowish outline) than CTRL+L > Modifiers. This will copy Displacement Modifier to all of them.
You can tweak your texture as you like.

Aaah, you beat me to it! :)

OHHHHH YEAHHHHHHHH I cant wait to get home and try this!!  I’ll mark it as answered as soon as I do!  Thank you!!

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos 3 minutes! :) I think StackExchange should have notification like "somebody is making answer right now", but it could be abused probably...

@PeteLozzi Here are two tips for your scene. Random colour (every M&M has the same material, it's changing colour randomly) and Roughness: https://imgur.com/AvdJaS0

@LukeD Besides upvotes there should also be Bronze Silver and Gold medals for first three answers XD

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos or split bounty (even), besides meta post on SE about it. I think it is needed. I have now problem with my latest question. Both answer are different and both are amazingly good...

A Lattice
One suggestion (among many) would be a lattice. Here is a simple 3 x 3 x 3 encompassing my smartie, and applied via a lattice modifier.

Deform the mesh by editing the lattice.  I've added a couple of shape keys to the lattice.

Variations of the strength of the lattice modifier, and shapekey values, will give subtle changes to each.
Apply the Lattice Modifier as a Shape
Finally can Apply the lattice modifier as a shape (once or many times) and randomize by altering the value of the mesh shape keys.


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Surface materials stretching on mesh
I originally asked this question on Quixel's support forum, but the answer just said "What you're missing is conflating UVs with subdivisions. UVs are independent of subdivisions. You'll need to edit your UV mapping for this plane instead of editing its subdivisions." When I asked if he could elaborate on that, I never got a response. So I figured I'd come to the pros.
My understanding after watching tutorials and trying my best to follow them is this: I make a mesh, if I want detail on this mesh, I need high verts/faces. I then UV Map the mesh with those faces, and this gives me the detail for my textures and materials.
I've added a pic of the road I made to show the issue I'm having. 1k faces is a bit much in my opinion but I wanted to vertex paint so I needed enough verts to accomplish that.
When I drag and drop my materials to the mesh in UE4(and even in Quixel/Substance apps) it looks awful.
What am I missing about my UVs and what am I doing wrong? I follow the tutorials step by step, and they're not doing anything that I haven't done.
Here is my Quixel question as well:
No matter how many verts and faces I have, when i add Quixel or Substance  materials to my meshes which have UV maps, I get one very stretched tile. If I bump up to 6 in tiling, it does less stretching, but looks awful.
If i scale the mesh in Y in UE4, I can get it small and it looks okay, but then I would have to be tiling in the same asset over and over, and for performance that is bad.
I've went from 2K to 4K, same issue.
I'm using a Blended Material with 3 megascans assets.

As you can see from your own image, the shape of your selection on the mesh is a rectangle shape, and the one on the UV map is square. True, it is good to use as much UV space as possible, so you can scale it, but do it while keeping the same scale ratio (ie: don't scale on only X or Y, scale both together.) The image above suggests you stretched the UV "island" on one axis only.

Well, what I did is just did the Smart UV Project, and I set my island margin to like .06 and that's what it came up with.
I think this is probably where my disconnect is. Even if I do Unwrap, it more or less get the same type of outcome. Should I be editing them any further than this?

For example, I was attempting to follow this tutorial with the Quixel team on vertex painting. He had created a mesh, which is much larger than mine and likely has more faces and different shapes, and he just drags and drops and it works.
You can see at 2:46 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJuiSERx_AI
So, I figured, make a plane, elongate it, subdivide for more verts, uv unwrap-- presto?

I've seen people utilize stacking UVs. Do I need to be using large UVs in my UV Editor and stacking them perhaps? A row of 4 maybe and stack them on top of eachother?

Ok, here's what you have to do. Get rid of the existing UV map. Go to object properties, UV maps, select the map and click the minus button. See below:

Then, go to object mode, press ctrl + A and select apply scale. Then, go back to edit mode smart unwrap again, but make sure to untick the "stretch to bounds box.

You should be good to go from there.
However, since all you're unwrapping is a flat plane, you should be fine to just use "unwrap" instead of "smart unwrap". You will still need to remove the existing map though, as smart unwraps tend to "stick around".
EDIT - Here is a .blend file showing what the UV unwrap should look like to avoid stretching, as well as the node setup for both the image texture and the generated one. I hope this helps to clarify that the ability to texture has nothing to do with subdivisions (in most cases). If you want the image tiled, look at the scale section of the Mapping node.
Here is the file -

will definitely try this approach, thank you

no go unfortunately. tried this with both unwrap and smart on two separate meshes so there weren't any left over UVs on the second try

Hi. Sorry it didn't work for you. Unfortunately I don't have time to take another look right at this moment. I promise to come back later and take a look. In the meantime, try reading this guide - it helped me a lot when I was first learning about texture mapping. Guide is here - https://artisticrender.com/the-definitive-tutorial-to-uv-mapping-in-blender/

Thanks for the link. While reading it, I did see what I've been holding off on, especially because I just wanted to work with primitives.. but maybe seams? It may just be a long plane, but with so many faces and vertices, doesn't it make sense? I did put a big long seam down the middle-- and while the result wasn't perfect, they were nearly as stretched. I'll tinker around with it more tomorrow. Thinking of putting seams at the ends of each end of the plane and one down the middle.

I really don't think it has to be as complicated as that. Really, all I think you have to do is unwrap the whole mesh and then apply your texture to the a selected area (if that's what you're trying to do). I'll upload a .blend file and add it to my answer so you can see for yourself.

Thanks for your continued assistance. I just reread my OP, and I believe I may have given incorrect information based on some replies. When I scale in UE4, it is strictly the scale function in UE4. I'm literally scaling the mesh itself. I shouldn't have to do this was my point in the OP. I can take my elongated plane into UE4, the textures stretch when I add them, but if I scale the mesh in UE4 to say a square, the textures look proper. But why is it that I have to do that? Why can't they tile or box project properly on the exact scale of the mesh I've created?


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How to create curved edges (something I thought was impossible) like this internet example?
I have always believed that edges are always straight in Blender, that that is just how it works.  then I ran across topologyguides.com.
Their tutorials are terse, but take a look at this one and in each picture the final step has curved edges.
https://topologyguides.com/bevel-width-transitions
I don't know if they are using an add-in, or what.  I haven't been able to find an answer for this.

This looks like they aren't using actually curved edges (as far as I know, you're right that would be impossible) but rather they're using a Subdivision Surface modifier with the "On Cage" option turned on (you can see it at the top of the modifier, next to the options toggling using the modifier during render, in the viewport, and in Edit mode). If you don't see that option, it may be because the subdivision modifier isn't first (the option disappears if there's another modifier before it).
As I understand it, the "On Cage" option just projects the edges onto the surface produced by applying the modifier, which makes them look curved. It's just an aesthetic thing, though - internally, the edges are still straight.

Yep, I was unaware of this visualization.  There must be a way to hide edge creases because the model is not subdivided throughout, yet none of the edges are highlighted pink.  I'm assuming I'm just not aware of the option to hide the highlighting indicated creases and whatnot.