text:
How can I use an existing text block as a data source?
I don't want to load data from an external file location. Instead I want the user to drop an xml file into an open text window, then run a script that can use this file as a data source. The file will always have the extension .csv. But I don't know how to search for an existing datablock like this?
Currently its a hard coded path for testing:
# READ INPUT FILE

fp   = "/Users/davidmcsween/Downloads/TEST LIST.csv"

file = csv.reader( open( fp, newline='' ), delimiter=',' )

nameIdx = 3 # Column index of text object's name
bodyIdx = 4 # Column index of text object's body (content)

I had hoped that I could use
fp   = bpy.data.texts[", *,".csv"].name = "", *,".csv"

But this fails.

In as much as you can get all the texts in a blend file with [text for text in bpy.data.texts] and the filepath is text.filepath.  If a file is pasted into the text editor then it will have filepath = "".  I recommend using the text editor current text as your csv data.  A simple panel is added to the text editor properties, which ensures that the current csv file is
current_csv_file = context.edit_text

Firstly, a simple operator that prints out the csv data, split by "," line for line.
import bpy

def main(context):
    text = context.edit_text
    for line in text.lines:
        split = line.body.split(",")
        print(split)

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "text.import_csv"
    bl_label = "Import CSV"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.active_object is not None

    def execute(self, context):
        main(context)
        return {'FINISHED'}

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(SimpleOperator)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SimpleOperator)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Can make a panel in the text editor UI like so

import bpy

class TextPTImportCSV(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the scene context of the properties editor"""
    bl_label = "Import CSV"
    bl_idname = "TEXT_PT_import_csv"
    bl_space_type = 'TEXT_EDITOR'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        text = context.edit_text
        return text.name[-4:].lower() == ".csv"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label(context.edit_text.name)
        layout.operator("text.import_csv")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(TextPTImportCSV)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(TextPTImportCSV)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

which running on the simple test file prints
['1', ' 1', ' 1', ' 1', ' 1', ' 1']
['2', ' 2', ' 2', ' 2', ' 2', ' 2']
['3', ' 3', ' 3', ' 3', ' 3', ' 3']

to the console.
EDIT: as a side note, split above will be a list of strings, and will need to be converted if they are other. Here is a basic way to make a key for your csv file.  Consider a file that has 4 columns, the first is an integer for frame, the next three a location.  Quite likely there is a way to use the text.lines as input to csv.reader (simple workaround would be to save to tmp file)
# key of csv file, [property name,  column(s), type]
key = [["frame", 0, int], # frame in col 1
       ["location", [1, 2, 3], float] # loc x, y, z in cols 1, 2, 3.
       ]
'''
data in csv like
1, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0
'''
split = ['1', ' 1.0', ' 1.0', '1.0']

for prop, cols, prop_type in key:
    if isinstance(cols, list):
        val = [prop_type(split[col]) for col in cols]
    elif isinstance(cols, int):
        val = prop_type(split[cols])

    print(prop, " = ", val)

Thank you for your help on this one, can you tell me what happening in this line-  return text.name[-4:].lower() == ".csv"  I gather that it is the identifier above the button but I don't understand how the line works?

only poll (display) the panel if the last 4 letters of name, converted to lower case, are ".csv".  Arguably could have used this for the operator too.

So the usable variable for me will be "split"? That will be the csv file contents to use later?

split is just one line of text editor, split into a list using the "," as a delimiter.   Generally would deal with csv data on a line by line basis. Made an edit on one way to use comma split list.  Could be a way to use the text editor content (eg text.lines is iterable)  as input to csv reader, might put together a q on this.

As explained by batFINGER text blocks have a name and a filepath, but if you just paste data into a text block, you might not have a filepath.
If you don't need the overhead of a custom operator, the following example is a bit more compact:
import bpy
import csv

def csvs():
    return [t for t in bpy.data.texts if t.name[-4:].lower() == ".csv"]

first = csvs()[0]

lines = first.as_string().splitlines()
#lines = first.lines # those aren't actually strings

f = csv.reader(lines)
for parts in f:
    print(parts)

Thanks, was trying  csv.reader(first.lines).  Never bothered to use csv before.

Thank you both for your help. I really am quite ignorant so I don't understand without lots of commenting. But I will try to work through these answers. Sorry for being dumb about it.


text:
Can I use an material texture to represent a surface of spheres?
I can cover a ball object in particle spheres but this is very processor and memory intensive.

I was wondering if I can use the new voronoi textures in Blender 2.82 to make pseudo spheres around the surface? Obviously it won't achieve the depth effect shown balls image attached.
I'm not sure if I can fake a surface displacement with Dot-product to an emission shader or use displacement in Cycles? I would be keen to try an Eevee normal displacement if its good enough.
Currently I cannot get Voronoi texture to represent moving balls very well.

Use a texture to drive a bump node. Plug Bump's "normal" output into the normal input of the Principled BSDF node. I can make a voronoi texture small enough to represent closely packed balls or bubbles. Then I can colour them as a group with a noisy texture. This hides the fact that each ball is not really coloured. Finally I use a 4D texture to animate the bubbles motion over time.

Here are the nodes :

This is incredible work. I love this. Thank you for sharing.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
What Is Wrong With My Log File In Network Render?
I have sent out a rendering job using Network Render, but everytime I try to view the log file I get an error message which states "This Page Can't Be Displayed" and my Master instance remains in a "Receiving log file" state. How can I get my network to properly send its log files back to the master?
I'm running on Windows 8.1 with a local network.
Thank You In Advance.

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


text:
Can A Deleted Material From A Fractured Object Be Re-applied?
I am creating an animated fractured object. Initally, when I created the fracture, it included a second material for the inside of the mesh (shown in black). Unfortunately, I deleted the 2nd material. Is there anyway to add the second material back onto all the objects without applying it one-by-one?

How exactly did you delete the material? I can't get the same black result like your screenshot. If I delete the slot like in your screenshot, the unassigned faces use the remaining  material and don't appear black.

I selected all the objects at one time and then deleted the black material by removing it from the material slot.

Hm.. I can't seem to reproduce the same conditions as in your screenshot. Did you happen to enable save vertex groups when fracturing? Then you could use some python to recreate and assign materials..

No, did nothing of the sort.

Select one piece and add your second material again.
Then select all of the other parts and select that one part with the second material as the active object (select it as last object). Then press Ctrl+L and click on materials!

It is not clear. How can I select all of the other fractures while selecting only the black face of the one piece?

Are those faces asigned to a material?

They were before I deleted the material. But now it's as if they are still assigned to a second material but they aren't.

I dont think my solution is possible without braking your animation: join all the pieces together and then deselect everything in editmode, then select all faces asigned to the material (it's a button under your material slot), then select invers and asign a new material to the selected faces. Then select everything and hit P and choose 'By loose parts' hope this works

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


text:
Get value from Numpy Array
At the moment I am working on several scripts which use Numpy arrays. An example of one of my arrays is:
y = np.array(([75], [82], [93]), dtype = float)

Then I also have a game property called "y1" and I want to assign it a value from the Numpy array. The game property is a float number, and I have tried the following code but it does not seem to work:
own["y1"] = y[1]

Why does it not work? And how can I assign the game property to have any specific value from the Numpy array?

I figured out the problem, and the answer to said problem, and it is so much simpler than I thought.
When you have a Numpy array such as:
y = np.array(([75], [82], [93]), dtype = float)

The array is actually a matrix of numbers, and the above array is a matrix of size 3x1.
Therefore, in order to set a game property (or any other variable if you so choose), you must pass in two numbers to specify the row and the column of the value you desire.
This means that instead of having;
own["y1"] = y[1]

In order to make the property equal "82" as the above code is trying to do, you should instead have:
own["y1"] = y[1, 0]

This new code will then specify the second row and the first column as the desired value.
Another example:
If you have the numpy array;
y = np.array(([26,72,54], [46,82,37], [36,67,81]), dtype = float)

You can select the value "36" by specifying the third row and the first column, as done here:
own["y1"] = y[2, 0]

Hopefully this makes sense, and you can understand its implementation through the above examples.


text:
Node Cloning / Duplication
Is it possible to link two nodes in such a way that if one is changed then the other changes as well?
For example; if I have two different texture nodes, each with the same texture in it, can they be linked so that if the texture in one of them is changed then the other one is changed as well?
This will be really helpful for a material setup that I am creating which requires me to have about 10 copies of the same texture node in different places and groupings.
Thanks for your help!

are you sure you can't share that texture node in subsequent steps? maybe you can load the texture in one node only and apply any transform or processing to different steps later... this, if all nodes apply to one object only...

No unfortunately not... The node setup is for a material base that I can then add to several objects and change the textures for each. Each texture is an image texture so I can't just link a value node to each of them, I want to change the image in one and have it change in all of them, but just for that material.

Hope that makes sense to you, I'm not sure how else to explain it ^

At first I thought "well, one way would be to use something like a "texture.jpg" name for that texture, and simply change the file that is named like that... that would do the trick, somehow. Other than that, you could probably need to script the change, for all the nodes to load the same texture. I can't think of other ways, atm"...
but then it came to my mind another trick, that could work better for you... here it is: use node groups!
you can set up a simple "image texture node" as a group, by itself.

It sounds absurd, to make a group of just one node, but it isn't: because you can reuse groups on every material you choose, and link it differently to other nodes.
Just select it as Add => Group => "yourGroupName" in the node composition area, and by default it has the same inputs/outputs as the base Texture Image node...
And, when you edit the group (on any node where it's used) you can change the texture, in a single node that's reused:

and, thus, reach your goal:

Wow! So simple but so effective! I have one small question though... If I duplicate the material, can I make the image texture for each material be different? So the nodes stay the same within the material but don't affect other materials? Or would I just have to make a different node group?

No I think you need a "texture node group" for each independent texture...

Oh no... My texture is within another group in several places, which means I can't change the "texture node group" within without changing it in the other materials, right?

Okay well I found a solution... Instead of having the image texture inside the group, I have a material node with the texture plugged in from outside the group... Only problem is it keeps crashing Blender!!! Help!

...crashes!? that could be another story, and maybe you can create a new question showing how are you doing that... but you can also create a group containing (nodes + (another) group), so I think it should be possible to create a setup that works...

Yeah I found a setup that works but whenever I plug the texture color into the color of the material node, blender crashes... I'm not sure why, but I'm thinking that perhaps my node setup is just waaay too big.


text:
Replace Game Property with Variable
When using Game Properties, you can change the value during the game.
Example: "prop" = 50     press r      then "prop" -= 5
After pressing "r", the property would subtract 5 from the original number, and then the new number becomes the "original" number.
Is it possible to do the same sort of thing with a python variable? So that i can have a variable in my code set to 50 when the game begins, get changed when "r" is pressed, but not revert back to 50 when the script is run in the next frame?
Example:
Start the game
prop = 50
Press R    (Just an example, not real code)
if keyboard.r = just_activated:
    prop -= 5
But when the script is run again, prop reverts back to 50

When using python in the game engine you can use a script or a module. While a script will be run from start to end, a module is a collection of functions that can be called indiviually, the "global" code in a module is run once when the module is first activated, which makes it a good place for a one off initialisation that you are looking for.
import bge

GameScore = 50
print('init once here')

def ChangeScore(cont):
    global GameScore
    ksens = cont.sensors["Keyboard"]
    sce = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
    scoreDisplay = sce.objects['ScoreDisplay']

    for key,status in ksens.events:
        if status == bge.logic.KX_INPUT_JUST_ACTIVATED:
            if key == bge.events.UPARROWKEY:
                GameScore += 5
            if key == bge.events.DOWNARROWKEY:
                GameScore -= 5

            scoreDisplay['Text'] = str(GameScore)

Paste this into a textblock and end the blocks name with .py you then use a python controller, set to module and enter the textblock name without the py extension followed by the function name like sample.ChangeScore. You will see the "init once here" will only get printed once when the module is first run.

Thank you so much sambler! I never really understood modules as they dont always seem to work for me, but now they are much clearer! Thank you! :D


text:
Issues with reference video framerate
I have some reference videos taken at 120 fps, my project is 30 fps. Do I just have to animate at 120 fps and then scale back down to 30?

What about scaling the videos to 30 fps first?

That depends on what you are trying to do. Are you rendering the animation to mix the video elsewhere? Using blenders VSE to mix the two? Will the final video be 120 or 30fps?


text:
Toggle Armature Layer Visability via Drivers?
FIGURED IT OUT MYSELF: (it looks like 0,1 don't need to be modified to T/F and I can just use var and 1-var to get the effect I want)
I'm in the process of creating my first semi-complex rig and I want to be able to be able to toggle the visibility of my FK and IK bones depending on whether they're driving my deformation bones.
I'm using five integers with [0,1] values to drive the bone constraint influence driving the deform bones. I want to use these same integers to show/hide my layers so I only see relevant bones.
Blender gives me an "ERROR: Invalid Python Expression" message when I put 'True' if var == 0 else 'False' in the scripted expression box in the Drivers Properties side-bar. How should I format this? Or is it not possible?
(Blender Ver 2.75a)

False if some_test else True (or vicee versee), no quotes on the booleans.

If you want to answer your own question you should use the answer box below your question instead of adding the answer into the body of the question.

Blender evaluates 1 and 0 as True and False without any extra coding needed. I was overthinking it.


text:
How to create path/curve tangent to mesh?
I want to generate a path/bezier curve such that it is tangent to a mesh's surface along the curve's length.
I intend to use array and curve modifiers to add geometry and cant seem to find an efficient way to get the curve to fit via ordinary means. (Using edit mode and manually fitting the curve)

The best way to do it is to position the curve approximately in position over the mesh, and then use the shrinkwrap modifier on the curve (I find near project mode to work the best).
The only trick is that you will probably have to apply the shrinkwrap modifier once you have it positioned the way you want it, if you are using other modifiers that act on the curve object.
If the curve path at this point is not tangent to the mesh, tab into edit mode, select all control points, and then type Ctrl+T to rotate the orientation of all the control points to be oriented at 90 degree to the mesh surface.


text:
What do you do if you dont have a numpad
imtrying to follow a tutorial on youtube but I have a laptop, and it doesent have a numpad, please help whats a good alternative

On a mac, you can use the Funtion key (fn) + U or I or O or j or k or L or M.. please check this image:


text:
Can I use grease pencil in game engine
Is it possible to draw and clear grease pencil real-time during/over blender game engine gameplay?

no, using the grease pencil in a game is not possible.

Since the game engine does not support drawing with grease pencil while the game engine is running, I made a script to draw on the camera in the game engine.
To use the script, enter it into the text editor and name it grease_pencil.py. You could call it anything, but it must end in .py to work as a module.

Add a Python controller to an Always sensor, with true level triggering enabled, on any object. Change the python controller's Execution Method to Module and set its source to grease_pencil.draw or whatever you named it only without the .py and followed by .draw (draw is the name of the function we are calling).

Press P, in the game engine, and click and drag to draw.

The complete script.
import bge

color = (.9, 0, 0)
lines = []

def position():
    scene = bge.logic.getCurrentScene()
    camera = scene.active_camera

    x, y = bge.logic.mouse.position

    vec = camera.worldPosition - camera.getScreenVect(x, y)
    vec = vec * camera.worldOrientation * camera.world_to_camera

    return vec

def mouse_just_down():
    return bge.logic.mouse.events[bge.events.LEFTMOUSE] == bge.logic.KX_INPUT_JUST_ACTIVATED

def mouse_down():
    return bge.logic.mouse.events[bge.events.LEFTMOUSE] == bge.logic.KX_INPUT_ACTIVE

def mouse_moving():
    return bge.logic.mouse.events[bge.events.MOUSEX] == bge.logic.KX_INPUT_ACTIVE or \
        bge.logic.mouse.events[bge.events.MOUSEY] == bge.logic.KX_INPUT_ACTIVE

def draw():
    if mouse_just_down():
        lines.append([position()])

    if mouse_down() and mouse_moving():
        lines[-1].append(position())

    for line in lines:
        prev = None
        for vec in line:
            if prev:
                bge.render.drawLine(prev, vec, color)
            prev = vec

upbge 0.3.0 branch has this capability (real 3d grease pencil strikes)

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


text:
Intersecting Droplets
I am struggling to get rid of these intersectiong droplets (created using the GEOMETRY NODE), any idea how to fix this overlapping using GEOMETRY NODE so that the intersectiong droplets will fuse together?

Blender file:
Many thanks

Try changing the Distribute Points on Faces node to Poisson and adjust Distance Min.

Could you provide your Blender file using https://blend-exchange.com/ ? I think that with two Distribute Points on Faces  nodes ignoring each other, you have to expect overlap...

Changing the Distribute Points on Faces node to Poisson and adjust Distance Min it wont' hel as there are two indipendent Distribute Points on Faces, one is for big drops abd the ther one is for tiny drops.

(Using Blender 3.6.8)
Removing points too close to big droplets from the Instance on Points node for small droplets could prevent overlapping between small and big ones:

NB 1: New nodes are in dark red.
NB 2: Method for scattering points for big droplets is set to Poisson Disk with a Distance Min set slightly larger than the Radius of the UV Sphere modelling big droplets to avoid overlapping.
NB 3: The proposed approach fails if the radius of small droplets is too small compared to the radius of big ones.
1. Faces of big droplets are set as Target of a Geometry Proximity node.
2. The Selection mask of the Instance on Points node for small droplets is rejecting Points that are at a Distance lower than an adjustable threshold, set slightly larger than the Radius of the UV Sphere modelling small droplets.

Of course it would be nice if the Distribute Points on Faces node would accept different distances, but this is a great approach/solution! Well done!

@quellenform: Thank you !

@StefLAncien - I really appreciate the time you have spent to explain the issue in detail. Thanks for your tips!


text:
Mapping node animation does not work in Blender Internal!
In Blender Internal renderer mapping node keyframes do not produce inbetweens during animation. Other nodes do. In cycles they work. Are there any workarounds?

Well, I found a workaround:
Instead of animating the mapping node I animate a blue value in a combine RGB node. It is possible because Blender converts RGB colors to XYZ coordinates automatically.


text:
Is the active object and zeroth selected object always the same?
I see a lot of scripts on BSE that use for example
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
cube = context.selected_objects[0]

instead of one of
cube = context.object
cube = context.active_object
cube = context.view_layer.objects.active # 2.8
cube = context.scene.objects.active # 2.79

is the zeroth selected object and the active object always the same

What's the downvote reason here?

Not always
After calling an add primitive operator it is almost always the case that the new object is both active and selected. In which case it rings true.
>>> bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add()
{'FINISHED'}

>>> C.object is C.selected_objects[0]
True

but the selection can be manipulated such that the active object is None, and there are still selected objects.
>>> for o in C.scene.objects:
...     o.select_set(True)
...
>>> C.view_layer.objects.active = None
>>> C.object is C.selected_objects[0]
False

Then not true.
Selecting then setting active object
>>> for o in C.scene.objects:
...     o.select_set(True)
...
>>> C.view_layer.objects.active = None
>>> C.selected_objects[0]
bpy.data.objects['Cube']

>>> C.view_layer.objects.active = C.scene.objects['Cube.001']
>>> C.selected_objects[0]
bpy.data.objects['Cube']

Again not true.
Or no selected objects, with or without an active object
>>> C.view_layer.objects.active = C.scene.objects['Cube'] # or None
>>> for o in C.scene.objects:
...     o.select_set(False)
...

>>> C.object is C.selected_objects[0]
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: list index out of range

In conclusion, suggest if you want to be sure it's the active object use context.active_object or context.object.  Check if not selected and set selection if need be  Don't rely on using context.selected_objects[0]


text:
Operator tooltip from layout text
The concept is to make a panel layout that emulates the workspace (screen) layout.  While testing I have set all the buttons to be the Splash Screen operator.
An image of how this looks for five default workspaces Animation, General, UV Editing, Compositing and Scripting

so apart from nesting the layout is pretty much
    for a in context.screen.areas:
        layout.operator("wm.splash", text=a.type)

The Mystery
At a loss to explain why some of the buttons display the button text as a tool tip, and some don't.  'OUTLINER' and 'PROPERTIES' always have the tooltip. Sometimes one 3d view in animation does and the other doesn't.
Any operator can be substituted for "wm.splash" and shows the same behaviour.
The only reference to "tooltip"  in UILayout is for template list which I am not using.

Isn't it just whether the text fits on the button? Ellipsized/clipped/overflowing texts get put in the tooltip. Side note: Do you have any ideas for controlling element size in .popup_menu()?

"OUTLINER", "PROPERTIES", and "IMAGE_EDITOR" get displayed in the tooltip because they don't fit on the operator button in any of the layouts. One of the "VIEW_3D"s in the animation box gets displayed only sometimes presumably because the left one barely fits, and gets ellipsized or not depending on window manager state. Consistency for the same string across the boxes is presumably coincidental. You can also confirm this behaviour by scaling any normal panel in Blender— The button label gets displayed in the tooltip when and only if its UI element becomes too small to fit the full text on it.


text:
Removing space draw callbacks after losing the handle?
A small edit of test code from GPU Shader Module (gpu) "Mesh with Random Vertex Colors" to save the handle to the driver namespace ...
import bpy
import gpu
import numpy as np
from random import random
from gpu_extras.batch import batch_for_shader

mesh = bpy.context.active_object.data
mesh.calc_loop_triangles()

vertices = np.empty((len(mesh.vertices), 3), 'f')
indices = np.empty((len(mesh.loop_triangles), 3), 'i')

mesh.vertices.foreach_get(
    "co", np.reshape(vertices, len(mesh.vertices) * 3))
mesh.loop_triangles.foreach_get(
    "vertices", np.reshape(indices, len(mesh.loop_triangles) * 3))

vertex_colors = [(random(), random(), random(), 1) for _ in range(len(mesh.vertices))]

shader = gpu.shader.from_builtin('3D_SMOOTH_COLOR')
batch = batch_for_shader(
    shader, 'TRIS',
    {"pos": vertices, "color": vertex_colors},
    indices=indices,
)

def draw():
    batch.draw(shader)

h = bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_add(draw, (), 'WINDOW', 'POST_VIEW')

bpy.app.driver_namespace["foo"] = h

Such that we can remove via the python console
>>> dns = bpy.app.driver_namespace
>>> h = dns['foo']
>>> h
<capsule object "RNA_HANDLE" at 0x7f4841cdbf90>

>>> bpy.types.SpaceView3D.draw_handler_remove(h, 'WINDOW')

... otherwise it is drawn on the screen until blender is shut.
Or is it?  Is there a way, via python API,  to remove all or any draw callbacks without the handle?

Related re making a class to "handle the handles"
I can't get a SpaceView3D draw callback to work
How do you remove a draw handler after it's been added?
handle vertex property changes with msgbus.subscribe_rna

I don't know too much what this question was about, but was it necessary to create the 'gpu-module' tag? Are there many other questions that would benefit from this tag?

There is a new gpu python module in 2.8,  replacing the bgl module to draw on the viewport.  Feel  the gpu tag refers more to the hardware.  bmesh as a standalone module has a tag, yet again blf doesn't.

Ah ok. Seems appropriate then.

Suggest adding a definition for the 'gpu-module' tag. Already seen the first misuse of it as a generic gpu tag.


text:
What does the mouse-binding "in-between move" do?
Soo, changed my settings around a bit so that Shift-C is cursor-to-selected and Ctrl-S is "view all without moving cursor". After doing this I had some intermittant trouble with the view resetting with the original Shift-C action when I alt-tabbed or used my screenshot program.
I finally tracked it down today; somehow this got set instead of disabling the original command:

I can't find "In-between Move" anywhere else in the key list; though that might be because search dosen't seem to work on it:

Note that the box dosen't become red like you typed something invalid in it.
Sooo ... what is this mouse action supposed to represent, anyway? I can't consistantly do it, so I'm not positive what it is, but I guess it has something to do with dragging between windows?

This is an event used internally for painting and sculpting tools, it is not useful in a keymap. It can be used when writing certain tools in Python (typically modal operators).
What this event does is give you higher resolution mouse positions in between the regular mouse move events. For most tools only the latest mouse position matters, and processing the positions in between would just be wasting time. But for some tools like painting and sculpting it's useful to known the full path that the mouse traveled to get more accurate paint strokes.

Interesting. Do you think that it being detectable in the keybinder constitutes a bug? The fact that search for it is broken leads me to believe that no one expected it to show up in there.

Yes, you're right, it will be fixed in the next release.

Ah, cool, thanks. I still need to figure out the tracker, haven't looked at it before.

In-between Move corresponds to blenders Event.type of value 'INBETWEEN_MOUSEMOVE'.
It occurs when you press a key at the same time your mouse is moving.


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Working around Blender's color management problems & General Confusion
So, I'm writing this in part because I'm still confused myself, and in part because getting a verified answer in a public place would be a good thing.
Blender 2.79b has incorporated some of Sobotka's Github original version filmic color management, but apparently not enough of it, therefore some people (myself included) are still using that package. The explanations I've found when researching what the problem did not really tell me much more than that there's a problem, though.
I just got into this from Andrew Price's tutorial which was basically "do this simple thing and all your stuff will look better forever" -- and it did, and I haven't had any reason to dig into it more until now.
The Sheepit Render Farm used to provide support for , but doesn't with 2.79b, probably assuming that it actually was functioning properly in base blender. The result is that people still using github's version get stuffed into generic sRGB sadlands when submitting a file. So I'm trying to figure out how to make due with standard blender at least for now.
(I'm still a little confused as to why this is all necessary, why we can't just simulate photons around, record their wavelengths, and call it a day, too... maybe that's better as it's own question....)
So using stock 2.79b with no scripts or plugins what's the best way to get the most amount of useful image data out of blender? What's the best way to replicate the Github's version log encoding + base contrast I got used to? Can that be done with the color management tools in the compositor? We still don't have a LUT input in there...
And for the confusion... how do the Display Device, Render View, Look, and Color Space even interact? And how can I learn what they're for? I mean I can go look up what an XYZ color space is but I don't know where to go to find out why someone would pick that. What are the dozens of film types listed in look for?

You seem to be asking quite a few questions here, and while they're related, this site works best with specific questions, so I suggest editing your question down to something more specific and focused. Also *sobotka.


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why can't blender read a movie which blender has itself rendered?
please excuse my ignorance. i'm starting to use blender 2.72 for its Video Editor.
i'm slowly making progress, but ran into a problem
when i tried to re-import a rendered movie.
blender seems to think it has no dimensions...could that be the problem?
to be clear - i rendered an animation (movie)as avi, from a Blender Session, and then imported it again, into the same session, as a fresh source file for further processing. but the sequencer doesn't read it....
i tried various rendering output options, but none seem to correct this.
thanks, Roland

okay i figured out the problem.  must make sure proxy view preferences match proxies which have been built or re-built.  i hadn't built the 50 percent proxy but was viewing that proxy in the viewer.....hence the lack of result.


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Background Image XY offset Not Keyframeable?
Is the Background Image xy offset in Camera properties Not keyframeable? or do i just need to assign them to a keying set or something along these lines?
now, when i hover the mouse and hit "i" i get:
"Failed to resolve path to property, try manually specifying this using a Keying Set instead"
if so, can someone point me to a tutorial for how to add these parameters to a keying set?
i attempted to do this but failed.
thanks for help!

Probably you misunderstood the message, you can't keyframe this parameter. You can add a Background Empty, set child of the camera and animate its location.

@FFeller thank you!


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Blender 2.93 LTS pose roll deprecated?
When looking https://youtu.be/QDWzqcc9U00?t=28
But in 2.93 LTS, I can not see this roll value.
How can I adjust the roll in pose mode, in 2.93 LTS (Bones>roll)?
(rotate yy fails for me)

You need to be in Edit mode to have access to the Bone > Transform > Roll value (or press CtrlR and type the value). To roll a bone on its Z axis in Pose mode, press RZ.

OK roll appears only in edit mode. Thank you !


text:
Which cam used as PoV?
On Blender 3.3
I open my file where Ctl-0 has been made on one of my 2 cameras, very narrow shift so visual no difference.
But when I open my file, no camera is selected.
How can I know, on which camera has been made Ctl-0 Point Of View (but without visual way) ?

Active camera has a camera icon with highlighted background:

Also you can see active camera in scene properties:

OK, indeed I see. Thank you !


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Edge Angle as Cycles Shader input
I am practicing with the creation of various procedurally generated materials and a unique problem has come up for me.
I have looked at a number of tutorials on shader creation and have been searching online for a while now with regards to this specific issue, having found some questions with only tangentially related topics.
I am trying to determine how I can pass the "edge angle" to a shader in cycles.
For example, when one is using the edge split modifier they can specifiy an edge angle that allows them to force the renderer to treat an edge as a non smoothed edge.
What I want to acheive:
I want to find areas of interest with respect to the way that the edge split has chosen these areas. The mesh pictured is smooth shaded, the left is without the edge split modifier applied and the right side has the edge split applied. Red areas show really distinctly, where edge split created a hard edge. The green area highlights where the bevel that was present on this material tester object becomes a much more prominent feature as aresult of the edge split angle.

I want to find a shader input that would allow me to say, take places where the edge angle is high as inputs, sortof like you can do with fresnel or other black and white input nodes
I want to do this procedureally, or at very last, I want to avoid using map textures because I want to be able to apply this material to objects that may not have a UV map.
Things I have trie as inputs (Using node wrangler to view the mask):

Fresnel / Layerweight: These options apply to whole geometry and ignore specific areas. Furthermore, fresnel is dependant on the viewing angle, not the geometry. That makes the fresnel simply move around the edges at any viewing angle.

Geometry > Pointiness: This does not work on something that has smooth curves. I have seen it used before in material tutorials but I understand that it relies on point density, something which a test ball (and presumeably many meshes) will not have in great amounts.

Every option I can think of in most input nodes : I have seen wild techniques about the angling of faces for use in topology like this for example but that only works for meshes where mesh is concave with respect to positive Z (likely would not work with purely vertical faces either)

Things I have not tried but seen as (non optimal) options:

Vertex painting a mask: While this is not ideal it would work. Id prefer not doing this because then one has to manually paint each mesh that they intend to use the materials on. I have also seen that most explaining this technique view it as requiring a fairly high detail mesh.

Is there a way I can get the edge angle out of the geometry and use it as an input for cycles shaders?

Have you tried adjusting the Pointiness output with a Color Ramp node? That is usually the only way to go

That provides a reasonable effect It seems, Better than what I was getting from an un-augmented pointiness mask. I will keep it in mind in case the magical unicorn script guru does not show up.

This solution doesn't give you a perfect angle based control but it is sort of a better version of the pointiness value map.
You will have to download a daily 2.79 build from https://builder.blender.org/download/ to get access to the bevel node.

The viewer node is just an emission shader to view the value map.

You can tweak this map even further with a colorramp node of course.

Will try this once I get back to the machine I use for blender, Looks very promising though!

This answer works well enough for my needs. I don't feel like trying to dig up the source code and this helped quite a bit. Though it is not angle based, the radius does provide a reasonable approximation for this process. Thank you Bert.

You are very welcome!

I believe there is an addon that can make vertex paint masks based on angles... You could use such a vertex map to mask out a portion of the technique above.

I will take a search then, that could be useful for some geometries with tighter corners where radius is not an ideal estimate.

There is an operator you can call from the spacebar menu within edit mode called 'Select sharp Edges' and lets you select edges based on an angle. This might give you the ability to create a vertex mask based on a given angle.

That would make it much easier to paint the right places only, good insight Bert, thank you for your continued input.

Hello, when I try this (Blender v2.82.7) there is not a Value output on the Subtract node. Do you know how this would be done in the modern version?


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Where can I find reference images for building modeling?
I am looking into modeling some realistic houses/buildings as a collection.
This is also one of the few times google images has failed me.
I can't seem to find helpful reference images and building plans. Anyone know of a good place to find these? www.the-blueprints.com/ sadly has no category for buildings.
Thanks

cgtextures.com under the building category, might be of use for you.


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Twist an object along multiple axes like a roller coaster path
I have imported a prefab from unity that looks like this.

It is a track for a roller coaster.
I want to twist it about the axis in between them such that it forms a roller coaster path like this.

I can't figure out how to twist it, both along its own axis, and also along another axis such that it forms a loop, as shown in the roller coaster figure. I thought that making a parent empty object (Plane Axes) and twisting it would solve the problem, but the Empty object doesn't seem to have modifiers, so I can't even add a twist to that object.

Curve modifier and array modifier?

Did my answer below help you with your file? Or do you need a different solution?

You need to model one segment of the repeating pattern of the roller coaster track, and then add an array modifier and a curve modifier.
The important thing is to make sure you align the first control point in the curve with the object origin of the mesh object. Also, you can set the array length to be based on the length of the curve as well.

Does this technique allow you to control the roll?

@MutantBob Of course, you can edit the tilt of the curve's vertices.


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I can't render audio with my video
This is probably an easy fix but I can't figure it out. I'm trying to render the audio with my video along with my video and when I play the video on the media player, I can't hear ANY audio. I've been looking at youtube videos but none of the videos have the same version of Blender as I do. Can Blender render both the audio and video at the same time?

Which version of Blender you are using? OS?

it can, but it is important to have the right selection of encondings. @DevTim's answer gives a good choice

In properties/encoding find "Audio codec:". It should read something other than "none". Make sure it's set to a format that's compatible with what you selected in "Format" and properties/output. This three should make sense when combined.
It would help a lot :) if you included in your question information such as:

Blender version
The content of the sections above (i.e. format of
   your video and audio)

Here's a similar question:
No audio output in rendered video file


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How can I create a staggered, repeating procedural pattern?
I read "How do I create repeating patterns in cycles with procedural textures?" here on Blender Stack Exchange, and "staggered texture mapping" on Greg Zaal's website.  I thought it seemed possible to combine the two ideas to have staggered procedural tiles, but can't seem to make it work.  Can anyone please help?

can you post an example of staggered procedural pattern

Here are the nodes for creating staggered texture mapping for procedural textures.

First the Y axis gets multiplied by the number of lines you want to have in the pattern (the Lines value node).  After adding .5 that gets rounded creating stripes (along the X axis in this example).

If you were to look at the output from that node at this point it would look all white, that is because the values start at 1 and increase by 1 with each stripe.

The next three nodes take the stripes, multiplies it by the reciprocal of the input value (lines), then by 0.5 to lower the values. Then the X axis is added in.

At this point there are only stripes, next the Modulo math node causes the texture coordinates to repeat.
All that was for the X axis.
The Y axis is simple, it is just the Modulo of the reciprocal of the lines.
With the nodes pictured at the top you can get a pattern like this.

After adding the Subtract and Absolute nodes from Jerryno's answer,  every other tile will be mirrored and you can get a pattern like this.

This blend has the nodes packed in to a node group, which can easily be added to any project.
Blend File
As you can see, manipulating the texture coordinates of generated textures is quite powerful.

You are the king.  This is exactly what I was looking for.  Thank you!!!!

Try this one, but only on 2.8
https://gumroad.com/l/Brcks
you can append "br`ck" node tree then use br`ck_v1.1 node like this

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference.  Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - From Review

@Georges, thanks for correction.


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Globbing FILE_TYPE StringProperty
In a recent question a user asks about setting relative / absolute paths from a subtype='DIR_PATH' string property.  Made me recall, (actually thought I had asked this, couldn't find)  re the ability to  glob a subtype='FILE_PATH' string property.
When the file / dir path  subtypes are set; to the layout is added a button to invoke the filebrowser.
layout.prop(ob, "file_path")

For the case of file path a button is added to open the filebrowser using bpy.ops.buttons.file_browse() This operator has all the "usual suspects" of an operator that invokes the file browser.  (Akin to using ImportHelper, ExportHelper)
For example, if this was a regular operator in layout could
op = layout.operator("buttons.file_browse")
op.filter_python = True
op.use_relative = True.

to glob python files and make a relative path.
and AFAIK there is no way to

When using subtype laid out as a property access and change the browse buttons operator properties

Or not using subtype pass the string property name to the operator to re-use the operator eg
row.prop(ob, "file_path") # without making it a file subtype
op = row.operator("buttons.browse_file")

and have the result populate the property.
Was hoping to "unlock" somehow using button context as shown here adding an operator to the context menu (right click)., by setting a context pointer to "button_prop", but alas found myself going in circles. Or using a hack like a depsgraph update handler or a callback on FILEBROWSER space to set the operator props if it active, kinda emulating somewhat  the check method in an ExportHelper operator
To paraphrase, is there a way to use the string property subtype FILE_PATH and glob the filebrowser invoked via the UI generated button?


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Parametizing parabolic nurbs surface

Wireframe of nurbs selected, default z-surface parabola underneath
How to model an accurate parabolic mirror with a known focal point?
Animating z surface math functions
Reminded me of an afterthought of instead  using a NURBS surface, which albeit my maths is rusting fast, the default nurbs surface is parabolic, or a very close approximation to.  Image above shows transforms of default NURB surface as to overlay the parabola created by add z-surface default.
How to calculate (Or theory behind) values of the 4 x 4 grid of knots required to add a NURBS approximation of focus 1 parabola $$(y^2 + x^2) / 4$$


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"Instance on Points" node connection with a mesh function of the index?
(Using Blender 3.6.5)

To save your time, notice that similar questions were already posted with detailed answers. Here are some well documented resources:
(1) Why is there a red line when I try to connect one node to another?
(2) Why can't the radius of an Icosphere be set depending on position with geometry nodes [SOLVED]
(3) How can I instantiate a procedural node group with different parameters?

Exploring different approaches to answer J.A.'s question Is it possible to have an equivalent of Array modifier with decreasing count?, and after reading Markus von Broady's answer based on extrusion, I played with the idea of preparing different floors for the tower then of stacking these with an Instance on Points node, instead of stacking the same floor (a circle), then of changing the shape (i.e. the number of bricks per circle). To do so, I planned to use the Pick Instance socket.
It works fine with a static collection made using a Geometry to Instance node connected to pre-made shapes (see the top of the GN graph in the figure).
But I am failing in creating shapes using a function based on the vertices index (see the middle part of the GN graph in the figure). The value downstream of the Sample Index node is correct in a Viewer node, but there is an error connecting it as input to the Mesh Circle node. I am suspecting that along the data path of this branch, there is a conflict between the geometry requirements flowing backward from the Instance socket, and the geometry information flowing forward from the Mesh Line node.
Am I trying to do something that is orthogonal to GN philosophy ? Or am I missing something ?

Resources:

the problem is "just" the difference between a single value (circular input) and a field value (diamond shaped input). The sample index has a diamond as output (so it is a field value), but Mesh circle vertices input is a field value - that's why you cannot connect them.

Shame in me ! I missed this... I was clearly trying something breaking rules.

I'm sure there's plenty similar questions to that, perhaps even it can be closed as a duplicate, but I think it's easier to answer than to find the other question…
The Mesh Circle node, just like most (exception: "Points" node) other "geometry primitive" nodes, creates just a single primitive.
So that's how the node is programmed, it creates a single "circle" (regular polygon really). It doesn't then make sense to use a field to control the number of vertices of this "circle". In case of a radius, you could at least argue that you want a "loop", which has a varying radius, just like the 3D equivalent I call a geoide under the link below:
Why can't the radius of an Icosphere be set depending on position with geometry nodes?
There's various tricks you can employ to create multiple "circles" with varying resolution, for example you can duplicate one circle and resample each spline differently:

Repeat Zone equivalent (well, the positioning isn't the same, for simplicity):


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What is the "Face Corner" definition used by the "Distribute Points on Faces" node?
(Using Blender 3.6.8)
Analysis
Trying to understand how the Density socket of the Distribute Points on Faces node behaves, I wrote the following basic GeometryNodes graph, derived from the question "Noise texture to control scatter density in geo nodes":

1. The Switch node connected to the By Face Corner input parameter is controlling whether the input ID is referring to a Face index, or to a Face Corner index.
2. If By Face Corner is False, the Density is captured per Face. Consequently it is the same for all the Face Corners of the chosen face. For the demonstration, it is set high compared to unselected faces. The figure above is illustrating the expected behaviour for face 1 of a 2x2 Grid.
3. If By Face Corner is True, the Density seems to be defined per Face Corner, in agreement with the documentation of the Selection socket stating "The selection of which face corners should be considered for point distribution". The figure below is illustrating the expected behaviour for face corner 1 (i.e. bottom right corner of face 1). However, it is to notice that fewer points are distribute per unit area.

Problem (?)
If face corner 2 is selected, the output is:

I was expecting a triangular shape as for face corner 1, not a quad. It seems that odd face corner indices are producing triangular shapes, while even face corner indices are producing quadrangular shapes. Inserting a Triangulate node just after the Grid node shows that in this case, the result is the same whatever the face corner selected inside the same face.

Question
How to interpret Face Corner index manipulated by Distribute Points on Faces node for quadrangular meshes ?

Resources

Follow-up
An other shape made with a Curve Circle node with 7 vertices followed by a Fill Curve node with Mode set to N-gons shows an unpredictable (?) behaviour:

1. The displayed number on the right is the selected Face Corner index.
2. The cube is put at the selected Face Corner position.

Changing the Distribution Method from Random to Poisson Disk does not seem to modify significantly the heterogeneity between face corners.

I haven't run through all the options for myself yet, but this sure looks like bad logic somewhere, which, while it may not be particularly harmful in itself, may be symptomatic of something that is. I'm guessing, once exhaustively tested, it should become a bug report

(Using Blender 3.6.8)

From developers answers and some experiments, the conclusion is that it is not a bug, merely a side effect of triangulation of mesh faces.

In what follows, analysis is detailed in a first part with some guidelines. Information from the developers are pasted at the end.

Analysis
The process seems to be as follows:

Faces are triangulated.
Density and Selection fields input in the Distribute Points on Faces node are "transferred" from the original face corners to the vertices of these triangles.
Points are distributed by sampling once each of these triangles.
The Density for a triangle is the average of the Density of its 3 vertices. The Density of a not selected face corner is 0.

The next picture illustrates the case of a single N-gons with 7 face corners.

1. (top left sub-figure) This is the reference configuration with Density set to 10 for all face corners. Whatever the triangle, its Density is thus 10 also. Consequently, a dense uniform distribution is achieved.
2. (top centre sub-figure) This shows the face corners indexing (as "Cn") and the (cached) triangles indexing (as "Tn").
3. (top right sub-figure) This configuration is such that Density for all face corners except C0 is lowered to 0.1. As C0 is only a vertex of T1, T2 to T5 are sparsely sampled with a Density of 0.1. And T1 is less sampled than the reference configuration because its Density is 10.2/3.
4. (middle left sub-figure) This configuration is such that Density for all face corners except C1 is lowered to 0.1. As T4 is the only triangle without C1 as one of its vertices, it is the only triangle sparsely sampled with a Density of 0.1. All other triangles are sampled with a Density of 10.2/3.
5. (remaining sub-figures) Density of face corner C2 to C6 is successively kept to 10, while it is lowered to 0.1 for all the others. These sub-figures show that only triangles connected to this face corner are highly sampled with points.
(Side note: it is to notice that the sampling of a triangle looks the same on all sub-figures. This is probably because the seed of the Random Number Generator to draw the associated point cloud is based on the (cached) triangles index).
Guidelines
Based on the desired effect, Selection and Density by Face or by Face Corner domain might be considered. An Evaluate on Domain node is useful to experiment, as follows:

From the developers
Replies on TICKET-121608:

Gerstmann Bradley: The issue stems in face corner, which I assume is a limitation just
like how a mesh may be triangulated. If you triangulate it you will
find the result being more restricted.

According to Iliya Katushenock:

Distribute Points of Faces node use face tris as way to distribute
points of surface. This is correct that if there is no any density
there will no points. If you select just one face corner, there is
some density. And this mode do not use density as way to control
distribution of points, if you want more complicated one, you can
switch node option.
For user requests and feedback, please use other channels:
https://developer.blender.org/docs/handbook/communication/user_feedback/
For more information on why this isn't considered a bug, visit:
https://developer.blender.org/docs/handbook/bug_reports/not_a_bug/


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My video is greenish, how do I correct it?
I guess automatic white balance was fooled by the background (garden through window), and now the people in the interior (yellowish light) look greenish. Is there a way to correct this white balance gone wrong?

You have not provided enough information for anyone to answer the question. Please upload a copy of your blend file, with relevant images packed, to a hosting site of your choice (or use [http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com] and post a link in your queston. It might also be useful to post one or more screenshots of the rendered scene.

Thanks brasshat, I'll do the next time. For this one, I think what @cegaton answered will be enough for a question this general :)


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How do the AV-sync, Frame Dropping and No sync in Timeline work?
How do the AV-sync, Frame Dropping and No Sync options in Timeline work when working with audio and video?

They come in help when the animation is too heavy to handle realtime reproduction, affecting only the 3D viewport, not the renders.
No sync means that every frame in the viewport is showed as soon as possible, and a number in the upper left corner of the 3D view tells you the frame rate actually being reproduced: if white everything is OK (I.E. 24 FPS - default), if Red is slower (Maybe 4.67 FPS).
Frame Dropping means that the FPS is always the choosen one (24 - default), and blender jumps from a frame to another trying to remain in sync, actually not displaying (dropping) all the frames between.
AV Sync is used in combination with the VSE, assuring corrispondence between the 3D frame and the VSE frame.

Thanks a lot! That was really clarifying. Specially the
"affecting only the 3D viewport, not the renders"
part.

AV Sync is useful for Video Footage in the VSE. It assures, that your playback audio and video matches up.

As far as I can see:

No Sync just tries to play back every single Frame no matter if it causes lags or time shifting problems with the Audio or the actual physical time.
Frame Dropping drops Frames from the ViewPort Animation Playback to match up with the actual Frame Rate being used
AV Sync skips Frames from Video Footage in the VSE so that Audio and Video in the Image Preview Sequencer Mode stays in sync

The AV Sync mode has been greatly improved in the Gooseberry Branch as Mathieu Auvray explains in his second VSE Editing Tutorial. It works through the whole Blender interface, Sequencer, 3D View, etc and makes sure, that your Audio and Video are in sync and it mostly uses Frame Skipping for this.


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Is there a way to "hack" blender to work better in windows?
I have been using blender for some time in a Macbook pro. Then I used it in linux. Now I'm running it in a Windows 10 machine with similar or better capacities and it doesn't render nor shows previews better. In fact it performs quite worse.
Task manager and resource monitor show Blender is not even close to maximum capacity (around 25-36% in CPU and memory usage 23 to 29% even when nothing much is running at the same time).
When I change the affinity to one processor I kind of get a faster render (not as fast as in linux or OSx).
Are there any other ways to hack windows or Blender so I can get a better performance?

It's quite normal you get better performance in Linux, as blender is basically optimized for it. As OSX is unix based it's close to linux system.

Is the problem that you want to optimize blender for your machine?

Yes, of course I want to optimize Blender for my machine :), but I don't really know if it is windows that makes Blender work slower. I'm with @Jerryno there. Maybe someone knows a way I can assign windows resources better or something.

I think the drivers provided by the manufacturer are usually the best.  I've only seen rarely that other drivers work better, and that had to do with whether to use the original Nvidia drivers for the chipset on the GPU, or the drivers that the 3rd party company providing a driver for an Nvidia chipset based GPU.  Sometimes, the chipset mfr had the best driver, and some times vice versa, the GPU card mfr depending upon the issue.  OpenGL should be standard with every Video card. Note: should be, not is, any mfr worth it's salt, will work with OpenGL or feature it and be included.

Regarding Window's resources.  The resources will be based on the type of interface the GPU uses. The latest PCIe would be best.  If you buy a GPU that uses the latest PCIe slot, and you don't have that slot, the GPU may and usually is compatible with a earlier version of PCIe but won't be able to use all the features of the GPU, and that affects performance a lot. Since you said you have a new machine, I presume that's not an issue.  You can choose whether to prioritize graphics, or math in the performance section of windows, background activity, or currently active processes.

I'm not completely sure, but you might be able to get some performance improvements if you build from source. This may not work though, and can also result in Blender being less stable.

use decent video drivers that actually have good openGL performance. It's not Blender that's at fault, it's not Windows that's at fault, it's the 3rd party hardware drivers that control your hardware.

If you bought a stock machine, these rarely have superior GPU video cards.  I'm not an expert by any means on graphics processing; but, find out how many cudas your processor has.  Do a Window's performance test, and see where the system is lacking.  Often you'll find a mismatch between the math processor and graphics, even if you have a great video card.  There's some great benchmark tests that will test every facet of graphics rendering. Perhaps someone could recommend one.  I'd found one, but can't recall.  One of these will tell your where you problem is to be found.

@Cyberchipz and often if you've a laptop with dual video cards, it will default to using the Intel chipset for everything even though an AMD or NVidia chipset is also available. You actually need to go and manually install the control software from AMD or NVidia to force the machine to use those chipsets.

That's interesting, I've never seen a laptop with dual video cards.  I can see that they're often set to default to the video card on the mother board; as that's often the only one on a laptop.  So, they make video card slots on laptops, now that's interesting and could be an issue.  It can definitely be an issue on desktops for sure.  On a desktop, it can allow (but not always) a second monitor.

@Cyberchipz most mid-range to high-end laptops have an Intel chipset and an AMD or NVidia chipset as well. I've 3 of them myself (of different ages) out of 4 machines, and the 4th is a Mac...

Try going to the task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), find blender from processes, right click on it, and set the priority to high. This will make it faster.


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Pull and slide along edges simultaneously
Is it possible to slide multiple vertices along edges that point towards a certain point? As demonstrated in the first picture, I would like to slide the selected along the edges on the direction shown by the arrows, but simultaneously, so they are all equidistant from the center (without merging them).

The problem is that if I select them and slide them on the edges at the same time, they slide in the direction of my mouse cursor, and therefore will slide in different directions, as show in the second picture.

Push/pull would indeed bring them closer, but without sliding on the edges (basically only bringing them close on 2 axes). Is there any way to accomplish what both push/pull and slide do, simultaneously? Or another effective way of doing this transformation?

If I've got you correctly, one way to do that is to select that central point to which you'd like to slide vertices, snap cursor to it with Shift + S and scale those vertices with Pivot Point set to 3D Cursor.

@MrZak Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately, I'm not looking to scale the vertices but rather to slide them along edges, just like you would do with SHIFT + V  granted, the result is close to the same on the example above but I made simple screenshots to exemplify the problem. My actual problem is with a UV sphere with many more vertices. If I scale them, they will dig into the sphere, whereas I need the vertices to move onto the surface along edges. But I was ALSO looking at how to make transformations towards the 3D cursor, and you did learn me something new that I needed. Thanks again!

You then should present problem with sphere actually, becuase what you've asked maybe done as I said. Still, with sphere you may try select one vertice, use Shift + V (or G twice) and enter exact number to slide it. And so whith every vertice you'd like to slide.


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Color Ramp vs RGB Curves in Cycles
I understand that both of them convert color values, but how are they different/similar? In other words, what are examples of situations where one would be better than the other? I understand more or less how the RGB curves work on a technical level (converts X input to Y output) but I'm less sure about color ramps. I have also seen people matching RGB curves to the information found on refractiveindex.info for realistic materials but I'm really not sure as to how this work (I could make a separate question for this if necessary).

They are different tools for doing the same things in different ways.
Color Ramp

Easier to precisely set colors and stops
Harder to make custom falloffs/interpolations

RGB Curves

Easier to make your own falloffs/distributions
Harder to specify exact colors

As an example, I attempted to replicate the result of an RGB curve setup with a color ramp node. Note the differences around the transitions due to the color ramp interpolation:

I used the compositor for this, but they work the same in Cycles

Which you use depends largely on what you want to do and what your preference is. I tend to use color ramps for precision stuff, and curves for more artistic things.


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Wrap cylinder around sphere
As you can see on the picture below, I have this object shaped like a complex tube (selected in picture) that I want to wrap around this other object which looks like a flattened low-poly sphere (inactive object in picture).

As you may see, the center of the tube is flat on the Z axis. I need to wrap the "tube" around the "sphere" so that a line of faces on the bottom of the tube snap to the faces of the sphere. If I try to do it manually with "snap to faces", only the selected face of the tube moves and the rests stays in place, which distorts the object. I need to bend the tube withtout changing its general geometry. The result intended is what you can see on this picture:

I tried the shrinkwrap mod but it flattens all the vertices of the tube on the surface of the sphere (like it were intended for wrapping objects without thickness). Should I use physics to make them solid and use bones in my tube so I can articulate it like an arm? I haven't done any rigging/animation so far. Or is there another efficient way of doing this? Another mod? I read a bit about cast, curve and deform modifiers but none them will make the object snap to the other without passing through it. Also, if I skipped a step and there was a more efficient way to do this from the beginning, don't hesitate to tell me. Thanks in advance!

I think the quickest way to deal with this issue would be to load the reference image behind the mesh, tab into Edit mode with Proportional editing on and quickly move the tube into place in sections. With proportional editing on you won't have to move every vertices. If you find the proportional editing is distorting your tube shape just decrease the strength/area of the tool's effect.
Also, I don't think you're going to be able to have a perfectly curved innner edge on the curve and have it snapped exactly to the sphere's surface because of the hard angles of the sphere (see screen shot). This is because you still want the curve to be smooth which will require some subsurf to be applied.

Thank you for your reply. I have played with a few tools and none of them could do what I originaly wanted, But I realized I just started wrong. I started again with the stone and then extruded the shape I wanted on top of the stone while clipping to faces/edges, instead of making the gold separately.Using proportional editing with cliping is feasible however I found it really difficult to without grabing unwanted vertices in the process. Another possibility would have been to use snapping set to active and select each edge loop with the snapping vertex last and move the loops one at a time.


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How to match material properties to physical reality?
I'm trying to make a realistic gold shader. I would like to know what is the right way to match the information found on refractiveindex.info (for gold:  http://refractiveindex.info/?shelf=3d&book=metals&page=gold) to my cycles shader. The page is in a section for "information for 3D artist" but I'm wondering what parts of the information can be integrated in a cycles material and where it should be plugged.
In this tutorial (in the section "Basic metallic shader" at the end) : http://www.chocofur.com/6-shadersamptextures.html is mentioned a technique for the reflection information. Even though this is a very-well written and complete tutorial, I'm not 100% sure about the accuracy of the information because the author claims that the red, blue and green curves match RGB curves (which I doubt because they are labeled as being for polarization) and in the author's example for gold, the curves to not actually match what is found on refractiveindex.info, as exemplified here :

I understand very few people are BOTH 3D artists and physicists, maybe explaining the difficulty of finding accurate information on the subject. As you can see, I have very little knowledge of optics myself.
Is there any other information on refractiveindex.info that I could plug in? Like wavelengths and absorption information for exact colors, for instance. Any information would be appreciated, suggestions of documentation on the subject as well.

I guess you will never get the real thing in blender (or other similar tools), because they are mostly "artist's" tools, thought to be able to represent amazingly good even reality, but they aree not nature simulators... eg: "light" in blender is not specified with a defined wave spectrum, the "atmosphere" is not real (no oxygen, nitrogen, co2, argon, dust particles, other electromagnetic waves), and a "camera" has no definition of the "sensor" which could add in the result...

I understand that Cycles is not an optics simulator, but it is nonetheless based on physics. Otherwise we wouldn't have a fresnel node, or input values such as "index of refraction". I am not making simulation for a physics paper, I'm making a gold shader that can look convincing from every angle.

And Cycles can do just that: CG that is indistinguishable from reality. It's called "physically based rendering/shading", and while it may not be desirable in all 3D projects, sometimes it's what we're aiming for. An approximation nonetheless, but good enough to trick the eye, and to do this properly you must understand how light interacts with materials, which is physics. So basically I don't want to plug ALL physical information in my shader, I'm asking "which" are important visually and "how" do I integrate them.

Blender Guru does reallllllly good tutorials on photo realism. You could look at what he did in that Posts.

Here is an amazing free add-on that basically has a library of ready-made real-world PBR materials, including gold. I have used it extensively. https://www.blendernation.com/2016/12/23/pbr-materials-addon-2/

Use the Principled BSDF node. It's using a PBR shader which is a physically based rendering shader. You can enter values for the material you would like to do.

Here's a wonderful tutorial by Blender Guru for making a completely accurate metallic shader. I would follow his tutorial, and use this list of colors to set up your gold. Metal in real life has different colors on the edges facing away from you than the ones facing you, so this tutorial and data-table should describe how to set it all up. This approach may also be simpler than trying to interpret the graphs and curves you are currently having problems with. It's kind of a workaround, but I hope it helps! Cheers,
Graves Broderick


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How to paint a gradient with TexDraw brush?
In texture painting mode, the TexDraw brush has a functional "Use Gradient" checkbox (functionnal meaning it will actually let you chose a gradient, compared with the Smear brush for instance which does not). However, I can't seem to make it work in pressure mode: it only paints with the rightmost color. Repeat mode works by making selecting colors randomly within the gradient and clamp mode uses one color on clicking and the other on dragging (I have no idea why anyone would want to use it this way...)
Basically I would like to make it work with the stroke set to "Line", that is being able to draw a straight line whose color is that of the gradient. Can this be done? The only brush that seems to work with gradients is the Fill brush, but I just need to draw lines, not to fill an area.

Strokes set to Line do not give you the ability to see a gradient travel along it, or curve for that matter. TexBrush with gradient and pressure in the Strength ticked on (be sure to adjust the strength to allow for some fluctuation) can be useful for changing the color along the gradient ramp, but then it is really about using your manual stroke here to control the pressure - wit hthat, I sometimes play with the Shift-S Smooth Stroke or Lazy Stroke to control my line/curve while painting.

In version 2.79 Gradient works with Stroke set to 'line' MOST of the time, but only if 'mode' is set to 'repeat'. However there seems to be a bug that makes only one colour (colour from the right side of the gradient colours) appear.
To make all colours appear along the line change the value of 'gradient spacing'. Default is '1', but change the value to any random number,  paint, then change back to default or any other value, the gradient colours  paint along the line.


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How to not see through mesh in RetopoFlow?
I'm using Blender 4.2 and RetopoFlow 3.4.3. When I am retopologizing, the source mesh or the high polygon mesh and the retopologized mesh are both transparent. Here is a picture of what I mean.

Is there anyway to fix this?

That's a fairly expensive commercial addon so unless anyone here has bought it we can't really help. Assuming you aren't in x-ray or wireframe view you should you ask the author.

Not possible to answer since we don't have the addon as John has pointed out. Contact the author.


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Geometry nodes : How to manage point distribution based on a material
I would like to know how to use a material (the pink volume in that case) to manage the distribution of the instances on points.
The pink volume :

From a previous question, i learned how to make my points only appear in the sphere :

Now, i'm searching for a way to control even more the distribution of the points by making them concentrated in the "tendrils" and avoid the empty spots.

Thanks in advance :)

Questions shouldn't rely solely on a .blend file attachment, please use some screenshots and text to describe your issue. Geonodes can only read material index, but not the result of the material, because material is computed after geonodes, typically on GPU (whereas geonodes are computed on CPU)

thank you for your comment, i've edited my post ;). If i can't use the output of my material, do you know an other way to obtain the result ?

You can use an output of your material, but for that you need to render an image, which is 2D, or an animation, where the frame number can be considered the 3rd dimension. Then you can analyze the image to read the material output (color) for each pixel. It's probably not going to lead you anywhere, however, and that's why XY problems are frowned upon. You never showed your material (again, .blend file should be a supplement, but the merit should be in the question).

Keep in mind the possible circular dependency: if the color of the point depends on it being occluded by other points or not, and the position/visibility of a point depends on the color, then both affect each-other. Of course maybe the problem is as simple as moving some logic from the shader to geonodes, so that you calculate the color within geonodes, then based on that spawn/position a point, and only then calculate the color again or use the color already calculated (and stored) in geonodes.


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How can I fix the number of repeating unit issue in geometry nodes?
I am trying to generate a crystal structure wich is basically a repetitipn of objects in a set manner.
I am using the nodes as attached:

As shown in the images below, in this setup what I am aiming for is when I set a value (n) for "core x-dimension", "core y-dimension" or "core thickness" I am expecting to have n yellow spheres kinda sandwiched between n+1 white spheres. This is working for numbers up to 61. But at 62 the number of white spheres become n+3 (instead of n+1) and number of yellow spheres remain n. This behaviour repats itself for other multiples of 62 (124, 168, 248 etc). Above 62 the number of white spheres go with n+3 (instead of n+1) and number of yellow spheres go with n+2 (instead of n)

Blender file:
What is the reason for this anomally, any idea?

Hello and welcome. Please use a title that matches the content of the post. It should read like a question, be descriptive but succinct, unique and identifying, summarizing the problem so that anyone searching for similar issues is likely to find this. Remove anything superfluous, avoid using words like "this", "help with", "issue" or "question about", instead describe what "it" is. Remember, your title is the first thing visitors see, answers you get depend heavily on it. See What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?"

You mention thickness.. is this packing what you're looking for ?

pls provide blend file so we can check it out and don't have to rebuild it manually. thx for your understanding.

It would really be better if you would provide a file. Just a few things I instantly wonder: why are you using multiple Combine XYZ nodes on the leftt when they all just combine the same three values? Or are those varying combinations? Because it is really not easy to see where exactly the connections are going.

Here is the link for my file: (https://blend-exchange.com/b/WO4l0p4L/)

Here is the link for my file: (https://blend-exchange.com/b/WO4l0p4L/)
@RobinBetts The packing is a little different which is called a zinc blende structure. where the white spheres kind of follow a skipping pattern. thats why I am using checker texture to obtain that packing.

@Chris Of course. I did not know how to it here, I am noob in this platform and in blender aswell. But from Gordon Brinkman's comment I realized how to do it. Not exactly tho :)
Here is the link for my file: (blend-exchange.com/b/WO4l0p4L)

@GordonBrinkmann Gordon thank you for your detailed response I appreciate it. Basically I can guess that there are multiple nonsense in my node setup. I am a total noob in Blender. I am doing a PhD in synthesis and characterization of nanocrystals. In my spare time I am working on such things to improve my figures in papers. So this is a patchwork lasting for months. And I dont touch things as long as they work :) But regarding your question, yes they can be different so that I can set values differently in xyz directions. Here is the link for my file: (blend-exchange.com/b/WO4l0p4L)

It is all a matter of values which you are combining. Since you use a Volume Cube instead of something simple like a Mesh > Grid for example which lets you exactly define where the points are, it is depending on the varying Min/Max values, the volume's Resolution X/Y/Z and the Spacing of the Distribute Points in Volume node.
This is what it looks like with your values when you set the Y dimension to 62:

But when you change some of your values, like in the example below where I increase the Resolution for the Volume Cube nodes from 32 to 48 (but actually even 33 would be okay) then it works fine:

You could also decrease the resolution and find values where it works, it's not necessarily needed to have a higher resolution. And as I mention in the beginning, it is not a single thing, it's the combination of values. So even if you would leave the Resolution at 32, changing the Spacing for the Distribute Points in Volume nodes can help too, here in the next example I've changed it from 0.2 to 0.15:

As before, other values would work too, for example 0.3 for the Spacing. The reason for this behaviour is, when changing the dimensions, resolution, spacing etc. this results in values which then have to be rounded in one way or another because there can only be an integer number of objects been placed. And when the combinations do not mathc very well, this odd behaviour will occur.
And although I showed you other values that worked, the thing is you will always risk using values which might work in one case, but not in another.
So I would do it with a fixed grid for distributing the objects. In my example below I'm using a mesh primitive Grid with the X and Y dimensions as Vertices X and Vertices Y and the Size X = Spacing × (X dimension - 1) and Size Y = Spacing × (Y dimension - 1). This grid I instance on a vertical Mesh Line with the Thickness as Count and a Z offset given by the Spacing.
On these grid instances I place the red spheres with an Instance on Points node, I also use the grids to instance cubes on them, for the size I use the Spacing. To avoid duplicate points I then have to realize the instances and then Merge By Distance. Then I take another Instance on Points node to place the white spheres on the corners of the cubes.
The "start location" frame can be ignored if you do not need to center the resulting sphere grid vertically. Perhaps there is an even easier way to create this.

Thank you for your detailed explanation Gordon. I am trying to achieve to generate multiple so called heterostructures. You can understand if you look into the following blender file of mine:
(https://blend-exchange.com/b/GL6LMJ3v/)
One difference with your result and mine is that white spheres are sitting in every cavity generated by 4 red spheres. But white spheres should skip one neighbour position. I achieved it with Checker Texture node. But most probably I can do the same for this one aswell. Not sure if I can arrange it to work in z direction but that can be resolved I guess.

@FurkanIşık I'm not at a PC so cannot look into your file, your question said nothing about skipping positions... it says "n yellow spheres sandwiched by n+1 white spheres", in my file it's n red spheres sandwiched by n+1 white spheres so it seemed to be correct to me (apart from the color ). Maybe I have time to look into your file tomorrow.

No no, I just sent it to explain it better, of course I do not ask you to solve it for me. I just was curious if your method is compatible with my task. That's it. Like I said I appreciate what you have done for me already. Cheers!

@FurkanIşık: just ask a new question - you can open as many questions as you want here


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How can I make my lego tiles on a grid without resizing them?
I've been making an animation using Legos, and the last part I have to do is make a Lego pond. I've looked into a few tutorials and other posts, but they all resize the lego tiles to make them fit together. I can't resize the Lego tile, because it needs to be to scale with the rest of the parts I use in the animation.
I'm using a plane shape with an ocean modifier for my water. In the geometry nodes tab, I have a "mesh to points" block going into a "instance on points" block:

However, this puts all the tiles very close together:

I need help finding a way to snap them to a grid, or if there's something else I could do, please let me know. If more info or screenshots are needed as well let me know.

Could you provide a simplified version of your Blender file using https://blend-exchange.com/ ? Just keep the plane shape with the ocean modifier, and the Legos piece for water. There are two sockets named Selection in your GN modifier that can certainly help in disseminating the blue tiles.

With a Mesh to Points node, it takes all the vertices and converts them to points.  When you use Instance on Points, it puts one Lego on each vertex of the original mesh.  So, if your original mesh doesn't have the vertices spaced properly, it's not going to line up, no matter what.
Fortunately, we can make a new pond mesh for this using Geometry Nodes, with the correct vertex spacing.My final setup required the original pond mesh, and a new mesh, which has the geometry nodes setup.
The object "Deform pond" only has an ocean modifier:
The object "Lego pond" has first the geometry node system to create the mesh with properly spaced vertices.A shrinkwrap modifier set to project comes next.  You will need to move the plane below the "Deform pond" to have it properly shrinkwrap.  If the shrinkwrap modifier is not set to project, the vertices will all be moved around, negating all that hard work we just did.The final geometry node setup is super basic, only used to distribute the Legos on the vertices.
The geometry node setup:Those first three nodes get the size of your Lego part.  Take care to have the vectors correctly plugged into the Vector Subtract node.
The "Get Size" subgroup:(this is the important one)
Hope this works for you!  Let me know if it needs any farther explanation.
To create custom inputs on input and output nodes, hit N to open the sidebar, and click the plus icon.

This worked!! Thanks so much! It took a bit for me to understand what everything did and to even get it working, but I definitely learned a lot more from your short explanation than I did from a 40-ish minute video! Now let's see if I can figure out how to mark this thing as solved...

Awesome, I'm so glad it worked out for you!


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I want to create a plaque to apply to a complex curved surface defined by an imported STL

My STL import represents the surface and shape of where the plaque is to be applied. I would like to create an object (the plaque) using a rectangular mesh that can be applied to the object represented by the STL. I have a rectangular mesh of the complex surface using a boolean but now I need to be the right shape and thickness. Any suggestions for a best approach?

Could you explain what is in the provided picture "the object represented by the STL" ?

Yes, the object represented by the STL is the object on the left side shaped like a fish. I say it is represented by an STL since it is an object created from an STL file import.

So what I understand is that you are looking for (1) a thin plate of constant thickness (the "plaque") (2) of rectangular outline (3) with a hole in the middle with the shape of the "fish". This thin plate is not flat, but (4) should reproduce the curvature of the STL surface. If I am right, what are your expectation for the extrapolated curved surface ?

Close but to clarify. The thin plate (the plaque) will have the same outline shape as the fish, not rectangular, and, indeed has the same curvature of the STL surface. The final object I am looking for will look the same as object on the left except it will be a plaque applied to the object on the left. The difference is the plaque will have a rectangular grid mesh and will be easily manipulated with the blender tools (I will be adding embosses and such to the plaque). Think of the plaque as a veneer on an irregular surface (like a cap on a tooth).

Could you provide your Blender file using https://blend-exchange.com/ ?

I made some progress by deleting all surfaces on the cube object I did not want and then extruding the fish shaped surface a thickness. Now I am stuck because I keep getting python errors when I try to export the STL for 3D printing.

Solution obtained. I deleted all of the unwanted surfaces on the cube and extruded the surface I wanted to create the plaque.


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Why can't I connect the duplicate index output into the curve circle radius input?
I am trying to make the radius be based on the index of the duplicate instances, but Blender is showing a red line. I am a beginner not sure what is going on.

It seems that you have a loop between the Duplicate Elements node and the Curve Circle  node. You can not use the output socket Duplicate Index connected to the input socket Radius as the output socket Curve is connected to the input socket Geometry. About red lines, may I recommend to read this post: Why is there a red line when I try to connect one node to another? ?

Also in this case you have a circular reference. Which node is supposed to be evaluated first? :)

(Using Blender 3.6.8)
Nodes such as Scale Instances, Translate Instances and Rotate Instances are useful after a Duplicate Elements node set in Instance domain to take advantage of the Duplicate Index socket. However, the input geometry must be converted to an instance before, using a Geometry to Instance node:

Resources:

Wow..... this is exactly what I wanted, but I do have one question though..  what if I want to realize all the instances not just 5?

Could you explain what you mean by "to realize" ? Because in Blender, realize has a specific meaning for instances, so I am confused. Do you want to control from the modifier panel (on the right hand side of GUI) how many rings are generated ?

Like in the viewer spreadsheet thing there is only 5 instances being shown, but theres clearly WAY more then that

We have nested instances: level 1 is 5 rings, level 2 is 9 points per ring. The spreadsheet seems to display only the first level, so 5. But if you add a Realize Instances node just before the Group Output node, you will see 45 points in the spreadsheet.

Yeah but I tried that and it like reset the scale for all the points though, why does this happen?

It is because the Realize Instances node is making copies of the same "original" point. So all points have the same radius and scaling a point does not change its radius, only its position. To go further, could you specify if you would like to have instances (i.e. sharing properties) or individual points (i.e. with specific properties) at the output of the GN modifier? By construction of instances, you can not have both...

Sir, I just want them to be each their own indiviual points so I can have all 45, that's all I am asking but thank you for your patience and explanation of everything thus far

I figured it out! :)

Great ! Could you share your findings by editing your question and adding your updated GN graph ?


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graph editor complication
pretty much new to graph editor , I m trying to create an animation pose to pose first after like 140 frames of the animation , I went to see the animation in Bezier mode on the timeline , the animation looks nice but the only problem I faced is my character is spinning weirdly , I went to graph editor to see which bone is making it , I m just having a hard time finding why the character is spinning and which bone is causing it ? its on first 10 Frames (20 - 30 )I reckon I can fix it once I know what causing it through graph editor but I just cant find it , a quick tip would be very helpful , these are some examples , its hard to notice but anyway ( also some of the frame there are some spinning hand also I just wanted to adjust that by graph editor maybe? )

Blend file for more details:

hello maybe share your file (at least the armature)?

i put it there my friend now

It's the bone called root that rotates -278.601d between frame 20 and 30 that seems to bother you, so you can either remove the keyframes or deactivate the track:

As for changing the Graph Editor curves shape, select the curve (select one vertex and press L to select the whole curve, press ShiftH if you want to hide all the other ones), go into the Key panel and explore the functions Density, Blend and Smooth, or simply remove the vertices with X:

my life saver right there as always , thanks my friend

another quick question moonboots please , the one with the graph editor  when select a bone i can see some zig zags sort of things can i make that just straight with one click? thanks in advance

I've edited, I hop it answers?

amazing  best regard

sorry for bothering again , I just like to learn from you moonboots , idk if i should add a new thread for this , but a question to you friend , after pose to pose , do we actually need or better to animate every frame? so we can get the best result ? best regard for your help

No you don't need, Blender interpolates between the frames, is it your question?


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water separates into small droplets
I'm doing a project where a glass is tipped over and the pan pours out of it. I want to make it as similar as possible, but at a certain point the water just starts to separate into small drops and it doesn’t look believable.
I changed the viscosity and speed of the water, but it didn’t help. (I set the viscosity to low, but it didn’t work for me at all)

In the red squares these are my works where the water was divided. I want to do something like in the photo
I would really appreciate any help that is given

Did you try playing with the resolution, and the mesh option inside the physics tab ? Both are involved in the results you are getting.


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Curve straight connection path to selected points using geometry nodes
I'm looking for a solution for connecting orange random points (orange color) diagonally but I used shortest path node and it seems that connects along main mesh's edges instead. Is there another to create a web out of those points ?

World map picture made B&W from the original alpha channel:

Blender file (without the world map picture):

I do not understand what is your condition to connect two orange spheres. Proximity ? Defining a short/long path ? Random walk ?

I don't how to describe the condition but i hope you can help me starting from my description of what i'm expecting to happen: here we go... From all the points on globe i select just a few / many by a selection method; Those selected points i want to connect by some kind shortest route that i will call it directly route. A directly route that makes a straight curve line connecting the nearest selected points but NOT following mesh edges as you can see in picture above but instead creating its own route directly to the points making a kind of  triangles web connection.

Sure, in case you need to view the source I let you the .blend file: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqJ28qgtNvgxjL1g15d0eWvpfZLzSw?e=87ffav

Could you provide your Blender file using https://blend-exchange.com/ instead of MS services that require identification ? You will get a link that you then copy/paste in the description of your question (not as a comment please).

here you go, https://blend-exchange.com/embedImage.png?bid=b4ExeekN

The earth image is not pack in your blend file. Could you add it and upload again?

my bad and thank you for your patience. Here it is just the image: https://we.tl/t-s8NWT5NZgp . It should work if you put it back into image texture node.

Looks like a job for Points to Curve ? Especially bearing in mind you can split your points into groups, by, say, mesh island, or Voronoi...

I edited the question to include the image, as the provided link expires after 7 days. The alpha channel file being 2Mb, I converted it to B&W instead to fit under imgur limit.


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Cycle bake result has partially black
I'm new to blender so forgive me for asking questions that might be dumb.
So currently I'm trying to bake the material to a texture for games, and I just need to bake one combined texture. After baking I found out that part of my model shows completely black, at first I thought it might be lighting issue, and it did fixed part of the black issue (quite strange actually). But still there're quite a lot of places that remains black.
I've checked normals, overlapping uv (I actually just use the smart uv), mesh overlapping, metallic value, these problem either not exist or has been fixed (as far as I can inspect), but the problem remains.
The blend file:

 um is this how it works? anyway here's the file link, i think

The reason you have the unwanted black areas on parts of the baked image texture is because you have a copy of the gun and cartridges hidden in the viewport but not hidden when rendering, thus causing unwanted shadows. You will find these objects in the Outliner panel > Armature > with the names Cylinder, Cylinder.001 and SSG. To hide these items when rendering uncheck the little camera icons. See image below.

oh, my, god, I completely forgot the prototype model that stayed at the same place! thanks for pointing this out!


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Blender 4.0 Remesh creates a blocky look with an unusual topology
I am creating a basic human within Blender version 4.0. I have never came across this situation before.
I added cubes, used a subdivision modifiers up to 3. then applied once I got the shape I wanted. After I proceeded to apply a remesh to the body which worked great as I applied voxel size of 0.04m. I smoothed down the surface and everything was going wonders. The head I did not attach to the body nor the hands as I was working on the body, legs, and arms as a whole first before getting to the smaller details.
When I had gone to the hand part, I remeshed it down to 0.01m and it looked like almost non existing. I applied a much smaller voxel size of 0.01m and it still did not work. When I went into Edit Mode, the topology was looking as if I grabbed a cube and extruded it only one time. In order for it to work I had to use voxel size of 0.001m but it was way too much to handle. I can't remesh the head now, nor the body again. It just wants me to use a low voxel size of 0.001m. I did not add any other modifiers other than the mirror tool, and subdivision. Also I did a shade smooth to the body.
I tried looking around but found nothing like this. I tried adding in another cube, sub-divide it to 3, applied, and remeshed it and that worked. I used that same cube to make of the hand using the way of shaping the cube to fit the hand, then applying the subdivision, then using the sculpt tool to get the size I want. When I apply the remesh tool, it is doing the same thing.
Hopefully this was specific enough to understand, but I don't know what could have gone wrong, I never had this problem. I could go and create another sculpt but I don't wanna get to that point where it happens again. I'm hoping I can fix this within the settings or within the mesh but I tried and I am now left stuck with where I'm at.
On the pictures provided you can see before using remesh and after. When using a lower remesh, it gets a bit better but impossible to sculpt on, I don't think I should even go that low (below voxel size 0.01m). The only way I can sculpt out my hand is when I remesh it to voxel size 0.001m but again it is too much and it isn't the best to sculpt. This is the same when applying a remesh modifier and going into sculpt mode to remesh it. It's the exact same results.