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How to create this brownie texture on geometry nodes?
I just wanted to know if there's a way to create this type of texture and make it look realistic? any feedback or direction I should head to? thanks!

did you ever use geometry nodes?

Hi Eugenio :). What have you tried so far and where exactly are you stuck? (imho such texture could be done with displacement)

Geometry nodes isn't probably the best tool for this.
But displacement might be a good start.
One noise texture for larger holes, another for bumpy surface.

Wow this was very helpful, thanks for this :D!!!

No problem, good luck with your project ;)

thank you @Jachym Michal :)! quick question, if besides these noise texture nodes combined by a math node, I want also add like bump to it. I'm planning to reuse this texture for rise cookie, and is similar with the holes but on top of that, there's a layer of rise pieces (deformed pieces) on top. Should I make it with noise texture and combining again with the resulting initial math? or do you think with a particles system with emission (collection) that contains deformed pieces already created covering the surface will help to create a better effect? thanks for your time to respond!

Hi :). I'd try both ways and see. But yes, you can combine any number of textures using more add nodes. If you get stuck, feel free to ask a new question ;)

posted ^^ thanks!

+1 ...now i am hungry.... :(


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Why two stitched shapes create this strange lines when subdivision modifier is applied?
I've created an arm and a hand separatedly, then I joined them, after that, I took the vertices and connected them together to create new faces. Everything looks fine with the basic shape

But once I apply some subdivision as a modifier then some really easy to spot lines appear :( basically on those two areas that I've merged together, what can I do to fix this? thanks!

I've run into this several times - it's always a relief to remember those sneaky internal edges/faces!

I found the solution, two edges were automatically generated within that shape that was causing this problem :)! edges disolved, the issue disappeared. thanks anyway!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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How to keep instances within the volume
I'm trying to create cookie chips within a chocolate with geometry nodes. I've managed to create the instances but within the surface. And all the references/tutorials (even blender description of the nodes) are mostly from the previous version not the latest 3.0 version of it :(! Not sure how to make this instances to remain within the shape of the chocolate, any help?

This setup worked for me. Basically you can move the points inwards along the normal.

The position of each distributed points is offset based on the normal at that point on the mesh.
The normal is scaled with a negative number so that the points move inwards rather than outwards.
In this case I captured the vertex normal instead of using the normal output directly from the distribute node because it is smoother around the corners of the cube, but I doubt it would make a difference for you, since your instances are much smaller and there are fewer of them.

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


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How do I change each instance X rotation at different moment
I have a camera, that I move along the X axis, and I want to rotate each instance of the K logo subtracting the x position of each instance to the actual camera position, to make it more dynamic, right now every K logo are rotating at the same time, not sure how to solve this with geometry nodes :( some help?

I finally sorted out :)! now it works :D!!


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How do make a metallic transition like this?
I would like to recreate this
And I have succeeded created the metallic effect with a B&W reference of the same packaging, leaving in white the areas I want metallic and black the areas I don't. But there's a transition within the metallic image reference, also a texture, not sure if I should add something else to my mask to make it the transition like that from bright to darkness.
Mine and how's looking so far:

Hi :). The gradient looks like a reflection. E.g. white floor, dark environment

maybe you should blur your mask a bit, also you should add a bit of bump noise

Put a "color ramp node" inbetween the color texture and the shader node (so on the yellow line) and play around with the sliders. you will fix the problem.


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"Internal error setting the array" during FBX export
I am trying to export a 3D model from blender 2.81 to an FBX file.  After clicking 'Export FBX', I receive the following error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\_init_.py", line 634, in execute
    return export_fbx_bin.save(self, context, **keywords)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 3198, in save
    ret = save_single(operator, context.scene, depsgraph, filepath, **kwargs_mod)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 3094, in save_single
    fbx_objects_elements(root, scene_data)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 2894, in fbx_objects_elements
    fbx_data_mesh_elements(objects, me_obj, scene_data, done_meshes)
File "C:Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 2.81\2.81\scripts\addons\io_scene_fbx\export_fbx_bin.py", line 1163, in fbx_data_mesh_elements
    uvlayer.data.foreach_get("uv", t_luv)
RuntimeError: internal error setting the array

location: <unknown location>:-1

This is a .blend file I got from someone else.  The only change  made was to separate part of one of the meshes into its own mesh.  Initially, it exported to FBX with no problem.  When I went back and separated another mesh, saved, and tried to export to FBX, it started giving me this error.
I'm new to 3D modeling and blender, I have no idea what any of this code stuff means.  I've tried googling this error and I'm seeing a lot of "nevermind, fixed it" type responses without explaining what they did to fix it.  Thanks in advance!

The only advice that I can give is to make sure everything is UV unwrapped.  If you need to flip normals on a surface you likely need to unwrap again.

THANK YOU so much this was so hard to find!


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Save 3D view in rendered shading in HQ
Is it possible to save the 3D view in the Rendered shading (or render preview) in HQ (defined resolution)? Because when I do Render preview I like the way looks, I like to save it directly, instead of to click the Render button (or F12), since else I must wait again for the same picture.
This question How to save print-quality screenshots of the 3D view? only works for Solid, Texture, Material, Wireframe and Bounding Box, but not for Rendered. Thanks :)
For example (the rendered preview):

After clicking the 3D view render button:

I think the best thing you can do is to take a screenshot, either using external software or via Window> Save Screenshot:

The downside is that you will have to crop out the rest of the interface afterwards as that will also be captured.

Thanks, but can I make a picture with a defined resolution (properties panel)?

Not really, the preview really is only intended as a preview.

What about an OpenGL render?

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


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What is the difference between duplicating and instancing an object, in regards to the materials they point to?
As a follow up of my question What does the 'F' button and '2' button do (materials tab)?, I have another question:
When I added an object mesh and applied a material, and I added another mesh, not duplicate but with ShiftA, and choose this same material than it is added as a new user (checked by press the 'F'-button and look at the number next to it).
When I duplicate linked an object by AltD their material data are linked, but this duplicated linked object mesh is not added as a new user (checked by press the 'F'-button and look at the number next to it)
But when I change the viewport color of the material then the added objects meshes (with ShiftA) and the duplicate linked object meshes (AltD) do change their viewport color. So are material from added objects linked different then the material from duplicate linked objects?

By default materials are linked to the object data. Hence when you instance the object data you are not duplicating the material, or the users of the material.
When you AltD an object, you are keeping the same object data.
If you look at the Data tab of the properties window for any linked duplicate object, you will see that the Mesh Data has the number of users.
The material still only has one user because part of the object data is the materials.

However if the material link is set to "Object" then AltD duplicating an object will increase the user count for the material.

The answers by David and TARDIS Maker demonstrate an understanding of the mechanisms in play, but don't use exactly the jargon I would prefer.
When you use Alt-d to duplicate an object, you are creating a new Object datablock (which live in bpy.data.objects[]) but that new object points at the SAME Mesh datablock (from bpy.data.meshes[]) as the original.  That mesh now has two users:

If you were to modify that shared mesh then both objects would be affected.
That single mesh datablock points at the material datablock, so the material datablock has only one user.
The mesh datablock is what David refers to as "object data", because in the python API it is accessible as obj.data.  There are a couple of other kinds of datablocks that can be object data such as curves (text and bezier), lamps, armatures, etc.
When you add a new cube object without duplicating it comes with a brand new mesh datablock different than the other ones in the scene, and when you assign the material datablock to that new cube's mesh datablock the material now has two users.
David also did a good job pointing out the per-object materials option which is a useful technique.

Thanks for clarifying :D You mean 1 user (just before your picture), right? :)

When you use Alt-D to duplicate an object, the mesh (or lamp or whatever the object points to) will have its user count incremented. Compare the object data pane before and after and you should see that the user count increases (either from no button to [2] or from [n] to [n+1]).

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


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Is it possible to make blurs that have an angle?
I try to make a light source a little blurry. In the compositor I use the blur filter, but that results in vertical or horizontal blurs (changing x and y values). Is it possible to make the blurs that have an angle? This image as an example:

There's a dedicated Glare node designed for creating lensflares:

I don't think it can produce diverging streaks quite like in your example, but perhaps it can come close enough?


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How can I use a pivot circle instead of a pivot point
As a follow up question to my previous question:
How to obtain the following topology?
Question
I start the with topology that resulted from the previous question:

How can I use a pivot circle instead of a pivot point, so I can obtain the following (of course I did it manually and inaccurate), where the distances, highlighted with red arrows, are equal and blue circle indicates pivot circle:

What I already tried
I tried scaling the inner and outer circle and use keyboard to type the same value, x and 1/x respectively

One way could be just mirroring one of those outer rings with either modifier or interactive mirroring.

I think instead of trying to find a way of changing pivot point mechanism (which doesn't necessarily exist) it's better to change way of modeling this object.
Simple alternative is to model this using curves. Create 2 curve circles, one - for the main object, another one - as bevel object for the first one. Set parameters for beveling on the first one and then make proper sharpness of second one to achieve form of desired object.

Both curve circles next to each other. Handle type for the big one is left as default, for the small one (profile curve) is set to Vector (edit it by pressing V in Edit mode)

Options for the big circle object (main one)

By editing profile curve you change main one. Note that if you want length of edges outlined on your screenshot to remain the same make sure to scale profile vertices (selected above) simultaneously or length will become uneven.

Edges of the final mesh have the same length.
See related info here Extrude along path

Alternative

First add a plane and rotate it 90 degrees around y-axis and rotate it 45 degrees around x-axis

scale along z-axis

move the plane along the z-axis up
use screw modifier with angle: 360 and screw: 0

I know I answered my own question because this could be an alternative to my question, but it does not answer my question about pivot circle


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Why won't this armature play it's animation in the Game Engine?
This question has been asked before but all the answers I found have not applied to me. My armature has the logic bricks "keyboard sensor> and > Action" with my animation selected and frames specified. No objects in the scene have any modifiers other than my characters armature modifier. I tried parenting my object to the armature and removing the armature modifier, but that didn't work. Always sensors do not work either. Also, the animations work perfectly when played before the game is started.
Here's my blend https://www.dropbox.com/s/l3bisldlm1prx5l/kirby2k162.blend?dl=0

Kirby's mesh is not parented to the armature, do ctrl+P with both objects selected. see this related post:http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/19656/how-are-bones-armatures-connected-to-the-rest-of-a-model/19658#19658

That did it thank you! I thought I had tried that before but I think I was doing an armature type parent, as opposed to a object parent, which is what worked.


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What causes rendered frame "flickering"?
Cycles Render. I have a simple scene, with a plane as ground, and objects on it. It is lit by a HDR background texture and one sun lamp, and being rendered to 16-bit TIFF individual frames. The ground plane color begins to flicker a darker version of the same hue after about 240 frames, and then eventually goes to the darker color after a dozen or so flickers over the next 120 frames. The ground material is simple Diffuse BSDF ... What is causing this flicker?
See flickering animation at: https://youtu.be/QSf4CFDx6Zk

Could be z-fighting, make sure you don't have any coplanar overlapping geometry on the ground.  Could you upload the .blend?

There are no coplanar polys anywhere in the scene. Blend uploaded.

This morning I am seeing this same bad rendering behavior on a different scene. At Fm 262 onward, the ground plane is rendering darker, with a dividing line between darker values at a 45-degree angle, with half of the plane color rendering even darker. This is RUINING the render. I tried rendering the offending frames again, but always get the same horrible result on those particular frames.  :-(  Why, why, WHY?

Here is a visual comparison between GOOD frames and BAD frames:  https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/62/fd/60/62fd607846e707a81f07a140311abd8c.jpg  These are rendered as 16-bit TIFF, if that makes a difference ...

could you upload the scene?

@ diramazoni -- It's 201.1 MB (baked rigid-body) ... I uploaded a simpler scene that had the same problem before, same ground plane asset, no changes ... (see above) ... but I'll try ... NOPE, upload size limit is 30 MB.

@Mr Zak - I tried your suggestions: no change. I'm noticing that the lower-res (25 samples) preview renders do NOT have this problem, only the large full-res (150 samples) renders do.

Rendered 262 frame of your animation, I don't see anything bad (HDR is another one because yours wasn't packed in file). Still if it persists and is present only on final render then the culprit might be in differences between them. See technical differences for details. Try disabling Motion Blur, changing camera's settings to default ones, using Clipping values as low as possible, change HDR to another one (though I don't think it can be reason), in world material set HDR to Non-Color data.

@ Mr Zak - In that earlier scene which I uploaded, the same errors happen at difference times. Please try seeing if you get a difference in ground-plane value between rendered frames 0276 and 0277. I will also try your suggestions on the newer/larger scene. On technical diffs, I get the same errors with F12 as with ctrl-f12.

So it appears that disabling Motion Blur doesn't really solve the problem ? (btw thank you for your letter, I'm glad to be of help). Unfortunately I can't proceed to testing as I couldn't reproduce the problem (frames mentioned rendered fine for me, but of course I didn't render whole animation). I'm really curious to learn what's wrong with this scene and whether this is a bug. Try importing exact these objects with exact this lighting into another scene and rendering it there. The only thing - what version of Blender do you use ? I don't think I know what's going on there as for now.

@ Mr Zak: Sometimes turning MB on or off and re-rendering a bad frame can correct the darkened objects, but most of the time, this is of no help. It is a great disappointment, and a hugely time-wasting frustrating mystery.

did you find solution? I have the same problem on Blender 3.6 .... Wtf is this?

It is most likely Z-fighting.
Break down the scene and look if there are any planes in the exact space of orientation.
1 - Could be a hidden object in viewport but still enabled in rendering

2 - Maybe it is an object that is hiding in a different layer.
3 - It could also be 1 object with 2 overlapping faces in the exact same location. (go into edit mode and pull away some edges to check)

It's not z-fighting, as stated before. No hidden objects. Nothing in any layer except layer 1. Nothing duplicated in the same space. -- I hate to report this, but on yet another scene (for the third time, with all fresh objects) this is happening again, but the darker frames also include ALL objects, not just the ground plane. The only thing that is not darker on the offending frames is the HDR background. The single lamp (sun) in the scene is NOT keyframed, and does not move or change during the scene. I'll post this render on YouTube with a link when it's finished. Blender 2.77.

Please see the new scene  https://youtu.be/dviikkFAsRQ  at around 7:20. The render was aborted after several bad frames. The darker frames include ALL objects, not just the ground plane. But the ground plane has that telltale 45-degree angle darker triangle, as before. I'd love to share the scene but it is too large to upload. I am stumped, and VERY frustrated.

Here is a side-by-side frame comparison between good and bad: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/76/43/f6/7643f653d7f87c4a0ba2c70859eed3fa.jpg

BTW, this is CPU rendering (not GPU). I'm continuing to render this 880-frame animation, and it continues to flicker ...

On what scale did you modeled the scene?

Scale: The dimensions of each plank is exactly X = 6.5, Y = 0.5, Z = 1.0.

The only thing I can then come up with is that the uv's are possibly generated?
Try ncluding a texture coordinate node in the material and set it to uv.(if it's unwrapped)

There are no UV's. All surfaces are simple mix nodes with diffuse and gloss. Alternatively, could this be a bug with CPU render? It's on a 2013 MacPro with AMD video cards (no GPU). I've seen other threads about the differences between CPU and GPU renders.

Mr Zak solved this, but I got side-tracked and didn't try his suggestion a week ago to turn MOTION BLUR off. I don't know why, but turning motion blur off has solved this problem which has been plaguing me for several weeks. Thank you, Mr Zak!  I'm sorry I didn't try your suggestion before. Now my question is: WHY? And of course, I need to be able to corner this bug in a super-simple scene and report it well ...

I guess I spoke too soon on the solution. MOST of the offending frames have been re-rendered OK with motion blur off, but there are still a few hold-outs which render DARK. I don't get it. This is a bizarre mystery, which makes no sense to me ... still searching for the solution.  :-(

authors: Никита Харлов


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How to get my [solid mode] object OUTLINES back?
 I don't know how this happened, but suddenly, my OGL object outlines (in object mode) are now gone. This makes it difficult to see object edges when they are placed adjacent to other objects. I need the object mode outlines back, but HOW?

http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/194/how-to-display-the-edges-of-a-mesh-while-in-object-mode

There are a couple places you can enable outlines. The first is within the viewport, to highlight selected and active objects. You can find that option here:

The other is in the object properties, here:

Enable wire to see the black edge outlines regardless of selection. Enable "Draw All Edges" to display all edges, whether coplanar or not. By default, coplanar edges are not drawn.

Thank you! The second one works fine, but only one object at a time. Is there a way to change ALL objects at the same time?

Select all objects, then hold ALT while pressing that checkbox. It will change all selected objects to match the active object.

@italic
Thanks for the useful tip,
one year later, in blender 2.76, select all object and hold CTRL+ALT to match active objet


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How do I restore the original window configuration?
I have made a real mess of things. Each time I try to close one "viewport" or whatever they are called, another one is created, and now my entire screen is a MESS. I just want the original window configuration back, with Tools, Outline, and main window. Right now, I can't even access User Prefs, to see if that's how to do it because there's some kind of "wrench" over it, and it cannot be opened. Help?

Think of it the other way, it is even more non-intuitive to split a window by making it bigger. Remember that you can only join windows if the shared borders of both windows have exactly the same size.

In 'User Preferences' under the 'File' tab, you can uncheck the 'Load UI' option.
Save User Preferences.
Then restart Blender.
This will cause blender to load the default window layout.
If you want to keep a window layout, you need to remember to re-check 'Load UI' once blender has restarted.

To close individual panel, you can drag the corner with the arrow of neighboring panel with the same height or width. This is using the outliner to close the properties panel.

The link posted by @poor has this answer, you just have to wait until the end of a 30 second gif to see it in action.  (is there a TL;DW for gifs?)
If all else fails you can reset Blender to the factory defaults from the file menu: File > Defaults > Load Factory Settings.

This last method has the unfortunate side-effect of resetting all customizations like shortcuts, window layouts and enabled addons.

This didn't work for me, when i loaded my saved file, Blender remembered all my windows.

Relevant open bug: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/111528


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Difference Between Edit and Draw Mode
I have some problems with my grease pencil. Sometimes some of my new drawings do not show in draw mode. It looks like blender do not take into account the new strokes? But when I look to the edit mode it seems that the stroke is there!
It looks like I have some problems with key frames settings or key frames recording. If I set a new key frame I can add new stroke but the old one disapears and I do not want to start again (even if it is looking very simple I know)

Welcome to the stack exchange! It sounds like you are having some hiccups with keyframes.
Firstly you're going to want to be able to see your keyframes. Grease Pencil Key frames are not visible in the Timeline so you might want to change the timeline at the bottom to Dope Sheet and then choose Grease Pencil in the adjoining drop down box. You should now be able to see your key frames when you select a Grease Pencil Object.
Why do your drawings delete on a new key frame? Well that's because when you move to a new frame whatever you draw on that keyframe lives on that keyframe only. Blender will show the last keyframe until you add a new one and that's why your previous frame appears to disappear when you add a new drawing. You can copy the previous frame quite easily, either click the draw button in the top left when in Draw mode then Animation, and Duplicate all layer or I tend to go into the new frame and enter edit mode, Select all with A, then click G and hit enter that effectively copies the frame.
In answer to your final question regarding some items appearing in edit mode and not Draw, do you have any modifiers, lattices or armatures at play here? Usually their effect is turned off when in edit mode so that would be my guess although being able to see your keyframes may unearth something else going on.
Hope that helps!
Matt

Sorry for the delay. Thanks a lot for your help!


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Search and replace image textures in a project?
Is there a way to search though the materials in a Blender project and replace the texture names?
For example, I have a PBR material consisting of several different external textures and I want to change the names of the textures while leaving the shader nodes intact. Rather than clicking on each texture node and loading a new texture, I'm hoping there's a way to search and replace the texture names. Seems to me this should be possible; is it? Thanks. Blender 3.0, Windows 11

There is no built-in to do this, but you could easily adapt this answer to do the image replacement when it finds an image node.

Marty Fouts, thank you for the suggestion. I'm not a scripting expert so I'll need to do some research to see if this will meet my needs. Thanks again!

You need to make a list of pairs of images, with the old name in the new.  In the if statement where I print the image name, you need to replace the print with code to do the change.  You can find a sample of that code in other answers here.


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How to return extrude back to original
What is the best way to recover the extrusion you have performed to your object?

Above is just an example, but should describe the case. And I'm not looking for answer like: draw a new sphere. Also "undo (Ctrl+Z)" is not an option (noticed the design error too late).
So far I have found two options:

I select all of those faces and delete. But then I get hole on my sphere. I can fill the cap by F or Alt+F, but the surface is not the same anymore.

Other option that comes to mind is lowering this close enough to the surface, and then using merge vertices. But then those two vertices on middle of those six faces are not meltdown to anywhere, and again surface does not look correct.

delete this part then you have a hole that you fill with ctrl F > Grid Fill (and tweak the parameters in the Operator box if necessary)

Script version.

Un-Extrude along face normals

Finds the average normal of all selected faces.
Finds the average edge length of extruded edges.
Translates all vertices back
Removes Doubles. (From the collapsed edges)

In edit mode select the faces, then run script.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector

ob = bpy.context.object
me = ob.data

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
faces = [f for f in bm.faces if f.select]
verts = set(v for f in faces for v in f.verts ) # or from selected verts
edges = [e for v in verts for e in v.link_edges
            if not e.select ]
norm = (sum((f.normal for f in faces), Vector()) / len(faces)).normalized()
norm.negate()
d = sum(e.calc_length() for e in edges) / len(edges)

bmesh.ops.translate(
        bm,
        verts=list(verts),
        vec=d * norm,
        )
bmesh.ops.remove_doubles(
        bm,
        verts=[v for e in edges for v in e.verts],
        dist=1e-5,
        )
for f in faces:
    f.select_set(True)
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

Notes
An improvement would be to find all the selected face islands within the selection and "unextrude" on an island by island basis.
This is "unextruding" an extrusion along face normal. Instead of the average face normal, the vector defined by any (or an average of all) edges would be a better fit.
Any direction un-extrude

After extruding the created extruded edges will (AFAIK) all be the extrusion vector.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector

ob = bpy.context.object
me = ob.data

bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
faces = [f for f in bm.faces if f.select]
verts = set(v for f in faces for v in f.verts ) # or from selected verts
edges = [e for v in verts for e in v.link_edges
            if not e.select ]

v0, v1 = sorted(edges[0].verts[:], key=lambda v:v.select)
bmesh.ops.translate(
        bm,
        verts=list(verts),
        vec=v0.co - v1.co,
        )

bmesh.ops.remove_doubles(
        bm,
        verts=[v for e in edges for v in e.verts],
        dist=1e-5,
        )
for f in faces:
    f.select_set(True)
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)

Added a test on Suzanne. The remove doubles has effect of unselecting a face depending on which edge vert was removed.... have updated script to restore selection

This is an even extrusion, no scaling. So..

Alt-select the ring of generated faces, X delete them
Hover - L select the isolated patch
With Snap set to 'Vertex', 'Active', the whole patch selected, and a convenient vertex made active, just G snap the patch back into place..
All verts selected, M merge > By Distance.

Delete the extrusion, select the hole edge loop, press CtrlF > Grid Fill, it will fill the hole and respect the topology (you can tweak some parameters in the Operator box):

Set the transform orientation to "Normal"
Select extruded face patch
Press G  to grab and  Z to constrain to the normal direction
Do your best to return the face patch to its original position (Snap should help, but I can't ever get it to work for me)
Merge the vertices by distance.


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How to scale and move a mesh to specific location and axis in Blender 2.8
I am a beginner and i am trying to move other mesh ,so that i can use as a wall and another mesh as floor .
But, i am unable to move the other mesh(smaller in the attached screen) .
Both the mesh is moving when i am using x,y,z transform (right side in screenshot).
Please help me in moving the smaller mesh towards bigger one and erect it as a wall and also scale the mesh in any axis by selecting it.
Thanks.

let me know if you face further problems or just upload the blend file.

Welcome to Blender Stack exchange! It appears that you are in edit mode and want to move the shorter plane near to the larger one(as described). You can just select the plane and move it using G hotkey, but make sure you are not selecting anything else other than the plane. You can go into edit mode > deselect everything (Double tap A or Alt A) > hover over the plane you want to move > press L to select that plane > use the move tool to move in the choice of your direction. I would recommend you to see some videos of Blender Guru, CGGeek, CGCookie to get started with blender.

Thanks a lot @Harshvarsdhan.

Welcome! Make amazing artworks now.


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rise cookie with shaders?
Is possible to create a shader like this rise cookie? I can notice that some areas have holes but some other looks like bumps at the same time? using bump and displacement at the same time with a displacement modifier for the holes? not only that but to make some parts coloured? like this example? some advice? thanks in advance!

Do you mean Rice cookie? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/84745/create-irregularly-shaped-gaps-in-cube

thanks Duarte! this is exactly what I required :D thanks!


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Why texture appears like this after smear applied?
I have an intricate sweet cookie made of chunked flavoured rise. I've used meatballs and a particle system as per other thread explained, I also created a seamless texture and applied to it, the thing is that since is very intricate and merged with another similar object then it displays the texture uneven, and looks bad.
I've used the smear tool to drag the sharp corners and make it look better, but on the final render it keeps appearing as a cuted edge. Any way to fix this?
thanks in advance:
The Smeared applied very well as you can see

The rendered version, can you see the jittered and badly gutted edges?

You can set your seamless texture image to "box" instead of "flat" ad play with the blend value to get something convincing.
Flat:

Box:


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How to generate a city using custom models in a custom shape?
So i need to create a custom medieval city. I have custom models for it already and the city needs to be in a specific shape, so not a square or circle. How can i generate the city within the shape with the custom models, without having the buildings colliding/overlapping?

please add some more screenshots how you did it. With geometry nodes? or hand-modeled? ...or? or provide your blend file...

I havn't done it, I'm trying to figure out how to do it. The buildings themselves are hand modeled.

One way would be using geometry nodes.
So if you have the shape of your city:

you can add a geometry nodes modifier to that shape with this node setup:

You should put your buildings in the collection.
result:

yes, you have to "imagine" that the torus, cubes and cones are your building. By changing the distance min parameter, you can change the distance between your buildings.

Note: this only works good, if the buildings have nearly the same
size.

you could even add rivers or streets...where no building may be built.
Then the node setup looks like this:

result:

Thankyou so much! I will try this out.

If the buildings have different sizes what would you recommend I do?

you could increase the "distance min" value. but this will of course increase the distance between all buildings,.

thanks again so much, ill try this out :)

Interesting city shape... I think medieval cities were usually round, because that's the optimal shape - the best area to the wall length... ;)

i am not a medieval city shape specialist...sorry :(


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Make an object Semi-Transparent while Transforming? (to see where to position it)
I'm working on a plugin to Photobash in the 3d Viewport, and a tricky thing I've come across is positioning the images, since they're imported with full opacity.
Is there possibly an option for the 3D Viewport to make an object semi-transparent while the Transform operator is being undertaken? Preferably without having to mess with automating shaders
Thanks!

Click here on "Object"

Choose here a color and set alpha e.g. to 0.5

result:


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Unable to add bone in Object Mode
I'm trying to add bones to my two sphere objects, but even though I'm in object mode I can't add any bones. When I mouse over Armatures, I do not get any options to add bones at all. Can someone please let me know what I might be doing wrong? Thanks

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

This option adds an armature (with one bone) to your scene. You need to set the armature in edit mode to add bones. Toggle Show Overlays on the top right to see them.


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Bind water animation to keyframe
I'm currently making a bar scene.
One of the guests is holding a keg upside down, I made the water animation for it.
But I want to make the camera go through the stream of pouring beer at frame 180.
How do I delay the animation so it starts at frame 179, so the camera can catch the initial pouring?

You can adjust the offset with the "Offset" paremeter above the "Bake" button on your picture.

Is that "Offset" value where you put the starting frame number? because I typed in 179 at "offset" but now the animation is almost completed at frame 1

Offset adjusts the simulation start forwards (if set negative) or backwards (if set positive).

Here's something that works for this:
Make sure you have saved the .blend file, and have baked your fluid simulation completely. (This isn't required but is optimal.)
Once ready, set the offset amount. Negative (one for each frame ahead) postpones the simulation one frame. Positive makes the simulation a frame earlier.
Here are some pictures:

Offset -15 frame one:

Frame 15 offset -15:

Hope this helps!


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How To Get A Quaternion Camera Rotation That Is Independent Of View Orientation
Here is the problem,
If I roll the view 90 degrees using Shift + 4 or Shift + 6. All of the view controls stop working correctly.
Rotating with the mouse left and right causes camera rotation up and down and vice versa.
Its impossible to use.
All other 3D modeling programs resolved this issue using quaternions for camera controls, so that camera controls work the same way independently of the where the camera is and what angle it is rotated to.
Is it possible to get this kind of control with Blender? Or is it not going to work with the view rotated 90 degrees perpendicular to the screen.

I've never experienced myself the specific problem that you are talking about, so I don't actually know if this fixes it, but you are able to change the rotation mode for the camera from XYZ to Quaternion.
The image below shows the setting being changed in the properties panel.

I hope this helps! (but it might not, idk)


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Cut a model into two models by intersecting with a third model
I have a cube puzzle i want to model:

It is basically a cube intersected by 12 spheres.
Rather than model each piece individually (which would be really painful) I would like to model a cube, make a bunch of spheres of the right size, position them correctly against the cube, and then "cut" the cube with the spheres (probably using mirroring to avoid extra work).
Here's a screenshot of the model I've got.

I'd like to "cut" the cube pictured along the place where the sphere intersects it. The end result I'd like to get is two pieces that add up to a cube, but have that partial-sphere cut going through the middle of it.
Is there any way to do this in blender?
I'm really new to blender, so the more specific you can be in how to do it, the more helpful it will be. I've been reading a ton of tutorials, but I'm not trying to become a blender expert, just trying to get this one model for a project I'm working on!
Thanks!

For each cut, duplicate the object and use a boolean "difference" modifier to get one side of the cut, and "intersect" to get the other side.

You can use a Boolean modifier.

create 2 different objects (i.e. cube and sphere), and position them where you like the "cut" to happen:

Add a Boolean modifier to the cube:

Set object to sphere and operation to difference:

Apply modifier and delete the sphere:


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Export Scene to JSON that has Multiple Models that each have Multiple Materials
I'm trying to export the following scene to JSON:

It is made up of 45 models. Each model will want to have 2-4 different colored faces, like in the picture above.
When I export it in the JSON exporter, I don't get multiple materials per model:
{
            "name":"Corner FTR",
            "uuid":"E83CD01B-9517-3450-B715-1736FABFF4AB",
            "matrix":[-0,0,0.814963,0,0.814963,0,0,0,0,0.814963,0,0,-0.003244,3e-06,0,1],
            "visible":true,
            "type":"Mesh",
            "material":"E323212E-D25C-3E77-B9E9-C7EF768C37B6",
            "castShadow":true,
            "receiveShadow":true,
            "geometry":"3AC1CE35-8D05-3429-9045-B37405F9EBC4"
}

(This is the resultant export code for the corner in the foreground with three colors).
Naturally, when I try to render this in Three.js, the materials don't show, because they didn't export. (In fact, no material shows at all; it seems that material exported is a dud).
If I give a model a single material, everything works fine. The problem only arises when I try to give a single model different materials for different faces.
Any suggestions?

I personally would try one of these two things:

Bake an image for the whole object to be UV wrapped in, and then use that image as one material.

OR

Separate the Meshes per material, and export those out separately with their single materials. I know THREEJS anyway has groups that you could use to re-group all of the geometry, but I'm not sure that's what you are using JSON for.


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How do I merge two quads that overlap each other into one?
I am relatively new to Blender and since I couldn't find any answer elsewhere online I decided to ask here for some support.
How do I merge two faces into one? What I am trying to do is merge the left and right quads along the center together because they overlap and create two pieces that extrude instead of one (which is what I am trying to do)...

I tried Bridge-Edge Loop but it doesn't create the desired effect, as you can see here:

Thank you in advance!
Aldin

Can you add your .blend file?

@Photon: cegaton's answer solved the problem! Thank you!


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Noise Reduction for Video in Blender
I have footage of noisy HD video (too dark) and wonder if Blender's noise reduction applies to video. There is also this Blender add on that is available for a nominal fee, but again, there is no indication that it works for video and the seller cannot be contacted. Can anyone advise on noise reduction for video in Blender? I have tried noise reduction in DaVinci Resolve and it works a treat, but hope the same can be done in Blender...or better. Just to be clear, because some are saying 'duplicate' this is for VIDEO not 3D. V I D E O.

Blender is a bit of a struggle as an NLE, but I was surprised it can do what it does. There are times when it can be useful for intro/outro graphics. Perhaps for 'add-on' developers reading this, they may want to make something for video reduction noise. One of this issues I have with DaVinci Resolve is that when you use Lite (their free version) it disables one of your GPU's (my workstation has two) and I do not have cash for the paid version, yet. I don't think Blender would ever disable my GPU's. Today, maybe Blender sucks as an NLE, but maybe it won't tomorrow.

Cycles noise reduction introduced in recently released Blender 2.79 version works exclusively for rendered images because it specifically uses information from the 3D scene to make an educated approximation, as far as I know.
As such it would not work for random video files since no 3D information would be available in most situations
Everything else that uses the Compositor and/or Video Sequence Editor should be able to work as well for externally obtained footage, as long as it does not rely on data obtained from 3D rendering, like render passes, layers, or any other buffered data from a virtual model.
The mentioned addon seems to be used in the node editor as a node group based approach, so in theory it should work with any externally obtained footage.
Just use an Shift+A > Input > Image or Input > Movie clip to insert your video sequence and use the desired nodes as recommended.
Disclaimer: Whether the algorithms or processes used in those nodes will work correctly or satisfyingly in your particular footage or specific type of noise is unknown.
Those nodes were made specifically with Raytracer bound noise/fireflies in mind, that have particularly very high peaks, so it may not work well of the low intensity noise or your particular case.


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Blender texture painting dosen't look right
When I try to paint my model, it is pretty difficult to paint a straight line.
What I have done so far, is selecting the faces I want to paint, but the result is pretty bad. It is actually terrible.
My image is 2048 x 2048, but it might not be enough?
How do you suggest to get rid of these chopped edges?

Best regards

Most likely a UV map issue. Try re unwrapping your object with a better UV layout

you could also draw in your UV Image editor to make a border around you UV edges


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can you add subdivision surface modifiers to specific vertex groups
i want to make parts of my model seem more smooth but others i want to stay flat.

No, you can't use Vertex Groups for Subdivision Surface modifier.
What you can do is select region you want to have smoother and use W > Subdivide Smooth.
Be aware that this method will create ngons and/or tris (when Quad/Tri Mode is checked).

In 2.83 and later (and possibly earlier), The process is to right-click and then click subdivide and change the "Smoothness" setting to 1

As far as I understand you can not do that, but you can use the knife tool to make cuts on the surface,
to access the tool touch the k or in the t menu on the left side of your screen in edit mode.
also remember that if two sides are very close to each other it will give the illusion that  the area is flatter
here I leave you an image as an example


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Error with Warning! Legacy WGL is unable to select between different OpenGL versions
Yesterday i was able to open the blender and use it normally; i updated to win10 3 days ago and was deleting and changing some stuffs in order to have a less slow pc and fix other problems with the double screen and other things. The thing is that now after finishing the "cleansing" i found that i can't open blender because of this:

But... before this message, i was having another issue while opening blender that was the one of the reason behind of this "cleansing". I had that annoying "LoadLibrary failed with error 87: The parameter is incorrect". After some research, i found that a way to solve it was by renaming the OpenGL driver "atig6pxx.dll" to "atig6pxx.dll.bak", and so i did that change and it worked, no more loadlibrary error, but... when i opened the Blender i got the message of not working/updated drivers, so, i went to the Driver Booster and updated 2 drivers, indeed, there were 2 drivers not updated after all this "cleansing"; i restarted the pc and after that... i opened the Blender and... BAM! another wild driver error message appears! I used Driver Booster to update the drivers, but it wasn't effective! (the drivers were already updated), so i decided to watch closely what was written in the cmd black screen, and found this damn message "Warning!  Legacy WGL is unable to select between different OpenGL versions" and i remembered the renaming process i did to solve the "loadlibrary failed error", and i asked myself "maybe that could be the problem", so, i went to the same folder, find that file and rename it back to it's original name, but guess what? it had its original name again! and i was like "okay, no problem... maybe that's the problem" so i decided to do the same like before, renaming it adding ".bak" and the end, but now this time i couldn't complete the task because i needed permission of "SYSTEM", and i was like, "oh god, why". So... that's it, That's the story.
Before this cleansing, i was able to open the Blender normally, but after that, i had all these issues i aforementioned in the story.
The Blender version i have is 2.79 (just in case).
Any suggestion on how i could fix this? ¡¡¡I HAVEN'T USED BLENDER IN 3 DAYS AT THIS POINT!1!1!

This is not a Blender question but I'll try to help you anyway.
Uninstall any display drivers you installed previously using DDU. Then just run a Windows update, that should load the most stable driver for you automatically. If that still doesn't work, go to amd.com, nvidia.com, or intel.com and find your driver from the Download/Support/Driver page.
A warning for the future, randomly renaming dlls is not a solution, it's a hack at best and is dangerous unless you understand what it's doing. In this case, you basically removed the OpenGL driver.

Thank you so much! it worked fine. You're the man, now i'll be able to work in Blender again! :D


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Basics: Retrieve Node attribute definition boxes and noodles
On save and re-open, objects display the node attributes defined previously, but in Shader Editor, how do you display the definition dialogs and noodles? (The screen is black, even when an object is displayed) node attributes are retained, so how do I retrieve the Node input/out definition boxes and the noodles connecting them?

I want:

Are you sure it's not just off screen? Go to View > Frame All or press Home on the keyboard. This will bring everything back on screen if it was in fact off screen.

Thanks for that. Home works great. After taking the splinters out of my forehead, I also found Select > Find Node > Principle BSDF


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V 3.4 Annotate Geometry Nodes
Is there a way to add text or annotation frames in the geo nodes editor? (to, for example, document methods or problems for oneself or for future users). I want these to appear in the editor, not on the layout.

The following description applies to both the Geometry and Material nodes editors and was discovered after experimenting so I may have missed some options.
Select your required nodes and frame them with Ctrl-J. Unchecking Shrink on the Properties section of the N-panel will allow you to manually resize the frame by dragging the edges and to move the nodes around in the frame to make room for the annotation. The Label Size applies to both the top frame label and the annotation.

Open a Text workspace, add and name a new document, then enter your required annotation text.

In the node workspace, click Text in the side panel and select your text document name. This will then be added to the frame.

You can change the text in the editor and this will be updated on the frame when you click anywhere in the node workspace.

Re-reading the question again, you can also press 'W' to bring up the toolbar and use the annotation tools, but you'd have to write any text with the mouse or a pen and graphics tablet rather than typing.

Thanks everyone. These tips are incredibly valuable to me and I couldn't find it on the exchange, nor in the manual. Hope it helps others as well.

Left Click Select , CTRL+J, Left Click Frame, F2

You can also add the contents of a text file to the frame background from the Properties > Text section on the N panel, but you then have to resize the frame and move the nodes around so that they don't cover it which is a bit of a fiddle.

@JohnEason ... this deserves stand-alone answer with a single screen that is awesome I didn't notice it :)

@vklidu I'll add an answer shortly. I'd only realised that it was possible myself after I saw this question and had a play! You can actually create the annotation in the Text editor and use that in the frame!

@JohnEason For resizing the frame that the nodes don't cover the text it might also be useful to know that you can disable the Shrink option in the Properties which is enabled by default and mostly ignored by most people, so you should add this in your answer :)

@GordonBrinkmann Yes I saw that when experimenting last night and was going to add that as part of my answer otherwise the nodes just cover the annotation text.


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Blender 3.0 Add Mesh (Icosphere)
I'm a beginner watching v2.x Youtube Tutorials. In them there is a add menu to define basic structure of the iconsphere.
(Object Mode > Add > Mesh > Icosphere > [enter]. No menu, just the sphere.
Where is the menu in 3.0, or what is the equivalent? Add-ons? modifier?

Are you looking for this menu? https://i.sstatic.net/No129.png

Yes, that's the one. The answer below also told me where to find it - so grats to both

As soon as you've added the icosphere you should see a settings dialog in the bottom left of the 3D window. You may have to click the down arrow (indicated) to expand it.
 Note that you must alter any of the settings before moving or applying any other transformation to the icosphere. You can however bring back the dialog with F9 if it's disappeared but only if you've not changed anything else in the interim.
This applies to most other objects too.

The dialog was disappearing under my zoom add-on. I can just see its top. But now I've got it - thank you so much

Quite a few folks haven't even noticed it's there *without any other addon dialogs in the way! :^)

Thanks again - for the F9 tip.


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Geo Nodes scattering is different in solid and rendered view
I am scattering moss assets on all the faces that face in z direction. I didnt get it to work until I changed from rendered view to solid view and there it is exactly how I want it to be. Not sure if it is because of the scultping I did with multires modifier and subdiv modifier, although I have the same levels for viewport and render in both of them.
How it looks in solid view:

How it looks in rendered view:

Geo Nodes setup (Blue circle is the moss scattering):

Modifier Stack:


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Distorted texture on a plane
I have this pool scene that I am trying to do and I have been trying for 2 hours to fix the distorted texture but cant figure it out. Tried different modelling approaches but nothing helped. I set the subdivision surface modifier to adaptive subdivision because I want to use the displacement of the texture. Tried different UV unwrapping methods but didnt help either but maybe I just did them wrong.

How have you textured and UV unwrapped the floor? I tried to replicate the issue but can't get such distortions.

Yes. Added a Texture and UV unwrapped with Smart uv, cube projection, project from view (in top view) and even manually


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How can I limit the rotation of a bone using euler angles in ik
The problem is I'm trying to limit the y rotation of the top bone in an ik chain to 0.
By the way, I'm not using a pole target.
When I posed ik handler, then applied the visual transform to the bone, I noticed the y rotation of the bone ignored the constraint.
As you can see in the picture below ik constraint tab is doing nothing.

Now, here come the weird part, I noticed that if I change the rotation mode to quaternion, the bone y component is always 0, as you can in the picture below.

The problem is I need the bones to rotate in the yzx axes
You can replicate this fairly easily, just create 4 bones, change the rotation mode to yzx, remove the parent from the last bone and make it the ik handler, no pull target.
So I have two questions:
Does the ik rotation constraints only work in quaternion ?
How can I limit the y rotation to 0 while using the yzx rotation mode while using ik ?
I also tried all the other Euler Modes, the problem is still there

I fixed the problem using rotation copy constraint
I duplicated the the bones needed for the ik chain, in this case, made a copy of, upper arm bend, upper arm twist, forearm bend, forearm twist, fixed their hierarchy, created the ik chain from the copied bones, made forearm bend and forearm twist copy the rotation each from its own duplicate, made the upper arm bend copy only the X and Z of its duplicate and finally, made the upper arm twist copy the rotation from its duplicate and the Y rotation of upper arm bend
EDIT : or a simpler way would be to make a two bones ik chain 'upper arm' and
'forearm' ,make the two FK bend bones copy the X and Z ,and the two FK twist bone copy the Y
The rotation copy constraint should be in local space.
If the bones are not moving naturally or look too stiff, play around with the stiffness value of rotation in the inverse kinematic tab for each bones.
Make sure to untick the deform option for the duplicate bones and to tick Only Deform Bones in the export options if you want to export the animation.

I gave a poor answer earlier.  I was thinking of a different situation.  I apologize.
But the main issue here, with the precise locks and limits you're using, is that 3D angles aren't decomposable into 3 independent axes.
The easiest example of this is to consider two different XYZ Euler triplets: either rotate in x by 180 degrees; or rotate in Y then Z 180 degrees each.  This is the exact same orientation.  So when we look at this orientation, does it have Y axis rotation?  When we lock an IK bone in Y, should this be an orientation it should be able to reach?
Let's do an experiment.  Just take one bone, make it any kind of Euler we want, and then rotate it in only local X and Z axes.  For ZX Eulers, rotating it in X then Z will give us Y axis rotation; for XZ Eulers, rotating it in Z then X will give us Y axis rotation.  Even though we never rotated it in Y!  So do those orientations have Y axis rotation?  Are these orientations that a Y-locked IK bone should reach?  No matter what the orientation, our Y locked IK bone is going to have Y axis rotation when it rotates in both X and Z, because the Y is not independent of X and Z.
Let's do another experiment.  Let's make a Y locked IK bone, a bone that locked tracks X then Z the target, a bone that locked tracks Z then X the target, and a bone that damped tracks the target, and rather than looking at their Y channel values in some particular Euler order, let's look at what direction their axes are pointing:

We can only see three bones there-- that's because the Y-locked IK bone has the exact same orientation as the damped tracking bone.  Meanwhile, the two locked track bones' axes point completely different directions.  The IK bone and the damped track bones' "roll" are in the middle of our two locked track orientations.  That's how a Y-only locked IK bone acts; and this is indeed the smartest way it could act.  The concept of bone twist is not as intuitive as it first seems, because it is not independent of other rotation, but this is the closest we can get to the idea of no-twist.
Now, what you're showing here is an upper arm, with an upper arm twist bone, and an IK forearm, presumably with a 3-bone chain length.  There is likely one of two practical questions here that you want answered:

How to keep the upper arm from adopting ugly positions?  The answer is not through IK angle limits, but through restraining yourself from placing the IK target in places that will lead to ugly positions.  There are places where an arm cannot reach.  Don't put the IK target there.  Trying to enforce arm position via IK angle limits will lead to twitch if it ever comes into play.  A good upper + lower arm IK system has 1 and only 1 solution for any position of the IK target (within reach), which is exactly what you want for IK, and all angle limits can do is make situations where there is no solution, so the bones will do something weird.

How to make a automatic twist bone setup for IK?  Start with a two-bone IK arm (upper arm, forearm) without any angle limits on any bone, with the forearm slightly, naturally bent.  Disable deform on the upper arm bone.  Create a new upper arm, parented to shoulder, and damped track the tail of the IK upper arm.  Create an upper arm twist bone and parent it to the IK upper arm:

thanks once again for taking the time to answer .first, i had like to clarify the problem exist even by slightly moving the ik ,i'm not moving the ik in an extreme position .what you mentioned make sense but the point is when animating ,the Y rotation should stay at 0 ,even if X and Z both rotate,just like in FK .also i'm using a daz model , that means first i cannot add new deform bones ,delete or change existent ones, second ,the upper arm and upper leg both are locked on the Y axis ,since there is a twist child bone for that ,i found a work around ,will write it in a bit ,thanks once again

It doesn't matter how far you move the IK.  This will always be true.  It is not something that only occurs at certain angles; the 180 degree example is merely the easiest to visualize in your mind.  The example with four bones involves a rotation of less than 90 degrees from rest as demonstrated in the picture.

i did not say you are wrong or that i did not understand ,it's simply beyond the point ,when baking the constraint later on for the animation ,the Y rotation should be always 0 in the graph editor ,its literally unacceptable for Y rotation to change from 0 since the bone have clear limits it should not exceed .so when i apply visual transform ,if the Y is anything other than 0 ,or if the X and Z went beyond the limits i set it's a failure


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How to apply a Shader in Blender 2.79?
Here the Shader download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G5YJ8gyZ-JlIWHNZd25mmMMLRANBxj88/view?usp=sharing

I opened Blender 2.79b
I went to import > Wavefront (.obj) and loaded my model. I selected the model
I switched from 3D View to Node Editor and checked the "Use nodes" checkbox
I went to Append > EngravingShader.blend > NodeTree > NodeGroup
I went to Add>Group>NodeGroup

Where do I connect the NodeGroup points so that the shader works when rendering my image?

The node group is like a texture, you could connect that directly to the output node. Also, if you select the node and press tab, you will see what's inside

Sorry, but what should I connect and where? In my NodeGroup, the points "Threshold", "Shader" and "Vector" do not connect at any point of the Output node. Only "Lines" connects to "Color" or "Alpha" of the Output. When I connect "Lines" to "Color" and/or "Alpha", it doesn't work, unfortunately

Unfortunately as it stands this question doesn't seem to be answerable without more details. Without knowing what that node group contains or what it is supposed to do it is a blind guess telling how to use it. Judging from the screenshot I'd even dare saying that is a Cycles shader node and you are attempting to use it in a Blender Internal material, which is most likely incompatible

Looking at the shader, we can see a green socket, which doesn't exist in Blender Renderer, so this shadergroup can be used in either Cycles or Eevee or another engine.
Then, looking inside the nodegroup, you should see an "undefined" node in red. That means the node isn't recognized by the Blender version you are using, either because the node was created in newer versions of Blender or for a render engine that isn't installed in your version.
But in your case, opening this shadernode in the current Blender 2.93 reveals that node to be a "Shader to RGB" node, which was introduced in Blender 2.8 series for Eevee render engine only.
In other words, this nodegroup is not compatible with Blender 2.79. You need to update.


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Blender Function need help
I found this guys on YouTube he able to move the object on edit mode by LMB  on spaces and move the vertex. But when I try on my own blender because I'm curious it just make a select box not moving the object. Here are the picture to show what I mean

From the picture above it shows that he click the outer range but able to move the vertex of the apple and he uses proportional editing that is why he can move all around the vertex.

Without knowing the Youtube tutorial I can only suppose what exactly the guy is doing, but I'm quite sure he has the Move tool enabled (the cross of arrows on the left) while you probably have the default Select tool enabled (which is the cursor in a box on the top left). If you enable the Move tool, left-click a vertex to select it, then left-click and drag the selected vertex while holding the mouse button. And with Proportional Editing enabled, the other vertices will be affected, too.
//EDIT: In the default settings for (newer) versions of Blender, you have to click and drag the selected vertex. What is missing in the tutorial (it's for Blender 2.8), is a selectable option for how to use Drag with the mouse (see last image at the top): by default it's set to Select Box. If you switch this to Active Tool, you can click somewhere in the viewport and start dragging the vertex.

here is the Link of the Yt  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEVAGnR2GRQ&list=PL3UWN2F2M2C8-zUjbFlbgtWPQa0NXBsp0&index=7 and its on minute of 13:06

i mean he moved the vertex tho from the outer spaces

@VincentThamrin Yeah, I guess you are using a different Blender version than Zach does in the tutorial (he's on 2.8), in newer versions you can change the option for dragging. I've edited the answer to show where you change it.

yeah,im using the latest version i think i use Blender that download on Steam

@VincentThamrin The problem is, most of the time and especially for really basic tutorials it doesn't matter that much which version you are using. But some features are not the same in each version, so you might keep an eye on that if something doesn't work as expected. Unfortunately not all tutorials are available for each version. Anyway, the edit I made to the answer should fix your problem.

so what you need to do is just change the Drag from  Select box to Active tools ? cuz mine i think is select box.

That's what I wrote... Select Box is the default setting. I didn't watch the tutorial, I have no idea if he changed anything. But in his older version you cannot even see the option on top of the window so maybe it worked like that by default back then.


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What does the "Height" map mean in Blender?
i've been purchasing some textures of Textures.com. The thing is that some of these have a displacement and some others have something called "Height". At first i thought it was the same thing but after watching closely, they don't seem to be the same (or maybe i'm bad at observation).
The thing is that i need to know what does this map mean.
It's the same as a "displacement" map?
If not, where should i connect it in the node editor?
EDIT:
You can see the differences here:
https://www.textures.com/download/substance0043/127911?q=seamless&filter=3d_materials
The thing is that in a displacement map, a valour means sinking and the other lifting, but in the second texture group you can see that a black valour(which is sinking), is in a place where in the colour image is not sinking but lifting instead (a lifting flagstone).
You can see the same happening here in this texture pack:
https://www.textures.com/download/substance0045/127923?q=seamless&filter=3d_materials
While in this other, instead, the height map looks more like a displacement map:
https://www.textures.com/download/3dscans0027/126894?q=seamless&filter=3d_materials
Now you see what i mean?
The thing is that these texture (mostly or entirely, i guess), are made for Zbrush
I hope this clear the things up :)

Could you descibe them? From what you have said I expect the are B/W images that works exactly as a displacement map. If you would like to use them to alter the normals of a BSDF, you can use the bump node which has an imput socket exactly called Height in Cycles. Or they can be used to drive the major displacement of a Displace modifier, leaving the minor details to a normal map... it depends on how they were intended to use.

I made an edit, you can see what i mean in there.

I would treat them as a displacement map. The maps you show are meant to be used in a generic engine with pbr workflow, the adaptation for Cycles depends on the needs of your project. Could you clarify where exactly you see incongruences between the colormap and the heightmap in the examples you provide?

I don't see a texture named "displacement" in any of those links?

The incongruences that i found are that in some tile floor displacements the black means sink and the white means lift, but in the height ones some textures has a height map with black colours where there is not a "sink" in the colour image, because remember that black means "sinking" in a displacement map. But anyways. thanks for the help. I'll use them as a displacement map from now on :)

Height map means that it has values of height from the surface mapped to color values in an image file. This usually means that black is the level of the surface and the lighter it gets the higher off the surface it is, however it could be implemented the other way around in some rendering engine and the maps could still be called the same.
This kind of a map can be used as a bump map or a displacement map depending on your needs and choice. Displacement maps can also consist of vectors. In that case 3 values are stored in the image to define the offset of the surface in 3 directions. In that case the displacement map would usually not be called a height map.
There is no real difference between a height map and a displacement map usually, however there is a small difference in the meaning of the names. A height map can be a displacement map as well as a bump map, however a displacement map does not necessarily need to be a height map. A bump map is pretty much always a height map. That is all as far as I know.


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Why my material is not showing on the render but in the preview of the right-side of the screen?
i came back after a long christmas break of using blender and i just found this problem while following a tutorial. I made all the steps that are shown in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3wghbZ-Vh4 and i see that isn't the same.
A better example:

So, the question is, what's happening? what am i doing wrong?
Just in case, i unwrapped the ball and isn't looking the same as in the right side preview.
This is how it looks with everything included to look "Realistic or photorealistic" (I'm using the Poliigon materials), and there not much changes in the rendered image.

EDIT: i found that i made a miss-step and didn't unwrap correctly. Now i unwrapped it on sphere projection, but still it looks flat :/

You need texture coordinates on your sphere. Either use generated coordinates or UV unwrap your Sphere.
Use the mapping node to transform your texture.

That will solve the "flatness" of the Normal map texture, the roughness of the gloss pbr material and the reflection of the reflection PBR material?

@J.J. I added a possible setup, unfortunately I can't share the textures. Use micropolygon displacement and a good set of textures with roughness, glossyness, color and displacement information.


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Why does my AO bake look like this?
Why does my AO bake look like this and how can I fix it? Im pretty new to this still.
Thanks!

please use the editor's button to add images (visible and permanent)

Sorry for that. :)

Please add the permanent image, but also please show your World settings tab so we can see the AO settings and the samples - this looks like you forgot to turn it on before baking or that your normals were reversed....

I added the world tab picture for you.


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Array Modifier Start/End Cap is Off
I am experiencing the following problem and can't seem to figure out the reason or solution to it.
I want to add an object as a start and end cap to the array modifier. However the results are not what I wished for - I do not want a space between the start/end caps and the middle object.
I made sure to apply scale properties to the mesh (strg + a -> Scale).
What am I not considering or aware of?

Edit:
The origin of the obj. to use for the caps is at the obj.'s geometry (origins to geometry), see:

Appreciate the help in advance guys!
Aldin

Check the origins of the object used for cap.

Georges, I have edited my original post and added the information. Can't seem to figure it out still :/

Array modifier sets the distance in between instances according to the given input that you assign, this applies to start/end caps, so unless the start and end caps have the same thickness on the array axis (in your case the Y axis) there will be a gap or they will overlay with the Array object, I found 2 solutions to this:
 First solution:
1- Make a copy of the start/end object so that you have two copies using Shift + D so you can use one of them for the start cap and the other for the end cap
2- Enter the start cap object's Edit mode using Tab, select all using A then move the mesh on the axis used for Array, in your case it's the Y axis, press G + Y and move your cursor, in your case the origin should be outside the mesh, think of it this way, the distance in between the origin of the start object and the surface touching the Array object, should be the same width of the Array object on Y axis.
3- Do the same for the End object, except that the direction of the movement should be reversed.

Notice the origin in the image above.
Keep in mind that if you assign the Start or End cap before moving the origin of their objects, you will need to re-assign after editing, the Array modifier will not update automatically.
Second solution:
You can use two Array modifiers, one of them to repeat the Array object on the Y axis, without using the Start/End cap object.
Then use the second modifier only for the cap object, so the repeat in the second modifier should be Count:1, then select the cap and end object and use the input in Relative or Constant or both, to set the distance input.
This way you are assigning separate input for the array itself (using the first array) and for the the Start/End cap (using the second array).
You will still need to move the origin of the Start/End cap object, but you don't have to make separate copies for the Start cap and the End cap.
Hope this was helpful, happy blending!

You're most welcome

That's just the way this modifier works. You will have to model a Cap object that has the same dimensions as your Object where you add your Array Modifier to. The modifier isn't aware of different dimensions of your cap object but simply extends your object one more time like the Array Modifier would do but replaces this last instance with the Cap object.
So you have to provide a Cap object that would fit in place as if the Array Modifier would have an increased Count and should place a further copy of your original object.
So instead of scaling your Start Cap cube like let's say at 0.2 in x direction with your Pivot Point set to Individual Origins, you should position your 3D cursor right at your cubes face in positive x direction and use it as your Pivot Point for scaling. You'd have to create a different (or duplicated and -1*x-scaled) End Cap object as well.

hey, thank you for the explanation about the array modifier and a solution!

des basst scho ;-) schön, dass jemand sich bedankt und eine hilfreiche Antwort positiv bewertet - weiter so

I have read all the previous explanations and I think they are good, I also think a few visual aides might be helpful, since I had a little trouble visualizing what distance between which origin and whatnot.


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How do you stop an adjacent face from moving?
I'm new to Blender, and really need some help.
I'm following a tutorial, where you have a cube, and you use extrude region on one side of the cube so you end up with two cubes next to each other. You then select the top face of one of the cubes and push it downwards.
In the tutorial the cube you don't touch remains as it was, so you have two cubes of different heights.
However, when I do this the top surface of the cube  I'm not moving, adjusts to my movement and slopes so the top half is like a triangle.
How do I stop the adjacent cube from changing it's shape when I adjust the height of the cube next to it?
I'm not sure if it would affect it or not, but proportional editing is disabled.
Thank you for any help you can provide!
Here is an photo of the part of the tutorial, it is from a magazine.

Step 8 says: You can move one face around independently of the adjoining face. Try pushing one of the adjacent faces downwards and notice that Blender fills the space between them with another surface.

Can you put the link of the video/tutorial?

It would be easier to do simply duplicating the cube. What are the steps before the 7-th and 8-th? And what is the version of Blender used in magazine ?

That is happening because both of cube faces share same vertexes. you probably missed some extrusion in the tutorial.
Starting from simple cube click E followed by Esc
then extrude normally (click E again and move your mouse to extrude the face.

You can notice extra dots in the place cubes meet.
Then just simply select top face and push it down:

Other way to get same result:
First select 2 vertexes those faces share:

When click V - (that is the hotkey for rip) followed by Enter (If you accidentally move the mouse and vertexes move, simply click ctrl+z to undo and try again.
Select the face and push it downwards:

Finally, select 4 vertexes and click F to fill up the hole with face

Thanks for your answer - what you suggest does work, but isn't how the tutorial suggests Blender should work. I've added a photo of the part of the tutorial.

For what it's worth : after using Blender for about a year, I have personally never encountered the behavior shown in that tutorial picture - that is to say, performing a "Sketchup-like" push and pull with an automatic fill.
A third-party add-on allowing for something of that nature has recently been released, but this is definitely not default. This probably means that this tutorial has been badly edited/proofread.


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How to open properties bar, I accidentally closed it?

As you can see I accidentally closed my properties bar on the right hand side and I can't figure out how to open it again. Please help!

I mean the part I have boxed in red in this one I can't get that one reopened in my current project.

Move the cursor on this point, you'll see your mouse will become a cross

Pull the cursor up and you'll see a new window opening like that

Last step: click on this one

and change to properties

By default it's toggled with N key


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2.7 -- Rigging model and not seeing "Deform" section in Armature >> Object Data >> Skeleton
You can find my blend file here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_dm_cPSM1oFbi1xYzNZMEs2UHc/view?usp=sharing
I've been following this tutorial to make a simple character model: wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Tutorials/Your_First_Animation/2.Animation
I'm getting stuck at the skinning step. I've created the skeleton how I want it, and set the mesh as a child of the armature as the tutorial indicates. The issue I run into is that there is no "Deform" section in the Skeleton settings:
I've tried multiple times to add a new armature object and regardless of what I do the "Deform" section doesn't appear. Any help with this is greatly appreciated!
EDIT 1
Updated image with Armature Modifier >> Vertex Groups disabled.

The deform section is one icon over from where you are in that picture, on the properties panel.  Click on the 'bone' icon, the deform will be there.  By the way, that tutorial is out of date, and you might just want to uncheck the VG group in your armature modifier settings to get full deformations going.

Mike, thanks for pointing that out! I tried unchecking VG and had no luck. I've updated my Q to show what I get when I try posing.

Sorry I mean 'x-out' 'Foot.L' under the VG field, in the Armature Modifier settings, in the Modifiers section.  'Vertex Groups' under 'Bind to' should still be checked.

Perfect- thank you! I had to go back in my undo history a bit, but got it working now!


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Rendered image sequence is darker then images (filmic or standard / H264 MPEG4)
What title says. Here is a screenshot, the red outlined one is the animation. It is way darker then the images. I tried color Management set to Filmic and Standard. Below are also my Encoding settings.

The first thing I see is, in the Color Management settings you have Follow Scene enabled, so I guess the MP4 was rendered with the same settings as the image sequence. However, I see the Exposure is set to -2.503 which seems quite dark to me for an interior scene (okay, it depends on how much light you put into that scene) and fitting to the look of the MP4. I have to ask, are you sure you didn't change settings between rendering the image sequence and the MP4?

The other thing is what is not quite clear from the question: did you render an image sequence and an MP4? Or did you import the image sequence and rendered an MP4 from that? Because in the latter case this would mean, you had a low exposure when rendering the images, and then you darken the images again by the low exposure, so they are twice darkened.

Hi, I rendered still images and then imported those to render an MP4. The Exposure is quite dark, because my light is relativly strong (Tried a bunch and I liked it this way). I just rendered with exposure set to 0 and it really lightend up my animation. I thought it just takes the images and puts them together. If I now change the exposure I will never get the exact sdame though as my images right? because Exposure set to 0 is now lighter then my original images

When you render a scene, the render is kind of a RAW image, displayed with the Color Management settings. Changing exposure or look from medium contrast to high contrast etc. will change how the image is displayed. As soon as you save the image as PNG, these settings are fixed in the saved pixels. Reimporting them with will take the already changed pixels in the image and will apply the settings again on them. So with a pre-rendered image sequence in PNG format it would be best to set Color Management to Standard and Look to None to get the originally saved appearance.

A quick tip: if you save the image sequence with OpenEXR instead of PNG, it is saved as a kind of RAW image and the Color Management can be applied to it. If you then also set the Codec to "DWAA (lossy)" you have no noticeable loss in quality but the EXR files are even much smaller than PNG files.

Color Management to Standard, Look to None, Exposure to 0 and Gamma to 1 is what I forgot to say. That's how to get the original look of the saved PNG and how it would be displayed in other image editing software (at least if you don't use some kind of fancy color management there as well).


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Image texturing to mix materials is not working
I am modeling an LP and want to mix the photo of the cover with some worn edges, since it doesnt work I tried it with just 2 colors but it still doesnt work and I dont understand why. I UV unwrapped the cube with cube projection.
It is not visible in the screenshot but the image texture I paint on is the right one (LP_Texture_Paint)

Can you clarify this for me: Are you trying to overlay an image texture or are you trying to texture paint? (Or are you trying to texture paint an image texture?)

I am not sure what the differences between those are but I am guessing I am trying to texture paint. I am trying to paint a texture black and white and use it as a factor to mix 2 shaders.

Can you try plugging an UV Map node to specifically call the UV mapping name into the texture node or use a Texture Coordinate node to generically assign the UV map to it? Also, can you double check normals are correct direction? Seems to me to be number one culprit when texpaint fails to show up.

For me, I use an Attribute Node's "Color" output as the input for the fac on a Mix Shader node. Then, I select the mesh, go to Edit Mode, select all the vertices, and make a new vertex group in the Object Data Properties panel. Then, go to Texture Paint mode, and paint! (basically, one color is one texture inputted into the Mix Shader node, and another color is the other texture.)

@CraigDJones Thank you! That was the problem. Plugging in the Coordinate Node and Texture Mapping solved it. Weirdly I also have to leave rendered view and go back into it to view the result.

Comment from Craig D Jones is the answer that solved my problem.


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Bolean and Knife Project add Artifacts? Best/Cleanest Way of Adding Details to Mesh?
I am trying to model a turntable and want to add a hole where a button is placed. I am struggling to add this whole as I tried to add it with a boolean modifier and with a knife project. I Guess the problem is the subdivision modifier in combination with the N-Gons but I dont know what the best practice is to model such a simpel Cube with a hole in it
My Mesh:

Boolean:

Knife Project:

It's pretty old now but there's a quick tutorial from
CG Cookie on avoiding the problems you're seeing when using the boolean modifier here which might help.

Thank you I will try..  but from looking shortly over it, it seems more as dirty fix for a not so good workflow. Is there a correct way to do this?

It's really correcting a limitation that you'll always come up against when using a boolean. The same thing applies to using knife project too.

First of all: It helped and now looks good.
I Understand that, but what would be the "clean"/"correct" way of doing it, if not with boolean or knife project?

There isn't really a "correct" way. If you Google "blender making holes near edge of object" you'l get a variety of suggestions and tutorials using different methods.


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Difference and how to use DISP/DISP16 / BUMP / NORM / GLOSS / REFL maps
So I know the basics ob pbr textures but everytime I download a pbr texture and unpack it I am suprised by some new names or different wording.
This time I downloaded a leather texture that has 11 image textures in it.

Question. Whats the difference between Refl and Gloss. I would have guessend Gloss is specular and then Refl is the roughness? Should I just try and judge of looks if I am right? Problem is I have very little experience and no clue how "good" materials should and can look.

What the difference between DISP / BUMP / NORM ? I would just use Normal in combination with a Normal Map and put it into normal of my Princibled BSDF.

WHats the fidd between BUMP and BUMP16

3x Color variants
1x AO okay
1x BUMP
1x BUMP16
1x DISP
1x DISP16
1x NRM
1x GLOSS
1x REFL

Gloss is inverted roughness.
Reflection is for Specular although this isn't technically realistic so is only used in non-PBR workflows.
Displacement is a B/W image used to displace geometry. Used with a Displacement node plugged into Displacement in the Material Output.
Bump is a B/W image, similar to displacement as it is height information, but is intended to affect light bounces only and not displace geometry. Used with a Bump Node plugged into Normal in the shader.
Normal is similar to Bump in the way that it only affects how the light bounces. This contains vector information instead of height information. Used with a Normal Map node plugged into Normal in the shader. Can be chained with a Bump node to combine.
16 after an image name represents it being 16bit, so a NRM16 would be an RGB image with a value between 0-65535 for each channel. A standard 8bit images only has 255. For colour, this is usually enough bit depth information. But with normals, using 8bit can sometimes show as jagged edges/sharp angles in the reflection.

What are the different texture maps for? from Poliigon is a good introduction to the kinds of maps and how they are used.  To answer your specific questions:

Reflection is specular and Gloss is roughness, (actually its inverse,) the opposite of your guess.
The differences:

Displacement is meant to actually displace the geometry.  Feed it to a diplacement node and feed that to the material output.
Bump is meant to 'fake' the appearance of geometry that isn't really there.  Feed it to a bump map node and feed that into the shader's normals.
Normal is a different way to 'fake' the appearance of geometry that isn't really there.  Feed it to a normal map node and feed that to the shader's normals.

The difference between FOO and FOO16 is that a FOO map uses 8 bit data, which is often enough, where a FOO16 map uses 16 bits.  More accurate but takes up more space.


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How to obtain the following topology?
My follow up question: How can I use a pivot circle instead of a pivot point
Question
At this moment, I have this:

What is the most efficient way to achieve a quad as cut section, where

all the faces as well as the unselected vertices are duplicated and
overlapping
but share the same vertices (selected).

The cut section would look like this:

you may try with solidify modifier. You can, within that modifier choose a suitable thickness.

Would beveling a circle curve - or even a screw modifier - do the trick?

Alternative 1
I tried the following:

E to extrude the selected vertices, S and Y and 0 to scale relative to the y-axis
Then remove the doubles

Alternative 2

First add a plane and rotate it 90 degrees around y-axis and rotate it 45 degrees around x-axis
scale along z-axis

It could be a solution to my own question and hence I posted this as an answer to my own question, but perhaps you have a more efficient solution


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define the prop of a driver with a script?
I'm trying to make a driver that gets the restrict viewport (hide property) and restrict rendering (hide_render property) properties from another object, as explained here.

1. No live updates ?
The above picture only shows a driver on the hide_render property, even if I did try with the hide property too.

hide_render : seems to work (objets are hidden when rendered);
hide : the outliner icons are not updated nor the objects are hidden in the viewport.  Probably related to this bug ?

This is a known limitation of the current dependency graph (depsgraph).
Currently, the depsgraph can only represent and schedule up
relationships on datablock level. Drivers are actually evaluated on
the object level, and all in one go before any other data on the
object gets evaluated. As a result, for drivers which operate on bones
within the same armature that they read values from, the drivers are
only able to see the result of the previous time that the pose was
evaluated. In other words, you'll find a bit of lag in the updates.

2. Script to fetch a parent ?
While I have coding skills, I don't know anything about Python, and it's the first time I'm thinking about using a script in Blender.
Rather than setting manually an object for the "prop" value of the driver, is it possible to add a script that would fetch the object's parent ?

That script should get the closest parent having keyframes for the desired property.
I would be glad to have your thoughts about all of this !

Firstly, quite possibly, the issue re viewport via render is you need to drive the hide property as well.  Simply right click copy on view_render driver, and right-click paste driver into the hide field to emulate hide_render behaviour.
A driver can only return a float (decimal) or integer (or bool (True, False)) type, therefore you can't return object references or name strings.  What you can do though, is pass the name of an object to a driver expression.
To get a property from a parent using a driver.
def get_parent_property(name, property, default):
    object = bpy.data.objects.get(name)
    parent = object.parent
    return getattr(parent, property, default)

#add to driver namespace
bpy.app.driver_namespace["get_parent_property"] = get_parent_property

The driver expression get_parent_property("Cube", "hide_render", True) will return the hide_render property of "Cube"'s parent object, or the default value True in the case there is no parent.

Hi, thanks for your reply !  I just updated my question to be more understandable, as I think we're not talking about the same thing...

You've posted  a bug report from Nov 14 2013.  I'm currently having no issues with driving the hide property of one object from the hide or hide_render property of another using 2.76.2.

To answer your first question, based on your screenshot your Python auto-execution is turned off.  Hit CtrlAltU to get to the User Preferences, click the File tab, and check the box in the bottom left that says Auto Run Python Scripts.  After this the drivers will update automatically.


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Driver variable prop (ID-block) : referencing the current object
I have several objects that share the same material.
This material has a mix shader node, whose the FAC parameter should be linked to a custom property of the object having that material assigned.
From what I read, I need drivers here, so I've set up one (see screenshot).
But I need to set an object as input for the driver.
I don't want to select each object manually.
What I would like is that the driver refers automatically to the current object.
Is it possible, or do you know a better way to achieve this ?
Thanks.

So this is what I need to put in the Path field, and leave the Prop field empty ?

In blender 2.78 (and maybe earlier) there is now the use_self option when setting up a driver.

And with a test script
import bpy

def x(self):
    print(self)
    print(getattr(self, "location", None))
    return 0.0

bpy.app.driver_namespace["x"] = x

After adding the driver expression x(self) to a driver on a cone mesh and a material's emit it prints the following to the system console
<bpy_struct, Material("Material")>
None
<bpy_struct, Object("Cone")>
<Vector (0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000)>

and to return  custom prop value, or 0 if there is no custom prop of that name.
def x(self):
    prop = self.get("toggleRedWhite", 0.0)
    return prop

PS. the data_path of a custom property is '["toggleRedWhite"]' How can I add drivers for custom properties?

I can confirm there was no 'use self' option in Blender 2.77.

Ok, I got the option on 2.77a.
Thanks for your explanations, I'm sure it will work, but for the moment i'm not able to achieve it.  Have I to put a script somewhere ?  What should I set for the variable name and prop ?
http://imgur.com/WygnQKV

@batfinger your self.get("property") line didn't work for me, the driver expression is valid but when I move the custom property value it does not drive the driver value. What must be done differently?
gordie you must put the script in the Text Editor in blender and press the Run script button.


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SCULPTING - Blender 2.8 "emulate 3 button mouse" disables ALT+LMB
Im using a graphics tablet, therefore I have "Emulate 3 button mouse" enabled in the preferences.
However if I want to sculpt on multiple objects at the same time, I cannot use Alt+LMB   to change between objects.
Its pretty lame to go back to object mode and set another object into sculpt mode for each change I need to make.
Maybe there's a workaround that you guys can help me with.

Solved it by remapping the 3D view global Alt+LMB  to Alt + RMB
Go to Blender Preferences -> Keymap -> 3D View -> 3D View (Global) and Scroll down to find a Select keymap box that has Alt+LMB  as keymap (it should be a few lines above the Box Select keymap).
Change the Alt+LMB  to Alt + RMB  instead.
Solved the issue for now. Not sure if this keymap was important for any other workspaces, but skimmed through the global keymap sections and could not spot one in any of the other sections.


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How does Blender apply the gamma curve?
When using an image file like png Blender automatically applies a gamma curve.
If I want to store a value like e.g. 0.5 in a png file without the value changing, do I need to use the standard view transform or the raw view transform?
I was always told that the standard view transform keeps the image as is and only apllies the gamma curve for the png data format, but when I left click to inspect the png image in the image editor the values seem to have changed.

If you want to render a non-color image, set the View Transform to "None".  This would be done, for example, to render a depth map.
If you want to bake or texture paint a non-color image, this has nothing to do with the view transform.  Instead, you specify how Blender should read or write color by setting the color mode in an image texture node referencing that image datablock-- typically, to non-color for non-color data.  This would be done, for example, to texture paint a bump map, or to bake a selected-to-active normal map.
If we have a .bmp, that file contains a 2D array of 8 bit triplets.  We can interpret those triplets as integers as we want; we can inspect the actual file and look at the places those values are stored.  If a particular number is 127, and we ask Blender what color that is, Blender will give us different answers depending on how we reference that image.  If we reference it as non-color data, Blender will tell us that color is about 0.5.  If we reference it as sRGB data, Blender will tell us something different.  The number itself is neither sRGB or non-color; the file itself is neither.  sRGB and non-color are ways to interpret what is contained in that file.

You're asking about three different things: How Blender stores png and edits png images; how blender converts images to its internal format; and how blender displays its internal format.
See Color management, display transforms for an overview.  Blender transforms images into a linear color space for internal processing.  How that's done depends on the image color space settings.  It transforms the linear color space to a display-dependent color space for display.  How that's done depends on the display settings.


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Differences between Principled bsdf and other shaders
The Blender docs states:

The emphasis on compatibility with other software means that it
interprets certain input parameters differently from older Blender
nodes.

With that in mind there are only two differences the docs state are that the roughness is the same as the square rooted value of the glossy roughness.
Does that mean that I also have to take the square root when converting the roughness values from the e.g. refraction bsdf or anisotropic bsdf?
The other difference the docs state is that the anisotropic reflection is by default rotated by 90 degrees.
I have only found those two differences are those the only differences between the principled bsdf and other bsdfs?

Hi :). Also Subsurface Scattering is done differently, Fresnel is fully implemented, also Emission has fresnel, and a big difference: Principled BSDF calculates correct lightbounces even from backface normals (important in grass and leafs)

Ok, could you please further elaborate how exactly the principled bsdf does things differently?

For example how could emission posisibly have fresnel? Fresnel is an phenomenom exclusive to specular reflection, to my knowledge saying that emission has fresnel does not make any physical sense. And as for the backface light bounces, most shaders (except for the transparancy related bsdfs like glass, etc.) treat foreward and backfacing faces exactly the same, how could the Principled bsdf calculate something more correct than other shaders which already do it fully correctly?

Hi :). 1) Principled BSDF Emission does actually have a faint "fresnel-like" effect - compared to regular Emission Shader. 2) I misremembered - Principled BSDF computes fresnel correctly even for backfaces.

I can't really elaborate any further, just sharing my experience ;)