text:
How to replace the skin modifier with geometry nodes in python?
In order to get proper right angles I was advised to use geometry nodes in my python script. Having zero experience with geometry nodes at all, what kind of geometry node do you recommend to replace the current skin modifier approach?

import bpy
vertices=[[0,0,0],[0,0,1],[0,1,1]]
edges=[[0,1],[1,2]]
faces = []

name = "my_bmesh"
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name)
obj = bpy.data.objects.new(name, mesh)

coll = bpy.data.collections.get("Collection")
coll.objects.link(obj)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
mesh.from_pydata(vertices, edges, faces)

# Add skin modifier
mod_skin = obj.modifiers.new('Skin', 'SKIN')
# Add radius
dim = (0.3, 0.3)

for v in obj.data.skin_vertices[0].data:
    v.radius = dim

This is my best attempt using python and not using geo-nodes: if you create two separate meshes and the combine them by either using a boolean union modifier or by simply joining them together, the resulting mesh contains the right angles. Just un-triple-quote which ever option you prefer.
import bpy

vertices=[[0,0,1],[0,1,1]]
edges=[[0,1]]
faces = []

name = "my_bmesh"
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name)
obj1 = bpy.data.objects.new(name, mesh)

coll = bpy.data.collections.get("Collection")
coll.objects.link(obj1)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj1
mesh.from_pydata(vertices, edges, faces)

dim = (0.3, 0.3)

vertices=[[0,0,0],[0,0,1 + dim[0]]]
edges=[[0, 1]]
faces = []

name = "my_bmesh"
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name)
obj2 = bpy.data.objects.new(name, mesh)

coll.objects.link(obj2)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj2
mesh.from_pydata(vertices, edges, faces)

# Add skin modifier
mod_skin = obj1.modifiers.new('Skin', 'SKIN')
# Add radius

for v in obj1.data.skin_vertices[0].data:
    v.radius = dim

mod_skin = obj2.modifiers.new('Skin', 'SKIN')

for v in obj2.data.skin_vertices[0].data:
    v.radius = dim

# OPTION 1 --- BOOLEAN ROUTE (NO INNER GEOMETRY)
"""
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='BOOLEAN')
bool = bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"]
bool.object = obj1
bool.operation = 'UNION'

bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj1
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Skin")
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj2
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Skin")
bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Boolean")
bpy.data.objects.remove(obj1)
"""

# OPTION 2 --- JOIN ROUTE (CONTAINS INNER GEOMETRY)
"""
obj1.select_set(True)
obj2.select_set(True)
bpy.ops.object.join()
# can uncomment the following line if you only want the surrounding mesh
#bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Skin")
"""

If you want to go the geometry node route, this is the best node set-up I could come up with:

On top of the geometry nodes, be sure to add the solidify modifier as follows

Here's the geometry nodes script:
import bpy

vertices=[[0,0,0],[0,0,1],[0,1,1]]
edges=[[0,1],[1,2]]
faces = []

name = "my_bmesh"
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new(name)
obj = bpy.data.objects.new(name, mesh)

coll = bpy.data.collections.get("Collection")
coll.objects.link(obj)
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
mesh.from_pydata(vertices, edges, faces)

# add GeometryNodes modifier
bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type="NODES")

bpy.ops.node.new_geometry_node_group_assign()

# access active object node_group
node_group = bpy.context.object.modifiers["GeometryNodes"].node_group

# add socket
inputs = node_group.inputs

# add nodes
nodes = node_group.nodes
mesh_to_curve = nodes.new(type = "GeometryNodeMeshToCurve")
mesh_to_curve .location.x -= 150
mesh_to_curve .location.y -= 0

curve_to_mesh = nodes.new(type="GeometryNodeCurveToMesh")

curve_to_mesh.location.x += 20
curve_to_mesh.location.y += 0

bez = nodes.new(type="GeometryNodeCurvePrimitiveBezierSegment")
bez.location.x += -150
bez.location.y -= 150

bez.inputs[1].default_value[0] = .3
bez.inputs[2].default_value[0] = 0
bez.inputs[2].default_value[1] = 0
bez.inputs[4].default_value[0] = -.3

# connect
links = node_group.links

links.new(nodes["Group Input"].outputs["Geometry"], mesh_to_curve.inputs["Mesh"])
links.new(mesh_to_curve.outputs["Curve"], curve_to_mesh.inputs["Curve"])
links.new(curve_to_mesh.outputs["Mesh"], nodes["Group Output"].inputs["Geometry"])
links.new(bez.outputs["Curve"], curve_to_mesh.inputs["Profile Curve"])

bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='SOLIDIFY')
solidify = bpy.context.object.modifiers["Solidify"]
solidify.thickness = 0.6
solidify.use_even_offset = True
solidify.offset = 0

Also, for this geometry nodes route, if you don't like the shading\smoothness, you can apply the geo-nodes and then auto-smooth the mesh or you can apply a Remesh modifier and set it to sharp or you can bump up the resolution of the bezier segment


text:
Is there any way to clean up/optimize mess of bones on imported model?
I've imported model from FBX, and there happened to be a lot of bones which control part of the model (face of character). This mess of bones actually makes it hard to see character itself, not to mention working with it. I tried searching to no avail, are there any quick ways to make less bones appear without loosing their functionality, or, perhaps, these bones might be optimized into some sort of rig?
(I'm new to blender, using Blender 2.82)

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/16487/bones-import-incorrectly-from-fbx-file

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to copy an armature between two scenes without linking the armature to itself?
Title might be vague -- When I make a "Full Copy" of a scene, it's not really a full copy apparently. I re-rigged a duplicated armature and edited the duplicated mesh it was a parent of - it messed up all the other scenes that were using that mesh and rig. I never knew a "Full Copy" had rigging data as an exception to that rule. -_-
Is there a way (a plugin maybe?) to ACTUALLY duplicate a scene so that 100% of the data between scenes is independent?

Does appending not work?

That seems like a sub-optimal solution. Isn't there a better way?

You could duplicate your scene using the "New Scene" button in the scene dialog in the top right of your screen, and from the popup menu, choose the "Full Copy" option.

@rblz, I've just tested full copy and it doesn't keep any link between the armatures, are you sure you've used full copy?

I definitely used full copy. However, I just noticed hovering my cursor above this button https://prnt.sc/t6x8wx that it says "Browse for a scene to be linked" - that is the button I use to switch between scenes. Does browsing scenes using this button link the current scene to the scene I click? If it does, how do I now unlink those scenes?

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


text:
Cannot find displacement in material panel - blender 2.83
I cannot find "displacement" in the material panel anymore in blender 2.83. I want to change my displacement type from "bump only" to "displacement and bump" but I cannot right now. When I opened my old files i can see the displacement there but not in my new file. Is that a bug or do I did something wrong?
Thanks
The new file
The old file

How to upload an image to a post

You need to change your Render engine, that option is only for Cycles
Go to Render Properties > Render Engine

omg yes this absolutely solve the problem thanks so much!


text:
Animation nodes remove duplicate elements from list
How can you remove duplicated items from a list of vectors, leaving only one of each item?

Try List -> List Boolean Operations

You can use this expression: [i for n, i in enumerate(x) if i not in x[:n]]


text:
How to fill a Bezier Curve and reduce its vertices
I'm doing a model and there is a part on the clothes that I think is easier to do with curves (the one marked with red) but after using the curves tool to draw the figure, I can't find an option to fill the faces. Is it an addon or option to do it or it is done manually?
Also if I convert the curve into a mesh, select all the vertices and fill with F, it almost fixes the problem, but the mesh will have a lot of vertices and it makes difficult to work with all of them, also if I add a subdivision modifier it will lag the app. How can I avoid the creation of a great amount of vertices?

In order to fill a curve it needs to be 2D (so it will need to be flat on Z) and also choose a fill mode. Also the Resolution Preview U value will determine the number of vertices once converted:

But if you've already converted it into a mesh you can select all in Edit mode and press X > Limited Dissolve and tweak the Max Angle value in the Operator box (bottom left of your 3D view):


text:
How to draw a line around a sphere
Is there an addon or something to draw a line on a sphere or to be able to rotate the camera while drawing?
I tried with the anchored stroke and it only looks good in front but behind it has a part where the line is too wide, also I had to do it looking from below, so if I want to make a line above the one I did I can't because the camera angle doesn't reach that part.
Also searched on google about the curve stroke, but it also depends on the camera angle.

@Gorgious I'm already using an outliner, but I don't want to create extra topology for those lines, I just want to paint them around the hairballs.

Is it wider on the back because you're painting in a perspective view? What does (Numpad-5) switching to orthographic do for you?

@RobinBetts you're right, I didn't know that button was to switch the view until you switch it again (I thought it was like pressing 1 to switch to ortographic view, but once you move the camera, it goes back to perspective)

Hi, @Kai ! There's a setting for 'Auto Perspective'  in Edit > Preferences : https://imgur.com/a/i3RYBsH  If these comments add up to a fix, could you self-answer to resolve your question? This is not really my area, and I can't demo on your model.  If I draw a line-stroke with 'Occlusion' off, and 'Cull Backfaces'  off, I'm nearly there, but with frustrating gaps on the sides. You're clearly very good at this.. I love your model :)

The solution was as a comment said, use the orthographic view instead the perspective, by looking from below in ortographic view you can have almost all the sphere in the perfect angle to paint the lines


text:
Export Hair particle system to ThreeJS
I am having trouble exporting a feather made with a hair particle system to ThreeJS. I have followed a lot of tutorials and looked all over but none of the methods I have found have been successful in the export. Does anyone have any guidance on doing so?

Any particle system will need to be converted to mesh(es) before exporting, I don't think it can export as a particle system.

yeah I went through a few different processes of doing this and had no luck of it showing in threejs


text:
Discrete Shading in Blender
I'm trying to shade objects in a very specific way.  What I'd like to do is make my shading only 3 distinct shades.  Similar to a comic book.  Rather than a gradient, there exists only a darkest, medium, and light.  Is there a capability to shade a spherical object in such a way that it only uses 3 or 4 distinct tones rather than a continuous gradient?

You can use a gradient (aka ColorRamp) and switch it to Constant, giving you only the used colors with sharp edges between them.

You've just described 'toon' shading, that might make a good search term for you. There's a very controllable version, perhaps more than you need, illustrated in this series of videos

Ah, thank you so much!  I'm very new to 3d graphics and there is so much to learn!  Thanks again!

Hey another question, is there a way to outline the contour of objects with black line?

There are several methods : try searching for Inverted hull method or "Freestyle render". If you don't find anything, don't hesitate to create a new question for it !


text:
Volume locked on sound strip in VSE
In VSE I have a sound strip where I adjusted the volume and then accidentally clicked the dot icon to the right of the volume box which seems to have locked the volume and changed the dot to a diamond so I can't alter it now. See image.
How can I undo that?  I've tried clicking it again, and selecting various menu options but no luck so far!  (Blender v2.82a)

You have added a keyframe. It can be deleted by clicking on the diamond again, or right-clicking in the number widget and select "Clear Keyframes":


text:
no shadows where mesh intersect, weird glow instead,
Hey I am getting these weird glow instead of shadows near the edges or where the mesh intersects, I am rendering in Eevee and have AO turned on.

In Light settings, low Bias setting of shadow. If it does not help, try set up contact shadows:


text:
How to use unwrapped mesh on different images at different locations?
I am a beginner, and I tried searching a lot for the solution to my problem but couldn't find it. I hope you guys have been through it and understand it.
So I unwrapped my mesh, and scaled the mesh on an image texture, and it got applied, simple. Now, I want to use another image texture for the details.
But if I move my unwrapped mesh on the second image, the mesh on the first image moves too, disturbing my first image texture. I want to give a separate location and scale to my unwrapped mesh for different images, and not let the positioning of my mesh on one of the image affects its position on another.
I would be very grateful if someone can help me with this.
Thanks a lot.

You can use as many UV maps as you want, see in the Properties panel > Object Data > UV Maps. Then in the Shader Editor you can create an Input > UV Map node to use your different UV maps

Thank you so much dude, I figured I could create two UV maps, didnt realise the thing about how to tell the shader about the UV map to use. Thanks man you're a life saver!

Okay, so moonboots told me I can create a separate UV map, in Object data panel, and insert Input>UV map node to the shader editor, to specify the UV map.
Thank you so much!


text:
Importing FBX with camera & target placeholders
I am importing FBX files that have camera placeholders.  They will import as Empty's in blender that may have useful animation.  I want to add add a camera to each as a child (inherit animation) and align the view to the placeholder's alignment, parent it, and add a TRACK_TO constraint if there is a "cameraName.Target" Empty placeholder.

The following is an example script that worked for me.  I first (manually) created a collection named "cameras" and moved all the Empties into that collection.  I skip any existing cameras in case I run the script more than once.
import bpy

for obj in bpy.data.objects:
    hasACamera = False
    if ( ("Camera" in obj.name) and ("Target" not in obj.name) and (obj.type != 'CAMERA') ):
        for child in obj.children:
            if (child.type == 'CAMERA'):
                hasACamera = True
        if ( hasACamera is True ):
            print( obj.name + ": already has a camera")
            continue
        print( obj )
        print( obj.type )
        bpy.ops.object.camera_add()
        bpy.context.object.name = obj.name + ".Camera"
        print( bpy.context.object )
        print( bpy.context.active_object )
        sel = bpy.data.objects[bpy.context.object.name]
        print( sel.name + " align"  )
        bpy.ops.transform.transform(mode='ALIGN', value=(0, 0, 0, 0), orient_type='GLOBAL',
         orient_matrix=((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), orient_matrix_type='GLOBAL', mirror=True, use_proportional_edit=False,
         proportional_edit_falloff='SMOOTH', proportional_size=1, use_proportional_connected=False, use_proportional_projected=False)
        sel.parent = obj
        bpy.ops.object.collection_link(collection='cameras')
    if ( (obj.type == 'CAMERA') and (".Camera" in obj.name) ):
        targetName = obj.name[0:-7] + ".Target"
        try:
            targetObj = bpy.data.objects[targetName]
            if obj.constraints["Track To"] is None:
                print( "adding Track To constraint" )
                obj.constraints.new(type='TRACK_TO')
                obj.constraints["Track To"].target = targetObj
        except:
            print()
```


text:
console warning: "Too many lights in the scene !!!"
Every time I switch back to my Layout workspace I get a flood of messages saying:

Too many lights in the scene !!!

Everything seems to be rendering fine.   I do have some simulated "LED light arrays" in my scene.  Is this a serious problem or should I ignore this?   How many lights are too many?

@susu thanks i was mostly using Cycles to render but Eevee for VP-shading mode and I see that is what causes the warning. Thanks for pointing out the Eevee limitation in documentation, I guess it might be difficult to know which of the 128 are used or perhaps the first 128 it finds in the blend data.

(I slightly enjoy the fact that some blender developer decided to use three exclamation marks for this warning. Almost as if using one ! is simply not enough here :))

For questions like this please indicate what render engine you are using. Eevee has a limit of 128 lights in a scene.
Read:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/limitations.html
Also, for simulated LED arrays you might want to consider a single texture as part of an emission shader.
How to give an image or video a TV screen effect?
and
How to control many tiny lights


text:
Extending animation out-of-range by looping, repeat, or cycle
I'm trying to look for an easy way to extend a simulation in one of several modes, similar to that in 3ds Max "out-of-range" feature, where I can specify that the simulation should repeat or be extended before and after the first and last keyed frames.
The feature dialog in 3ds Max shows a dialog that allows you to select what might happen before and after what is keyed, such as Constant (nothing, disabled), Cycle (repeat the animation), Loop, Ping Pong, Linear, Relative repeat (repeat from the present position, rotation):

How can I accomplish this in blender?

Use extrapolation in the graph editor. Then you can use modifiers to set ranges or combine motions. In the key menu you can mirror and there are other choices in the interpolation controls

This is possible by using Keyframe Extrapolation, Shift+E in the Graph Editor. This shortcut is also available in the Timeline and Dope Sheet, and you can Ctrl+Tab to quickly access the Graph Editor from any of those panels.

Further, you can change Keyframe Interpolation with T

Finally, you can fine-tune these Modifiers in the Graph Editor under the N menu to restrict their frame range, among other adjustments.

Is it possible somehow to use this with cloth animation?   For example I have an short animation of a flag waving in Wind & gravity.   The references I've seen using messy MDD exp/imp doesn't seem to work, and using mathematically combined multiple Sine waves is a disappointment compared to a loping flapping flag.  This is where editing an endpoint of a cycle and then cycling the animation is a superior solution.

Unfortunately, these methods only cover f-curves/keyframes indeed, not simulations. Some simulations can be semi-looped by setting the start frame to a precise negative point, or by manipulating the cache. From what I see, MDD really is the way to go for looping a cloth sim, perhaps it's worth another shot.


text:
Rigging an already weighted model
I have a model that is already weighted but it doesn’t have any bones.
Is there any way or add-on or something to generate a rig/armature based on the weight and vertex groups?
I know that you have to have a bone for each vertex group (with the same name) and after that you should parent your model using "armature deform" to your rig.
Because you know, There are a lot of vertex groups and if I want to create a rig/armature manually it takes for ever! I have searched a lot but couldn't find anything.
Thanks


text:
Geometry nodes instance on edge
I want to instance cylinders on the edges of a circle and line the cylinders up with the edges like so

I am currently just instancing the cylinders on the edges of the circle but I am unable to align them. I have tried doing goofy stuff with the normals, instancing a curve on the edges, and instancing on points but I just cannot get these cylinders to align parallel to the mesh.

Nevermind, I misread the question. In order to align to an edge, you need to find out the vector of that edge. You can do that by taking the position of each of its vertices and subtracting one from the other.

NB : it looks good because it's a cylinder and it's symmetrical on all 3 axes, but if you change it to a shape that's not (such as a Suzanne), you will find that it doesn't necessarily orient itself with respect to what you perceive to be the normal of the underlying shape (the circle).
For this you'd need to capture the normal of the circle as well (change the fill type to ngon for this to work) and use another align euler to vector node on top of this.


text:
How to create an 'external' database managed with an addon?
I have a problematic : I create multiple models but I use always the same colors. I created an addon with the colors inside a dictionnary, but when I want to update some colors, add or remove others, I have to search inside of my addon and it takes a lot of time, because i have now a few hundreds of different colors.
So my question is : how can I store these colors into an external file, and just have a panel in my addon to create, remove or update these colors ? I just can't find if I can use multiple python files in my addon, and modify the one I would use as a database...
Tanks by advance !

I never used the asset browser, but I guess this is a possible use case for it... but I had to watch tutorials on how to use it to give any substantial answer to this question. Maybe you could look out for tutorials to see if this might help you?

The simplest file format IMO is json. Could you add a little bit of information about your setup ? You store only color data ? I'm a little intrigued by you saying looking up a dictionary takes a lot of time, accessing a python dict should be almost constant time whatever the number of items inside it. see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1963507/time-complexity-of-accessing-a-python-dict

I was studying about Json, which seems to be the best solution indeed. I was worried it couldn't be stored inside an addon, does it have to be an external data?
The problem with dictionnaries is that it is stored inside my python script, and i can't modify my script dynamically : i have to search manually the color i want to update, then modify it. When i have to update or upload dozens of colors, it is a bit long... Tha'ts why i'm searching an other way to store theses datas (i store color, color_name and color_id, and i use it in my panels to create materials)


text:
Sketchfab addon tab disappeared (& another related problem)
I have a quick question. I’ve recently started using the Sketchfab addon in Blender, and suddenly yesterday, in the Blender file in which I’ve been using it, the Sketchfab addon tab is gone from that place on the side of the viewport where you can click tabs to open panels like Item, Tool, View, and addons. Up until now it’s been there. Does anyone know what the deal might be, and how to get my Sketchfab addon tab back on the side of the viewport there? My models imported using the Sketchfab addon are still in the file I’ve been using all along, so I don’t know what’s going on. Side note, this screenshot is just one I grabbed off Google images - it’s not my interface specifically - it’s just to show the area I’m referring to where those tabs are.
As a side note, today the tab seems to be back, but everything is now greyed out or "ghosted" or whatever the term is - so it's now there again but it's seemingly useless? If anyone has any suggestions why all this is happening and how to fix it, it would be much appreciated - Thanks

If it was previously working and suddenly stopped this could be due to server connection issue or login issue. As this is is Sketchfab add-on it is not a bad idea contacting their support services. Also check for new version of the add-on.

Thanks so much! I appreciate the guidance


text:
Why do some of my normals look like this?
Shouldnt everything be a solid blue color?
https://imgur.com/a/TydAYAZ
https://imgur.com/a/0bGhp0N

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

Instead of having users go through links and external sites please use the builtin tools to embed images in your post. See How to upload an image to a post? or GIF

Are youtalking about the bad shading? It's not a question about normals but about split normals (shading), it can be caused by ngons for example, but maybe share your file

The Face Orientation only has two options to show the normals: they are either blue (the "front" or "outside" of the face) or red (the "back" or "inside" of the face). To me none of them look red. Smooth or flat shading is based on normals and geometry and would most likely also show up without overlaying the Face Orientation, but the simple orientation info itself is either blue or red.

sorry about the images on the other site, i already had the images uploaded and didnt know your able to uplaod images.

thank you to everyone who has tried to provide me with help.  it ended up being i had moved some vertices by accident causing the issue.  i havent really had much of an issue with this until recently. i try to remember to recalculate the normals when needed but this time i started this particular object over a few times and had the exact same issue.  its is probably due to my improper techniques all too often.  thank you for providing me with the best help that you were able to!!

The blue and red colors are the Face Orientation colors set in the preferences. They are not fully opaque as shown in the screenshot below which means you will be able to see through them. If you don't want to see through them, you can set their Alpha value to 1.0.

The shading artifacts visible in your screenshot have to do with the normals. They can usually be fixed by selecting the problematic vertices and running Mesh > Normals > Reset Vectors or Mesh > Normals > Smooth Vectors depending on your needs.


text:
How do you move an object and have it stay in focus in the viewport?
Say that you have to move an object, vertex, vertices, face, etc in your viewport and you need to move it to a location out of the field of view in the viewport.  What keys are used to be able to move an object and have the viewport stay focused on the thing you are moving as you are moving it? What is the shortcut/setup to be able to do that? Just to clarify, when moving whatever your moving, I would like to move it in one continuous move to a location that is off my viewport and do it accurately.  If I start to move an object and then I have to move it further than my viewport can currently display.  Not using the Numpad .(period) shortcut to focus on an object.  The perfect example of what I am talking about would be if you are moving a camera and have it locked to view, the viewport will move with the camera when moving it further than your viewport displays.  How can you do that but with a vertex, face, edge, object, etc?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/186976/how-to-follow-object-when-moving?rq=1

There is no hotkey for such type of navigation. You can set Track To constraint to the camera and change the  object to track to. Then move it through the camera view. Tracking of selected vertices is also possible if you temporarily place them in a Vertex Group. Then add that vertex group in the Track To constraint. Now the Camera will track the vertices of the group when you move them. You just have to learn the hotkeys for adding and removing vertices from the active vertex group.

@josh sanfelici this will work for a specific object but if i have a bunch of objects joined together then it wont allow me to "track" or have the viewport move with a selected group of vertices of that object, it will be locked to the object in general i guess you would say.  thank you for your answer, i appreciate the help!!

@Rumen Belev - thank you, after spending quite some time combing through all of the menus and options this was the conclusion that i had came to, you have just confirmed that for me!!! thank you so much!!!


text:
Blender Eevee. I can´t properly see the smoke

When I render smoke in this project, in the viewport it doesn´t look as I expect , and when I render it (With previous baked) I can´t barely see it. It doesn´t have anything to do with the mesh or the boxes sourrounding it, I´ve checked it. I thing is should be something about the view options. Any help?

you should post the screenshot of the shader node of the domain, so it's possible to check what's wrong.

Ah yes, smoke and Eevee. It's tough, that's for sure. It's hard to tell exactly what the issue because you need to show the shaders, and the smoke domain settings. You also need to make sure that the smoke is lit. Sometimes you need to use a fair bit of light. You can make the smoke emit but not directly through the principled volume shader. My recommendation would be to watch Iridisium tutorial on making a simple explosion in Blender.
You also need to check your render settings for volumetrics. Having a clipping distance to far or too close can prevent you from seeing your smoke. Finally, you might need to play around with density, the emitter, and the division value. Too high a setting can make for wispy smoke if you don't change other settings.
Good luck. I have found the smoke simulator very tough to use. There are some great tutorials out there though.


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creating more randomness in texture image
Lack of better wording so im creating like a red clay roof that i made by creating a root object to apply to a particle system. Now i applied a texture image to the root object which in turn applied to the rest of the shingles. The issue i dont know how to get passed is how can i work it so i can create randomness within the texture so that every shingle doesnt look exactly the same?

In general for image texture randomness you need to offset texture in X, Y axis for each object. For that you will need also seamless texture to prevent edge texture appearance.
Random Location
One way to randomise location can be done with Object Info node > Random plugged into Mapping node > Location

Random Color
similar way you can be randomise a color of tiles

Random Rotation
... you can randomise rotation as well, but directly connected Random to Rot cause "shearing", because texture would be rotated in all axis. To prevent this result use Separate XYZ node and Combine XYZ and connect only Z axis. To rotate more or less you can add between Math node and increase or decrease value.)


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Extrude Tool Not Creating New Face
Please pardon my lack of knowledge on lingo (yes im new), but im having an issue with the extrude tool. In the fundamental tutorials it explained to me how to (in this example) create a stack of blocks with the extrude tool and that the tool will basically create a new face on the surface of the previous cube for you to adjust the size, raise up, and repeat. It was working at first but now the tool, instead of creating the new face for a new cube, is adjusting the original face of the first cube and thereby changing the shape of the entire cube into basically a pyramid. What am i missing here? First picture is my issue while the second is my desired outcome

Can you try extruding with E key?

In the first image you are not extruding, but resizing/moving a face. To extrude select the face, press "E" and pull with the mouse'

I would guess that in the first image you are using the extrude tool then pressing ctrl z to return the face to its origin? this would undo both the extrusion and the location of the extrusion in the second sequence you click the right mouse button while still holding the extrusion with the left mouse button to release the extrusion so it is still there to be scaled.

The lower example takes two steps.
First Extrude E, then scale S inwards.
Then extrude E, and pull (transform) G upwards on Z axis.

You may find it simpler to use inset I instead of extrude for the first step to shorten steps.

Awesome! i knew it was a simple answer but for the life of me i couldnt figure it out lol

Welcome, glad to help :)


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Basics! How to get rid of protruding face that overlaps another object
A hopefully simple solution for a newbie like me. So i created a cube, deleted the top face, and then created the roof using a single plane and mirror modifier. Once i lined up the roof to the walls i had to fill in the space in the center between the roof and walls. My solution was to extrude it up and then do away with teh excess face that is protruding passed the roof. But to no avail i couldnt find anything... What is your guys's solution? Or maybe a different method all around?

I think you need to check some hard surface modeling tutorials on youtube, just to learn some basic stuff.. (btw are you trying to make a box with a roof?)

ive spent a lot of time on tutorials, but its difficult sometimes to follow when a large majority of them are of previous versions of blender. Not to mention a large portion of the learning process is trial and error. So after trying to imitate desired effects through tuts and running into an issue i figured id be able to come here to figure out where im going wrong.. or do i have the wrong idea here

and essentially im trying to slice off the excess of whats going beyond the top of the roof to fill what used to be an empty triangular space between the roof and house walls.. if that makes sense

If you want to make a box with a roof, you can simply

add a cube
loop cut and slide it in the half like this:

select the middle top edge and move it upward


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Is there a way to change the scale of the model when exporting in GLB format?
I was trying to decrease the scale of my model while exporting in GLB format but I couldn't find that option like In the FBX exporter,

but The GLB exporter doesn't have it

If you guys have solution to this please do let me know.
Thank you.

The glTF exporter does not have this setting, as of Blender v3.6. You'll need to scale the object before export.

I hoped that there would some other easy way because I have to export it in different scales in multiple times. I guess there is not other way then.


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How can I choose which actions I want to see in Blender?
I have two characters with different actions. One of my character can run and swim. My other character can walk and sit.
These characters are different blend.file.
When I want to append these characters In a new empty blend.file, I can see all of
The actions both characters.
So my character who can run and swim, I can choose walk and sit action too.
But I want to see those actions when I select the armature, which I made for this character. So I don't want to see walk and sit actions, because these don't belong to the character who can run and swim only.
Is it possible?

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.

I don't think that you can see only some actions, there are no folders to sort the actions for example for the moment, and actions are not attached to an object in particular, maybe put some prefix so that they are kind of sorted out?


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How to make a material that reacts to the strength of light
So I'm modeling a space ship, and I want to make a pattern on it glow with an iridescent sheen only when in direct light. When strong light hits that specific area, I want a bunch of lines of iridescent patters to appear, but not where there isn't strong light. I hope this makes sense. I've been trying a lot of different things, but none of them work. Any suggestions would help.

can you post a screenshot or example image of what you're looking for?

Speaking generally, almost every shader reacts to the strength of light.  For doing weird stuff, like emission based on light strength, you would either need shader-to-RGB (Eevee, easy and convenient) or compositing+re-render (in Cycles or Eevee, less convenient.)  What rendering engine are you using?

As Nathan mentioned in his comment, you can make use of Shader to RGB. Used a Diffuse into Shader to RGB into a ColorRamp (your choice whether to use linear or constant) like a basic Toon Shader setup, but only using 2 shades - black and white. Use this as a mix factor between your base material and your Iridescent material.

Here's the setup in its entirety with a slightly better Iridescent texture:

EDIT - Sorry, I just saw you wanted a "glow". If you want this, try mixing your glossy shader with an emission shader of the same color. If you just want the "glow sheen" to overlay the current material (without replacing it entirely), you can try something like the setup below:


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How to color object based on distance from camera with geometry nodes?
I'm trying to recreate this effect
Is it possible to change an object's color depending on its distance?
In my project, I have 2*2 KM plane which need to be painted gradually in different colors based on distance from camera.
I've tried this:
Is it possible to calculate the distance between the vertices of two objects in Geometry Nodes?
but it didn't help me.
Thank you for response.

In which way it didn't help you? What Geometry Nodes setup do you have so far?

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.

A camera has no geometry, so you would have to convert the instance of the camera into a point with Instances to Points.
You can then use this point as a reference with Geometry Proximity and thus assign values to the points of your mesh.
The values resulting from the distance to the camera you would have to adjust to your needs with Map Range.
You store these values with Store Named Attribute in the geometry, which you can read again in the shader with Attribute and convert into a color.

(Blender 3.2+)

Update
Of course you can solve this even easier (thanks to @Gordon Brinkmann for the attentive reading):
Instead of solving the distance via Geometry Proximity, you can directly do the distance to the camera with Vector Math:

No need for the Store Named Attribute, just plug the Result from the Map Range node into the empty socket of the Group Output and give it the name in the modifier.

Oh, and you could calculate the distance between the camera's location and the position of the plane's vertices by using a Vector Math node. No need for geometry proximity and hence no converting of the camera into a point. And you can leave the camera's Object Info node at default values, no switching to Relative or enabling As Instance.

@GordonBrinkmann Thank you, that is completely correct! I have once again thought a little more complicated than necessary :D ...but with the example can still do a lot.

I actually thought the OP was asking for what the link directly showed me at first, cubes that get an overall uniform color depending on the distance instead of a gradient. In this case your Store Named Attribute (or Capture Attribute linked to the Group Output)  with domain set to Instance would be the better solution, since you can capture the location of the instances. Coloring the cubes differently only works if you realize the instances, but then you'll get the gradient with my simpler solution. The Store Named/Capture Attribute gets the location before they are realized.

@GordonBrinkmann: Looks like you are the only one here who reads ALL the answers :D (and understands them) :D :D

@Chris Well, not really all, only the ones where I'm curious for an answer myself or where I've got my own solution for. Like here, although my solution for the plane gradient works without Attribute (Store Named or Capture) node. I also have a solution for cubes with single colors per instance and a combination of having a gradient on a plane and colors per instance on the cubes in the same node tree. ♂

Thank you so much! It worked, I cant thank you enough!

If you want the color-change at render-time and/or at render, (rather than the geometry's,) resolution, it might be better to do this with a shader?

You always have the option of baking the color to an image-texture..


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How to Raycast from All Vertices of a Plane in the Direction the Plane is Facing in Blender Using Python?
I'm working on a project in Blender where I need to perform raycasting from all the vertices of a plane in the direction the plane is facing. The plane represents a surface, and I want to determine if any objects intersect with the rays cast from the vertices.
I'm looking for guidance on how to achieve this. Specifically, I need help with the following:

What's the proper way to calculate the direction in which
the plane is facing?
How can I cast rays from each vertex in the direction of the plane's
normal and detect intersections with other objects (suppose a cube) in the scene?
What actions can I take when a ray hits an object? For example, I
may want to print information about the intersection or perform
other operations.

Any example code or step-by-step instructions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your assistance!

I hope this code helps you out. The plane and Suzanne objects are obtained from bpy.data. I used the plane's matrix_world to get the true direction of its normal vector. From there I simply loop through the vertices of the plane and ray cast them towards Suzanne using obj.ray_cast. The 0th index of the cast result is a boolean determining whether or not the cast intersected. The 1st index is the location of the hit. If there was no hit, it's (0, 0, 0). I then plot some some empty's at the hit locations, if there is a hit. Note: I  applied the scale and location of Suzanne (using ctrl-A) for it to register properly.
import bpy

plane = bpy.data.objects["Plane"]

mtx = plane.matrix_world

verts = plane.data.vertices

polys = plane.data.polygons

normal = mtx @ polys[0].normal

obj = bpy.data.objects["Suzanne"]

for v in verts:
    # cast_result
    # input: (origin, direction, distance, depsgraph) <---excluding depsgraph
    # cast_result returns: (T/F, hit location, normal vector at intersection face, intersection face index)
    cast_result = obj.ray_cast(v.co, normal, distance = 1000)

    T_or_F = cast_result[0]

    hit_location = cast_result[1]

    print(T_or_F)

    print(hit_location)

    if T_or_F:
        bpy.ops.object.empty_add(location=hit_location)

You could do if T_or_F: bpy.ops.object.empty_add(... to only add empties when a ray hits.

@MarkusvonBroady done thanks for that advice

thank you! that works!


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Cloth on the inflatable
I'm trying to inflate a balloon with a cloth lifted up by the balloon. The cloth is anchored on the four edges.
Both objects are set as clothes. The top cloth should not be elastic, and thus, I set the bending moment linear, and increase the structural value. The bottom circle mesh is anchored on the boundary and has a positive pressure.

However, when I start the simulation, I see these weird pointy defacts.

I'm not sure how to make such a simulation. Or a few ropes restrain the inflatable. Has anyone tried it?

hello maybe share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

Hi, this is the blender file. https://we.tl/t-AvPmz4ItG7

i think you geometry isn't that good, so i deleted all inner vertices of your "blowing up" thing so that just the circle was there -> then F3 -> grid fill so that it looks like this:

and also for the other cloth i used tris to quads:

then i changed a few cloth settings and got this:

Hope it helps.

Dear Chris, thank you so much! I will have a look :)

If my answer helped you, please click on the checkmark left of my answer. thx.

Dear Chris, I have given the simulation another try. However, the result is still a bit weird. I first deflate the balloon and then I try to inflate it with some restraint string/fabric on the top. However, when the two pieces of cloth are very close to each other, it seems that there's a force attracting each other. As a result, my balloon deforms and remains no longer a sphere. Do you know what parameter can be wrong? Thank you very much!!


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How to move objects in a collection with interval using geometry node

Hello Good day, how can I move objects with interval instead of moving after the each object is finished. Thank you.

The phrase "move objects with interval instead of moving after the each object is finished" is not clear. What does "with interval" mean? Does the attached GIF show the desired, or undesired effect?

@TheLabCat Hello, with reference to the animation, the 2nd sphere moves only after the first sphere hit the bottom and so on, what I want to achieve  is  I want the 2nd sphere to follow the first sphere after a few frames or say while the first sphere is still on the middle distance from the bottom, the 2nd sphere will already start moving.

Hi. Please don't post essential information like links, file downloads or additional details in the comments section where it can be easily missed. Instead edit them into your original post with the [Edit] button above. Comments are transitory by nature, are hard to index or search for, and may be erased at any moment.

You can use just math instead of selection.
Set an interval between each instance (as a number of frames), when the current frame is greater than this interval, things start moving.

File

Thank you Daniel Möller, this is what I want to achieve.

@Kaluy.Ph, if this answers your question, please mark it as answered so the community knows it.

Hi, may I know what math formula or equation you used to obtain this result? because I really want to understand how this is happening, I am thinking like this is just "y=mx + c", where "y" is the index value and "x" is scene time, I have been trying to create a formula but its not working every time. I hope you can help me, thank you.


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Incorrect display of grass in Particle Systems
I'm new to blender and I often run into difficulties, one of them is that the grass on the stage is somehow displayed in red. I made grass from the particle system - hair, made a texture and everything was displayed correctly both in the viewport and on the render. After some time, when I started the render again, I saw that the grass was partially painted in red (the texture of the grass is fine, it is correct), I thought for a long time, decided to remove this grass from the particle systems altogether, restarted the render and this grass remained on the render. I don't understand what it is, a Blender glitch? Is it possible to clear the cache somewhere? I added more objects to the scene and they were reflected in the rendering, that is, the picture is updated, and this grass remains there, even if the plane on which this grass was was removed. Help to understand what is happening, thanks in advance

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.

If you have Hair Dynamics checked on the Particle System properties and open the Cache section below it, there's a Delete All Bakes button near the bottom of that section. Does that help?


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scale several bones envelopes proportionally
I am looking to proportionally scale down (for example) all bone envelopes in the hand of an armature .
However I cannot seem to use the Deform Distance:

nor the Scale tool to effect the envelope distance of the multi-select, proportionally.

Is there a way to do this without resorting to scripting (python)?

It appears the Alt-S and Ctrl-Alt-S work to scale multiple, proportionally.


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Background color isn't changing
I'm using the compositing to change the background color from black to pink, but after all the configuration, the background doesn't change the color, I have tried with different nodes and nothing. I even checked my first donut to see if I missed something, but everything looks good.
Is there something that I did wrong?

in render properties, turn on "transparent" then you will get:


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Huge PNG file size compared to other Software
I've rendered a 900 frames animation as a png sequence. RGBA with 100% compression and i got round about 34mb each frame and the overall sequence is about 30gb big. That is pretty huge.
Tools like Premiere Pro or After Effects struggle to load those huge sequences and compositing is pretty impossible because it's way too slow.
My question is, why are those png images so huge? If i take them and rewrite them with e.g. media encoder the file sizes it gives me is about 2mb per frame. But it looks totally the same and also contains alpha.
Is there a way to get normal file sizes out of the box from blender so i can skip the converting part with external tools like media encoder?
Thanks for your help!
(Additional informations: Render Engine Cycles / 3840x2160px 4K / PNG RGBA)

Looks like you have about 8 megapixels with about 4 bytes/pixel, corresponding to the 4 channels, per image. This would be the numbers if your frames don't have large contiguous areas of exactly the same color, e.g. in typical renderings with color gradients (because PNG only compresses runs of the same pixel values). Adobe Media Encoder seems to support video formats like H.264 which compress video really well, but lossy -- a totally different animal than lossless PNG (single image) frame sequences.

@Peter-ReinstateMonica PNG doesn't just compress runs of same pixel values. It has filters to subtract the left pixel or top pixel, etc. It has Huffman coding to compress frequently appearing values that are not in runs.

@Nayuki Thanks for the info -- I was so sure because in my experience PNG compresses very well for e.g. screen shots of text and really badly for the typical photograph. Perhaps the more sophisticated compression methods are not supported by all encoders? Or their benefit is limited with typical photography.

@Peter-ReinstateMonica The filters in PNG are supported by libpng, the pervasive encoder that everyone uses. The compression methods like Huffman is supported by zlib, the pervasive library that everyone uses. If anything, it's harder to not use the standard filters and compression methods that libpng+zlib provide by default.

@Nayuki After reading the PNG Wikipedia page I should correct my first comment -- uniform color gradients actually do compress very well with PNG, but irregular, small-scale patterns don't. So it's possible that the color depth of your PNG frames is more bits/color and PNG achieves a compression ratio leading to the observed image size.

It seems you have set 16-bit color and then resaved it in 8-bit.
Saving 4k image in 16-bit gives me relatively same size of PNG.

Images look the same because typical monitor is limited by 8-bit color, the only difference you may note is banding effect which is not the case in 8-bit color because of dithering.

Before comparing "cats with dogs", be aware that PNG is an non-lossy image format.
So for every pixel you would have four components (R,G,B,A) with the required bit depth (e.g. 8 or 16 bits).
The only thing that PNG can do is to pack the bits and compress common pattern (non-lossy).
In contrast JPEG (just one example) is a lossy format, depending on the quality factor.
Typically the file size can be smaller but you can have artefacts (like grass looking like green mud).
Maybe JPEG2000 (or similar) that use a different approach storing the image data will provide smaller image sizes.
However in some cases PNG images are actually smaller than JPEG images are (depending on the image).
Another important fact is that even when images look the same initially, the result of processing those any further can be quite different (like when listening to MP3 music at half of the speed).
If you repeat the procedure "load from lossy format, modify, save as lossy format" a few times the image will become quite terrible.

While technically true, the original question did not state that they were comparing PNG with JPEG but rather that saving the same image as a PNG with another software results in smaller file sizes.

Why even save as PNG? It's not a production format, it's only meant as a final export format for the internet, so is jpeg.
It lacks a lot of features like including render passes, it's heavy, and incredibly slow to write and read. When you save an image sequence, you should use a format made for production.
EXR comes with some compression algorithm like Pxr24 if you want lossy, or any lossless compression method. Just avoid DWAA if you uses passes as it will lose crucial data on passes. Alternatively, if you don't need passes, use targa raw.
The only occasions you should use png or jpeg as an output is if you are outputting a single image ready to post on the internet. Any other cases, you most likely should avoid anything not meant for production, you will lose either data or time.


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Is there a way to choose precisely where to add a vertex?
I work for a construction company and I want to create a topography/ground level for a site that is not flat. I have imported an image as plane with an over-layed a pdf screenshot of the site with the survey levels included.
I want to be able to place a vertex on each of these points to allow me then to adjust the height for each point. This is rhw image I'm working with.Subdivision only seems to let me place more vertices on regular points.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Why don't you convert the PDF to SVG (if it contains vector data) and import the SVG into Blender?

Also do you have access to the actual topographical data from this site? Blender has several addons that can import topological data in several forms and convert it to a mesh.

You can do it. Just enable add-on Add mesh: Extra objects:

For now, you'll see a single vert option in add menu:
So, if you want to place vertex in specific position - just use shift + right mouse button hotkey to place your cursor in desired place and add the vertex.


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Delete Keyframe hot key not working
Hey I just downloaded Blender 3.1.2 and I am trying to use (Alt+I) to delete a keyframe while in the 3D viewport but nothing is happening. It would really speed things up if I didn't have to go to the timeline to delete and add frames.

What OS are you on?

ALT+I only works if there is a keyframe at the frame currently selected in the timeline.  You still have to set current frame to the frame you want to delete the keyframe.


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Is there a way to reduce or eliminate render time? When changing the color of an animated object
I've created an animation of spinning coin and I'm trying to figure out if theres anyway I can reduce or eliminate the render time when I change the color of the coin.
I want to create several color variations of the same animation, and I am currently re-rendering the entire animation each time I make a small color change(Which is over an hour each time). Does anyone have any solutions to this problem?

If you're not worried about indirect lighting you can use cryptomatte in the compositor to change materials.

To begin with, If all you render is the coin in your post, an hour seems quite excessive unless you have a big frame range to render and/or a low end hardware. Maybe you should investigate that too.... That being said, you could render it once in greyscale, then colorize it with a color ramp in comp (just exclude the drop shadow).


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Start "Track To" at a later frame
I would like to start the "Track To" after a random time and stop it after a random number of frames. Can anyone help me with this?

Set a key frame on the Influence parameter of the constraint.


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Disable in renders not working?
New to Blender here.
I want to disable a certain object from rendering for a certain period of time, so I assigned keyframes from frame 1 to 30 for it to not render. Yet it doesn't seem to be working? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.
Image for reference. Thanks in advance

Nevermind, it seems that it's only being disabled on the final rendered model rather than on render preview. I suppose it works for me

"Disable render" works only in "Render" yes. Though feel free to also animate the viewport visibility if it helps, but be careful there are many things you can't do on an object while hidden in the viewport.


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Object resets to position of deleted Keyframe
I have a hand Model that I parented to a cylinder so it looks like a hand spear.
The plan was for the Spear to move in time to hit a rolling brick ball away from a Spider Robot's way, simple and straight to the point.
I have everything up and ready except the Spear, as this is the second time it happens to me in this project alone, I set a beginning location Keyframe and then in frame 350 I set another location Keyframe in a different location. I wanted to do it again as I made a mistake with my calculations so I deleted the Keyframes, I am supposed to be able to move the spear normally now but no, whenever I move it It just resets to the location in which I put the now deleted first keyframe. It happened many times before and I usually just delete the Object and do it again but this is starting to get on my nerves XD.
The location settings are not locked I checked many times.
I just don't know what I did wrong.

The spear parent can't do that on it's own.  Could you have left a keyframe say at frame 1, 0, or somewhere else along the timeline that's pulling it back?  Check the Dopesheet. Hit the "Home" key to make sure all keyframes are included.  If it's not a forgotten keyframe, are there redundant strips in there.  (they're usually underlined in red)
Is the cylinder/spear in fact parented to something else?  It may be that a forgotten constraint, modifier, physics or whatever, is acting on it.  Check the sphere's constraints list, then modifier list, then it's physics properties.

Continued - You might try saving then exiting Blender completely,  loading it back in again.

saving then exiting Blender completely, loading it back in again did the trick, however I still don't know what I did wrong. There is nothing in the constraints list or the modifier list but It does have Rigid Body in physics properties, But I kept that at default. Only thing I changed was Friction. There are no KeyFrames left or any redundant strips either. This is giving me a headache XD. –

Your Rigid Body physics could well be the problem.  The physics engine doesn't necessarily reset or update everything when you change settings or even remove the physics altogether! The object can continue to behave as before and even go erratic sometimes.  Only a complete save, exit, and reload will rid the object of the former settings.  Cont...

...Cont - It's one of the reasons I find baking an object's behavior, once I get it right can save hours of headache work later down the track.  You are then free to clear it of physics and other constraints, regain full control again and continue unhindered with the project's next sequence.  Example -
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/189665/animating-active-object-in-physics-simulation/190246#190246


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Uv unwrapping giving lots of extra lines?

So I am a complete beginner to blender and started trying to do this frog model tutorial. I got to the uv unwrapping after marking seams and have a mess instead of what the video showed. I have tried to look around and find a solution but I still have this problem and have no idea what I should do. Does anyone have a solution or suggestions that might help?

the model has horrible topology and most likely duplicate vertices causing this problem. you have to fix your topology first. research about good topology first and fix it. once your topology is good, then you can proceed with UV unwrapping.

Okay, I'll try that. Thanks for the reply.

the easiest way to do some cleanup by going into Edit Mode (like in your screenshot) and selecting all vertices with "A" then pressing "M", then choose "By Distance" and you can adjust the threshold distance from 0.0001m to something else maybe 0.001m or 0.01m in the lower left corner


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FBX Model has no walls inside in Unity – why is that
I have an FBX file which I import in Unity. If I go inside the Model, the walls are not visible. How can I solve this problem?

Probably backface culling.
Blender doesn't cull backfaces by default, meaning your still able to see the mesh even when you look at polygons from the "wrong" side. This is what it looks like when you enable it.

You can solve this by adding some "solid" geometry with a solidify modifier to give the walls two out-facing normals.

Thank you! Do you know how to do this in Cinema4d? Cause I don't use blender…

This is a blender help forum. I have not used C4D, but very briefly.

Technically, in every 3D software a face has only one side and is not visible from the other side. It only 'exists' in the direction of its normal. Most softwares have the option to enable "two sided" (or disable "backface culling"), making the faces visible from both sides. Effectively what the software is doing is duplicating every face and flipping the normals, making it appear that faces have two sides. For 'real time' applications like games, this can have a considerable negative effect on performance if it's overused.
That being said, both Unity and Unreal have material settings that enable 'two sided', but it's not recommended to overuse it, for perfomance reasons.
It's usually best to just model the interior faces only where they'll be seen by the user/player. In the case of your model I assume the player would only be able to see a little bit inside the cylinder/pipe that comes out of the capsule, so you'd just need to create interior faces on that part of the mesh.


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Dynamic Hair bug?
Maybe that's me who's doing something wrong, but as soon as I create a UV sphere, scale it a bit and apply Hair Particle - it's getting extremely messy.
Blender 3.1.2
How to reproduce:

Create UV Sphere
Scale it whatever direction
Apply Hair Particles
Turn on Dynamic
Bake

A small YouTube recording of it
Any ideas/tips?

Did you apply the scale to the sphere before baking?

Not sure i did. Im newbie to blender, so how should i apply the scale if i do that via object properties?

In Object mode, CTRL - A and choose "Scale" from the popup Apply menu or via the Object > Apply > Scale menu on the top toolbar.

If you're unsure you can check the transform scale values in the side panel (key N) of the 3D viewport. After you applied the scale the transform values will be reset to 1.0 but the actual scale of the object is kept. A scale of one is important for physics and many other things, and it is a common mistake not to apply it.

I'll check it tomorrow morning and will reply. Thank you for tips!

@John Eason
Yes, it worked like this, thank you. Will keep that in mind.  Thank you, once again, for tips!

After transforming, while in object mode I have to hit CTRL + A to apply all the transformations I do to the object and after this hair works just fine.


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Simulate paint balls hitting a surface, then dripping
I want to simulate: fire some paint ball particles against a surface and then have these turn into liquid geometry that will have them splatter and then drip down the surface.
In this example I use two particle systems to fire a few objects spread out across two sets of frames, using an object that is a Liquid goemetry.
This isn't working because I imaging that by the time the paint particle geometry is fired, the geometry has already been simulated and no more water particles are available as the object hits the particle/fluid collision surface.

Perhaps I could make the particle instances real, but then it appears that I'd have lots of work to be keyed for a short as a short inflow -- how would I find the exact collision moment?  Or perhaps just keep as a constant inflow and have the object-particle killed upon collision?

As Emerson-Lake-Palmer once wrote: "confusion will be my epitaph".
My example:


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script to clean up video sequence and adjust params (resolution, filepath, etc)
I have the following repeating use cases where I'd like to automate several steps.
UC#1: I use a video upscaler and raster removal app that creates outputs with a much larger bit rate and therefore file size than I deem necessary to my acuity.   So I run these through a blender VE with medium quality output to the same file name (blender will add frame number as a file suffix prior to the file type suffix (like "myvideo 0000-32797.mp4").  I want the same height and width output.  I want to be sure that the start and end frames align to the left-aligned video sequence.
UC#2: I want to remove segments of a video.  Take for example a comedy sketch show, where some of the more experimental sketches bomb. So I cut out and remove one or more parts.  I then want to run a script that automates the appropriate output settings.
Since I apply these use cases many times per month, I'd like to automate as much as possible.

Hello. Please don't ask more than one question per post. Use the [edit] link below your post, to break this into multiple posts so that each focuses on a single issue. Make as many separate questions as necessary. Your question touches on two distinct workflows: resizing/re-encoding videos and removing segments from a video. To ensure clarity and better responses, please focus on a single issue per post

@HarryMcKenzie -- I think you reviewed this Q too quickly.  There is really only one point, one question: how to automate a common workflow, demonstrated by two overlapping use cases.

Here is an example script.   Let me know if you can change/add to this first attempt.
import bpy

# have all sequences selected, for gap removal
for s in bpy.context.sequences:
    s.select=True
bpy.context.scene.frame_current=0
bpy.ops.sequencer.gap_remove(all=True)

# set scene.frame_end to the largest frame_final_end of all strips
furthest_end = -1
for s in bpy.context.sequences:
    if furthest_end < s.frame_final_end:
        furthest_end = s.frame_final_end
bpy.context.scene.frame_end = furthest_end

# find a MOVIE sequence to obtain resolution, etc:
ms = None
for s in bpy.context.sequences:
    if s.type == 'MOVIE':
        ms = bpy.types.MovieSequence(s)
        break

# set output filename
baseNameSplit = ms.filepath.split("\\")
baseNamePlusFT = baseNameSplit[len(baseNameSplit)-1]
baseName = baseNamePlusFT.split('.')[0]
bpy.context.scene.render.filepath = "C:\\Users\\James\\Downloads\\" + baseName + " "

# set output params to what I commonly prefer
bpy.context.scene.render.ffmpeg.format = 'MPEG4'
bpy.context.scene.render.ffmpeg.codec = 'H264'
bpy.context.scene.render.ffmpeg.constant_rate_factor = 'MEDIUM'
bpy.context.scene.render.ffmpeg.audio_codec = 'MP3'

# set resolution and be sure that the image snaps to this
bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_x = ms.elements[0].orig_width
bpy.context.scene.render.resolution_y = ms.elements[0].orig_height

bpy.ops.sequencer.strip_transform_fit(fit_method='FIT')


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how to set a shortcut to select a specific Transformation Orientation
I want to set up some transformation shortcuts as I frequently need to switch between Global, View and Gimbal "Transformation Orientations", especially during bone animations.
I see that the 3d View "Transformation Orientations" have a single shortcut key (that I can change from numpad-+, which only works if I'm hovering over the drop-down.

I bet there's some magic you good looking people could share.
Again I'd like to select a bone and shift between Global and View as I move and rotation and also Gimbal to look at single dimension transformations.

Can't you use the pie menu which is initiated with the ',' comma hotkey?


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how to use "Cut particles to shape" to "trim a lawn" in areas defined by objects
My goal is to not have tall lawn grass (hair) not show through heavy objects on a lawn (like a chair leg or other object.   I would like to understand any way of using the ParticleEdit.shape_object and bpy.ops.particle.shape_cut() button:

For me, not matter the object (sphere, plane), all the hair particles disappear when I click on Cut button.
I can find no use cases in my search of this site and would like to discover any.
My example file:
I also think that this question could be helped by an answer to this.

The Cut Particles to Shape operation  works the other way around than you expect.  It's like a Bowl Cut hairstyle: put a bowl over the head and cut off everything that is not covered by the bowl.
In your case, you place the sphere on the grass (particles) and everything outside the sphere is cut off:

It seems not to work with a plane as cut object. You need to extrude it to a box then it works as you expect.
If you want to cut off the grass under an object, I would use a vertex group for the Vertex Group > Density in the particle settings or an image texture as shown here: How to use a texture to affect particle density


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Flipping the pose on the x axis is pasted incorrectly
So for the past few hours i have been trying to animate a simple walk cycle but couldn't because
when i try to flip the pose on the x axis it doesn't paste it correctly. (Blend File)
The pose i copied:

And this is the pose i got when i fliped it on the x axis:

Both pictures are viewed in the same angle .
I checked the armature names in case it didn't fit the naming convention but there's nothing
wrong with it .
I complitely redone the rigging multiple times just to be sure but it didn't change anything.
Everything other then the legs are pasted correctly.

The bones of your right leg are not well oriented, you must have duplicated your left leg instead of symmetrized it. So delete the right leg, bend a bit the left leg (always better to show Blender in what direction it is supposed to bend), symmetrize it. As you'll see you'll need to correct the IK Pole Angle of the right lower leg (0°). It should work.

Thank you so much it finally worked!


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How can I animate two objects merging smoothly, similarly to metaballs?
I want to achieve the effect of an object being smoothly swallowed by water - on contact the two objects should have a gradual transition, instead of an ugly rough seam at their intersection. Something similar to how two metaballs merge, but ideally with more control and flexibility.
The objects are pretty abstract, so no need to handle complex geometry, but directly using metaballs is also too restricting. What are my best other options?


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What's this and how do I Merge them all together into one mesh?

I have all these 'Model's and It makes Blender laggy. I was hoping I could solve it by merging it into one. I tried Ctrl + J but it doesn't work. Can anyone show me some examples of merging it?

are you sure you can merge objects in the Outliner? Once you've selected every object you want you can go in the 3D view and press ctrl J, I guess it should work. Not sure it will make Blender less laggy as you'll have the same amount of vertices at the end...

oh ok I'll give it a try .thanks


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Blender Cache Error. 0 frames in memory Cache is Outdated

Hi, so for the last couple of days i've been trying to bake hair particles from a tree I modeled  but I keep getting this error that says "0 frames in memory (0 B), cache is outdated!" and I can't find an answer for this.
At first I thought that maybe I did something wrong with the project file, but then I started a new one with the default cube, I added some hair particles and the same error still appeared. Does anyone know how to fix this? Or what is the cause?

I just found out. You can't bake while in Edit Mode. Hope this helps future straglers:)

I had this "0 frames in memory, cache is outdated". My collection was empty. after I clicked RigidBodyWorld. Bake works:)

I have been searching too, what I did is I clicked on remove rigid body world and afterwards I put it back and everything worked! I had different simulations in the same project and I think blender couldn't handle it or I messed up in the bakes I don't know! But let me know if this works for you!


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Texture shown in Viewport is white in Render
The street texture is in the viewport but not in Render what have i done wrong?
-> see in the pictures

can be a lot of reasons. If you don't want us to guess...you should provide your blend file

First thing I always look for in situations like this are objects that are hidden in the viewport - hidden objects will still show in renders.

Perfect There was a white plane hidden in the viewport thanks!


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How to render transparent background for png image texture with eevee?
I have placed an image texture (on a plane mesh) using a png image that has a transparent background. The transparent background appears as the default material on the plane instead of being transparent. How do I get the transparent areas of my image to display as such? I need to do this specifically in EEVEE.

Here is the proper setup for a texture with an alpha (transparent) channel in EEVEE. Take note of the blend modes I highlighted in red on the right - these are necessary (anything but opaque).

Perfect! Thank you.


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Driver rotating driven object in the wrong direction?
I have set up a driver to rotate an object on its x axis by moving the driver on it z axis. I want to rotate the driven object in a certain direction when moving the driver up and of course in the other direction when moved down. The problem is that these directions are reversed - the driven object rotates the opposite direction in which I want it to rotate when moving the driver. How can I reverse this so that the object rotates in the desired direction?

You can multiply the driver by -1 using the Generator modifier.
This will effectively invert the values.
Original answer on how to set up driver modifiers.

Sorted - thank you!


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How do I create seamless walking animation?
I am new to this particular website. While I have been teaching myself 3d art & animation for the entire time of Covid19 quarantine, I'm left with a small hiccup.
I downloaded a Mixamo character with a basic walk animation. And I was able to repeat the action within Blender2.8. However, I am having trouble figuring out how to continue the walk with an offset so that the character does not repeat the walk from its origin but rather continues along a seamless path. Any help would be greatly appreciated and I will ink a video to show what I am describing. Thank you.
Blender Animation Video Link:
https://streamable.com/i5930c

here I explain how to make a walk cycle: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/159782/lego-walkcycle-sliding-problem/159796#159796 ... but as your walk is moving forward what you could do is pushing you animation down into the NLA, repeat the strip several times, and at the beginning of each iteration, move the armature to the exact spot where it is supposed to begin. Please tell me if it's clear

Hello, thank you for the reply. I somewhat know what you are referring to, however I don't think my character has a sliding problem with the walking. I just need the character to continue walking on a path without having to repeat the action of walking at frame 0.


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How do I close a mesh without losing the hole I made>
I had to make a cutout in my mesh for 4 holes that I wanted to introduce. I want to make the mesh watertight, but because I had to cut through surfaces, it is showing the 'inside' of my mesh. How can I make this file printable without losing the holes I created?

red is the gap between the two surfaces, ideally where I would introduce a new face or something to close the mesh

you  can try bridge edge loops

@susu I tried but theres so many vertices it is sort of a mess


text:
Low quality model when export
how can I make a good 3d model ...
This is what i made and this is when i try to open it in Unity, is there a way that i can export it in high quality...

the problem is your materials. unity as with unreal or lumberyard or any other engine does not understand blender materials. You need to recreate your materials in your destination software.

See here for more about material export... .fbx export why there are no materials or textures?


text:
Smooth out a concave edge
Hey guys beginner user here.
I'm trying to model a skateboard to get the hand of using blender and I was able to get the basic shape down except I have an edge that is too sharp. I tried multiple technics but I was unable to get it to work.
This is what I have:

What I'm trying to smoothen out is the hard-line where the body meets the tail. make it look like a more round edge.
what am I missing here?

This is generally a result of the complexity of working with the subdivision surface modifier. The closer together your edge loops are, the more of a "crease" you will get.
To solve this, I would recommend individually selecting the edge loops on each side of the center edge loop where the crease is and edge sliding (double tap G) them away from each other until the "crease" is smoothed out. As an aside, you should consider if those three edge loops are even needed: is it possible to get away with only one?
Please edit your post to share your blend file too - it would really help!
You can use this site to share blend files: https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/

Thank you! this solved my problem. I also got rid of the other two edge loops, it was initially one but since I couldn't get rid of the crease I added them to try other methods out.


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How to load cloth baked cache?
I am new to blender.
Created a character, made cloth pants and shirt to the character, baked the simulation to the disk (a folder was created at the same folder with the project called blendcache_ProjectName with all the baked files in it)
But as soon as i restart the blender and load this project, all the clothes are at the initial state and i can't find any way to load the baked cache, so i don't have to simulate it again. Apparently blender see these files according to the screenshot, but whenever i start the playback, they're static.
Anything i miss?
Thanks.


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How do I rig my 3d model properly? Parenting isn't working for me
Im new to rigging in blender, I want to pose this model I made but i cant, even after watching multiple videos after making the armature posing it doesnt work after parenting.

This problem may have already been solved but i cant find an answer. Im open to DM via discord or if somebody can guide me here, even better. All help is apreciated ive been dealing with this for too long. If anybody needs more specific images of my UI for context just tell me and ill try to be as fast as posible to not waste anybody's time.

Difficult to tell without more details, but from the outliner it looks as if it's not been parented correctly. I suggest you view this short video from CGDive which shows exactly how it's supposed to be done. - The Automatic Weights section is the one you'll need but it's worth viewing all of it, particularly how it's supposed to look in the outliner when it's parented correctly.

I recommend watching this playlist from CGDive it helps me a lot and helps me to rig the dragon model I recommend watching from the beginning of the playlist.https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdcL5aF8ZcJv68SSdwxip33M7snakl6Dx


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Blender keeps showing me the same render even though i made changes to the 3d model
So I made my first 3d model and rendered it once. But when I added some things to the model and then rendered it, but it showed the previous render. I kept doing it but it never showed the changes that I made after the first render. I tried turning off the sequencer and compositioning like another forum said, but it still doesn't fix the problem

I forgot to say, the first image is the current render and the second is the 3d model i have currently made

maybe the camera is facing the other side

Suggestion Please. Put your first comment in the question itself.  Show more of the Blender UI in your image, perhaps the entire screen capture.  There are many ways to hide meshes. The UI may reveal any undesired settings.   Intentionally set or not.

@ShantanuAryan Thanks it works


text:
How do you switch between parents without the location being affected

I used these object constraints to switch parents but the location is being messed up whenever the influence changes

if you plan to animated an object that goes from a parent to another, look for the Dynamic Parent addon, it simplifies the operation

alright i'll try it


text:
Cycles, information on how the motion vectors are calculated
Where can I find technical information on how the cycle rendering engine calculates the vector (motion) information? Specifically the backward motion. Is it doing a backward render of each frame? And if so how does it handle something like physics?

This is not an answer, but ideally for final you'd have all physics baked, so blender would have effortless forward and backward lookup

Right. But I am curious as to how Cycles does it when it is not already baked. :(


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How to display image inside my UI panel that receive from url in blender using python bpy?
I want to create a blender addon that downloads a random in the creation time of the panel on the time panel in the drawing. png file from the internet, and preview it to the user inside the panel.
The panel Info:
bl_label="Image"
bl_idname= "image"
bl_category="image"
bl_region_type= "UI"
bl_space_type= "VIEW_3D"

steps:

download an image from a URL,
preview it to the user - I'd rather store the image in the temp directory than in local storage.

Hello and welcome to BSE. Try checking this answer maybe it can help you further your search for an answer. You can look into the requests module


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ImageTexture shows digonal border?
I'm an absolute beginner in using blender.
What I want to achieve is applying an image texture to a plain rectangle.
The result shows a pattern along the diagonal. How can I avoid this?
My image "Texture.png" does not show this diagonal struture.

I generate the shading as follows:

Regards Christophe

Hello could you please pack your image (File > External Data > Pack Resources) and share your file? https://blend-exchange.com/

Hi Christophe. Please edit your question ad add more information. What does the real texture look like? What the UV map of the plane look like?

looks like a UV issue to me, how do they look like?

I added the sample file
here

I solved it myself, by looking at the UV Map. And I removed all structures there.

Look how your UV looks like, for some reason it's not the same as your original shape, this deformation explains why the inner triangulation of your quad appears (a quad is always made of 2 triangles, if you deform the face or the UV you'll begin to notice it):

To fix that you need to unwrap again, you can do a simple U > Unwrap or Project from View and the texture will be correctly displayed:


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Cannot open this file on Blender 2.79b, blender quit unexpectedly
When i open this file on 2.79b, the apps quit unexpectedly.
But when i try to open in 2.83, it can open normally
But my daughter want 2.79b for editing, she don't want the latest version..
hopefully someone can help me, maybe some trick to make it work
This is the file
http://download1821.mediafire.com/5zb63pnn3i4g/b2ucqkt3tgefl5l/RobloxRig_Woman.zip

Related: Opening files from version 2.8 in 2.79, How to get my file back in 2.79 after saving with 2.80 Aplha 2?

Hello :). Blender doesn't support backward compatibility. 2.8+ versions are also fundamentally different from 2.7 so any importing/appending might cause issues later.


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Exporting animation to FBX
I have a problem with exporting animation from Blender to FBX. After I export to fbx, I open fbx file with FBX Review and can not see any animation. When I import fbx back to blender there is no previous animation and data.
What was my mistake while exporting?
How it can be solved?
My .blend file:

My export (default) settings:

Not sure what is correct way to do this, but I solved my problem by baking all animations:
(Select Armature->Object menu in object mode->Animation->Bake Action).
I think my mistake was that I thought FBX supports Blender constraint, but as I understand it don’t. Therefore all animations which are driven by blender constraints will be lost if it exported to FBX.

I think you need to add some key frame (location, rotation). Then u can export to fBX format

select the object, curve and bone then export to FBX. It worked for me.


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How to generate meshes from pre made modules
There are different options for individual parts of the mesh (modules). How can Blender quickly generate mesh made up of random combination of these modules?
For example, there are different options for the first, second floor and roof of the house. How can I quickly generate a street of random houses?

I suppose Animation Nodes add-on will be a good place to start


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Make fresnel visible only from a side of the mesh in eevee
I used this fresnel setup on top of my shader to create a artificial rim light effect

But of course fresnel is applied around the entire object, is there a way to control the sides of the object it is applied so I can emulate a rim light effect comming only from the left?

I'm testing things tryng to find a solution, but no luck so far. I have an idea (maybe), however I need to know if either the light direction or the camera angle are going to change (example: you want only the "left side" to have a fresnel, does "left" mean the left side of a still image. or does it mean the side that's always farthest from the camera, or does it mean the lit/unlit side)?

Ideally it would always be the unlit side, but having a parameter where I can change the direction of the fresnel at will would work as well.

You can do this, in a number of different ways, without any matcap or anything:

Left to right: original; rotated normal; directionally limited Fresnel.
The Fresnel calculation looks at the relationship between incoming ray and the surface normal to get its output.  We can send the Fresnel node a false normal ouput, which we have altered in some method, to get Fresnel as if the normal were something else:

We could also just check which direction the normal is facing, and make out emission black if it's facing the wrong direction:

Here, I'm comparing the surface normal to the object space -1,0,0 vector.  If the surface normal is facing that direction, we'll do the full emission.  If it's parallel or facing away, we'll do black instead.  Between, we'll interpolate.
There are plenty more imaginable methods, and any of these can be adjusted however desired.  A single map range node can go a long way....

I think you want to mess with the Geometry Node. This is me just plugging in the first random value that comes to mind, but I'm sure playing with some of the other attributes might work even better.

Result:

For those interested, I have achieved what I wanted with a matcap setup, the problem is that its not easily editable and I have to put a new image file every time I want to make adjustments, I'm still open to now if theres a way to do it with a fresnel node
[


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Grease Pencil Keyframes not visible in timeline
I am very new to blender, working on my first project. I am trying to combine a 3D model, animated using an armature, with some hand-drawn animation, using grease pencil. I started with the model, and everything worked as expected, but when I started animating with the grease pencil, the keyframes were not visible in the timeline. As a result, I cannot grab them, arrange them, or view their onion-skinning.
I saw a similar question asked about the Dope sheet, which allowed me to see the keyframes there, but the timeline is still blank. I have a picture of the view, with the grease pencil selected, but with no keyframes visible. For reference: There are keyframes on frame 0, 1, and 20. I cannot see them in object, edit, or draw mode.

I think my problem has something to do with using the wrong "Keying set" since I am using one with LocRotScale for the armature bones, But I am not sure how to change it to a keying set that allows for grease pencil frames. Keying sets are still a little confusing to me in general. I know the keyframes are being created because scrubbing the timeline still shows the different frames in the viewport, but I just can't view them in the timeline. I am most interested in getting the onion skinning working, which I believe is linked to this visibility issue.

Any help is much appreciated. I've been at a bit of a stuck in the project because I cannot figure this out.

Switch from timeline to the dopesheet editor ( go to the timeline and press Ctrl tab) the timeline will only show the keyframes for the active object.

Is there a difference between the "active" object and the "selected" object? I know I can use the dopesheet (the other question I linked already answered that), but without the timeline, I cannot view the onion-skinning. Can I "Activate" the grease pencil then?

I had the same problem!
Turns out I locked the collection (where the grease pencil layer was) in outliner. Therefore I could not select the grease pencil drawings. You lock/unlock the collection or any layer by clicking the pointer icon to the right of the name of the collection/object/etc.
I realise that this might be a different problem, but maybe someone will find this helpful at some point in time :D

I have the exact problem, I have keyframes and there is animation, but the keyframes aren't visible anywhere, not even in graph editor even though the object is selected.
To fix the bug go to Object Mode and create a new grease pencil stroke. When going back to the original drawing keyframes show again.

What you are looking for is in Dope Sheet -> Crease pencil mode.

I just had the same problem. Solved it by moving the Grease Pencil Object into a collection in Outliner and keys appeared again in the Dope Sheet.


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Disabling Render causes Rigid Body object to recalc during render
I have a baked RB simulation that looks fine when played in the View.

Instead of using a clear, see-through material on the Cube Passive RB where I have sphere Actives bouncing off, I decided to disable rendering on this (enabling Holdout would cause some unwanted gray-scale in the result).

However, the render-animation result seems to ignore the Baked RB simulation and re-calculated with a very jittery result:

To me this enters the level of bug as to its unexpected side effects.   Other than kludging up a see-through material for the cube, am I missing a more expected, straight-forward way to use the RBW cache during rendering?
My example:


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Blender 2.79 to 3.0, Removed toolbar?
I'm a bit late to switching to Blender 3, but I had my reasons.  Mainly to wait for improvements since a lot of necessary UI features were removed in the update, partially waiting for a critical addon to be updated, mostly just because I didn't have the time to waste on learning while working on my current job at the time.
I am trying to learn to adapt my workflow but it seems like a significant number of options are moved to different menus or not accessible via UI anymore at all.
Like tool bar on the left side of the main viewport, the one with the "Tools" "Create" "Physics" etc tabs.  Mainly what I use the most is the "Add Primitive" menu.
Where is it?  Why is it gone?  How do I get it back?  How can I access it without using keyboard shortcuts?  Second question, how do I get the custom properties to display their value instead of just a "edit value" button that opens a window that doesn't even have enough room to show the full value?
I understand the praise the new Blender gets but what I don't understand is why criticisms or questions like this are met with ridicule and snark.  There was no reason to remove this, and there is certainly no reason why users shouldn't be able to add it back without having to learn python and implement it themselves.
I would very much appreciate the help.

Most of the functions you mention (such as add primitive) can be found from the menu(s) at the top. There are also further "point and click" (sometimes hold) mesh manipulation tools in the left-hand toolbar (both highlighted with red). Other mesh tools such as Object Data Properties, Physics, Constraints, etc... can be found on the right side properties tabs (highlighted yellow):

Also, I'm not entirely certain what the problem is you are having with edit custom property. The property window is usually accessed as shown below. Is the problem that you have a large value and the window can't be resized?

The "Add" section is entirely missing for both object and edit mode.  I am guessing this is an issue on my end as I can't find any reason why that may be the case via search so I'll look into a fresh install.
As for the custom properties, the ones I use primarily are of the type "python" and the value isn't visible at all unless you edit it and the text bar won't display everything at once. I need to be able to look at what the value is at a glance so I can change something else in another part of the UI simultaneously.  It might seem small but it drastically slows my workflow over time.


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How can I bake emission?
I followed these steps : I created an image texture with a 4k image and the alpha disabled, I set the bake type to emit, then I selected the image texture and the object that had the emissive material and pressed bake, But all I got was a black image, am I doing something wrong?
Picture of the object having the emission node attached.

The same object when the baked image is attached

You have to use the Selected to Active option. The active is the last selected (yellow). https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/baking.html#selected-to-active

I selected the object that had the emissive material and pressed bake, it said that there were no valid objects selected , so I selected another object and then I selected the eyes and mouth (they were the active object) , but when I baked it the image was still completely black

You should select the eyes first, then the object, and the texture node (the 4k image) must be in the object's shader graph.

The texture node is supposed to be in the Shader graph of the eyes and mouth correct?

You want to create a texture, which fits to the other object not to the eyes. So the other object must contains the image.

The other object (The robot) has multiple materials assigned to it, Does it matter in which material I place the image texture?

create the Image Texture in the material that you've assigned to the eye

I tried doing that but i still got a plain black image


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Is it possible to export emission with an .fbx file?
I made a model , some parts of that model have emission , I baked the emission into image textures. Is it possible to export this emission in the .fbx format? If so, then how can I do it?

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

What node setup are you trying? Hooking the image up the Emssion socket of the default Principled node should work.

I tried what you said and it worked , Thanks a lot scurest :)


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X axis mirror in sculpt mode not being symmetrical
I'm in sculpt mode and when I turn on the mirror for the x axis it is not symmetrical as you can see in the image below. Is there a way to fix this?

Sculpt symmetry is based on your object transforms. Try to apply all transforms (Ctrl +  A > All transforms  or Object > Apply > All Transforms).
When the symmetry dot seems to be snapping to random spots on the object, it's likely that the rotation transform is not applied to it.
You can check these values in the side panel on the 3D view while in Object Mode (Shortcut  N, then Item > Transform)


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Trying to make a 2 planed 3-d space using image planes -- but having problems with weird shadow castings
Not the best or series 3-d person with blender. I get by with much head bashing and teeth nashing...
But i think somethings have changed with Newest Blender. I am having this weird shadow casting with two 2-d Image Planes. How do i get rid of the shadows. Trying to create a semi-3-d effect with part of the image on the ground and other half rises vertically so you can create a motion/tilt up effect.
Any ideas on how or what i am doing wrong. Been playing with Shaders and nothing is working. I've added a picture of a test render for everyone can see what i am talking about.
Thanks! Calvin

sorry... but i finally figured out what the problem is. There is a function in the Shader that allows for casting shadows. I turned it off and Poof, the problem is now gone. Now i have another issue -- or not-- i will have to use another computer with better Graphics card to see if this is the solution. Too Damn Many Check Boxes, Add-ons, special modules and subsections!! And yeah... maybe a stomping huge monster CPU/GPU would help.
Cheers. Calvin


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Texture image erased for no reason wondering if i can somehow get it back

Ok, so I'm making a model and I make the textures and all that, I switch over to "modelling" to create a new object, I switch back and the textures are just gone note how the thumbnail has colours yet the image loaded doesn't and is instead blank. I cant access them in materials either they also seem to blank. I don't think anyways. I think they may have also been erased

I'm kind of leaving my blender to run overnight so I don't lose it. so i would highly appreciate help, thanks!

I can't tell from the images.. are you in Solid Preview Mode by any chance? If so, press Z in the 3D viewport and select either Material Preview or Rendered from the pie menu. To make sure you don't lose a material that is not being used, hit the little "shield icon" (false user) next to the material name.

It's not the textures on the actual model that have been erased its the actual texture itself. it's gone fully blank after switching to modelling. I have not closed blender without saving or anything like that at all