text:
How to highlight parts of my scene - strategy for materials?
I have a scene that looks like this...

(source: timevaryinglights.com)
The renderer is Cycles (probably obvious from the screenshot :) ). Blender 2.78.
I'd like to be able to highlight components, such as the gearbox, in a highlight color such as a slightly emissive orange. This would be for stills and for animation; and for animation it would be cool to be able to fade from current materials to highlighted material over a few frames.
The main question I have relates to materials strategy. Currently, I've got materials such as aluminum, shiny_steel, powder_coat, etc. So this means that if I want to highlight, say, the gearbox, I need all the objects in the gearbox (which are more than one material) to change color, without affecting everything else in the scene that also has the same materials.
At this point, I don't have a handy hierarchy as these meshes were imported more-or-less flat; but I'd be happy to parent all the gearbox parts to an empty called "EMPTY_gearbox", for example. Then maybe the ideal thing would be to add a custom property to the parent that allows me to fade from assigned materials to highlight material, perhaps through a driver (I'm kinda guessing here - I'm not an expert yet... :) )
What's the best strategy for achieving this? How do I get my head around material slots, mix shaders, etc.? I'd rather not have to have several different aluminums, such as aluminum_for_gearbox, aluminum_for_manifold, etc. But if this is what it takes, I can do it, but it seems like a clunky approach.
Thanks!
Dan

A small note that image from your question isn't shown (at least for me) because site won't be opened. I suggest adding images with built-in functionality, thanks.

Huh. Well, for now, here's a direct link to the image: link

I'm answering my own question as none of the answers was quite what I was looking for, but there were gems in there that let me figure it out. Thanks to all those who answered!
My solution:

I forked local copies of materials, e.g. Aluminum is now Aluminum.Gearbox, Aluminum.Manifold, etc. Thankfully, no component has more than 4 materials, so this was much less painful than I was thinking it might be.
I created my orange highlight material (some glossy, some diffuse and some emissive), using a node group to make it easy to place in all the materials where I want it.
I added a mix shader node before the output of these forked materials, and hung the orange color on the other input.
I added an empty, such as "EMPTY_gearbox_highlighter" with a custom property of "Highlight_Strength", going from 0.000 to 1.000.
I added simple drivers on the Fac of the mix shaders for all the materials in the gearbox, to be directly controlled by the Highlight_Strength property on the empty.

I'll repeat this for each highlightable component, and then all I need to do is to animate the Highlight_Strength properties on my empties, and it'll fade all the materials in the gearbox (or other component) to orange, which is exactly what I want!
Thanks to all who gave me the stepping stones to get here!
Here's the gearbox unhighlighted:

And here it is highlighted, just by taking that single custom parameter to 1.000:

One way would be to use Object-ID masks in the compositor (see here: How to use an object as a mask?).
You could then (for example) use the RGB curves node and keyframe the fac-value as shown below.
Unfortunately, this is not so easy to use. But I'm afraid there is no alternative at the moment...

Interesting, I might give it a shot. Thanks! However, I was hoping to override the materials as I think it would be cool to have nearby objects receiving light and colour from my highlighted component, rather than just an image-space overlay.

You could add another simple object encasing each object you want to highlight and use a  mix of transparent and emission. By animating the mixture you can turn on/off the highlighting.

You could use the Is Camera Ray to calculate a weaker emission value towards the camera so that the emission on surrounding objects is more visible.
The highlighting object could be a part of the same mesh as the main object, just with the highlight material assigned to it.

I personally like this approach, but the OP was trying to stay away from having to manipulate individual materials. The 'Is Camera Ray' helps, but as far as I can tell, only if your intended object to highlight is in the focal center of the camera. Does that sound right to you, or am I missing something with this approach?

Animating a mix shader's factor would be fine, and wouldn't even need an encasing object. I could simply set up, say, AluminumForGearbox and SteelForGearbox and have mix shaders right before the surface output, with emissive orange on the other branch of the mix. Since there's usually no more than three materials involved, animating three mix shaders wouldn't be too painful. The pain would be in having to make several different identical aluminums, and several different identical steels, etc. In my OP, I was imagining that it's possible to override materials orthogonally, by hierarchy.

I would still be interested to know if there's a way to control, say, three mix shaders by animating a custom property on a parent empty. Is that possible?

To give you a quick example of what I'm fearing in this approach... using your picture looking at the drive train, and the cross members of your chassis, those look like they may be the same material. If you were trying to isolate the drive train to highlight, and your camera passed over the cross members, then those would highlight as well, meaning that you would have to make a seperate material for those members that gets highlighted from a different approach.

I think that for your custom property idea to work, you need to be looking at drivers. I will experiment and let you know how it goes.

Thanks, Rick! Yes, I'm aware I'll need separate materials. I found the "make local copy" thing, which makes it very easy to fork materials for objects; and I've also discovered how a node group makes it easy to add "highlight_orange" to any material's node tree without having to brew up orange lots of separate times.  Yes, I'm having fun. :)

You can turn your existing materials into groups and then Aluminum4Gearbox will just be an aluminum group mixing with emission and Steel4Gearbox will be a steel group and emission, then any changes you make to any group will affect each material that uses it.

@rick-riggs a camera ray is true for any ray between the object and the camera, which is what puts the object onto the the final image, so if it is connected straight into the mix node between emission and transparent, will make the object always transparent anywhere in the final render but will emit to any surrounding objects.

Adding another answer based on some of the comment threads.
This answer has to do with driving the material selection via an Empty object's location.
Here's the pictorial overview:

Picture 1 above shows the final node setup once everything is in place, so just use that as a final reference.
Here's the run-down:

For each mesh object in your scene that you wish to have react to the empties location, I used a Vertex Color slot to just relate the object to the material. I did not use any other Trick, just add the Vertex Color Slot, and give it a unique name. In my example of Picture 2 above, I just use Col, Col.1, & Col.2, to respectively relate to Cube, Cube.001, & Cube.002
Next I added these four nodes seen here:

Attribute, Math (Set to Greater Than), Emission, Mix Shader
You will notice that at the First group of these nodes the first shader input on the Mix Shader is the intended material, the rest is there for a per object basis. The second thing that you will notice, is that the Attribute Node then gets a single name that relates to the Unique Vertex Color Entry that we added previously. The third step to this is to add a driver to the second value slot in the Math node as shown in Picture 3 above. For the Emission Shader Set that to what is desirable to you, and plug that into the second slot of the Mix Shader (The output of this first Mix Shader will be connected to the first input of the next group's Mix Shader).
To manipulate the Driver settings, you need to go to the Graph Editor as shown on the right hand side of Picture 4 above., there is a selection menu at the bottom of that screen, which will most likely read F-curve, this needs to be set to Drivers. Next over in the Node Editor, on the Math Node, be sure to select only this node. Make sure the Right side menu is expanded (Hint: with your cursor on the Graph Editor Screen Hit N). Next proceed to to change the driver settings as follows (you will likely have to scroll down on the Right side screen of the Graph editor to see this).

4.a. Change var to have a type of Distance.
4.b. Set the first object to be whatever object corresponds to the Vertex Color Entry (in my case Cube).
4.c. Set the second object to be the Empty Object (in my case Empty).
4.d. In the Expression field set the formula text to:

0.2 if var <= 1.0 else 2.2

Repeat these steps until all of your objects are setup, and keyframe the position of yourt empty.
Here's the result:

Thanks Rick! I think this is more complex than I need, as I don't need to animate per the position of an empty, but rather the value of a custom property on an empty. But this certainly gives me some techniques to think about.

I would use duplication for this, as it can be keyframed.
Here's a picture run-down.

The three main keys to making this work are as follows:

For duplication to work out properly, you have to parent the object created in step #2 above to the Larger (Correct Object). To accomplish this 1st select the smaller object hold Shift then select the larger object. once selection is accomplished, Ctrl+P >> Select Object in the following drop-down menu.
There must be enough verts/faces on the main object for this effect to look reasonable. Sub-Divide as necessary.
To keyframe the Duplication settings, make sure you are where you want to be in the timeline, select the duplication method that you want (if you want the effect off select None), Then hold your cursor over the selected option, and hit i on your keyboard.

The cons to this are the transition, it's pretty abrupt (If you want control over the abrupt feel of this, I would think about animating the material of the small Duplication object), however highly effective.

Thanks! But I think that since some of my highlightable components have lots of meshes (nuts and bolts, casing, etc.), I think my brain would come out of my ears trying to animate this way! :)

I would give all the aluminum for the gearbox a different material. Don't call it aluminum for gearbox. Call it, GearBoxAluminum or something. Eventually you may want to make subtle adjustments for each type of thing because the aluminium in a gear box is going to have different properties than the aluminum in a casing.

Thanks! However, I'm hoping there's a way of doing this without having to animate the materials themselves, as this seems like Major Pain whenever I want to animate a highlight on a component (which may consist of lots of meshes with several materials). I'm looking for a way to impose a different material (highlight orange) on groups of meshes, irrespective of their original material - and to be able to revert when I end the highlighted state. And to make it easy to control at, say, the parent level.


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Python script to generate robot model produces wrong result
Platform = Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit, Blender 2.77a
Here's the image:

The following simple script produces an incorrect model is from the book "Learning Robotics Using Python"; so I did not create it and I'm a complete newbie to Blender so I'm totally lost concerning fixing it.
There is no errata mentioning bug corrections on the script, so this forum is my best practical hope. The script runs, but the model generated has a bottom base plate missing and one of the wheels is a cube; the rest is okay.
The script is supposed to produce a robot model comprised of 3 vertically stacked circular plates with 4 poles in between them for support; a cube on the middle plate, two wheels with shafts and motors.
Would someone please show me what is wrong?
Thankfully,
Sam
Here is the script:
=========================
import bpy # contains all the functionalities of Blender and it can only be
       # accessed from inside the Blender application

# This function will draw base plate
def Draw_Base_Plate():

    #Added two cubes for cutting sides of base plate

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=0.05, location=(0.175,0,0.09))
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=0.05, location=(-0.175,0,0.09))

   #############################################################################################

    #Adding base plate
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.15,depth=0.005, location=(0,0,0.09))

    #Adding booleab difference modifier from first cube

    bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='BOOLEAN')
    bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"].operation = 'DIFFERENCE'
    bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"].object =      bpy.data.objects["Cube"]
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Boolean")

#############################################################################################

    #Adding booleab difference modifier from second cube

    bpy.ops.object.modifier_add(type='BOOLEAN')
    bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"].operation = 'DIFFERENCE'
    bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"].object =     bpy.data.objects["Cube.001"]
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Boolean")

#############################################################################################

    #Deselect cylinder and delete cubes
    bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="Cube")
    bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="Cube.001")
    bpy.data.objects['Cylinder'].select = False
    bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)

#This function will draw motors and wheels
def Draw_Motors_Wheels():

    #Create first Wheel

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.045,depth=0.01, location=(0,0,0.07))
    #Rotate
    bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[1] = 1.5708
    #Transalation
    bpy.context.object.location[0] = 0.135

    #Create second wheel
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.045,depth=0.01, location=(0,0,0.07))
    #Rotate
    bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[1] = 1.5708
    #Transalation
    bpy.context.object.location[0] = -0.135

    #Adding motors

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.018,depth=0.06, location=(0.075,0,0.075))
    bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[1] = 1.5708

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.018,depth=0.06, location=(-0.075,0,0.075))
    bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[1] = 1.5708

    #Adding motor shaft
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.006,depth=0.04, location=(0.12,0,0.075))
    bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[1] = 1.5708

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.006,depth=0.04, location=(-0.12,0,0.075))
    bpy.context.object.rotation_euler[1] = 1.5708

#############################################################################################

    #Addubg Caster Wheel

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.015,depth=0.05, location=(0,0.125,0.065))
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.015,depth=0.05, location=(0,-0.125,0.065))

    #Adding Kinect

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=0.04, location=(0,0,0.26))

#Draw middle plate
def Draw_Middle_Plate():
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.15,depth=0.005, location=(0,0,0.22))

#Adding top plate
def Draw_Top_Plate():
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.15,depth=0.005, location=(0,0,0.37))

#Adding support tubes
def Draw_Support_Tubes():
    #Cylinders
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.007,depth=0.30, location=(0.09,0.09,0.23))
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.007,depth=0.30, location=(-0.09,0.09,0.23))
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.007,depth=0.30, location=(-0.09,-0.09,0.23))
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.007,depth=0.30, location=(0.09,-0.09,0.23))

#Exporting into STL
def Save_to_STL():
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')
    #    bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='TOGGLE')
    bpy.ops.export_mesh.stl(check_existing=True,
        filepath="/home/sam/Desktop/exported.stl",
        filter_glob="*.stl", ascii=False, use_mesh_modifiers=True,
        axis_forward='Y', axis_up='Z', global_scale=1.0)

#Main code

if __name__ == "__main__":
    Draw_Base_Plate()
    Draw_Motors_Wheels()
    Draw_Middle_Plate()
    Draw_Top_Plate()
    Draw_Support_Tubes()
    Save_to_STL()

Please post an image of your results that will help us understand what's wrong.
I ran this and got the expected result:
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=102183

Okay, I want to send an image and I have a .png file on my computer. I don't understand how to create a link like you did to have my image accessible on this page. Could you show me how?

Also, what version of blender are you using? Your rendering is MUCH better than mine! and THANK YOU for responding to quickly.

I solved the image link problem. Th image is added to my original question

The issue is in lines such as
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=0.05, location=(0.175,0,0.09))
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=0.05, location=(-0.175,0,0.09))

in the script assumes the two cubes created will be named "Cube" and "Cube.001", as they are later referenced for the boolean modifiers
bpy.context.object.modifiers["Boolean"].object = bpy.data.objects["Cube"]

which is assuming that you don't already have an object in your file named Cube or Cube.001 before running, in which case the newly created cubes will have unique names "Cube.nnn" where nnn is the first available unused name.
When I pasted and ran in a test file with both "Cube" and "Cube.001", already existing in another scene, ended up with a busted base plate and cubes for wheels.
My suggestion would be to a)
make a ref when creating the primitives if they are going to be used as modifier targets etc scene.objects.active gives a reference to the newly created primitive, as would context.active_object, but I've passed the scene to the method.  Could pass the context I suppose, which in way is good practice as so much code Ops and Panels etc use method(self, context):
def Draw_Base_Plate(scene=bpy.context.scene):
    #Add cube for cutting sides of base plate

    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(radius=0.05, location=(0.175,0,0.09))
    cube1 = scene.objects.active
    # copy cube1 and link to scene (not required as example howto)
    '''
    cube2 = cube1.copy()
    cube2.location.x = -0.175
    scene.objects.link(cube2)
    '''

    #Adding base plate
    bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(radius=0.15,depth=0.005, location=(0,0,0.09))
    cyl = scene.objects.active

    #Adding booleab difference modifiers
    for ob in [cube1, cube1]:
        mod = cyl.modifiers.new("FacePlateBool", type='BOOLEAN')
        mod.operation = 'DIFFERENCE'
        mod.object =  ob
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier=mod.name)
        ob.location.x = -ob.location.x

    #Deselect cylinder and delete cube
    cyl.select = False
    scene.objects.unlink(cube1)
    bpy.data.objects.remove(cube1)

or b)
make sure you have no "Cube" or "Cube.nnn" (by renaming) in your file before running script.

I tried what you recommended and both ways ended up with only a base plate and two cubes for wheels showing. I believe I must also modify the lines: that delete the cubes from the base plate:     bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="cube1")
bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="cube2")
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False)       but I don't know what syntax to use when dealing with the reference vars cube1 and cube2 instead of file names. How do I change these deletion lines?

When Blender is first invoked via the Unity launcher icon in Ubuntu linux, there is a "cube" object automatically present. (This can be verified by mouse clicking on the "Choose Screen layout" icon to the left of the text box showing "Default" at the top bar of the Blender app; then selecting "Scripting" from the drop-down menu; then typing bpy.context.selected_objects in the python console window at the bottom of the scripting layout and pressing return key on keyboard; the result is [bpy.data.objects['Cube']]).
The example code from the book mentioned above inadvertently uses the object name "Cube" when creating the first cube and then uses the object name "Cube.001" when creating the second cube. Apparently, two different objects with the name "Cube" are then in the objects list. The first "Cube" object in the object list is the automatically displayed cube upon startup of Blender, and the second "Cube" object in the list is the one we create. When deleting the cubes from the base plate cylinder to provide space for wheels, the code line bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="Cube") deletes the automatically displayed startup cube, and leaves the cube we created as part of the model, so one wheel looks like a cube.
The base plate fails to display due to the conflicts caused by having two "Cube" objects.
There are two cures to this problem:

Delete the startup Cube object before executing the book script (which isn't obvious that this would be necessary) by doing:
bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="Cube") and
bpy.ops.object.delete(use_global=False) in the Python console of the Scripting layout

or

Submit an errata to the book that changes the two cube names created by script to: "Cube.001" and "Cube.002" so the while hassle is avoided (unless objects with names if "Cube.001" and "Cube.002" already exist!); or perhaps an errata that explains the potential problem.

Added a different take on Add_Base_Plate in answer to show non operator ways of doing things.  All the operators could be replaced with low level API calls.  There is a happy medium (somewhere) between using bpy.ops or otherwise.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


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Making a procedural mask for a specific parts of a mesh
My question is similar to this: How to make a procedural hair strand texture?!
I textured some body parts of my model using images (.jpgs) as masks. Now I want all of them to be exchanged to procedural ones.
For example I succeed to make a procedural mask for an eye (as pictured below).

Now I wonder how to do the same trick on my jaw mesh. I want a mask to appear only on the teeth tips (the dark parts of the teeth pictured below), where transparent material would be applied. Is it possible, assuming that this is one solid mesh without any loose parts?

The Pointiness feature may be able to do what you are looking for.  You can bring the results into visual range by using a Color Ramp node.

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


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How to set a random value for only visible shape keys?
My question is related to my previous asked one: How to set a random value for multiple shape keys?
I want to set the random values for only visible shapekeys. Is it possible using scripting?

I would also like to know how to set a specific value (like 0.5) for all visible shape keys.

import bpy
from random import uniform
context = bpy.context
obj = context.object

def set_shapekeys(obj, value=0.5, random=False):
    sk = obj.data.shape_keys
    for i, kb in enumerate(sk.key_blocks.values()):
        if not i or kb.mute:
            # assume kb[0] is 'Basis'
            continue
        if random:
            kb.value = uniform(kb.slider_min, kb.slider_max)
        else:
            kb.value = value

#set visible keys to random

set_shapekeys(obj, random=True)

#set visible keys to 0.7

#set_shapekeys(obj, value=0.7)

Use set_shapekeys(obj, value=0.5) to set all visible shapekeys to 0.5

WOW! Thank you so very much!!! Scripting is a black magic for me :). Really appreciate your help!


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How to make a circular rainbow effect?
I've played Nier Gestalt and Beyond Two Souls games recently and noticed  that in both of them the circular/half-circular rainbow effect appears.

Could somebody tell me what is this effect called and how to achieve it in Blender? I know I can create it using transparent and color ramp nodes (like in here: How to make rainbow ends fade out), but how to make it physically acurate? This effect appears when you rotate camera out from the light source. The more you rotate from it, the more the effect appears.

Halo maybe? Get a transparent rainbow image and overlay it in the node editor?

It's lens flare effect, you can achieve it in compositor. Google it, there are some good tutorials about it, and sadly I can't do something as long right now for you.

You can't make it physically acurate, since rainbows don't appear in thin air like that. A real camera lens flare also doesn't look like that. It's a cool effect, though.

Only the first image looks like a rainbow effect or some sort of shock-wave maybe. It is impossible to make such physically correct effect in Blender, because Blender does not support light dispersion. You need to fake it. A transparent texture on plane or particles is your best bet.
The rest are lens-flares. You can learn how to make such effect in post-production here: http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/1865/7777

@Sybren I don't know what photography background you have but this is real camera lens effect. Especially when you are using old lenses without coating.

I have quite a few old cameras (oldest one is from 1917), but I've never seen lens flare like this.

Apparently this is an effect of the human iris http://simonwinder.com/projects/simulation-of-lens-flare-in-the-human-eye/ "In addition to the rotationally symmetric point spread function, there are also radial corona rays that are generated by mutliplying by a uniform deviate in the range 0 to 1 as a function of orientation. A different set of random numbers is used for the rays of the lenticular halo."

This is a post effect as it occurs inside the lens. I have used a mask to create the ring, then added some noise from a cloud texture, this is distorted radially to make streaks (that you could animate). Then this is coloured with a fringe using the Projector node.
Make a single mask with 2 circle shapes on their own layers:

Layer one use Add function

Layer two use a Merge Subtract function

Make sure both layers are active, tick the eye buttons

Use this mask shape with a noise texture that is distorted with a radial blend texture using a UV map node:

Here's the blend file I created for this effect:
UPDATE:
Here's the flare turned up to 11!
I duplicated the projector node for more color and added a ramp to the radial blend so that I could better control the stretch of the cloud texture.


text:
How to fix 'Modifier is disabled, skipping apply' error?
I've tried to answer this question: Removing Armature and Keeping pose and apply the Armature Modifier, when suddenly the  'Modifier is disabled, skipping apply' error window appeared. How to fix it, so I may apply the modifier?

Without proper settings a modifier is "disabled" as it can't perform it's task. To enable a modifier, suitable options need to be chosen - for the armature modifier that is assigning an armature to it.

Given that the modifier is not doing anything you could also delete it without effect.

Check if your viewport is set to 0. Just turn it up to see the effect of the modifier.
This worked for me for Subdivision surface modifier

I had this problem with the SubSur but not lucky. My solution was to copy the object and armature to another file and the SubSur worked. Mysterious...

That was the ticket for me.   Subsurf modifier can't work if Viewport Max Subdivision is set to 0.
Render > Simplify > Viewport > Max Subdivision

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


text:
Subdivision causes this weird thing
I am very new to blender and trying to make a coffee cup lid which has sharp edges. I used the Edge Split modifier which fixed some of the issues i previously had but subdivision causes this weird thing and idk how to fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

hello, the best would be to fix your topology with some additional edge loops, you should show the picture of what you're trying to achieve and share your file

Well, that's simply how the Subdivision Surface modifier works. It tries to round all edges to smooth them. The less geometry there is or the further away two edges are from each other, the more round or smooth it will be there.
So, to makes edges sharper, to need to have more geometry i.e. there need to be edges closer together. Like @moonboots said in his comment, additional edge loops might help here.
What you did with the Edge Split modifier is sharpening edges, too - but in this case, Blender assumes a split edge as two separate parts, which means they will stay completely sharp even with a Subdivision Surface modifier. No slight smoothing even if desired.
Take a look at the image below, the left and bottom sides of the object have edge loops close to the bounding edges - more geometry, sharper edges. The right and top sides have no additional edge loops - they are rounded off stronlgy.


text:
Is there an easy way to make these surfaces flat

How can i flatten those surfaces so that they are just a bunch of cuboids? I tried rotating but it doesn't work.

S + Z + 0 should do it

Ah thank you it worked


text:
can lights in blender influence image sequence?
I have a image sequence imported in blender and I want it to be influenced by the lights in blender, not just the shadow but also the amount of light and color of light.

Absolutely. Just use a regular shader (eg. a principled or diffuse bsdf) allowing the image plane (or sequence on a plane) receive shadows/lights.

@brockmann thankyou for answering first of all, and shadow is working but when i am putting lights off my image sequence plane is not getting affected or if I am changing the color of light it's not getting affected by this

If the shadow is working why the light shouldn't? Suggest bump up the intensity or provide a blend file using https://blend-exchange.com/

@brockmann I tried uploading it many times but it's not getting uploaded

Follow the instructions and it will work, not sure what exactly you're trying to upload though. Quick test using images as planes add-on, works out of the box using a spot light, see: https://i.sstatic.net/7F3Wx.jpg and if that works for a single image it will work for a sequence as well.

@brockmann thankyou it's now working actually I learned blender from youtube because I wanted to make a movie


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where is Viewer Draw mk3? I cannot find it in the Viz menu
I have recently started to learn sverchok on Blender 2.92. Following a tutorial I realised the viewer Draw MK3 node in Viz is not there. Searching for a solution I read somewhere that I have to update Sverchok and I did. However the problem is not solved and I cannot find any other solution. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

I am pretty sure that Viewer Draw is the same node just in a newer version. They just renamed it.
UPDATE:
You can use the mesh viewer. It has input sockets vertices, faces and edges.

But in the Viewer Draw there is no faces option to connect like in Mk3. or there is a way to make it appear?

i updated my answer. If this doesn't help, please provide your blend file so that i can see what you are doing. Thank you.

mk# are iterations of same node. so we move old mk2 to outdated nodes show to user mk3 as only choice. Viewer draw always newest mk# from menu


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Mesh getting distorted with animation
My character has rings around his ankles that are getting heavily distorted when animating. What would be best way to fix this?

The weighting of the vertices to the armature is not correct, you just need to properly weight them.
This tutorial teaches how to do that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fICQmBEt4Y&ab_channel=RoyalSkies

If you don't want them to deform at all you could completely solid fill the weight paints on a single bone group.

can you provide blend file?


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Mesh appears transparent in Unity, even after flipping normals
Mesh appears transparent in Unity, even after flipping normals. Also tried recalculating the normals inside and outside and didn't work.
How it appears in Blender:

How it appears in Unity:

There's an option to show normals in Blender to check if they're correct. Are you sure it's not a reflective material?

I've already resolved this issue that way. The normals were flipped. Thanks.


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Bake texture with Mapping node coordinates?
I have these exact shading settings and I would like to bake the textures exactly with the Mapping node coordinates so I can export it to Unity.

I tried baking the normals but the result texture became strange as soon as I disconnected the Mapping node. I need it to look exactly how it looks with this configuration but just with the texture image node, so I can use it in Unity.

Not sure if this is what you need, but my instinct would be to plug the output of the Bump node into an emission shader, and bake the emission into the original UV map? (Taking care to be in a linear color-space .. saving to Open EXR)


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How to combine/bake Displacement and Normal map?
I've combined a displacement and normal map through a Bump node to add detail to object and I would like to know how I bake it into a single image so it can be used in Unity.

In the shader editor create a new image texture node, click on its new button to create  a new texture with the desired resolution, and leave it unconnected and selected.
Switch to cycles, go to bake tab properties panel, select "Normal" and click bake.
After finished baking you can save this new image as Normal map, which will contain bump informations also.
Original (Normal + Voronoi bump):

Baked Normal only:

That's what I do, but it doesn't bake the details from the displacement map connected to the Bump node.

I noticed that the strenght of your bump map is 0.021, and the normal and displacement  textures are in sRGB color space instead of non-color data. Expecially Normal maps need non-color data space. I think that this little influence gets lost in the color space uncorrect conversion: probably if you use non-color data you'll get all details back.

I was able to make the metal parts of the object look acceptable, but the leather parts are very faint and low res.


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problem with insetting faces
i want to inset the face to 1 mt.
actually the face is 20x20.
when i apply it to  mi its insetting like  this
but i need the result of the face 19 x 19 after insetting
 but im getting like that when i inset by 0.1 but its not correct to the actual diensions

In Object mode, select your object and press Ctrl+A, then select Scale.
This will make sure the Local scale of the vertices, match the Global scale of the scene.
This probably happened because you scaled your object in Object mode rather than in Edit mode.

thanks dude working


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How do I stop the object I used as part of a boolean from rendering?
I want to add a small cut for my bishop. So I have used boolean difference modifier but when rendering it renders the cube also, but I want to create a notch there. Please tell me how to remove the cube from my piece.

You have to turn off the render visibility in the outliner for the cutting piece. Click on the funnel (Filter) icon at the rigth upper corner of the Outliner and click on the little camera (Render Visibilty) icon. After you can toggle the Render Visibility of your objects.

You need to disable the rendering of your object:
in the outliner menu on the right, click on to enable the rendering toggle switch
then just turn it off for your object.


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remove vertices in blender
I'm a beginner and I have a problem with merging vertices or removing them, I cant find remove by distance or I can't remove them with merge by distance.
It shows 0 vertices removed, if i increase the merge distance its happening like this.

You can join the two loops with "Bridge Edge Loops" then remove one of them with "Dissolve Edges".

NO I cant find the solution for the problem in this way .....

Although, now, you can edit multiple objects simultaneously, you can't merge vertices between them. In this case, I suspect you will have to CtrlJ join the objects in Object Mode, before merging vertices in what would then be a single mesh.

BTW, a more direct way to do this might be to create the hemisphere, and then EZ extrude the edges on the equator downwards

yeah tht would be easy . thanks dude  ;-)

Good eye, I didn't notice these were two different objects :).


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reflection in mirror
i wanted to reflect the  3d model  in mirror. i added a plane and i have increased metallic nature to 1
and  decreased roughness to 0
 but i have added a background image hdri  before.so its reflecting the background image not the 3d model .
so how can i get rid of this  problem ?
 if i remove the background image hdri . its not reflecting anything at all
 in top view i can see a little bit of reflection..

You could use a reflection plane. I knew nothing about mirrors on Blender until I read your question. I did a quick setup and this is my result:

You add the reflection plane probe surrounding the plane (Add > Light Probe > Reflection Plane ), pointing towards the direction of your reflection. The probe should surround the plane, and I positioned the center (reflection plane preview) slightly above my plane object.
These are the settings for the mirror plane material, nothing fancy:

And these are the settings for the Reflection Plane Probe:

@DileepKumarDeepu 1: ALL CAPS is the written version of shouting thus considered rude; 2: this is a good solution (as you can see 2 users had the same idea to solve your problem). If it's not what you want please edit your question to add WHY you don't want to use Reflection Planes specifically, or just wait for other answers. Check [ask] if you need more info.

I cant use reflection panel  i dont know how to use that  i have seen tutorial videos but its not working with my project

@DileepKumarDeepu You got 2 answers here explaining in detail how to add reflection planes, what part of it are you having trouble with? Perhaps you should try creating a new file and follow the steps and see where you get stuck, then come back and tell us so we can help.

I assume you are using Eevee as it seems in the second screenshot.
In Eevee to get better reflections you should use "Reflection Cubemaps" or "Reflection Planes".
You can find them in "add menu" > "light probe".
Since your mirror is a plane object I suggest you to put a reflection plane on the surface of the mirror. Here you can see the difference:

This is without reflection plane.
And this is with a reflection plane on the surface of the mirror object:

HDRI image should not affect objects reflections, only background reflection.
You can read abount reflection cubemap/plane here: Blender 2.81 Manual - Eevee Light Probes

Lol you probably posted your answer as I was writing mine...


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Why does my render layer node not have the expected number of outputs?
I should get this type of box when I go to compositing mode. I have seen this tutorial from youtube (Blender Guru) but the box I'm getting is different. Here is the picture box in the mean the name render layer.

What exactly do you mean by "Box"? Are you referring to the sidebar with the Node and Properties panel?

sorry just i have edited question

Enabling this will give you all the extra input (e.g. Noisy Image, Denoising Normal...)


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Is it possible to get the file path to the .blend file that a linked object came from programmatically?
I am trying to find a list of all file paths that are appended/linked in a .blend file through the Blender API, I need to run a script in each appended/linked file to change materials so in turn the material would be changed in the source file.
Thanks for any help in advance.

Yes it is possible:
obj.library.filepath

Additionnally, a not linked object has an empty obj.library.


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How to rotate an object from a reference plane
How can I rotate a plane to make it have the same orientation of another plane. Until now I have:
import bpy
# The object to rotate
ob = bpy.context.active_object
# The object world normal vector
ob_local_normal = ob.data.polygons[0].normal
ob_world_normal = ob.matrix_world * ob_local_normal
print(ob_world_normal)
# The plane to be aligned/parallel with
pl = bpy.data.objects['Plane']
# The plane world normal vector
pl_local_normal = pl.data.polygons[0].normal
pl_world_normal = ob.matrix_world * pl_local_normal
print(pl_world_normal)
# Now I need to rotate the object...

In Python rotate a polygon to face something was also helpful but I need the 2 planes beeing parallel each other.

import bpy
from mathutils import Matrix, Vector

def scale_from_vector(v):
    mat = Matrix.Identity(4)
    for i in range(3):
        mat[i][i] = v[i]
    return mat

o1 = bpy.data.objects['Object.001']
o2 = bpy.data.objects['Object.002']

loc_src, rot_src, scale_src = o1.matrix_world.decompose()
loc_dst, rot_dst, scale_dst = o2.matrix_world.decompose()

Apply the rotation of object o1 to object o2
o2.matrix_world = (
    Matrix.Translation(loc_dst) *
    rot_src.to_matrix().to_4x4() *
    scale_from_vector(scale_dst)
)

If you only want to align an axis use the following code instead:
#only align z-axis
axis = Vector((0.0, 0.0, 1.0))
z1 = rot_src * axis
z2 = rot_dst * axis
q = z2.rotation_difference(z1)

o2.matrix_world = (
    Matrix.Translation(loc_dst) *
    (q*rot_dst).to_matrix().to_4x4() *
    scale_from_vector(scale_dst)
)

Thanks, now the normal is the same... but the local orientation is not the same and it looks like I should rotate the destination plan around the normal vector to make it aligned with the source plan. Is there an easy way to do it?

There probably is, but I'm having difficulty understanding exactly what you want done.  Perhaps if you could paste together some screenshots that illustrate the result that disappoints you next to what you wish it looked like I could fine tune the procedure.


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List boolean object names
Is it possible to list, in Python, all the subtracted objects?
I've got a big wall (Wall) with 3 holes (Cube, Cube.001, Cube.002). I made the holes with a boolean difference and I wish to list the names of these objects.
In this case I want to list:
list = ['Cube', 'Cube.001', 'Cube.002']

Thanks in advance!

This script will loop through the modifiers on the specified object, check if they are boolean modifiers, check if the modifier has an object specified, and if it does it will print the name of the object being used:
import bpy

#Object with modifiers
object = bpy.data.objects['Cube']

for modifier in object.modifiers:
    #Check if modifier is boolean AND has a boolean object selected
    if modifier.type == "BOOLEAN" and modifier.object:
        print (modifier.object.name)

You could of course .append object names into a list instead of printing.
Alternatively, you can use a list comprehension version which does exactly the same, except this adds all object names to a list before printing:
objects = [mod.object.name for mod in object.modifiers if mod.type=="BOOLEAN" and mod.object]
print (objects)


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transfer same rotation in graph editor and 3d view
When I change the rotation of a certain bone (e.g. the bone of an upper-arm) in 3d view on only one axis (e.g. ' X '), all three curves in the graph editor are automatically changed when I set a keyframe and not only one curve.
Therefore, changing the rotation in the graph editor by changing the keyframes would be easier than to work in 3d view where all 3 axes are automatically changed. But since I work with Quaternion I would like to avoid using the graph editor to adjust the rotation of a bone because the W rotation wouldn't be automatically adjusted.
Is there a way to have the same effect when changing the rotation of one axis in 3d view as it is in the graph editor?

I think you are referring to inserting a keyframe for a single channel. Of course with quaternions the minimum number of axis are two (because how quaternions works)

But that only seems to show the rotation on only the selected axes e.g. if I added the X rotation to the Keying Set and only change the Y axis, the X-curve will be affected. What I would like to know is how to affect only e.g. the X axis when rotating the bone by pressing R + X and not the other axes.

So the bone only moves to one direction. It's like you change the axes from global to local to have the chance to affect only one axis for the location.

automatic Keying will write to all you channel, but if you press I for the following poses the box axis it'll keep inserting only in that channel. Or maybe I have not understood what you are asking for. It's rather confused to me...

As I wrote with quaternions the minimum number of axis are two (because how quaternions works) W + X or Y or Z

First of all sorry for the bad explanation. Let me retry my question. If there is the possibility for rotations to change the axes from global to local, it'd be helpful e.g. if you want to rotate an arm while the body has already been rotated. If you rotate it on the global X-axis to swing the arm back, the arm would not be rotated along the body but in an unwanted direction (e.g. through the body). But if you change the axes to local the arm will swing in the wanted direction. I only know that changing the axes from global to local works with locations, but does it also work with rotations?

sure select Local orientation then press R and double press X for a local rotation on X (same for Y and Z)

maybe related http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/12211/why-are-keyframes-in-global-coords-instead-of-local-coords-blender-2-70a


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How to mix two baked normal maps on one mesh
I can't seem to find a solution on here or anywhere else. I have baked two separate normal maps from two different high-poly meshes onto one low-poly one.
I did this so I can have the head of the human I'm modelling have quality normals as well as the body.

But now I have a problem, I have both textures made in the panel, but they don't seem to mix well. One of the normal maps acts like a mask to the other one.

I can switch between these, and the regions of the mesh that correspond to the map work well, but they can't seem to work together.

Is there a solution to this?
Here is the .blend file,

You will need to select which UV map is used for which normal map. Go to the mapping panel in the texture tab for each normal map and make sure mapping is set to UV and the appropriate UV map is selected.
Also, when you create a UV map, every face from your object is on every map, so you will need to make sure that the face UVs are on an area of the Body UV map where the texture is transparent and vice versa. If you select all of the faces of your mesh in edit mode and look at each map you will notice that the UVs for the face and body are on each map. Simply select all of the islands for the face and scale them down until they fit on one of the transparent sections on the Body Normals image, and do the same to the Face Normals map but scale down the body island instead.
Also in your case you'll want to turn down the strength of the normals to .1-.2 or something as otherwise they make your mesh quite grey. Your lighting setup is also causing a few of the funny lines and dark/light spots. A single hemi lamp will give even lighting with minimal shadows so you can more clearly see what's going in with your maps.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I already have that sorted out. Is there another possible reason this is happening? Could it be under the influence tab that I have change the mixing mode?

You could try setting the extension on each texture to clip instead of repeat in the image mapping panel.

Sorry, that doesn't seem to work, thanks for the help so far though. Do you think I should post the blend file or try to bake the high-poly into one normal map rather than two? I'm not too keen on doing that for a couple of reasons, but I can try instead.

Posting the blend file would be very helpful.

I got the files zipped and ready to share, though I can't use the blend file upload site since the file has both the .blend and the textures that come along with it. What file sharing site would like to me give it to you from?

You should be able to pack the textures with the file, and if there's too many just include the ones relevant to the question.

Take a look at my edited answer, I found your problem.


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Transparent Glass Material not rendering alpha in Blender Internal
I've encountered a problem with a transparent material I created to resemble a form of glass. In the scene I have set up, I have a multitude of X "Dummy" Trees propped up in the background to fill the skyline. However, as you can see through the image, the trees that are not behind the POV with the glass look fine while the ones that are behind it act like their alphas are not being used.

Each tree is an 'X' plane with the image of a cycled rendered tree plastered on it. It is made so that only the tree is visible, and the rest of the picture is transparent.
Is this a problem with the texture made for the trees or the window? Since I also noticed that this same kind of glass created some weird effects on UV textures in another part of this scene.
EDIT:
After trying the first suggestion I get this:

It still seems to be prevalent in the trees, albeit some trees, (which I have pointed to), have the problem fixed, while others in the background still have the black rectangles. To the right is my selections for options and shadow.
Here is a copy of the blend file with the stuff needing fixing selected.

Here is the tree files for the Dummy's:
https://i.sstatic.net/B320M.jpg

Is switching to Cycles an option? Why are you using the Blender renderer?

For the scene and circumstances, I cannot switch to Cycles, because then  certain materials that I need to have won't be available and will be costly with time. Is this something specific about Blender Internal?

About the only thing about BI I know is that it's inferior, not designed to create realistic scenes and shouldn't be used. Sorry.

Fine, I'll wait for someone else, I just simply can't use Cycles for the situation.

I notice that one of the specular sliders are not at zero.  This could explain why the borders of the cloud plane are showing up, along with reflected light.  For complete border and surface invisibility both specular sliders usually need to be at zero.  i.e. the main one in the Material properties, and the one included immediately under the Alpha slider found in the Transparency tab.  Additionally you may find it necessary to tick/untick the "Transparency" box found in the plane's general properties.  That's the orange cube icon  at top.  Go down to the "Display" tab.  The box is in there.

Given those tree artifacts, would it be feasible to make up the strip of trees first?  Get them as a single alpha layered png file with which to texture a single plane.  Then  you'll only have two planes to work on, the clouds and the trees.  Alpha layered planes can interreact when one is behind the other.  There is a fix for that also.

Your Glass plane uses Raytrace so you need to allocate more depth rays for the amount of transparency changes behind it. I have bumped it up to 6, I guess you'll need more for all those trees?

Alternatively you could switch the transparency type to "Z Trans" but you'll loose some of the nice effects from raytrace.

Under Options for your tree materials, put a check next to Face Textures,
then most importantly, place one next to Face Textures Alpha.

Also be sure to place a check next to Transparency.
It doesn't matter which method you use.  That's up to you.

For some reason it is still not working. I updated the post to include a second picture after I tried your suggestion. In the new picture I can see that some trees have it where the tops are visible without the black rectangles, but for some reason other trees have the blackness still. Should I upload my blender file? Currently I'm thinking it could be something to do with shadows for receiving and casting, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, I used the "Import Image as Plane" plugin.  It may have automatically selected an option while importing.  You can try it that way, or upload your blend to http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com and I'll compare it with what I've got.


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How do I move whole individual faces that are connected in the center by mirror modifier?
I am sorry, that I didn't post an image, but I guess everybody knows the problem.
When the mesh is mirrorred moving any face on one side moves it on the other. But faces that are connected in the middle by mirror axis always move together. I understand it is because there is only one non-symetrical group of vertices in the middle.
Is there any shortcut that allows to disconnect those faces while mowing them ? I remember there is B shortcut for when Insetting separate faces in the middle, there must be something like this for simple moving.

Uncheck Clipping under the Mirror modifier

Yes Yes thank You for so fast answer :)


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Any tips on modelling huge amounts of models partially sharing animations ? Looking for effective workflow
I am trying to model around 150 characters for tactical game. I hope to use one shared armature, however I imagine models might have various silhouettes and moving body elements. I mean most are humanoid, some are fat, some are twice larger, some have spider legs or snake trunk, or wings. What do You think would be best approach for this ? Should I make one armature with additional bones ? How should I parent mesh to the armature for most elastic workflow ? Will shapekeys be helpful ? Should I keyframe poses in specific way, or should I take advantage of blending animations ??
Please, any tip or advice is welcome

This is the wrong forum to ask questions like that where any answers would be opinion-based. Try Blenderartists.org.

Surely you can't use a spider animation for a biped character, so I will use as example bipeds only (even quite different one from another).
I would recomend to use always the same rest pose (A-pose is best for modeling, but Unity will always translate into a T-pose, so I think T-pose is best for rigging).
The models could share the same distance between hip bone and floor (they can be scaled up or down as a whole directly into the animation data).
After perfoming the animation, you could bake it as visual keying and clear constraints all and only deforming bones, so to get a pure FK rig, without constraints (as those of Mixamo): this kind of animation relate on rot data only, except for the hip bone, which acts as a master bone and has loc data also.
All rot data can be transferred to different characters with ease, as soon as the rest pose share the same bones orientations.
Loc data of hip bone has to be scaled on its Y values the same amount as the scale of the whole character (if the character was scaled 0.5, in the graph editor select all loc data of hip bone and press S Y 0.5 Enter).
If the character needs to have a different bone orientation in its rest pose, you will need to perform a retargeting procedure: it can be helpful Auto Rig Pro addon, which can retarget from any rig to any rig.

That was perfectly what I needed and so much more, thank You ! Now You got me thinking - could I make characters with various body parts sizes using this scaling method ? Like long legged character with big arms, or short legged character with tall torso ? So only parts of armature are scaled somehow ?

Yes, as Hip is a master bone you can elongate torso, legs, arms, neck and head as much as you want. If you mantain the bones orientations you will be able to switch animations from one character to another. If not you'll have to perform retargeting.


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Why does applying skin modifier messes up my mesh every time ? File attached
This is example project : https://pasteall.org/blend/7a092c98a4c1485a8aaed35b16219108
If You apply skin modifier to it, You will notice mesh gets distorted, creating hole in model. I struggle with this problem for very long and I usually solve it by applying mirror modifier first. But this is unconvenient. How do I prevent this from even happening ? Am I using skin modifier wrong ? Is it about modifier order ?
Generally I wish to keep workflow to create base shape with skin modifier, create armature using skin modifier, tweak model in subdivision modifier, add final details without subdivision modifier, finally add unsymetrical elements without mirror modifier

What do you mean with "this is inconvenient"? This is the normal behaviour of modifiers. The order matters. So different orders will create different results (with just a few exceptions). So if you apply the skin modifier first, of course you will get a different result, because by this you first apply your skin and then Blender uses the mirror modifier. Before applying Blender uses first the mirror and then the skin modifier.

If this is normal I guess I am not worried :). I thought, that result of applying should be visually the same as before applying. Thank You for clearing this for me

This is the normal behaviour of modifiers. The order matters. So different orders will create different results (with just a few exceptions). So if you apply the skin modifier first, of course you will get a different result, because by this you first apply your skin and then Blender uses the mirror modifier. Before applying Blender uses first the mirror and then the skin modifier.


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Exporting blender model to glb/gltf changes texture color assignments
When I export my model to a glb or gltf format (This is for a game), the texture gets messed up. The texture is just a simple png file with color strips in it, nothing fancy. What's going on? I've tried to export in almost every format blender offers with similar results.
The only thing that even kept the colors in the right place was to move the base color to the emission and change the base color to black. That comes from a stackexchange answer, which I can't seem to find at the moment. But it makes the model look really weird.
This is the original model

Here's what it looks like after exporting.

Your model has a vertex color layer that is black everywhere but the hands. In glTF the first vertex color layer is always multiplied into the base color, so anywhere the vertex color is black, the base color will be black.
You can check what happened by reimporting the .glb into Blender and comparing against your original material. Here's the nodes you'll get.

See the "multiply by vertex colors" part that got added?
You can fix this by just deleting the vertex color layer.
Btw there is also another difference you might notice: you've used a "Non-Color" texture for the base color. The glTF exporter expects an "sRGB" texture (it will not convert colorspaces for you) so you will also need to convert your image to SRGB if you want the colors to be the same.

I see what you're talking about (I actually changed it from sRGB because I thought the Godot documentation mentioned I needed to do that). As for the Vertex Color, deleting that fixes it when I reimport, but it will just show back up when I try to export again. I'm not sure how to avoid it.

I'm saying delete the vertex color layer itself (ie. in the Properties editor) before you export. Not the nodes.

Thanks! That did the trick. No idea why there was a vertex color there in the first place. But I didn't make this model, just made some edits, and generated an animation.

For anybody that stumbles upon this later, to delete the vertex color go to
Object Data Properties (Green upside down triangle) -> Vertex Colors (Click on it to open the drop down) -> Hit the minus button to remove the vertex color. (In my case it was something named Col)


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there is no image in texture paint blender 2.82

In blender 2.82 what I expected was there should be an image in the viewport so that I can paint, chosing part of image as I wanted, but I can't do that because there's no image showing.
Is there any hotkey or UI to show image on viewport?

For this, you need to load a texture in the texture subpanel of the Bursh settings panel, and set its mapping to Stencil:

oh my god. i see. thank you so much. have a nice day!

You welcome, don't forget to up vote and set this as your topic's answer in the top left corner.


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Why do objects move around separately even after parenting?
I was following the good ol' doughnut tutorial on Youtube and came across a quick problem.
After assigning Child & Parent connections from the 'Icing' and 'Bun' I found that when grabbing the object, the icing moves around on it's own even though the two are now connected.
Pressing Ctrl+J makes them both one shape, but in this instance I would like to keep the objects separate.
In the tutorial after setting the Child and Parent, he is able to move both around and fixed together. I will attach a link to the video.
https://youtu.be/ZTxBrjN1ugA?t=210
I have attached an image also detailing the problem, any help is appreciated!

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

The icing is a child of the bun, and so it can move freely. But if you move the bun, the icing will move too

@Gorgious That's the thing, it moves around like this regardless of which object i select first

Disconnecting the Child and Parent and re attaching them in a different order allowed them to move as one object. Also the Plane was stuck to my doughnut when trying to move it originally, but found out I had left Proportional Editing on so it was radius moving everything in an area, derp!

Make sure proportional editing (hotkey O) is turned off.

I feel like a fool now.

When this happens, you may have accidentally checked one of the Transform options in the N panel.
Check here:

You might consider applying scale and rotation to both, then using the world origin (where the 3D cursor is after pressing ⇧ Shift +  C as the origin of both objects (Object > Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor).
Then both objects should move in sync. You can always change object origin to edit.

This is a terrible answer. It is wrong and - what's even worse - misleading. Transforms of the objects do not have any effect in how object hierarchy is intended to work.


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Animation Nodes not working with blender 2.80 2.81 2.82
I've been trying to make the animation nodes work with blender but no matter which version of blender I install they won't work.I do prefer using blender 2.80 or higher and I did notice online that some users managed to install them. No answer from them tho. Please help.

Hello, you can check common installation problems there : https://github.com/JacquesLucke/animation_nodes/issues/1240

No problem installing for me. What´specifically 'doesnt work'? Which release are you using?


text:
How to reconnect a split face to its mesh?
I have accidentally pressed the Y key and have split a face from its mesh.
I can undo the action but I would like to know the actual command to do the opposite of split.
Merge tool options did not work (unless I am doing it wrong).
Object mode -> Join did not work.

In this case you can try: W > remove doubles

Hmmm, that did not work, sorry.

If you have selected everything (or at least problem part of the mesh) before proceeding with Remove Doubles, and if you haven't change splitted face location, then it should work. If you changed location, then I think the solution would be to select vertice of the splitted face, and adjacent of the mesh and press Alt+M>At Last. You should do so for every single vertex of the splitted face.

Ah, Mr. Zak, that was it. I had attempted the "Remove Doubles" immediately after pressing the y key. I needed to " have selected everything (or at least problem part of the mesh) before proceeding with Remove Doubles" (per your instructions) for this to finally work. Thank you.

Easiest one is Mesh -> Cleanup -> Merge by distance

Being in Edit Mode select the whole mesh (A), hit W-->Remove Doubles. Now you have a consistent mesh.

You may also use a Undo History pop up menu (press Ctrl+Alt+Z) and select the step you want to get back to.

In newer versions (3.0 or so and up) "Remove Doubles" is now called "Merge by Distance"

I had attempted the "Remove Doubles" immediately after pressing the Y key but this did not work.
I needed to have everything selected (A toggles select all, or select none) before proceeding with "Remove Doubles" for this to finally work.

Remove doubles with option "Unselected" checked


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View camera boundaries in user perspective?
I'm currently weight painting and find myself glancing back and forth between camera view and user perspective view to check where I'm painting in relation to my camera boundaries (for an environment scene).
Is there a way to view the camera boundaries from within the user perspective view?

Another option is to simply scale up the camera object. It doesn't effect the FOV at all. Select the camera, go to the properties panel and Camera > Display > Size.

Scale it up until the frustrum covers your painting area. You can see it from any angle. Alternatively you could parent a lamp with a square cone to match the camera frustrum.
Add a spot lamp and constrain it to the camera and copy the camera's Field Of View to lamp Size. You will have to scale the lamp's Y axis to fit aspect ratio.

Hardly intuitive, but highly effective results!

Thanks I think it would make a neat little addon if automated.

I don't think it's possible as of 2.77, but a quick workaround would be to use Clipping Border to visualize what's visible from camera regarding its field of view angle setup.

Enter camera view (Numpad 0) and enable Clipping Border tool with Alt+B.
Draw the rectabgle which should be the same as camera boundaries.

Now once exiting the camera view you'll see large grey cone of nearly the same area visible to the camera.

Note:

Clipping border means that any geometry out of its boundaries is hidden.
The border drawn may be not the most convenient while in 3D Viewport because of grey area it consists of.

Well that just makes my method look stupid haha.

@RayMairlot well I wouldn't say as Clipping Border hides any other geometry which may be undesirable and it has quite strange visualization in 3D Viewport (it's much more friendly with mesh), but the method is faster.

Thanks for this, have never used that before but looks like it should work. I also thought your idea Ray was good!

Blender has an option to display camera bounds. The option is only available for the 3D stereoscopy camera. If we want to use it for a normal camera it is possible to enable the multi-view option without altering the camera view, this needs to be disabled again to render unless you setup the camera properly.

Once enable we have the stereoscopy panel in the 3Dview properties panel (N)

Currently there is no built in way to do this. Someone did start building a patch for this here, with the developer, Ulysse Martin, stating:

I'm not convinced about the usefulness of this too finally. So I close
  the task for the moment, and if users request such a feature, I'll
  reopen it.

If you feel this is an important feature I would suggest commenting on the patch as Ulysse Martin suggested.
However, I was able to make a rough camera frustrum by modelling it with geometry:

Select the camera, press Shift+S and choose Cursor to selected.
Go to the camera view (Numpad 0) and add a Plane with Shift+A, which results in:

(This depends on the Editing user preference Align To set to View, so new objects are aligned to where you are looking)

Extrude the plane along its face normal until it aligns with the front of the camera.
Scale down the face so it matches the camera shape. Using a local transform manipulator can help with this:

Select the other end of the cube and press S,0 to scale down the face to a point.
Select the face that aligns with the front of the camera and press G twice to perform an Edge Slide. While edge sliding press C to turn off Clamping. You can now adjust the 'camera frustrum' to be as big as necessary:

You could then parent the frustrum object to the camera with Ctrl+P so it follows the camera if you move it.
For convenience, while doing this I set the object to Wire display mode by going to Object Properties> Display and setting Maximum Draw Type to wire.
I'm not sure if you want to go to this effort or if this is even useful doing it in this manner (as it may still be hard to tell what is inside or outside the object), but this is the only way I know of doing it.

As an extension to Rays answer, this script automates making a camera frustum mesh object,
the object can also be scaled up to show it at further distances

import bpy
import math

scene = bpy.context.scene
camera = scene.camera

# this script tries to recreate what the camera shows in the viewport (orange pyramid) as a mesh

# the viewport camera looks like a point and a plane, this starts by making the plane

#  get the height scale for the new plane
#  like 9/16 for a 16:9 ratio
height_ratio = scene.render.resolution_y / scene.render.resolution_x

new_plane = bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_plane_add(
    size=1,
    enter_editmode=False,
    align='WORLD',
    scale=(1, height_ratio, 1),
    location=(camera.location),
    rotation=(camera.rotation_euler),
)

# make the plane have the correct aspect ratio (like 16:9)
# (for some reason, setting scale when creating doesn't work)
bpy.ops.transform.resize(value=(1, height_ratio, 1), orient_type='LOCAL')

#  using trigonometry to figure out the plane distance from the camera point
# (imagine looking from above the camera, and halving it into two right angle triangles)
#  using half the FOV as the angle, and knowing the length of the OPPOSITE side (0.5) , we can calculate the ADJACENT side (distance from camera point to the camera rectangle shown in the viewport)

# for the Soh Cah Toa trigonometry stuff, this is half the width of the plane (the plane width is 1)
opposite = 0.5

camera.data.lens_unit = 'FOV'
field_of_view = camera.data.angle

# this is the angle for the trigonometry right angle triangle
angle_radians = camera.data.angle / 2
extrude_distance = opposite / math.tan(angle_radians)

#  turn on edit mode
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()
# select the planes face
bpy.ops.mesh.select_all(action='SELECT')
# move it to the same position as the camera rectangle shown in the viewport
bpy.ops.transform.translate(value=(0, 0, -extrude_distance), orient_type='LOCAL')
# extrude it backwards to the camera point
bpy.ops.mesh.extrude_region_move(
    MESH_OT_extrude_region={},
    TRANSFORM_OT_translate={
        "value": (0, 0, extrude_distance),
        "orient_type": 'NORMAL',
        "orient_matrix_type": 'NORMAL',
        "constraint_axis": (False, False, True),
    },
)
# join the extruded face in the middle into one point, so it makes a pyramid shape
bpy.ops.mesh.merge(type='CENTER')

# turn off edit mode
bpy.ops.object.editmode_toggle()

# now there should be a mesh the same shape as the camera object
# the new mesh can be scaled to see the camera frustum at a longer distance

Initial Solution: AltB select the camera boundary. Pro: Simple Con: Limited view of other references. Alternative Solution: Vertex/ Face Mask. Pro: Flexibility & control Con: N/A.  Most Efficient Solution: Adjust Mesh to Camera View. Pro: No wasted vertices Con: Camera is set - less flexible.


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Rigid body physics based pulley in blender?
Hi I want to make a simple physics based pulley with two rigid body objects, so that when the heavier object moves (via physics) it pulls the other object over the pulley. I don't need the 'rope' between the objects, just the physics of the pulley. Any help appreciated.

There is no easy or simple way to do this as rigid bodies are "rigid" and will stay in only one shape.

That’s a shame, maybe adding a rope is the best method?

You can't do that due to how belnder sims work


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Wave deformities
I'm adding the wave dynamic paint to the roman numerals XX, but the waves are shapes very peculiar, is there a way to fix this?, if so, what will it look as bad fully rendered?

Text objects have terrible topology, you need some nice even topology for any type of deformation.  See my answer here.

A grid-shaped topology like PGmath suggested would definitely be an improvement. I think insetting will give you the best results though. See this.

I figured it out, I used re-mesh to give the text objects more topology.


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How to loopcut a Square-based Pyramid?
Is there a way to loop-cut a Square based Pyramid, so that there is multiple bands around the sloped sides?
Edit: Sorry, my bad, but when I said triangular prism, I was thinking about a pyramid, Changed that just now. Sorry again! Though the prism answer was a nice knowledge to know.

try knife tool (K)

@Bithur Yeah, but is there a way to do multiple (around 210) cuts somewhat quickly?

loopcut should do that but if not, try knife projrct

Like this https://i.sstatic.net/QXNs4.png ?

@stacker Sorry, my bad, I changed it now to Squared based pyramid, which is what I was asking for, sry.

Regardless it is square-based or not, you can always select all sloped edges, then hit W > Subdivide, then tweak the number of cuts as you want.

Another trick is to first bevel the pole vertex, with a very small value, to make all sloped faces quads (they might still look like triangles , but they are actually quads now), then you can use loop cut tool to cut them. After that, just remove the extra vertices with Remove Doubles tool.

Thank-you!, can't believe that I haven't tried to just select the sloped sides when subdividing!

If you need to cut it around slope sides do it with the loopcut tool Ctrl+R and adjust the number of cuts with middle wheel or input number with keyboard.

If you need to cut it along slope sides:

Subdivide your prism with W > Subdivide as many times as you need:

Delete the middle part:

Select everything and convert to n-gons with F, then hit W > Bridge Edge Loops:

You should use the Loop Subdivide tool. Just hover your cursor over the area of the mesh you want to loop-cut (place it near the edge), press CTRL+R and input the number of cuts you want to use using numerical keyboard buttons. Approve the operation by hitting Enter twice.

You can see the details here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Editing/Subdividing/Loop_Subdivide


text:
Bake per vertex color to Texture
So, I was trying to make the colours of a obj created by this Demo make by the talented people of the Computer Vision Laboratory of University of Nottingham and with no success and frustration I wasn't able to make the colours show up, even less bake to a normal texture map.
Screenshot https://i.sstatic.net/RzYWU.png
Link for you to try be yourself http://cvl-demos.cs.nott.ac.uk/vrn/
Thank you and best regards.

What is your question, could you elaborate? Also add some more info to your post like screenshots and details about the issue. Don't rely on people downloading a file to understand what you are trying to achieve

Sorry for not clearing my question My issue is view and bake the vertex color of this mesh https://i.imgur.com/IEN8rkm.png

The issue is that .OBJ format by standard does not support vertex colors, so Blender isn't importing them. The way to append vertex color after vertex position is only a third-party hack to the format, and thus the support is limited in many applications.
Please follow this post about importing an .OBJ file with vertex colors into Blender and you should be able to see, render and bake the colors no problem.
How to display and use Vertex Color from OBJ model

The problem is in the way Blender handles vertex colors. if I import the mesh in meshlab e export as .ply the mesh will be with vertex colors


text:
Cycles Node Editor: Double Diffuse problem
Basically there is 1 area and it is all 1 material.
It consists of 3 parts/UV maps: Mountain, Soil, and Beach. The UV maps "overlap" each other which means that the faces of transition between the parts are in both/all three of the UV maps.
The layers of the textures have an order: First there is the mountain, then there is the soil which covers a bit of the mountain, then there is the beach which covers some of the mountain and the soil. The soil and beach textures have slightly transparent parts at the transition.
I use the general Color/Normal/Occlusion/Specularity setup for each of the textures. In the end the different parts shall all have their own diffuse and glossy shaders, the mountain f.e. gets a slightly red gloss to it.

Now there is the problem that the faces of the transition seem to be "diffused twice" you can see that they are way brighter:

(note that it really is just the faces of the transition not the whole mountain even if it might look a little like this in the screenshot.)
Here is an image of the node setup, sadly it is too small to read it:

Last but not least the .blend-file(too large for blend exchange):
Choose one:
http://www.file-upload.net/download-10862405/area.blend.html
http://www.megafileupload.com/5157/area.blend

To sum it up: Is there a way to diffuse it all with the same brightness whilst remaining separate color and normal maps plus separate specularity maps and glossy shaders. Aka "how to set it up correctly".

EDIT: Here are the textures packed in a .zip:
http://www.file-upload.net/download-10862545/textures.zip.html
http://www.megafileupload.com/5176/textures.zip

EDIT: The answer of PGmath might work but in my case it doesn't because the textures are "hand painted" and they already have transparent parts at the borders and stuff. Isn't there another way to achieve this? I cannot use the mask method, I'd have to do the whole thing again.

I suspect those add shaders at the end, but it'll be hard to tell how to fix it without the textures.. Could you upload a version with packed textures?

I think gandalf3 is right, why are you using add shaders?

@gandalf3 Thought that you might need the textures too. I added download links for the zipped textures. You will have to reassign them manually, the nodes tell you the names.

@PGmath I used mix shaders before which were "even more wrong" so I switched to the add shaders. I am not really skilled with the node editor yet, it was merely a trial and error.

I think you are going about what you are trying to accomplish the wrong way.  The way multiple different materials are usually combined is by using a mask.  A mask is basically a black and white map where black areas correspond to one material and white areas correspond to another material.
To set this up in the node editor just use a mix shader and plug the mask into the fac input.  This will make lighter areas of the mask give the output shader more of the second input and darker areas give more of the first input.

Note: make sure you set the image texture node for the mask to non-color data.
Here is a rendered visualization of just the mask plugged into a diffuse shader across a piece of randomly generated terrain:

And here is a render with the same mask only in the above node setup:

So for your case you will have to now go and create a mask which defines where each material should be.  To combine more than 2 materials just create multiple masks and use multiple mix shaders in succession.

I'll check this out, TARDIS Maker also told me to do it like that.

Still something unclear: A) Do I have to use 1 UV map for all of the textures then(which would be the whole area)? B) If that is so, would that mean, that in my case, I have to make all of the textures again?

I guess this doesnt work for me, see the Edit in the question.

@Jonathan Try using the alpha from the image textures to drive the mix shaders.

@Jonathan I just noticed your answer, glad it worked!

Just found the most simple solution which I was looking for all the time:
Instead of using a mask texture I just plugged the Alpha output of the latter too color textures into the Factor of the Mix Shaders.


text:
Character Rigging and Mesh Deformations rotating and shrinking strangely around joint
This time, I began to rig a mesh through weight painting and deformations so I could achieve an accurate effect to my liking. For all my characters before, I have used object rigging, (Without Vertex groups as I never needed to have some).
However, this time I have an arm with two bones, One for the forearm and one for the wrist. When I rotate the wrist, it works correctly, but once I rotate the forearm, there are a specific pair of circular vertices that work strangely.
Here is the weight paint and arm at rest position:

The Yellow and light blue ones deform once I rotate the bone.

Like so.
It is strange because I have an armature modifier applied to the object with preserved volume checked. Yet it seems as if those sets of vertices do not follow the command; they seem to be moving closer and closer to the joint whilst shrinking as I rotate the bone.
Here is what the weight values of the second bone are:

Any suggestions or wisdom would be appreciated, and I can always upload the .blend if you ask me to.
Thank you.
Here is the .blend file:

Could you provide your .blend file on https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com to be able to help you?

Added it for you

I'm confused what is the exact problem? Can you highlight it in the screenshots?

There are a set of vertices that continue to shrink towards the joint of the bone whenever it is moved. If you rotate it, you'll see them, I don't know how to fix them so that they follow the shoulder bone and have the appropriate relations to the wrist bone so they do not deform unnaturally.

Answer provided with screenshots, you can accept and upvote it if it solved your problem.

Select your Mesh and delete all vertex groups and all modifiers as shown:

Select your Mesh then select your armature using Shift+RightClick and hit Ctrl+P then choose With Empty Groups:

Switch to Pose Mode then select the two bones LWrist and LShoulder then select the mesh using Shift+RightClick as shown below:

Switch to weight painting mode and select Assign Automatic From Bones from the Weights menu as shown below:

Done, now the mesh will have weights assigned to these bones with good deformations as shown below:


text:
How to make "fuzzy" snow particle material in Eevee?
I'm trying to make a nighttime blizzard snowstorm scene with particles and wind, but I'm currently having trouble getting the particle material to render in a realistic way.
I followed this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IShp0PSLBOA&t=1s

My scene is set up so that there is a point light source to the upper left of the camera.
The snow on the upper left side of the image seems correct, but the snow that is closer to the ground is completely dark, which isn't realistic.
Here are my material settings:

The material the person in the tutorial creates noticeably doesn't have a diffuse component, which is probably why the particles are darkened towards the direction of the light source, however I have tried to implement a diffuse component of this material with little success.
In short I'm trying to make the snow cluster material:
-Diffusely reflect the light source
-Translucently interact with the light source (transmit light through the material when the light source is behind the object)
-Have a transparency component that gives the snow clusters soft edges

When I change the world color, the darkened areas of the snow clusters change to match it. However, the scene I am making must take place at night for it to make sense in the game I am making.
So is it possible to achieve the look I am trying to get?
[EDIT] I have an update.
I managed to get both Diffuse and Translucent effects on opposite sides of each snow particle with the following configuration:

However there is still the issue of shading on the snow particles as shown below:

Snow particles generally don't have obvious shading on them like this. Is there a way to control how much shading is rendered on the material? I've tried using emission but the correct configuration evades me.

Hello, if you are in Eevee, as you're using a Transparent node, did you make sure that the material was set to Blend Mode > Alpha Blend instead of Opaque?

Yes it is in Alpha Blend mode

Maybe share your file?

Blender File has now been added.

I found out how to manage the shading on the particles by changing the properties of the light source

I changed the radius of the point light, and in doing so, smoothed out the shading on each particle. I initially had it set to 0, which is why I was getting such stark shading.
In addition I changed my material nodes to the following configuration:

Which allows for some transparency through the visible part of the snow particle.
The result is below:

I can't say this the exact material I will use in the end, but it's looking much more realistic for the setup.
[EDIT] Lastly, one can use noise to vary the transparency edge on each particle as follows:

The Diffuse node creates a shadow, as for the Translucent, it only works if you have a light behind the object, which is not the case here, so your flakes appear rather dark. Also maybe you should give a Subdivision Surface modifier to your icosphere in order to have a more spherical flake (or use a UV Sphere instead of an Icosphere) and therefore a more spherical shadow.
You could still try to fix your current setup, or create another lighting in your scene, but you could also try a mix between an Emission node and a Transparent, with the Layer Weights as factor, it can be more complicated (example mix your Emission with a Diffuse) but I think it already works pretty well:

Thanks for looking into the issue. Unfortunately I didn't want to use Emission because then the material doesn't react to any external light source. Fortunately, I managed to figure out how to fix the core issue and posted my answer.

Sure, it's not the ideal solution, it's just a quick one   ;)


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Blender multiple Image texture one Material
I made a few signs in blender. They all have the same Material.
I want to put an images on the front of the signs - but all the images are unique. I want to keep the ability to edit the material of the signs and to use one unique Image for every sign.
So the only ways I know how to achieve this are: Create one big image and map it (i dont want to do it).
Duplicate the Material with different Images (i will lose the ability to edit all materials at once)
What to do?

A good solution to this is to take advantage of Node Groups. You can extract the common portions of your different materials into a group, then share it across all of them. You can then edit the contents of the group to make changes to all the materials that share it at once.
For example, suppose you have a material that looks like this:

If you want to share the Principled BSDF settings across many different materials but use different image textures, you can select the Principled BSDF node and press CtrlG to convert it to a new node group:

By default, all of the node’s inputs are made into group inputs, but in this case we only want the Base Color to be provided by the enclosing material, so we can delete all the other inputs in the node properties panel (accessed by pressing N):

This produces a node group that looks like this:

Pressing Tab to leave Edit Mode for the new group and return to the original material, we can rename the group to something more informative:

Now you can add the node group to other materials using ShiftA ▸ Group ▸ <name of group>:

To edit the group contents, just select it (from within any material) and press Tab to enter Edit Mode again. Any changes you make will affect all the materials that use the group, so there’s no need to duplicate anything between materials.

thank you very much! nice and precise answer :)

I think that if you don't want to use atlases (may I ask why btw?) one possible solution would be python. Tweak one of the materials and then propagate the changes over the whole collection.


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EXR Transparency Border with bloom and glare
This issue was solved by saving to EXR, however when loading that EXR into the VSE over a background a dark border appears around the transparent text that cuts through the glare and bloom.
I'm using Blender 2.92.0.
EEVEE with bloom
Render layers -> Glare -> Composite (with "UseAlpha" checked)

Following up to say I've just tried:
EEVEE with no bloom.
Render layers -> Glare (streaks) -> Glare (fog glow) -> Composite (with "UseAlpha" checked). The problem persists

This seems like a bug to me. Here’s another question discussing the same thing: https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/203616 It seems like maybe the VSE doesn’t handle Alpha Over compositing correctly for images with premultiplied alpha. If you can add the background in the compositor rather than in the VSE, that should work better, but otherwise I don’t have any great ideas.

Thanks @AlexisKing, these workarounds might work

Actually, I take it back—I realized the VSE operates in sRGB by default, which is the root cause of your problems. See my answer.

By default, the Video Sequence Editor operates in the sRGB color space, while the Compositor always operates in the Linear color space. (You can read more about the difference in the Color Management section of the Blender documentation.)
When you render to OpenEXR, the information in the image is stored in the raw Linear color space. This means that the colors have not yet been mapped to sRGB, and in fact there are many possible different ways that mapping could be done (as changing the View Transform and Look settings can illustrate). Although the VSE does handle images in the Linear color space even when compositing in sRGB, the compositing operations themselves still happen in sRGB, which means the image must be converted to sRGB before the alpha blending is applied.
This is fraught with potential problems, and although I sadly can’t say with confidence why exactly this leads to black fringing in your example, it seems wiser to play it safe and do this compositing entirely in the Linear space. You can set the VSE to Linear in the Scene ▸ Color Management panel:

This eliminates the fringing in the rendered result.

There are other tradeoffs related to the choice of VSE color space, and the full subject is too complex to attempt to cover here. But if all you are doing is compositing rendered output from Blender itself, using the Linear color space is almost certainly a perfectly fine choice.
If you find that using the Linear color space does cause problems for whatever reason, one solution could be to use multiple scenes, one of which uses the Linear color space in the VSE, the other which uses sRGB. Then you can do your video compositing in two passes, first compositing in the Linear space and outputting sRGB video, then further processing the sRGB video in the sRGB space. Of course, if doing everything in the Linear color space works fine for you, that is preferable, since that is much simpler.

Whoa this is great! I would like to note that simply making this change with the image in the project didn't work. I had to reimport the images after making this change. I suppose something happens on import for the item.


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Model deforming clipping and falling through clothing
I started trying to do a walk animation, and I added some clothes to the character. But, for some reason, the player falls through the clothing. I'm admittedly very new to cloth physics, and animation in general so it's probably something simple. But I've been at this for hours and can't figure it out.
I haven't even gotten to the actual animation part. When I set the animation to any frame other than 1 the model starts deforming and ballooning through the clothing.

Here is the HDR image
Here is my model

The solution to this issue was to apply a collision modifier to the model.
Step 1.) Go to Modifier Properties -> Add Modifier -> collision modifier -> Right-click
Step 2.) Make sure your model doesn't intersect the clothing or whatever secondary object you have. It will cause issues with the solver.
Then apply the collision modifier. The clothing needs to have a collision modifier as well.
This solves that issue, but the model and clothing fall through the floor now. So this is not a complete solution. But that's a different problem for a different question.


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Why does view_layer.update seemingly fail for my armature?
I'm writing an export script for an armature (using Blender 3.0.0). In this script, I'm attempting to clear bone roll, then force local bone matrices (bone.matrix_local) to be recomputed before writing to a file, as follows:
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode = 'EDIT')

# I could also use bpy.ops.armature.roll_clear()
for editBone in armature.edit_bones:
    editBone.roll = 0

# I've tried this script with and without the following line (setting the armature's node to be active).
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = node
bpy.context.view_layer.update()

This seemingly has no effect, as I've confirmed that exported local bone matrices include roll (rather than zeroing roll first). What am I missing? How can I force the export script to recompute bone matrices immediately?

Generally you need to exit edit mode for changes to be applied. It works the same way for meshes actually. For example
# Make sure the armature is the thing you're editing
bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = arma_ob

# Switch to edit mode
if bpy.context.mode != 'EDIT':
    bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='EDIT')

# Clear all rolls
for editBone in arma_ob.data.edit_bones:
    editBone.roll = 0

# Exit edit mode
bpy.ops.object.mode_set(mode='OBJECT')

# Access the new bone.matrix_local here


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Curtain simulation not following pegs enough
I'm having an issue with the curtain I need to make in a scene.

This is the curtain at it's rest position. (It's stats at the right)

This is more of a close up on the pegs. I have it so that the pegs do have collision properties at all default values. As you can also see the whole that I've cut out of the un-applied solidified mesh is what the curtain will react to and ultimately be dragged around by.

This is the result of the simulation I have at around 90 frames. The pegs themselves move to the shape-key I've applied for them, but the curtain itself moves only slightly, and it's the top parts that's supposed to carry the rest of the it along.
I've tried varying presets, ones with heavier cloth, more and less dampening, and I've also messed with the structure as well. Then when that didn't work right, I moved onto the collision sets and tried to tamper with those, but all of them seem right.
I don't have a picture to show you this, but the general way I want to curtain is to move left and carry the bottom parts along with it close behind. It's not silk, but it's not rubber either.
I'm almost done talking, but in case you're wondering, the stage is hidden in the pictures, but I've checked, and the base of the cloth does not touch or intersect with said object.
Any help is appreciated.
EDIT: Here's the .blend file in case you are wondering.

You should probably move the curtain with shapekeys instead.

So not with a cloth simulation? Or should I select the vertices around the wholes and drag them out to the position of where the rings are? I think I see what you're saying, I just need to know exactly

You still use cloth simulation regularly, but instead of making the pegs move the wholes with them just create a shapekey and move the wholes manually, visually matching the peg motion but independent from them. Animated that shape key, and let that influence the curtain motion instead.

Thank you for the clarification. I've been testing it a little bit more and I noticed how large my scene is. Once I lowered the mass down to unusual levels, the cloth starts to move more, but it never ultimately reaches the place that I need. I did what you said, and it is working better thankfully, but not completely. Should I upload the .blend file in case you want to check it out?

This may help https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssYemC0j6Ag

Unfortunately, that was the video I watched to make the simulation. Thank you for the reference though. I put the .blend file in the post for anyone who wants to work with it themselves.


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Working around the UV Maps limit
Since the maximum amount of UV Maps is eight per object, (I'm not quite sure why),  a workaround is most likely my only option. For this problem, I have a single object that has 55 materials.
There is a base texture that is used in every material and is unwrapped properly.

However, every texture also has another decal texture specific to that set of faces/wall

So you see, the base texture is unwrapped differently from the decal, (which is made to fit the proportions of that wall). The way to achieve this effect without messing with both UV unwraps is by UV Maps in the data tab.
However, since there are only eight available on any one object at a time, I can't add anymore to continue the workflow I've done so far.
A possible workaround would be to separate the object into many objects that each have a set number of the UV Maps.
However, is there any other ways I can achieve this effect?
Thank you in advance.

Weird, I thought I added the last line, but I had to refresh the page because it thought I had less than ten reputation. Sorry for the mishap, It's a question, but the actual question at the bottom didn't get saved after I came back to it.