text:
How to create a keyboard shortcut to call a custom menu in a floating window with Python?
This is very simple script example from Blender templates:
import bpy

class SimpleCustomMenu(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = "Simple Custom Menu"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_MT_simple_custom_menu"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout

        layout.operator("wm.open_mainfile")
        layout.operator("wm.save_as_mainfile")

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

    # The menu can also be called from scripts
    bpy.ops.wm.call_menu(name=SimpleCustomMenu.bl_idname)

All I care about is the ability opening the menu in separate floating window without need to go thru menu all the time, as I have my own code (add-on) and trying to implement this (no success yet - I am still scripting newbie, so you know).
Thus merit of my question is: how can we make what line bpy.ops.wm.call_menu(name=SimpleCustomMenu.bl_idname) is doing with hardcoded keyboard shortcut right in the script itslef?
Like: when I press, let's say, Shift+Q it would open that small floating window with my menu - anyone with a working example script based on the code above?
I DID TRY several ways, but still I was unable making it work, that is reason why I would like to see actual working code, not just some kind of statement (I saw such statements already and they were of no help at all to me).
EDIT: I reformated my question so it would be clear to everyone what I mean (sorry, english is not my native language)

Just set the keymap item identifier to WindowManager.call_menu and assign bl_idname of the menu to the name property. Basic example on how create a shortcut to call a menu using CtrlW:

import bpy

class SimpleCustomMenu(bpy.types.Menu):
    bl_label = "Simple Custom Menu"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_MT_simple_custom_menu"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.operator("wm.open_mainfile")
        layout.operator("wm.save_as_mainfile")

addon_keymaps = []

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

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.addon
    if kc:
        km = wm.keyconfigs.addon.keymaps.new(name='3D View', space_type='VIEW_3D')
        kmi = km.keymap_items.new('wm.call_menu', 'W', 'PRESS', ctrl=True, shift=False, alt=False)
        kmi.properties.name =  SimpleCustomMenu.bl_idname
        addon_keymaps.append((km, kmi))

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(SimpleCustomMenu)
    for km, kmi in addon_keymaps:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
    addon_keymaps.clear()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

Related: Create keyboard shortcut for an operator using python?


text:
Problem with transmission of a material that uses principled shader

I'm having an issue with transmission in the principled shader. As you can see my material's base colour is blue, but when I add transmission to it goes dark?
EDIT: Also just realized that I left transmission roughness on 1, I was just trying to see if anything's gonna change with that, but no. It remained the same. So on transmission roughness any value from 0 to 1... no difference at all.
EDIT2: Using Eevee

are you using eevee are cycles?

I'm using eevee

i have the same problem,  transmission doesn't seem to work with eevee. (I know for a fact that it can, but I can't figure it out.  What's annoying is that i thought glass would be easier in eevee because it wouldn't be realistic, so I could make a windshield that didn't distort the characters looking through it.

Go to the Material Tab. Scroll down to "Settings" and Check "Screen Space Refraction"

You also need to enable "Refraction" in the "Screen Space Reflections" panel of the render properties. Render engine must be set to Eevee beforehand.

Also make sure the roughness value is not too high, above 0.5 it will gradually prevent refraction.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to proceed to UV unwrapping
I used retopoflow 3 beta and retopologized it (retopology for the first time) and I think I am done.
But now what? There are 2 modifiers added to the retopology mesh.
Should I apply both of them then go UV unwrapping it or should I leave the Mirror modifier as it is and then proceed to UV unwrapping?

what are your modifiers? is your object supposed to be used in Blender only or will you export it into a game engine?

currently mirror and displacement modifiers are active.I will add a subdivition surface modifier too.I will use it as a vfx character in a shortvideo.For that I will render multiple passes from blender and then composite it in after effects.

It's recommended to apply the mirror modifier for humans, animals & creatures. This allows you to paint both sides differently to add scars, freckles, spots, tattoos, wrinkles, skin pores, imperfections, etc for a more realistic appearance.
Hair/fur/whiskers should also have some asymentry to look natural and realistic.
You still can use mirror mode in texture paint and particle edit mode to save time.
About the displacement modifier I don't know. Do you need it? After retopology the low poly mesh should be fine.
A common workflow is to create a high poly object, retopologize it to get a low poly version. Then you bake a normal map and apply this baked texture to the low poly object. If you want to add more details like wrinkles, etc you can add a multires modifier to the lowpoly and bake the normal map again.

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


text:
Displayed dimensions of the edges are different than in object mode
Just a beginner question here about dimensions. As an exercise I wanted to create a house and started with a block. The block was supposed to be 20m long, 3m high and 6m deep. I entered these values in object mode:

Then I wanted to continue changing the shape in edit mode to progress with the house design but I saw that the displayed dimensions of the edges were completely different than in object mode:

...however, if I switch to "global" in the side menu under "transform" the dimensions become correct again...:

Can anybody tell me what's going on here? Why are the values different?
Thanks in advance for helping me out.


text:
White Noise after Rendered Scene
When I render, white like bricks come up in my scene and start to affect the sand textures.

I've researched I thought it was a noise particle from using something transparent like water but the noise particles are more like circles than bricks.

Please use the [edit] link at the
bottom of your question (https://i.sstatic.net/lXFuK.png) and add
more information on how you set up your project material and textures. Do you have overlapping planes for the white, brown and green parts?

Try increasing samples!

Over here, i think its the best if you add your scene, there are much things that can be it.

Hello, most likely you have an additional object sitting at the exact same place which you might had hidden in the viewport, but not deactivated for rendering


text:
Why is my rendered animation showing a hexadecagon border around my image?
I am using blender 2.91 for Mac. I am trying to animate an inflating balloon flying away on a still image. When I toggle to camera view everything looks ok, yet when I go to render the animation I get a darker image with a hexadecagon border around the image. I attached two screenshots below to provide further context for my question.
Thank you in advance!

maybe you've given a Subdisivision Surface modifier to your image, check the modifiers panel

You were right, Thank you so much!

Here's a plane:

Here's the same plane with a subsurf modifier:

Now the object has more vertices instead of the original 4.
The subdivision modifier creates new "virtual" geometry, by interpolating the existing edges and faces.

The Subdivision Surface modifier (often shorten to “Subdiv”) is used to split the faces of a mesh into smaller faces, giving it a smooth appearance. It enables you to create complex smooth surfaces while modeling simple, low-vertex meshes. It avoids the need to save and maintain huge amounts of data, and gives a smooth “organic” look to the object.

If you use (default) Catmul-clark subdivision the object will be rounded.
To keep the plane like a parallelogram, use Simple subdivision:


text:
Movie as a plane does not update every frame, only the first frame is rendered
I need to import videoclip as a plane on Blender. I tried with Blender (2.79, 2.83.5) versions.
I can see movie on preview but not when render.
When render with cycle engine, only first frame is render and movie don't play but freeze first frame.
When render with eevee image is purple.
I have tried video import as a plane in blank "general" project.
Can anyone help me?
Thanks a lot
EDIT: project source

Hi there : ) Can you share your .blend file with packed in textures also add the image of the node setup of the material of the plane. For rendering animations you need to click on Render > Render Animations.  I guess you pressed Render Image.

https://easyupload.io/8bt1ui project

I have taken a look at your file. It renders quite fine in my PC. How did u render it ? Did u press Render > Render Image or press F12 ?

I press "render animation". I want to export video and some 3d object that is not in project

I forgot to say...You need to go to the output tab > Output > File Format and select a video format like .Avi or FFmpeg . It is PNG by default and I guess you are using it. That is precisely why you are not getting a video instead a photo. If this helps I will post it as the answer.

Nxdhin2005, Sorry but I don't have problem with output (image or video) format. My problem is that cycle render engine draw First frame and than freeze it until video ended

Apparently it is a known bug. Devs fixes issue in 2.9


text:
Non-existent tris
I'm working on this mesh trying to reduce the number of tris I have. The mesh itself has around 9,000 tris, but when I go into object mode, it tells me I have 23,000 tris. I can't seem to locate the source of the extra 12,000 tris.
Anybody have any solutions?
In edit mode

In object mode

In object mode, the number of faces/tri's, etc.. includes any that are created as the result of modifiers (applied or not). So it basically shows you how many tri's you'd have if you applied all your modifiers. It also shows the total count for all objects in the scene.

The extra geometry is likely the result of modifiers you are using (for example mirror, subdiv, etc). Pressing alt-h can reveal any hidden objects in the scene you haven't gotten rid of, if you want to be extra sure.


text:
Set 3D cursor button randomly set to LMB in Edit Mode
Blender 2.8 randomly sets the LMB to set the 3D cursor in Edit Mode despite the keymap settings stating that is it LMB. The LMB is selecting in Object Mode but not in Edit Mode.
It does this in only one project. Other projects still use the LMB for selecting in Edit Mode.
I've tried to reset the factory setting via File -> Default -> Load Factory Settings. I've tried Preferences -> Load Factory Preferences. I've restarted Blender. Like it was suggested in this question.
But nothing works. It's like I accidentally pressed a button combination to set it like this. Does anybody know what I can do the make selecting in Edit Mode the LMB again?

Didn't you press the cursor icon in the left toolbar (you can call it by pressing T)?

WOW that was actually it. I can't believe it was something that small. Probably why I didn't see it. I don't even remember pressing it.
Thank you.

Don't edit the question to say "answered", instead you could add an answer below and mark it as accepted, that's the way Blender.SE works. Check [ask], [answer] and take the [tour] to learn more.

Tried to do that but it asked if I wanted to answer my own question and I agreed that that was a weird thing to do, and seeing as I couldn't select FFeller's comment as an answer I did it this way.

Press the cursor icon in the left toolbar (you can call it by pressing T)
(as pointed out by @FFelller)


text:
I can't see the vertices in vertex mode
Though I am in vertex select mode, I am unable to see the vertices as shown.

Hello :). Your viewport overlay is turned off. Upper right corner, the icon with two circles is grey :).

Your viewport overlay is turned off.
Upper right corner, the icon with two circles is grey :).


text:
Is there any data lost opening 4.0+ files in Blender 3.6?
Due to my computer's graphics card, Blender 3.6 is the latest version I can open. I am able to open 4.0+ files fine, but was wondering if there's anything to look out for.
I'm specifically asking if there are any changes in the file I should be aware of when opening a 4.0+ file in 3.6. For example, when a 3.4+ file is opened in 3.3, any mix color node becomes undefined because of the node update that happened in 3.4. Does anything like that occur when a 4.0+ file is opened in 3.6?

Of course. You can generally expect better results for adjacent minor versions like 4.0 and 4.1, but some data loss is inevitable, because features change between versions. Between major versions like 3.x and 4.x in some cases you may expect complete incompatibility. See more here

I don't see how you can get a meaningful answer to what you are specifically asking. Have you had any problems with the files you have opened? In your other question related to this subject: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/310887/how-to-port-4-0-blend-files-to-older-versions-of-blender the comment from Blunder on Feb 1 is IMHO about as good as it gets. Here are a couple more compatibility links, but you have probably already seen something similar. https://developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/compatibility/ https://developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/4.0/#compatibility

You might try asking on https://blenderartists.org/ to see if anyone there can add any information for you.


text:
How can I set the active category in the "N" panel?
I have created a custom panel and when N is pressed on the keyboard in 3d view we get the Sidebar with the Item tab opened by default, but I don't want that. I have also added an operator that does the same as N but I want to add one more thing that I could not find.
When someone presses N or executes my operator by pressing Shift+N it should open the Sidebar tab with my add-on.
import bpy

class MY_PT_PANEL(bpy.types.Panel):
    bl_label = "My Addon"
    bl_idname = "MY_PT_TAB"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'UI'
    bl_category = "MyTab"

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.label(text='Welcome to my addon',icon='FORWARD')

class MY_OT_OPERATOR(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname='addon.open_sidebar'
    bl_label = 'Open SideBar'

    def execute(self,context):
        areas = bpy.context.screen.areas
        view_3d = None
        for area in areas:
            if area.type == 'VIEW_3D':
                view_3d = area

        space = view_3d.spaces[0]
        space.show_gizmo = False
        space.show_region_ui = True

        return {'FINISHED'}

addon_keymap = []

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(MY_PT_PANEL)
    bpy.utils.register_class(MY_OT_OPERATOR)

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.addon
    km = kc.keymaps.new('3D View', space_type = 'VIEW_3D')
    kmi = km.keymap_items.new('addon.open_sidebar','N','PRESS',shift=True)

    addon_keymap.append((km,kmi))

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MY_PT_PANEL)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(MY_OT_OPERATOR)

    wm = bpy.context.window_manager
    kc = wm.keyconfigs.addon
    for km, kmi in addon_keymap:
        km.keymap_items.remove(kmi)
    addon_keymap.clear()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()
```

Hello! What exactly do you mean by "open an addon" ?

I mean whenever we press N it opens the Item tab which I don't. I should open another tab like View or Tool or my addon.

In this case this and this should answer your question

no, I'm not looking for this.

you want to open new window for your addon?

No, I mean when someone presses the N key it opens the Region UI with the Transform tab. I want to open another tab instead of Transform like View or Tool or my addon.

So you want to make another tab default to N but why?

Change you question title and description.

@Muzammil Your response was already given by @Gorgious... But you probably haven't even read the other threads. The Toolbar for the N shortcut is defined by bl_category. If you want a new tab with a name "MyTab",  just add bl_category = "MyTab" to the attributes of your panel, and Blender will create a new tab for your Panel (or place your panel in another tab, if it already exists).

Please read the question's description again.

Alright, I understand what you want, @Karan seems to have pinpointed the problem. I don't know if this is available to the python API unfortunately. I'm sorry to inform you that AFAIK this is not possible. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/163360/is-it-possible-to-change-the-active-bl-category-with-python Unless you're willing to dive into the source code and build a custom version of Blender.

There is a hack, you have to get your addon tab position and simulate a click on it.

Seems like it is really impossible to change the active Sidebar tab from Blender's Python API.

In blender 4.2 they added the ability to change and set categories. There is another option, through ctypes, it is implemented in my addon UniV, in the operator SplitUVToggle, but it is too complex for the average programmer.
import bpy

def set_active_panel_category(category, area_type):
    if bpy.app.version >= (4, 2, 0):
        areas = (area for win in bpy.context.window_manager.windows for area in win.screen.areas if area.type == area_type)
        for a in areas:
            for r in a.regions:
                if r.type == 'UI':
                    if r.width == 1:
                        with bpy.context.temp_override(area=a):
                            bpy.ops.wm.context_toggle(data_path='space_data.show_region_ui')
                    try:
                        if r.active_panel_category != category:
                            r.active_panel_category = category
                            a.tag_redraw()
                    except NameError as e:
                        raise e

area_type = 'VIEW_3D'
category = 'View'

set_active_panel_category(category, area_type)
```


text:
How can I access the rotation of an object and dynamically update it as text?
I am new to Blender and Python. I wanted to see if there is a way to grab the rotation value of an object and show it as text. I am trying to export this as a 3D model to other software, so I am also wondering if I export it as a FBX will the numbers still show up as changing.

Hello ! I can definitely say that the answer to the last part of your question is no. Can you elaborate a bit on your setup ? Do you want the 3D text to change dynamically when the object rotation changes ? Does the object rotation change with user input or via code ?

@Gorgious I am wanting the 3D text to change dynamically when the object rotation changes. So when the rotation is 50 I want the text to say that the rotation is 50. when its 61 the text to say 61 and so on. As of right now the object rotation changes by using the keyframe animation.

TL;DR
If you want to get something in Python written in a 3D Text in your scene, see:
How can I make dynamic text in an animation? - Blender Stack Exchange
You can get an object's euler rotation via:
bpy.data.objects["NAME OF OBJECT"].rotation_euler

Short introduction to Python and Blender's API and how to discover it by yourself
Let's switch to the scripting workspace to make some experiments:

When you want to get a value as python, all you have to do is RMB it and click Copy Full Data Path:

Then, to test it out, you can paste it into Blender's Python Console:

>>> bpy.data.objects["Cube"].rotation_euler[1]
0.0

The line with >>> is a command you entered, and the line after that is what Blender returned as value.
Think of the dots in a command like the / in a file path. Each "folder" may contain data that you can querry or edit, or other "folders".
Let's decompose that command:

bpy.data.objects["Cube"] point to the data of the object named "Cube".
.rotation_euler gets its Euler rotation (objects have different rotation systems with different coordinates, so you have to indicate which one you want to access). The different axes values are stored as a list, so you can either get all the values at once from there, or you can ask for a specific element of the list like bellow:
[1] gets you the second value within the list of values contained in rotation_euler. Counting starts from zero in programming. So X = 0, Y = 1, Z = 2

Now, let's say you just want to get the full rotation of the object, you could simply write the same command without [0]:
>>> bpy.data.objects["Cube"].rotation_euler
Euler((0.0, 0.0, 0.0), 'XYZ')

Now, this command works only on the object named "Cube". If you wanted a different object, you could simply replace the name in the command. But more often than not, in scripting we prefer to have make scripts that work without the need to manually tell object names.
An easy way for that is to replace the part pointing to a specific object by a query to the selected object. This kind of information is usually stored under bpy.context.
Let's pretend I don't remember what exactly is the command to querry my selection. What I can do is type bpy.context.selec and press ↹ Tab to have the python console autocomplete, or show the possible things I can get:

Here you can see "selected_objects" in the list. That sounds like what we want, so let's assemble the full line:
>>> bpy.context.selected_objects
[bpy.data.objects['Cube'], bpy.data.objects['Camera']]

As you can see, it didn't just returned the path to our Cube, it also returned the path to my camera which is also selected, separated with a , and put them between []. That is a Python list. And it's logical, we asked to get the selected_objectS. And that's what will allow you work on multiple objects at once if you want.
Now, if you want to get only one object, you can do as we did with the rotation axes and pick which object's rotation you want to see by adding a [number] in front of the selected_objects:
>>> bpy.context.selected_objects[0].rotation_euler
Euler((0.0, 0.0, 0.0), 'XYZ')

Alternatively, if you want to get all selected object's rotation, you can't just put .rotation_euler at the end. What you need to do is tell Python "for each selected_objects, show me rotation_euler. Which is done by a for loop:
>>> for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
...     obj.rotation_euler
...
Euler((0.0, 0.0, 0.0), 'XYZ')
Euler((1.1093189716339111, 0.0, 0.8149281740188599), 'XYZ')

Now, I will skip lengthy explanations because I won't make a full Python tutorial here, but if you wanted to make a reusable script out of this, and make the returned data more readable, you could do this:
import bpy

for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    re = obj.rotation_euler
    objName = obj.name
    rx, ry, rz = round(re[0], 1), round(re[1], 1), round(re[2], 1)

    print(f"'{objName}' rotation :  X {rx}  Y {ry}  Z {rz}")

You need to enter that in the Text Editor, click the Run button, and you will see the result in Blender's system console (Window > Toggle System Console)

For more information about scripting in Blender:

Blender 3.5 Python API Documentation — Blender Python API
3.10.10 Documentation

Outstanding answer ! I would just avoid overriding the builtin object keyword in python, it can have unintended consequences.

yeah I first missed the part where the OP said he wanted to output stuff as a 3d text object, so i thought a mini introduction to bpy discovery was needed. And by the time i got my mistake, it was already all written and I didn't want it to go to waste x) Good point about object, made some changes.


text:
Combine pass in compositior Blender 4.2
Is there any way to combine passes in the compositor?
For example if I want to modify only the Glossy Direct pass and combine the result in the final image. How can I do that ?
The node Add (2 images) no longer exists on Blender 4.2.

There never was an Add node (or at least not anymore for a very very long time). It is the Mix Color node set to the blending mode Add. Just like there is no Add node for adding float values, it is the Math node set to Add.

It works the same way as in many previous versions.
You add direct and indirect passes and multiply the result by color pass for diffuse, glossy, transmission and volume passes add them together and add emission and environment passes, AO is not something realistic, so you can do whatever you want with it, but generally what you want with AO tends to be multiplication. See the documentation
Looks something like this:

You use Color Mix node like Gordon Brinkmann explained in the comment.

It makes sense to group some nodes and have it tidy when you actually work with it.
While working it might make sense to have some sort of sustainable system for organizing nodes, for example, personally, I work from left to right adding whatever I need along the path of all the passes. Could look something like this:

Thank you for your answer :)

Consider up-voting or accepting it as the answer if you find it useful.

Just a thought, I wonder if it wouldn't be nice to have an addon that can automatically generate that end node group and named reroutes from the passes you have on a render layer node.

Node Wrangler creates and names reroutes and you can shift-RMB-drag to insert them on many lines at once. Different purposes might also require different passes. For example, you might not need direct and indirect light passes and may want to combine them straight after render before compositing. Creating whatever nodes you need to combine the passes you use only takes a couple of minutes though and you can also save the group as an asset. It's quite alright as it is already. An add-on would add just a small bit of convenience, not sure if it's worth going through the trouble of writing it.


text:
How to tile floor-tile texture on flat plane. Also its blurry
I've looked at loads of different questions / ask / etc, but they either don't work for me or (more commonly) I just don't understand what it's telling me.
I'm extremely new to Blender, maybe 1 month? And I need you to explain to me like a big dumb stupid baby, because I can't seem to understand more than that. XD
I'm trying to make an animation, and I want the floor, which is a flat plane, to look like floor-tile. The bit of UV I have is 3x3 tiles, and it SHOULD be seamless, but its not. (It is VERY small, 30x30 pixels). I managed to get it to "work" by making a bunch of loop cuts (I thought there was a way to use subdivide, but that makes the whole thing circular.) but it has a weird seam line that is very visible, which, since I'm able to move the points onto individual pixels- weird to me. Shouldn't I be able to get it exact?
Is it BECAUSE its such a small texture? I know I can probably just make the image itself bigger, like. 9x9 instead of 3x3. is that what I would have to do? I managed to get the wall to look pretty decent.
Also- is there a way for it to scale up properly? It keeps making all the pixels blurry, and I know in Photoshop and stuff you can change the scale from (whatever) to (nearest neighbor). Something about making it so it doesn't use antialiasing when scaling. (It's pixelart.)
I saw some stuff talking about nodes, but, uhh... I've yet to get there in my tutorials, so if that's the solution then I guess I'll have to fix it later. I've got a basic node setup that works for shading or something I copied directly from someone else, but if I have to add more to the nodes, uhh......
Edit:
Sorry for not being more clear. The only way I can manage to tile my image (which isn't working because of the seam lines, which I thought I'd successfully edited into the post last night, but I realized today I didn't.)
The only way I could manage to get this to work was my dividing my plane using loop cuts so it was 8x8. (8 rows and 8 columns). I then overlapped the faces in the UV so they were all exactly the same, therefor manually 'tiling' my texture. I know there is a better way to do this, but even if there isn't a better way, I should be able to remove the seam in the texture, since the image itself is a seamless image. I have extra pixels around it to try to fix the seam issue, because otherwise I was able to see the background color.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to ask everyone to teach me nodes or UV mapping or anything, I'm just trying to get this one issue (the seam) to get fixed. (Well, and also the blurriness, but I figured that would either be easy, or part of the solution.)
Edit Edit:
It's fixed! The seam was caused by the antialiasing, so once I changed the Interpolation from Linear to Closest like Gordon said, it fixed the issue, and I was able to tile it properly!
Thank you so much!
(I'm sure there is still an easier way to tile an image, but my problem is solved for now so I'm happy! <3)

It's OK to be new to Blender and to not understand stuff and most of people answering questions here expect that, but you need to communicate a lot more clearly. Form a clear specific single question, state what you have done exactly to atchieve you goals (step by step maybe?..) and how it failed, add images/sketches of what you are trying to atchieve, screenshots of your attempts and Blender's UI and settings you are working with and you may get a good answer. You should edit the question because it's not possible to understand now.

It might sometimes be helpful to share the file in addition to screenshots if possible. You could use https://blend-exchange.com/ for that.

Please don't edit the title with "Fixed" or "Solved" or anything like that. It's not how this works on Blender Stack Exchange. If you have the answer mark it as accepted, if you figure it out on your own, it's expected here you would provide the solution as an answer even if it's your own question.

BLURRY
To fix the blurriness, I followed what Gordon Brinkmann said, and changed the image texture from Linear to Closest. Since my tile was a pixel image, I wanted the pixels to scale correctly, and that is what does it.
TILE

I have a single, flat plane. No subdivision or loop-cuts needed. Just a blank, flat plane. Add the tile image and put the UV to fit your tile (mine is a square.)

In the Shader tab, using the nodes, I have a Texture Coordinate node, which I can set to UV to repeat a single image, then I use the Mapping node, connecting the Texture Coordinate > UV to the Mapping  > Vector.
Playing with the scale repeats the UV texture you've used. You want to be in Render View to see it.
Ta-Da!

If you have such small textures and you don't want them to get blurry, change the Interpolation in the Image Texture node from the default Linear to Closest instead.

For everything else, how the Subdivision Surface modifier works, how texturing and UV mapping etc. works: this is a very broad question and cannot be simply answered in one step. This site is more about focusing on single specific issues per question. Being completely new is fine, but I would highly recommend you watch a lot of beginner tutorials to get a grasp on how things work in Blender, also to get to know terminology which makes it easier to ask questions which will be understood by users on this platform.


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what does pink mean when I try to append a material?
I am trying to append a material onto a new file. the first time i tried it the icon showed the dirt look i wanted but the object was hot pink. the second time, the material morphed into a hot pink 'guy'-- what does that mean?

Pink means that the image texture used is not available.
Either it does not exist in the hard drive, or it is in a folder that is not accessible, or has been renamed, or it could mean that the image cannot be mapped the way it is set up on the material.
By default, Blender does not store images used as part of the file, it just uses a reference to the path in the computer where such images are saved.
If you want to save images as part of the .blend file, you need to pack them.


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I am getting no lighting or anything else in my render

So I opened blender, made new file and pressed a F12. I changed nothing and I get this as output. Is this output what I should get? I couldn't find anyone that got this result. What should I try to fix my issue? I am using amd gpu.

probably a problem with the latest AMD driver, try the previous one or in the the Properties panel > Render > Performance, try High Quality Normals

Issue is solved by moonboots and his suggestion to Properties panel > Render > Performance, try High Quality Normals.


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Why is my object shaped differently in object mode than in edit mode?
Why is my object shaped differently in object mode than in edit mode?

Here's the model in object mode. (The undesired shape)

Here's the model in edit mode. (The desired shape)

Hello :). Differences between Object/Edit mode are usually caused by modifiers. See if you have one that's only enabled for object mode.

That's an answer more than a comment. Consider to relocate it.


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Eevee Render Making Objects Green
I am rendering a laptop animation, and the metal of the laptop is becoming green when I render it via Eevee.
I have tried altering the materials and it has no effect.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1933oUlElwDQBeJQIXqVq3-uWECeHYYiG?usp=sharing. This is a link to download the project folder if anyone wants to help.
All help is appreciate, many thanks.

Please attach your simplified blend file to see your setup. Use https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com and paste given code into your question. External links aren't allowed here, they aren't permanent.

@vklidu, would this not remove images? They are in a separate folder. I am using images as well as materials.

It looks like the reflection of a green environment, are you using an HDRi to light the scene?

@vklidu, I have uploaded the file to the site, however it is too big. It goes over their 30mb limit. Can you not download the folder from the Drive link?

@susu I am not. How would I go about doing that?

https://www.appypie.com/faqs/how-can-i-make-my-google-drive-document-public

Yes I cant access your file from drive. You don't have to upload such a big file try to delete parts of your scene and upload just a simplified file where issue still resist. By deleting part by part there is a chance you will discover what it cause by your self :)


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Camera motion tracking: How to adjust to make the solve < 0.5?
I am trying to understand how to best approach adjusting a camera track to get the error down to something < 0.5 px

Video clip is 141 frames, HD
There are 8 markers/tracks
All of these tracks look good when I visually inspect them

The solve gives me 2.48 px and the the graph, tells me that some of the tracks have errors around 3-5. I can't visually see why it is so:

If I select one of the tracks, "Track.001":

and follow that during the 141 frames, I dont see why it is so bad, see this video:
http://somup.com/cYlt1L27xM
The "quick view", in the top right, its just a "mush", not clear at all, so it is hard to use, but from what I can tell, the track is on point.
If someone is interested in helping a newbie out, I can upload the PNG files (248 MB) and the project file.
---- EDIT ----
After adding about 4 more tracks, the error goes up to 169.09 px. When testing different "Refine" options, no change. The weirdest thing is that I can see the "per frame average error" (blue line below), but when looking for a blue line per track, there is none:

Ensure your solver Lens settings are set appropriate to the device you have recorded your footage with. It’s important that it matches as closely as possible. There are presets for common camera devices (eg, iPhone) and this can make a big difference in the accuracy of the camera solve.

Read also motion tracking, What do the graphs represent and how are they useful

The camera is not being displaced, but is just rotating. There is no parallax information that way. You will not get a 3D reconstruction out of that shot. You can only solve a shot like that with tripod solve. Also the checkered pattern on the floor might make the tracking jump, as there are not enough uinique elements to track.

Thanks for the input! I actually tried the "tripod" solve, and that made it much much worse, even though my initial thought would be "tripod", as I wasnt moving much, just panning, more or less. Also had a hard time figuring out the Huawei P30 lens, but I finally set 16 mm (sensor) and 17 mm (focal length). No idea if that helped of made things worse.


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How to create advanced slider controller (like Maya's)?

I've noticed that there are some rigging features in Maya. One of these it's "slider controller" that can go through the body and influence on it. So how I can create similar controller in Blender ?
There is a screen recording about how it works

Hello and welcome. While files, images, and external videos or links may be helpful additions they should not be the only way to obtain information about your issue. Don't make understanding your question rely on downloading a file, watching a video or visiting an external site. Use the builtin tools to upload images or gifs, along with thoroughly explaining the problem in written form so it can be indexed and searched for thus helping future visitors with similar issues.

You should be able to do this using Bone constraints.
The slider controller in that case would probably be a target bone or an empty. The Bone constraints only show up in pose mode of the rig and you can apply them to singular bones.
Maybe damped track or inverse kinematic would do what you intend.
If I'm looking at your example maybe a spline rigging setup like for a tentacle could also be what you are looking for, as there are similarities in how the spine is controlled on the bear to how the curve on a tentacle would be controlled.
This is a pretty in depth tutorial on rigging tweaker bones on an IK chain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBXFJA6UdaI

Thank you for your attention! This author's rig allows to rich flexibility, but it still not be able to control, influence a big amount of bones with one controller. In my case I need a little bit different mechanism. Bear's rig has already existed and I need to somehow add constraints that could influence on the def bones when "a slider control" right on them.


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I want to recreate this in 3D. How can I model the skin around the sqheres?
Is there a tool to make this possible and what shapes can I do this with?

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

Please verbally describe what your issue is, be specific and and use relevant keywords. Avoid referencing images or links as alternative to words, try to stay away from vague references like "this happens", "issue with", "like so", which make the post impossible to find for someone using search. Instead describe what "it" is, be descriptive, succinct and detailed. It may not be immediately obvious to users trying to help what you mean. See What is the problem of asking “How do I do this?"

What have you tried as far? What are you struggling with? There are many ways to do this: modelling, sculpting, simulation, just drawing... All involve many steps that might require making quite lengthy tutorial which is generally considered to have the potential of being off-topic here on its own, but without narrowing this question down to some more specific approach you are after it's really impossible to answer this with a single answer. You should edit it and narrow it down. You should also do at least some research before asking. Have you thought about how you want to make this?

Maybe the context could narrow it down to more reasonable approaches. What is the context? What do you want to make? Animation, stills? Why? For what purpose?

Have you tried using the sculpting tools?

I finally figured it out how to do the skin part by using a cube with a lot of subdivisions and then shrinkwrap. after applying the effect I smoothed and did other modifications on the object in sculpt mode.


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Intersect boolean option in face
I am trying to use the Intersect Boolean option in Face menu after using a Boolean modifier then joining the object and i cleared the Boolean modifier but when i go to the edit mode as u can see in the video i was selecting the faces individually but i need to select the whole object as i saw in a tutorial and they didn't select individually when they switched to edit mode the object was selected I did as they told first to select the bishop then the cube but i don't know what is wrong in my procedure.I have attached the video kindly check on it

Hello please don't use capitals for your title and also your link asks for an authorization

If you watch a tutorial and do not get same results as what's shown in it, start again from the beginning and follow the instructions more thoroughly. This solves pretty much all problems with something not working same as in a tutorial.

"I need to select the whole object as I saw in a tutorial" Objects are selected by just clicking on them in object mode, but if you need to select connected geometry in edit mode you can hit  L  while hovering your mouse over desired component of the mesh island you wish to select or Ctrl + L  if you already have some component(s) selected and want to extend selection to all connected geometry. There is also Select similar(Shift+ G ) menu to help with selection as well as everything in Select menu.

Your link is behind permissions. Please find a way to illustrate your difficulty that doesn't require it. A couple of screen-grabs can go a long way.

sorry for that i have set open link now and thanks everyone

As @Martynas Ziemys told pressing L did the job thanks


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Screw modifier not mirroring the object I'm drawing
Why is this happening? I'm trying to model this chess piece with the screw modifier but for some reason this happens:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/101386/screw-modifier-problem https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/253830/how-can-i-use-screw-modifier-right

"but for some reason this happens": What precisely is "this"? It looks like a profile is sweeped around the Y axis (it looks a bit angled, but hard to tell from the perspective). The Screw modifier does exactly this, sweeping a profile around a rotational axis - and in your case, the Y axis is chosen. What is it you actually expected it to do?

Screw modifier extrudes your geometry in steps while rotating it around object's origin point(or another chosen object called "Axis Object" in the properties of the modifier) on selected axis. So, although the resulting geometry has radial symmetry, it does not "mirror" the object and is not supposed to do that.
You should choose the axis for rotation:

In your case that would probably be Z if the object space matches global space.
You also have to make sure the geometry is appropriately positioned in relation to the object's origin point. You can do that by either moving the geometry in edit mode, or moving the origin point with Affect Only: Origins enabled:

All regular transform operations( G ,  R ,  S ) will then affect only origin.


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How do you master modelling in Blender?
I know this is a big question, but what I'm trying to find out is how do you reach this point where you can model anything.
there are lots of objects in life and everyone approaches modeling them in different ways and techniques, this makes things even harder because I can't find a specific method to model objects and apply it always.
so what should I do, I'm already struggling in modeling and didn't start texturing, geometry nodes...etc.

Specifically by not asking questions like that here! This Q&A site is here to help with modelling problems in Blender, not for general advice on learning to use it. Read the tour. Then try asking somewhere like https://blenderartists.org.

there's no real method, each object is different and will inspire a different strategy, depending on if the object is symmetrical, cylindrical, organic, etc, the best way is to follow a lot of tutorials and you'll get a better idea on how to do an object or another

Hi, Someo one, I hope you don't mind my edit of the title, but your question really seems to be specifically about modelling, not Blender in general(which would be closed even faster as opinion based and off-topic).

I am not a master of Blender by any means but...
PRACTICE, and practice with intention. Follow tutorials, complete courses, join a modelling community and ask specific questions that fix your specific problems. When you encounter issues, DO NOT give up until you figure out how to fix it.
Start small (i.e., low poly), and stay consistent. You reach the point where you can model anything after you model a bit of everything.
Finally, I will say that you have to have some passion for it. Do you enjoy learning Blender? Try to embrace issues you encounter as challenges that will level-up your skills as an artist.
Good luck!

It's difficult to answer how you reach this level, and the way will be different for different people, but it might be helpful to consider what it is to be able to model any forms and how it is done and what separate smaller skills you need.
You definitely need a few things in order to be able to model anything:

The knowledge of all available functionality of the software. You need to know what each function does precisely or at least attempt to know as much as possible. Poly modelling in Blender involves all the functions in the menus of the 3D Viewport header in Edit mode(Select, Add, Mesh, Vertex, Edge, Face, UV), and Object mode(Select, Add, Object) so you should know what each function does well(I am not suggesting to actually use the menus - you should probably use hotkeys while modelling in Blender, most of us do). You can optionally use tools in the Toolbar, so you would need to know how to use them if you choose that. You should know what the modifiers do as well. That includes one tricky one - Geometry Nodes. It's up to you how deep you go with that one. Understanding other functionality like how to transform objects or elements is also crucial. You should know how Transform Orientations, Transform Pivot Point, snapping and proportional editing works. There are also benefits in understanding other functionality like what you can do with curve objects and so on. There is sculpting as well and you might need to use simulations for certain things(like for example you would use cloth simulation for modelling clothes, but also some other objects like for example soft furniture so simulations are also sometimes part of modelling). That's basically the knowledge of everything the software can do including many things I fail to mentions here.

The other big part is the ability to see the forms(observation is one very important skill that you need to train a lot) that make up objects and choose workflows(series of actions) that will let you atchieve them. That is something you cannot read in the manual or learn watching a single tutorial. You need to know a lot of ways to model a lot of forms - that's sort of understanding and intuition about how all the different functions work together, how you can combine them and what results you can expect when you combine different techniques. This comes with a lot of practice and you need lots of time for this. You find certain ways to model certain things just by trying while practicing or by watching many tutorials and learn them(sometimes subconsciously). So it's not enough just to learn the functions and you absolutely need to practice a lot as well in order to learn many techniques and how to combine them.


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What does the pixel value mean in HDRI?
I am new to Blender and HDR. I wonder if there are any physical meaning for the pixel value in a HDR image. For the image example below, it has pixel values ranging from 0.000 to 27904.000
Does it mean the radiance in the units of W/m2, or anything else?

Apologize for my unclear expression.
My main concern is: How is 32-bit HDRI pixel value interpreted in Blender (or Cycles)? Does it have a physical unit?
For example, I have two HDRIs, the original one and the -2EV one.
The pixel value of -2EV HDRI is 1/4 of the original HDRI. See below.
When I use them as the environment maps, the lighting result is also different. So I guess Blender takes the pixel values as input to calculate the illumination. Since Cycles is physically based, I wonder how the pixel value is considered in Blender.

I'm sorry, this is no question about using Blender and considered off-topic here. I don't even know what program you are using there - maybe there is some documentation for this software telling you what these values are supposed to mean?

@GordonBrinkmann i think it's unclear what they are talking about. Maybe it's about Blender, and the EXR is only viewed in other software. Yifan Lu, could you clarify?

@Gordon et al. I think it's fair to ask if there is, or is not, a strict  physical interpretation of the float values in an HDR environment texture,  as far as Cycles PBR is concerned? (To what extent the renderer is calibrated to a model of physical truth)

@RobinBetts That sure is interesting to know, although I would suspect the technical details of how the Cycles engine is working and calculating light intensities exceeds the general knowledge of non-developers just using Blender (which is often pointed out when users ask technical questions here). The other thing is, you could also consider this as too localized. Most users have to adjust the settings depending on the specific HDRI they are using anyway, since the pixel values there are not directly comparable between images in regard to real world light intensities.

EXR format does not define what the values should be and any such definition would not be possible to enforce. So the answer is that they do not have any physical meaning, unless that meaning is assigned to them by the user.

I think EXR opens by default in the linear space and should be opened in such a space, meaning the value in EXR is the same as the value in Blender. So the question simplifies to: what formula (if any) to apply on a value of color to get the irradiance expressed in $W\over{m^2}$

@MartynasŽiemys et al.  I suspected as much, since personally I've never seen any standards for tone-mapping. Thanks for filling us in :)

"So the question simplifies to: what formula (if any) to apply on a value of color to get the irradiance expressed in Wm2" I would not just trust the values to be accurate if the purpose was let's say light calculation for interior light design. What about caustics(reflective)? what about multiple importnace sampling?..  Also irradiance values cannot be taken from render containing color passes. Should it be diffuse only?.. Should it be some special shader?.. Cycles is not designed to output irradiance. It would be fun to explore this idea more though.

@MartynasŽiemys as I understand, the question is about the source of light, the HDRI, so you assume some radius for a sphere (or instead of $W\over{m^2}$ use $W\over{°^2}$ meaning some angular cut from the HDRI, or just Watts per the entire sphere if it was filled with this color)

I did not assume it would be about HDRI image. It would be just radiance then. I think EXR contains linear values and then those numerical values will be assumed to be Watts per square meter per steradian in Blender if used for HDRI lighting. I think it is very unlikely many HDR images where those values would actually represent these units exist. I would not trust consumer cameras and common HDR merging techniques to be very accurate in this area...

@MartynasŽiemys sorry, the "You assume" was a figure of speech, "one could assume" is what I meant.

The values do not have defined meaning unless you define it. It's just data and can be anything. It can be in different formats - 16-bit or 32-bit floating-point numbers.
In Blender you can adjust exposure and make any values of light in the scene work(for your image to look good). The ratios are generally most important.
The units of light are supposed to be Watts, Watts per square meter or Watts per square meter per steradian depending on the type of light you are using. This means that an image that you use for HDRI lighting is converted to linear color space if needed (like everything else in Blender) and then those linear values are considered to be Watts per square meter per steradian. EXR format should be linear already, so no conversion is need. So renders are based on light calculations using those physical units and what comes out of the rendering calculations can end up as pixel values in an EXR file. Rendering calculations are somewhat based on physics and various physical phenomenon. This does not mean those values are in any way physically accurate. You can set up render settings in a way there is not even a slightest chance for those values to resemble physical world phenomenon and you can try to make them as accurate as possible, but Cycles renderer isn't even attempting to be physically accurate and it's worth noting that render result will always be just a very rough estimate of physical reality at best. This is true for all other render engines as well, even those that are supposed to be more physically accurate. None of them are. But sure, the goal is to mimic reality and it makes sense to imagine that those values represent actual amount of light, that we hope might be physically plausible. That assignment of meaning is done by the user though. At least in Blender.
Markus von Broady pointed out in the comments:

...[this answer] could be overinterpreted as Cycles relying mostly on
arbitrary, eye-balled constants rather than a physical model.

This interpretation would not be correct. Cycles is based on physics.

" Cycles renderer isn't even attempting to be physically accurate" - without going into semantics, I think it's a misleading statement. Cycles webpage says: "Cycles is a physically based production renderer". One example of how Cycles attempts to be physically accurate is how it's concerned with conservation of energy. Sure, some settings (changing default specularity of Principled BSDF) break it, but I think the development of Cycles is heavily inspired by thre actual optics

"heavily inspired" - Of course. "Physically based" is the correct term. No problems there.

As I said, I don't intend to have a zealous semantics dispute, just pointing out the statement could be overinterpreted as Cycles relying mostly on arbitrary, eye-balled constants rather than a physical model. One example where Cycles is not realistic is that it represents light as rays of color, disregarding polarization and flattening the color spectrum to a value described by 3 samples of this spectrum (RGB). Still, I think the question actually can be answered with a specific value.

OK. That is a good point. This is really not what I meant to say. I'll try to edit.


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What is the simplest way to turn off all but one layer in python
I have a simple python script where i am importing many files and placing them in layers. But when I turn on another layer, the previous ones remain on.
What is the simplest way to turn off all but one specific layer via python, preferably through bpy.data.scenes instead of bpy.ops

not sure how terse you want this ;)
bpy.context.scene.layers = [i == 6 for i in range(20)]

The layer with index 6 will be flipped on, the others off.

Can do something like (py console code C = bpy.context)
C.scene.layers = [i == 1 for i, l in enumerate(C.scene.layers)]

which will turn on only layer 1.

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


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How to insert keyframe in Blender?
How to insert keyframe in like this? I don't know how to do this.

What kind of keyframes? The shortcut is i to keyframe with the default settings, k yo choose what kind of keyframe, Shift K to choose the default keyframe that will be created with i

To add a single keyframe, go to the frame you want, position the object properly and press I (full keyframe, location, rotation and scale) or K (custom keyframe)
Now, your image shows one keyframe for every frame, which is probably the result of a script or a baking.
If you have created a "simulation", you can search around how to "bake the simulation".
If you know how to script (python), then you can create your script to add keyframes for all frames.
But in regular animations, people only set a few keyframes manually and adjust the interpolations in the "Graph Editor".
Unfortunately it's not possible to answer your question better than that as it contains no other information.


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Add peg hole to each face of a model
Is there a way to add a peg hole to each face of a model? There are a lot of faces, so it would be best if it could be done as one action (perhaps using a script).
Note that faces are not all aligned. They do all point towards the origin, though (meaning that the line between the origin and face's center is perpendicular).
Here's a picture of the model I want to add peg holes to using blender:

Could you add some image representing the issue? It will be better to understand what you mean.

@cgslav Okay, I added an image of the model, if that's what you mean. Note that I'm beginner, so there might be an obvious way to do this that I'm missing.

Do all the holes need to be the same size?

@Robin Betts Yes

This might not be exact enough for you ..  but ...

II Inset all faces
AltP Poke all faces
CtrlShiftB Bevel all new vertices
I Inset new faces, ES 3 times for holding edges top and bottom of holes, and bottom face of holes.
I for internal holding edge on bottom face of holes.
Ctrl2 on the keyboard to put on a couple of levels of subdivision.

The result of subdivision will be very slightly different diameter holes, though, depending on the number of sides in the faces. It may be more economical to tweak these than to adopt another possible approach, duplicating cutting curves to all faces.

Square faces would need further work, too...

Steps:

Select all Faces.
Press I twice to Inset Individual Faces.
Set size of Inset with your mouse or by entering value.
X > Faces to remove newly created ones.

(optional) You can add Solidify modifier.

The pegs are circular. Sorry I didn't mention that in the post.


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Custom Bokeh Shapes
I'm trying to make a Bokeh background like this:
I've got the Bokeh in blender with a particle system copying a sphere that has an emission modifier. I'm using the depth of field to blur out the spheres. This creates a simple bokeh effect. I can increase the blade value to get triangles, squares, pentagons, etc. but that doesn't get complex shapes. in a normal camera, i'd put a piece of card with a shaped hole in it to make that shape appear on all the bokeh. That doesn't seem to work in blender. here is my attempt with a cross.
And here is the render.

As you can see, this method doesn't work. What does?

Yes you can do it. Here is a tutorial, sorry I don't have time to write the answer up https://vimeo.com/28353103 The aperture shape must be at the right distance to the lens and the camera clipping needs to accommodate the distance to the lamp

Although this method is useful from an educational point of view, it's not the more efficient. You can do it in compositing with the Bokeh Blur node associated with a Bokeh Image node ( https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/compositing/types/filter/bokeh_blur.html )

To make it perfect, but your method is almost perfect. You have to move the bokeh shape closer to the camera and reduce it's size until the hole is smaller than the camera.


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Make complex shape without modeling
I want to make an object like this:

But it is way too hard for me to model. It dosen't have to be the exact same, just the same look.
Is there a trick to modeling it, or some kind of generated texture?

For this kind of modelling (which I assume the worklfow is - subdivide, decimate, wireframe, etc. modifiers) there is a neat (free) add-on called By-Gen by Curtis Holt. You can try some examples and study the modifier order to get this kind of results

One "trick" you could try to use is adding texture with transparent "holes" to basic geometries, overlapping them to replicate some similar pattern. The "import images as planes" add-on (included but disabled by default) could ease the process somehow.
Eg:

That's an interesting idea, but I don't think it would work for the tower parts. I'll certainly try it with the ground though!


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Why are my boids jittery?
I'm trying to make a scene with fighters using boids. They move around and turn, and from a distance it looks alright, but when I look closer, they are moving irregularly and turning a little in random directions when they don't need to. When I looked online, people seem to take this jittering for granted, but I'd rather they moved smoothly. What can I do about it?
More information at Rich Sedman's request:
The Boid brain has four rules in this order
follow leader
seperate
avoid collision(boids is checked)
avoid collision(deflectors is checked.)
It follows a deflector object as a leader, so that it moves toward it without hitting it. Everything works fine except their movement is jittery.
a recording of the problem:
https://i.sstatic.net/HkMqv.jpg

If i recall correctly, the jittering usually comes as a side effect of the cohesion rule (moving towards center of mass of nearby boids). You could try just disabling that one, or reducing its strength

I don't think there is enough information in this question for a meaningful answer without someone taking considerable time to try and guess the poster's situation and replicate something similar. Consider updating the question to include sufficient detail as to how your boids are configured to demonstrate the jittering you're referring to.

I agree with @Rich.  Upload a sample dot blend file can help.

I’ve tried to replicate that and don’t see anything I could describe as ‘jittering’. Can you post an animated gif showing what you’re seeing?

Thanks for the extra info - it looks like the problem is the rapid changes it the direction each boid is facing - presumably as it switches target as it tried to follow the rules.

I don't seem to be able to replicate the jittering... did you change any other boid settings? Can you either share your Blend file or replicate the setup in a fresh blend file and share that?


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Converting tapered hair to mesh
I want to convert a hair particle to mesh, but whenever I press the convert button in the modifiers panel it converts to a curve. I can then give depth to the curve, but I can't give it the same tapered effect I could get in the particle settings. How do I fix this?
More info:
What I want:

(I got this by rendering it)
What I have:

(The converted curve)

You can convert the curve to a mesh.

But when I convert to mesh it loses it's tapering and turns into a line.

Yeah. I'm not sure then. I thought using a Bezier Curve as a Taper Object for the (hair) curve would be able to adjust the taper, but it doesn't seem to want to play nice with multiple hair particles (curves). I played with it a bit, but I don't think I had any more success than you. Maybe you'll have more luck with the taper object that I did.

can you put an image of what you are looking for?

Maybe sharing your file could help to have a fast answer. Taper object inside curves geometry looks like a good option Example https://imgur.com/a/Co0yVTT

From the Blender Manual
on taper objects.

The taper curve is evaluated along the local X axis, using the local Y axis for width control. Note also that: Tapering a curve
causes it to get thinner towards one end. You can also alter the
proportions of the Taper throughout the tapered object by
moving/scaling/rotating the control points of the Taper Object. The
Taper Object can only be another curve. Editing the handles and
control points of the Taper Object will cause the original Object to
change shape.
In order for this to work:

It must be an open curve.

The taper is applied independently to all curves of the extruded object.

Only the first curve in a Taper Object is evaluated, even if you have several separated segments.

The scaling starts at the first control point on the left and moves along the curve to the last control point on the right.

Negative scaling, (e.g. negative local Y on the taper curve) is possible as well. However, rendering artifacts may appear.

Might need to increase the curve resolution to see more detail of the taper.

With closed curves, the taper curve in Taper Object acts along the whole curve (perimeter of the object), not just the length of the
object, and varies the extrusion depth. In these cases, you want the
relative height of the Taper Object Taper curve at both ends to be the
same, so that the cyclic point (the place where the endpoint of the
curve connects to the beginning) is a smooth transition.

In the example below, Suzanne has had a simple hair system converted to curves, then a bezier curve is used as a taper object.

The geometry settings for the converted hair are below:

The hair curve also has a subdivision surface modifier to further smooth the shape after conversion.
The hair system itself is nothing special, all default settings except that the count is changed to be much less than the default 1000 (only 36)and for suzanne is using a density vertex group for emission. Also, in order to prevent the hair from detaching from the emitter due to the forces after being converted, I used emit from volume rather than faces, or vertices.
The shape of the hair is created with two forces, turbulence and vortex
In short, as long as the curve is along the correct axis, as shown in the example you should have no problem reproducing in your own project. Once satisfied with the final shape of the curves, you may convert them to mesh via Object ‣ Convert To ‣ Mesh
I have also included a finished sample file demonstrating the taper on suzanne, hopefully it will get you in the right direction.


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Can I make source and sink for water?
Can I make a source (where water comes from) and a sink (where water goes or sits) in water simulation?
I want to make fountain so that when it is full, the water overflows from it.
How can I make a sink for it, or I control the incoming and outgoing flow?

You can. The "sink" is called outflow, look for "Outflow" in the fluid sim. And the outflow mesh stops water from overflowing.


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When import OBJ the edge becomes 'strong'

when I import OBJ file. The edge becomes 'strong'.
some edges are good, but most of them are like this in picture.

I'm not sure what you're looking for, but what you're seeing is edges that are marked "sharp", If you want them gone, select the whole mesh (in edit mode - edge select), right click, and pick "clear sharp".

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/69533 https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/84961

These light blue edges are marked sharp.

It means they will be sharp when you Shade Smooth the object and Auto Smooth the Normals

You can remove them by selecting them, pressing Right mouse button and selecting Clear Sharp

thank you so much

You are welcome.


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Inserting frames in between current frame
I, unknowingly, set my frame at multiple of one on timeline, and drew in each frame accordingly. I want to change it to multiple of 10 frame.

use time remaping https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/output/settings.html?highlight=time%20remapping#time-remapping and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/189535/what-is-the-relation-between-time-remapping-fps-and-the-number-of-frames

or A S 10 ?


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Blender Internal. How do I add a texture for part of the object, while keeping the rest of the texture
Can someone tell me how to overlay the texture for the eyes? If I go to texture, the outfit isn't there. I have the same problem with other textures as well.

@susu good catch, I hadn't noticed it was for blender internal. Reopened, sorry about that

One way you could do this is the following:

Add a new material for your object.
Assign the new material to the eyes.
Create a new texture.
In the Shading workspace, add your texture to the new material you created using a Image Texture node.

If you want more in-depth instructions, let me know.

Another recommendation: Update Blender.


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How to make custom hotkeys?
Is there a way to make a custom hotkey for specific functions?
Like to solve my problem here:
I’m working on a piece, its a replica and I have many references setup in some collections and I need to hide/unhide the collections all the time. I do it by hitting the relevant checkbox in the object browser list. Can I somehow hotkey that specific checkbox?
If coding, IK how to code, but I do not know how to get console or script in blender, or at-least I need a ‘pointer’ to get started.

Press H to hide the collection.

https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.ops.object.html#bpy.ops.object.hide_collection

Ahh cool ty for api docs, ill look at that stuff ty. Also, h to hide collection doesnt work when im in edit mode and cant select collection (and I want no touching mouse so no selecting).

You can add a custom shortcut directly on most commands, using the assign Shortcut option.
In this case select the collection, press on the context menu (F3) look for the command and right click. A new menu will allow you to assign a shortcut directly.

Ok, this is perfect, many thanks!


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Hidden keyframes
My keyframes have dissapeared, but the animations are still working.
Its not the keyframes what dissapeared. It is the "Rig" under "Summary"
So if I turn off "Only keyframes from selected area" its shows the models and its shape keys but not the rigs. I tried searching for unhide keys or select all frame all reload the blend file etc etc.
It started first when I changed to the "Nonlinear Animation" tab (I wanted to loop an animation, So I Split-ed a track)
It happened one time when I switched to Graph editor or Dope sheet I don't remember. I did not find the solution to that I just reloaded an old save.

I figuried out. If you press "Push down action" in Nonlinear Animation your frames dissapear in every edit/view mode. But I don't know how to get back ang roup the track together again. Any idea?

I had found a similar problem and the solution is simple. Go to the action editor and back to the timeline and all the keyframes will be visible again.
Hope it helps.


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How to get a rocky texture throughout the mesh?
How to get the rocky texture all throughout the mesh, I obtained this obj from an external source and want to get the get the rocky texture all throughout the mesh

What have you tried so far that is not working?

Try something like this. All I did was use a Noise Texture to slightly warp the vectors of a Voronai Texture to make the "cells" and to give them slightly uneven edges (less straight). Then I just filled in the surface detail by multiplying it again with another Noise Texture. I ran the result through the Height input of a Bump node, and gave it a bit of a gray color and a slight metallic value (to match your image).

Nice work replicating the texture :).

Any idea how to make a mesh out of it?

If you mean in detail of your sample image - Bake normal map and use it as texture for Displacement modifier and Apply (but it became very dense  topology). If you are asking for render purpose to get roughness on mesh edges use above node tree attached to Displacement  (you have to enable Experimental Set in Render Properties and  in Material Properties-Settings-Surface-Displacement and Bump. Or better ask a new Q.


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how can I make the material on the surface different color than the sprinkles on this cube?
EDIT
I have played around with colors in Blender and I have yet a problem:
how can I make the background in different color than the sprinkles
on the cube ? Say, I want to make the background in red and sprinkles
in random green as they presently are. What shall I touch ? Please see the first snippet. I've almost succeeded with shader but the background is still green.

I have a wonder what to touch so that the cube in the snippet below becomes blue.
I'm new to blender.

Hello, You've created a new texture that is blue but now you need to assign the texture to the object, please show the Shader Editor to see if you've correctly plugged the nodes

@moonboots Could you please have a look at my EDIT ?

@moonboots Or it would even suffice, if different color of the background is not possible, that it would appear as in the picture in the answer below: like a mesh grid instead of my colorful background. How can I achieve this but maintaining the full random green color of the cube ?

Could you please give me a .blend file ?

I'm not sure to understand, is Christopher's answer not accurate?

To change the color, you must use the Material Properties tab:

To answer your edit, if you want the cube to have a different color than the sprinkles, you have to use different materials for the Cube and Particle Instance objects, respectively.
CUBE MATERIAL

PARTICLE MATERIAL (On sphere and cone)

EDIT - Here is a file with the Cube, as requested:

Can you please have a look at my EDIT ?

Could you please give me a .blend file of the red cube ?

I added a file, if you want it.


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What's wrong with my render?
I have a scene that is pretty much ready for render, and in the render mode of the viewport it looks good. But whenever I try to render it, materials change and the lighting goes wonky. I can't see any reason why this would happen. I'm using the current version of blender.

Are you rendering in Eevee or Cycles? Could you provide some screenshots with your question to show how the materials change and go "wonky"?

or provide your blend file...

Does this answer your question? Render looks way different from viewport render mode. How can I fix this?

I've edited it to have screenshots. Unfortunately, I can't share the as it is too big.

It looks as if some parts of the scene were not lit and I can't see lights in your collection.

@Lukasz-40sth There is a sun light out of frame. It all looks good in the viewport render, so I don't think it's the lights.


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How to create less realistic sky in Blender Cycles?
My project has a cartoon-y aesthetic (clay-like), and to complement that I want to add a cartoon sky as well. The goals are to be not as realistic and dull, I would want to be able to choose my own colors for below and above the horizon.
At first I've tried hacking something simple together with shaders, but then I realized I am bad at shaders (I couldn't figure out which color to choose from the an RGB Curve node).
EDIT: Something akin to this

, a very simple gradient and sun. The procedural clouds I will add later (though I don't know how to do that, too), the gradient & sun is really all that I need.

Wow, this is hard to answer without specific examples... unfortunately, there are many, many kinds of 'toon sky'

Yes, can you provide some image examples?

Added an example.

The above two do not show how to emulate a sun


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Smoke shows on render, Fire doesn't
Good day! I am having a problem wherein fire does not render. I followed a smoke and fire simulation on YouTube. Followed everything in his tutorial. However, the fire in my scene does not render at all. I wanted it to look like rocket thrusters. As of now, this is what I currently have for my Smoke Domain material.

I temporarily set the smoke to 0 because it may be blocking the flame. I've provided the screenshots where the smoke is enabled and disabled. (Forgive the quality of the rendered images, I lowered down the samples to quickly render the image.

And for my scene, this is what it looks like.

I am rendering it using GPU compute. If there's anything missing in the  current scene setup, just ask for it and i'll provide the necessary requirements. I tried searching for solutions but nothing worked out for me. Thank you and have a nice day!

Attribute nodes are case-sensitive, if you change "Flame" to "flame", that should correct the issue!

It did fix the problem. Not really a pro with blender. Didn't knew they were case-sensitive. Thanks a lot!


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Compute object's foreground mask in screen coordinates
For a research project I am using Blender's Python API to generate some simple random scenes. In addition to the generated renders, I need to acquire a 'foreground mask' in screen (image) coordinates of all the objects in the scene. See below for a simple example using one object:

I would like to know the best way of approaching this problem using the Python API. I several helpful discussions:

How to find image coordinates of the rendered vertex?
How to convert coordinates from vertex to world-space?
https://blenderartists.org/t/3d-coordinates-to-2d-coordinates-in-camera-coordinates-pixels-not-screen-region/561513

Using these sources I have written some code that extracts the object's vertices and convert them to screen coordinates:
world_matrix = obj.matrix_world
modelview_matrix  = camera_obj.matrix_world.inverted()   # currently not used
projection_matrix = camera_obj.calc_matrix_camera(       # currently not used
    scene.render.resolution_x,
    scene.render.resolution_y,
    scene.render.pixel_aspect_x,
    scene.render.pixel_aspect_y,
)

render_scale = scene.render.resolution_percentage/100
render_size = (int(scene.render.resolution_x * render_scale),
               int(scene.render.resolution_y * render_scale))

for v in obj.data.vertices:
    loc = world_matrix * v.co
    screen_coords = bpy_extras.object_utils.world_to_camera_view(scene, camera_obj, loc)
    pixel_coords = (round(screen_coords.x * render_size[0]),
                    round(screen_coords.y * render_size[1]))

However, this gives incorrect results but I am not sure what goes wrong. Here is the corresponding output with the yellow points indicating the valid screen coordinates from the code above:

Besides being incorrect, the logic to check whether a vertex is actually in the field of view is missing. I am wondering whether there are some built-in functions that I can use to achieve my goals. For example, I found that Blender Game Engine has the function bge.types.KX_Camera.getScreenPosition which looks like what I need. Unfortunately, it seems like I cannot import bge when using Blender in python-only mode without IDE. Another possibility may be bpy_extras.view3d_utils.location_3d_to_region_2d.
EDIT: I modified the code a little to position the camera in the origin (0,0,0) and then the above code gives the correct result when the object's scale is (1.0,1.0,1.0) and rotation_euler is (0,0,0). However, when I scale or rotate the image the above code does not return correct results. What is the correct way of converting the NDC coordinates to device coordinates? Below is are the example outputs with object's scale 1.0 and 1.2 (full modified code can be found here). I am also still wondering whether this is the way to go, for a simple cube this may work but for more complex meshes this method may become cumbersome.

Any pointers in the right direction are highly appreciated!

bge.types.KX_Camera.getScreenPosition: https://docs.blender.org/api/2.78a/bge.types.KX_Camera.html#bge.types.KX_Camera.getScreenPosition
bpy_extras.view3d_utils.location_3d_to_region_2d: https://docs.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_75_3/bpy_extras.view3d_utils.html?highlight=3d%20view

How are you accessing bpy_extras.view3d_utils.location_3d_to_region_2d?  Recommend using from bpy_extras.view3d_uitls import location_3d_to_region_3d.  Be very surprised if it is missing from blender.

Thanks for your comment. You are indeed correct, my import line had a mistake. This works: "from bpy_extras.view3d_utils import location_3d_to_region_2d".

I was not aware of Blender's ability to render the scene depth map. This is exactly what I need to obtain the foreground mask. The code snippet at the link below produces the desired results, specifically when setting the map.size value to a very low number, e.g. 0.001.
Render depth map to image with python script


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Get outside wireframe
I am a begginer and have to make something like that:

With plane geometry I can easily make, but with curves the triangulation gets in the way...

How to make a wireframe only for external edges, anyone can help??
If I just delete the undesirable faces my external ones gets all bored.
I can get a mesh with only the edges if it helps, but I need to be able to assing materials to edges.

English ins't my language, sorry!
EDIT 1 ----
With @Martin Z I get this:

And that is great! But I need to close this gaps, any ideia?
EDIT 2 ----
With @Martin Z and @Carlo i successfully make this geometry! Thanks guys!
But with another geometry with a hole in it I can't...
My mesh come like this (left) and a apply the decimate modifi (right):

If I delete the edeges in blue (the left blue ones, with shouldn't exist), I end with holes in my mesh (blue right):

Any way to get the holes out? If I make one by one it could get much time, I have 62 geometry like this.
Thanks a lot!

The definition of "external" is in this case dependent from the point of view. Howare you planning to address that?

You could duplicate the desired edges and separate into a separate mesh and then add a Skin modifier - similar to https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/65603/29586

@Carlo External is the edges that don't make a face, in a the second image internal edges makes te cylinder

@RichSedman the skin modifier make the intersections between edger "rounded" some way to make it 90º?

@LucasLauri I'm afraid there isn't a way to do that with Skin - unfortunately there isn't much control over how the edges join.

You can use Wireframe or Skin modifiers(note that you can adjust the radius per vertex in the n panel while in edit mode for skin modifier or with ctrl+a).
With Wireframe modifier you'll have to keep an eye on your mesh edges. Use N-gons wisely in order to pass the operator just the edges you need. For the provided example, a solution could be something like:

As you see the trick is to not build a complete mesh, but just the faces that hold the right edges. You'll also be able to assign different materials to the edges with vertex paint without having to apply the modifier.
You can also select only edges you want, invert selection with ctrl+i, delete everything else, select all and delete only faces (x menu) and then you are left with edges only. Then from object mode you can convert them to curves(alt+c) and then you can add thickness to them:

If you wish once you are happy with them you may convert them back to polygons with the same shortcut alt+c.

Hey @Martin Z thas works great! But my mesh get little gaps that I need to fill, any idea? Maybe make this mesh solid? Put an image in the first post. Thank you!

can I make a wireframe with selected edge? This could be an option two

No, not really. There are no native operators in Blender that would do so. Its not complicated to make one with Python, however that does not seem like a very useful function to me as it is quite easy to just duplicate selected edges and separate them and then convert them to a curve. Yes it's more work then just click a shortcut with selected edges, but this is not something a modeller would do often.  If you have a good reason for needing it, I can write the script for you. I cannot think of any good reasons one would want such a function though.

With this model I get what I need with your help and what Carlo edit in yours post. But with another geometry (with has a hole) I can't make a ngon from the meshs... My good reason is make 62 geometry like this :( With isn't all bad if a dont have to adjust every faces intersection, but like this is terrible. I will edit the original post with new geometry. Thank you very much Martin! could help me a little more?

@Carlo with your edit I successffuly make this geometry, but in a geometry withi a hole in it I can't make a ngon, did you have any another idea? I will update the original post with this new problem..

You do not need o have all the geometry connected. You can have floating unconnected overlapping faces instead of holes. If you make sure you have Boundary option ticked in the Wireframe modifier it works fine.

Ngons doesn't currently support holes. I agree with @MartinZ that for the presented purpose, unconnected geometry should works. You don't have to think about "modeling an object", you should focus on building the support geometry for your wires.

Yep! That works great! Thanks a lot guys! You two really had helped me


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Transferring mirrored UV map
I have two objects [A] and [B].
[A] is a simple geometric form and [B] is same as [A] but mirored.
Both Meshes are made in Sketchup.
What I want is to create UV map for [A] and then transfer it to [B]. However the result is that the uv map for [B] is messed up.
What is interesting is that if in Blender I delete [B] then copy [A] and mirror it then I can transfer the UV map without a problem.
That might be a somewhat of a solution but I would like to see if anyone knows some decent way of transferring UV`s in this situation.

Ok I figured it out. I will leave the answer here if anyone else has the same problem in the future.
1.Select the model you want the UVs copied to, then the model you will copy them from.
2.Press Control+Shift+T to transfer mesh data.
3.Select Vertex Group and click the Auto transform checkbox.
4.Press Control+Shift+T and choose UVs


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Blender 2.76 file browser slow
I recently tried the final release candidate of blender 2.76 and the file browser is extremely slow. Regardless of what opens the file browser, it will take 20-30 seconds to open up and freezes my blender until open. This did not happen in 2.75 as far as I'm aware and it seems 2.76 introduced an improved file browser.
I've tried empty scenes, different versions of 2.76, but nothing changes and It's really killing my workflow.
Any suggestions?

I haven't been experiencing that with 2.76. Is it always in the same directory? Maybe do some tests to see if browsing in a different location makes a difference. If you still have the 2.75 installation try to repeat the same steps within 2.75 just to confirm if it really is a version-specific issue. If you can produce a replicable symptom then submit a bug report.

I tried with blender 2.75 and the problem is very much the same, I must've not repeated the same steps as 2.76. It's an odd issue really.

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


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How to smooth out different interpolation types
I am trying to complete a blender animation where a ball rolls down a slope under the influence of gravity.
To simulate gravity I have calculated the time and distance the ball needs to travel to accomplish an acceleration of 10 m/s^2.
However, I want the transition from the flat part of the slope to be seamless, but the ball seems to suddenly slow down, as you can see from the graph editor.
How do I make the ball act the way that I want? I have used the interpolation type quadratic.

There is a much simpler way if you just want to roll a ball down a hill...Rigid bodies would make things much easier.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to use rigid bodies, though it was something that I thought of. If they are very simple and don't require much learning, then that could be an option. Do you have some sort of basic tutorial?

See my answer, maybe it helps..

The ball should never reach the acceleration of 9.81 m/s^2. Even if the ball falls completely vertically, as long as there's some significant friction in neighboring surface causing the ball's angular acceleration, it's some of the potential energy converted to kinetic energy elsewhere than to the ball's falling speed.

An easier way to roll a ball downhill is to use rigid bodies. This way, the active objects are subject to the scene gravity.

For this, you will want two rigid bodies, one active and one passive. The active one will be the ball, the passive will be slope.
Add rigid body physics to each object in the physics tab:

These are the settings for the ball:

These are the settings for our slope:

A note on the difference between active and passive rigid bodies from the manual

Active
The object is dynamic and is directly controlled by simulation results.
Passive
The object remains static and is directly controlled by animation system, thus does not have Dynamics properties.

Thanks for the information, it was helpful. I wished that you would have added how to animate with rigid bodies, as I had to find out how to do that myself, but overall, great solution!

To modify the vectors that define the curve, you can press the V key (or select Key > Handle type)
That will allow you to align the handles into a straight line, making a smoother transition between two vectors.

I wanted the ball rolling to be accurate to how it would behave in the real world. While this solution would work, I don't think it would have been perfectly accurate, and I would have to do a bit of guessing unless there is some way of defining the properties in blender.

It is indeed easier to do it with physics. For curves you would need to calculate the rate of acceleration to determine the placement for the handles.


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Rigify on a Frankenstein Rig Not Working

[Previous Question; I would still like advice please]
I made a humanoid mesh but it's body doesn't line up (at all) with the basic humanoid rig found in Rigify. Instead of using Rigify I built the bone structure myself and then used that for animations, but Rigify seems like a better option.
Unfortunately when I went into Object Data Properties and clicked 'metarig' I received errors such as [spine004]. After looking up that issue it seemed my rig is just too different to use with Rigify. I selected each bone and tried to assign it a rig individually and still couldn't access the the loopy lines that surround the mesh that means it worked. So I tried to go into the Object Data Properties and clicked 'metarig' one more time. This time I didn't receive an error.
But also seems like... Nothing happened. Did it work? How do I access that cool loopy-line thing that animators use to make fighting poses?
[Update]
I tried the advice given, which was to align the standard rig to the model and then attach it with the intention of deleting unnecessary bones afterwards. But when I pressed 'Generate Rig' under the Rigify button only a tiny green copy of the face bones was present at the bottom of the mesh. Why did this happen and how can I fix it?

I've had this problem recently. If you want to use rigify you can't really add bones or change their names. Just move things around until they fit, rigify it, then add anything else you need on top.

Have you read the documentation on how to use rigify? It is very thorough, I recommend taking the time to read it. You will have to reposition the bones to fit your humanoid...

Thank you both for the help! I admit I haven't fully read through the documentation, but I am going to try using a base metarig and then attaching it to my mesh first, then deleting unneeded bones.


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How to use flat colors to determine how a scene looks? I want no shadows just colored shapes
Is it possible for blender to just use colors to determine how a scene looks? I want no shadows, just the colors, like in after effects but 3D.
I´m trying to replicate the following:

It will be helpful y you could add some image as an example

Could you share an illustration of the specific look you are after?

Sorry for that, I added the picture

Basically, toon shaders for all the gears. Some depth of field and the most important camera setting: Orthographic. Then my sun casts no shadows. Add vignette in Compositing and that's pretty much it.

Or emission shaders for 2.8+

Very late, but I tried this to see if this worked better than my fix, but setting camera to orthographic messes up my camera movement completly, so it isn´t much use

Well, ortho was just to make sure you don't use perspective. You'd need your gears to have nearly zero thickness to makem them appear 2D.


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Deleting occluded faces
I am trying to rig models for an old game using Blender. There is a poly limit of 5000. One thing has has proven to be a bit of a problem is that some of the models I am trying to rig have the clothes as separate objects from the base model, leading to unnecessary faces in the sense that the "skin" is not visible as it is blocked out by the clothes.
What I am wondering is, do I have a better way of deleting these occluded faces other than manually selecting them by hand?
What I've tried so far:

Merging nearby vertices and then selecting interior faces and deleting them. This kind of works, but merging them leads to vertices placed in between where the skin was and where the clothes were. This deforms the clothes. Perhaps there is a way to pick the outer vertices as the point where the merged ones should be?

Using the boolean modifier. This kind of works? Some faces definitely do get deleted on the "difference" mode, but not all of them. And, worse, depending on the object selected, sometimes it'll delete the entire body (e.g., in this particular case, the hair just nukes the whole model - example: http://sis.sy/WhiteTimidBeta).

If you can't tell, I'm a total noob, but I have tried (and failed).

The link doesn't work for me. But anyway the boolean may help but you need to make both meshes to meet some basic requirements: Mainly they should be manifold. So e.g. if the cloth is trousers, you have to close all three holes (just click alt + left click on border edge to select the ring and press F). Next I would apply "merge by distance" to prevent any doubles. Even that may not be enough if there is some overlapping volume". You can check it by selecting "non-manifold" vertices.  Also check normals, using "recalculate normals outside" may help too.

You may also consider using Union instead of Difference because otherwise, first Boolean  will cause your character to cease being manifold. If it is about a resurrection of an old game, it shouldn't be such a big downgrading to weld it all together, if all the "connecting" geometry would be dark...

You could write a shader in your engine that gets rid of unwanted faces. The best practice though - depending on the game style - might be to redo the model and make each bodypart piecewise - which is typically what games like half life, n64 and psx titles have done
meaning you start off with one mesh like a head - and then once its where you want it to be in edit mode - you add another mesh for, say a jacket IN EDIT MODE SO ITS ALL PART OF THE SAME MESH GROUP
Its a strange concept at first if you're used to having everything in one mesh but its actually what many games used to do and to top it all off, since youre working with simple geometry rigging and texturing will be super easy
I get what you're saying though. Unfortunantly if you dont want to write a shader you will have to manually delete, shape, and reunwrap your model as fit. It sucks and I understand the pain. Ive done it before myself.


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Render issue- my partly transparent mesh won't render
So I am trying to go this animation (using a pre existing rig and all)
and for some reason my bg and the partly transparent mesh won't render in teh final immage

I am not certain how to fix this any help is welcome nya

Try selecting the objects that are not rendered, and check in the outline that the camera icon is enabled next to the name.

there are too many possibilities to create the behavior you see. please provide the .blend file at https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com for others to test. remember to pack the textures if possible

I know the Item should be rendered in the final as teh camera option is corectly ticked.


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why car is not falling after joining mesh using rigibody in blender?
I have problem animation. Why is the car not falling like the cube is falling? After I joined all parts of the car and using rigibody the car is not falling. The car is falling but its not like cube.

Hi, could  the plane somehow block the car...? or there is any other limit? try to show or describe the settings for all objects in the scene... 22MB of a sample file is a bit too much for me...

hi m. ardito..thanks for response.. i have solved my problem..there are some vertices need cleaned and scaled....problem solved