text:
Cycles Material: How to make a UV image not tile?
I am trying to figure out how if there is an easy way in Blender Cycles to UV Project an image and nave it so it only appears once across the mesh.
I have attached a screen shot of the bottom corner of a rectangular plane where I want to project the image, but only have it appear on the front face.
As you can see the image is currently repeating and tiling onto the sides and back of the mesh. I want to eventually have the material appear as glass and be semi transparent. having the image tile across the back will become problematic.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Go to the UV/Image Editor while in Edit Mode and scale as desired.

http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/1258/2217 or http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/2629/2217


text:
Crashed fluid simulation
I've been baking a fluid simulation for the past four hours, and I decided to set up the materials in my scene while I was waiting.  While doing the materials, blender crashed.  Is there anyway that I can resume the baking right where it left off?  Thanks!  (This is seperate from How to resume baking fluid simulation?).

How is it different? Looks like more or less the same situation to me..

@gandalf3 So it's impossible to do any sort of resuming?

Yes (unfortunately).

I had Mantaflow baking a 750 res animation for 4 days, and right at frame 230 the power went out :(

source: Stack Exchange

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

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

sort: votes


text:
More realistic lightning motion in Blender
I used the solution to create animated lightning found here to do the Sith lightning effects for my film (the effect can be seen here). Cool, but not cool enough.  Each particle is completely random compared to previous particles, and does not behave like the cool lightning found in After Effects for example: this or this or this. How can I animate a mesh or other object to behave and move more naturally like lightning?
Gracias.

Maybe not exactly related, but you could try to scale lightning mesh way down in Object mode without applying rotation and in Skin modifier change settings for Mean Radius. This would allow to have lightning with small branches, like in this example.

@MrZak That looks good, but remember that I want each bolt to have its own motion and not be static.

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


text:
Difference between visual and normal keyframes
I was looking at this question:
What do the preferences keyframing options actually mean?
I still can't figure out what the difference is between a visual LocRotScale, and just a normal LocRotScale.  An in depth explanation would be nice.

The following cube has a limit location set to (0,0,0) when you move the cube its position in the viewport don't change while the location info in the transform panel shows this change:

this is the case for all constraints they won't change what is displayed on the properties panel while they change the visual properties ( loc, rot, scale)

so you if you keyframe the location you'll store (1.938, 0.411, 1.286) for the current frame
while if you keyframe the visual location you'll store (0, 0, 0)


text:
Clear UV seams not clearing seams
I want to clear UV seams on a object and remake them myself, but neither UV Mapping > Clear Seams nor UV Mapping > Reset Seems to work. Please see attachment images.
This is my mesh before i do UV Mapping > Clear Seams:

This is my mesh after I did UV Mapping > Clear Seams. Seams still present:

How do I fix this problem? I can't clearly cut my mesh while those seams are around.
Here is the scene:

I think this model was originally created in 3Ds Max.

did you select the whole mesh in edit mode, then CTRL + E --> Clear seam?

Yes, i did it just as you said gladys, seams are still present.

can you upload the blend model?

Uploaded it, link in the main post.

i downloaded your model but I didn't see seams, I saw only edges that are marked as sharp so the only thing you have to do to clear those CTRL + E --> Clear sharp.

You are right gladys. I was being an idiot, i never ever knew about this feature. I thought those are UV seams. Should you post this as an answer?

There were no seams in the model the edges were marked as sharp so the only thing you have to do to clear those Ctrl+ E > Clear Sharp.

This problem seems to appear more often when importing from another platform into Blender. I imported a mesh I made in Blender version 2.49 into Blender 2.68A, and had a similar problem: I had what appeared to be seams that would not clear with the CTRL +  E shortcut. The solution was to use SHFT + E, and set the value of the crease to  -1 on the numeric keypad.

Thanks for contribution brasshat, gladys found the solution. Those was not UV seams, it was sharp edges.

IvanKartofanov, when I started my answer I did not yet see your edit, nor the blend file. And yes, I agree that @gladys should change her comment to an answer. But I think my answer is enough different from hers to be desirable for completeness, particularly since more than on entity--seams, creases, &c. seem to have the same inconsistencies, especially between meshes created with pre-2.5 versions imported into post-2.5 UI.


text:
Plane Tracked + Keyed video is misaligned when moving quickly
I have a video that I used Plane Tracking on, to key out a green board and put a video inside it.
It's all working more or less correctly, but I notice that when the board moves quickly in the video, the video inside is pretty misaligned. I'm not seeing this problem when the board is moving slowly though.
As you can see below, the board is tracked fairly perfectly:

But if you see in the "Compositing" panel's preview, on the same frame, the board is misaligned:

Why is this happening?

most likely the trackers for the fast moving section are not accurately tracking. Use a larger search area for the tracker.

I quite literally moved the trackers, frame by frame, by hand, to track the dots (on the board) accurately, and also adjusted the plane with it. It seems that the plane tracking is misaligned in some way, although I can't figure out how.. It's perfect, I scrolled through every frame to check!

Tracking blurry footage is a nightmare, and something you should try to avoid as much as possible, as you need to match the motion blur for each of the elements (including the matte for the green screen. The tracking might indeed seem accurate, but the original image has no clear borders anymore. Why are you using a shutter speed of .1 in the plane track deform node?

I tried fiddling around the shutter speed values to between 0 and 5, all of which is still misaligned and clearly show the green part on the bottom. I think I'll just screw around with the actual tracking points, re-place them to be lower than they should, to make the bottom part extend more. But do you have any other suggestions? :(

The most common shutter speed is 0.5. Check also the matte generated by the keyer node. To troubleshoot unplug the image output from the pane deform and use the plane output to see where the error is happening.

I can see that the frames, for some reason, repeats a single frame (so two identical frames in a row) at some times, which clearly screws up the tracking (as the visuals show two identical frames in a row but the auto-tracker tracks the second frame as if it's the continuous frame). Why is this happening? My frame rate is 29.97, but I think I tracked the footage at 24fps (default). Do I need to track the whole thing again, with the settings at 29.97fps again?? Oh no.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Chat is not working. You should not track at a different framerate! Blender is quite dumb when it comes to temporal interpolation in  video. It can only deal with a single timebase.

Yes, many many regrets. Which leads me to the other question I asked; I think the answer should be quite simple on that one, could you go take a look? :)

Also if your video is using mp4  with a long GOP blender will not track correctly. Try converting the video to an image sequence.

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


text:
Small automated script
I need your help for a small script, because my python skills are very low.
I would like to automate on my selected objects:

Duplicate object "linked"
Constrain duplicate to original object with "Transforms"
Set all material_slots of duplicate to "object"
Override all empty materials with custom material. A black one for example
Move duplicate with black materials to specific layer

It would be nice if this would work on a hierarchy so it would be possible to do this with rigs.
This is what I have done so far, the biggest problem is to set a material to the empty slots.
import bpy

for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
    ob.select = True

    bpy.ops.object.duplicate_move_linked(OBJECT_OT_duplicate={"linked":True, "mode":'TRANSLATION'}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0,   0, 0), "constraint_axis":(False, False, False), "constraint_orientation":'GLOBAL', "mirror":False, "proportional":'DISABLED',       "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0),     "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False})

    ob.select = True

    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]

    bpy.ops.object.constraint_add_with_targets(type='COPY_TRANSFORMS')

    mat = bpy.data.materials.get("#BLACK")

    new = bpy.context.selected_objects[1]

    for matslot in new.material_slots:
        i = ob.material_slots.find(matslot.name)

        matslot.link = 'OBJECT'

The result without calling operators.
import bpy

from bpy import context
# all mesh objects
meshobs = [o for o in context.selected_objects if o.type == 'MESH']
# black material (or None)
black = bpy.data.materials.get('BLACK')
# copy layer
copy_layer = 19
copy_layers = [i == copy_layer for i in range(20)]
if black is None:
    print("WARNING: no black material")

scene = context.scene

for o in meshobs:
    # linked copy
    copy = o.copy()
    # new copy transforms constraint
    ct = copy.constraints.new('COPY_TRANSFORMS')
    # set target to original
    ct.target = o
    # loop thru material slots
    for slot in copy.material_slots:
        # object link
        slot.link = 'OBJECT'
        # set to black material
        if slot.material is None:
            slot.material = black

    # link to scene
    scene.objects.link(copy)
    # move to copy_layer (after linking to scene)
    copy.layers = copy_layers

It only sets existing slots with empty (slot.material is None) material to black.

i think i got it, works well so far.
Now i have two buttons, one with black material and one without material.
The goal was to have a second viewport as an alpha mask to key the orignial viewport in realtime over a hardware picture mixer. I think there is a much more elegant way to do this, but im a beginner
Biggest problem was to select and deselect the objects in the script.
Cheers Daniel
bl_info = {
    "name": "Alpha",
    "author": "DanielPaul",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 78, 0),
    "location": "View3D > Tool Shelf > My Tab",
    "description": "Makes_object_to_alpha",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Duplicate",
    }

import bpy

def main(context):
    #get selected objects
    for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects:

        #deselect all
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        #select only ob
        ob.select = True

        #dublicate linked
        bpy.ops.object.duplicate_move_linked(OBJECT_OT_duplicate={"linked":True, "mode":'TRANSLATION'}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0,   0, 0), "constraint_axis":(False, False, False), "constraint_orientation":'GLOBAL', "mirror":False, "proportional":'DISABLED',       "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0),     "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False})

        #select new linked dublicate
        ob.select = True
        #set original as active
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
        #constraint "transform"
        bpy.ops.object.constraint_add_with_targets(type='COPY_TRANSFORMS')

        #select linked dublicate
        new = bpy.context.selected_objects[1]

        #change "data" in material slot to "object"
        for matslot in new.material_slots:

            matslot.link = 'OBJECT'

        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        new.select = True
        bpy.ops.object.move_to_layer(layers=(False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, True))

def second(context):
    #get selected objects
    for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects:

        #get black mat
        mat = bpy.data.materials.get("#BLACK")

        if mat is None:
            # create material
            mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="#BLACK")
            mat.diffuse_color = (0,0,0)
            mat.specular_color = (0,0,0)

        #deselect all
        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        #select only ob
        ob.select = True

        #dublicate linked
        bpy.ops.object.duplicate_move_linked(OBJECT_OT_duplicate={"linked":True, "mode":'TRANSLATION'}, TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(0,   0, 0), "constraint_axis":(False, False, False), "constraint_orientation":'GLOBAL', "mirror":False, "proportional":'DISABLED',       "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0),     "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":False, "release_confirm":False})

        #select new linked dublicate
        ob.select = True
        #set original as active
        bpy.context.scene.objects.active = bpy.context.selected_objects[0]
        #constraint "transform"
        bpy.ops.object.constraint_add_with_targets(type='COPY_TRANSFORMS')

        #select linked dublicate
        new = bpy.context.selected_objects[1]

        #change "data" in material slot to "object"
        for matslot in new.material_slots:

            matslot.link = 'OBJECT'

                #set black mat to empty mat slots in dublicate
        for i in range(len(new.material_slots)):
            new.material_slots[i].material = mat

        bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
        new.select = True
        bpy.ops.object.move_to_layer(layers=(False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, False, True))

class WhiteAlphaDublicate(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "myops.white_alphadublicate"
    bl_label = "White alpha"

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

class BlackAlphaDublicate(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "myops.black_alphadublicate"
    bl_label = "Black alpha"

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

class AlphaDublicatePanel(bpy.types.Panel):
    """Creates a Panel in the Tool Shelf"""
    bl_label = "Alpha dublicate"
    bl_idname = "OBJECT_PT_alpha"
    bl_space_type = 'VIEW_3D'
    bl_region_type = 'TOOLS'
    bl_category = "Studio_tools"

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

        row = layout.row()
        row.operator("myops.white_alphadublicate")
        row.operator("myops.black_alphadublicate")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(WhiteAlphaDublicate)
    bpy.utils.register_class(BlackAlphaDublicate)
    bpy.utils.register_class(AlphaDublicatePanel)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(WhiteAlphaDublicate)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(BlackAlphaDublicate)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(AlphaDublicatePanel)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()


text:
Blender solidify thinner along axis
I'm working on an object that is essentially a section of a sphere, and I need to have the object have a wall thickness that gets thinner along the X-axis (from left to right). At he left side (A) I need the wall thickness to be 0.7, and I need it to be half that (0.35) at the right side (B). I don't want any variation across the Z or Y axis.
The solidify tool is working great to add thickness, but I need it to be a variable thickness based on the X axis distance, so that it smoothly drops from 0.7-0.35. Any help would be much appreciated

The Solidify modifier like many others, can be assigned to a Vertex Group. In the case of Solidify, the vertex weights affect thickness. If you paint a linear gradient down the right axis:

Then there's quite a lot of tweaking-room left in the Solidify's 'Thickness' and 'Factor' settings .. maybe enough to get the precision you need?

Been given a little more love in 2.82

@batFINGER   Ahh ! Very Nice! Looks like quite an important update.. not just for arch. but for offsets in modelling in general.

Looking very Churchillian (sans cigar) in the bow tie, Mr Betts.

This worked perfectly. Thank you very much.  Ultimately I was looking for a dropdown/slider style solution but the gradient sketching worked really well with some tweaking.

@batFINGER (raising two fingers).. Happy Christmas, Mr. FINGER!


text:
Why does Blender crash when I select Skin for my 3D model?
When I try to add a Skin modifier to my 3D model, the program crashes. The program doesn't close when it crashes. What can I do to avoid this? The 3D model is 4 000 quads/ 8 000 tris. We've tried on both Windows and Mac on the same scene.
Blender version:
Version 2.73 (2.73, 2015-Jan-07, Blender Foundation)

Antonio Buch: Thank you very much! This was actually what I was looking for, unfortunately I don't have enough reputation to mark your answer as correct.

I've edited my answer just to clarify it ;)

I think you might not know the purpose of the Skin Modifier. With it, any vertex is kind of a tubular node connected to the other ones. It's for making quick base model like the image below:

Applied to a complex model, would take several minutes to process it. And the results are not pretty good though. Here you can see a cube and a Suzzane with the Skin Modifier. Suzzane completely freezed the aplication for 2 minutes.

The use of the Skin Modifier is covered in its wiki page.
At this point, I think this is not what you want to accomplish. As you have animation and rigging tags in your question, I think you need the Armature Modifier for make your character rig. Armature Modifier is named Skin in 3ds Max, maybe that's why you made this mistake (if you did).
It looks that I haven't clarify that enough: in this case, you need to create an Armature (a rig in Blender) and use the Armature Modifier (like Skin in 3ds Max) in your character's mesh.


text:
Node "Recipe" For Asphalt?
Is there any sort of node "recipe" or tricks for making asphalt? I'm making a road and I was wondering if there is a way of using shaders and/or other things in the editor to make it look more realistic?
This is intended for use in Cycles.

@someonewithpc I've posted a meta on this: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/q/569/599


text:
Blender Game Engine - Shadeless Textures?
Blender has an option to make a material shadeless. If you make a game and want a lightmap from Cycles, you can remove all the lights. But, if you want a normal map or more in your game, it is impossible...The normal map can be lightened by fake lamps and spots which are at the same place as the lights in cycles are. So, if I have 2 textures on my material, one is the pre-baked texture with all the lights and is set to shadeless. The other texture on this material is a normal map, the normal map isn't set to shadeless.
The end result is:
You have an object that is shadeless, but with the normal map you have an object that looks like a render from Cylces, BUT it is in realtime!
Is there anyway to make textures shadeless?

Is this what you're looking for?
Just check the small box that says shadeless in the materials tab.

Instead create two separate materials one shadless and one not shadless.  Then you mix them in node editor and create a black and white map to plug into the mix factor telling it which areas get which material. Also plug in a color ramp between this map and the mix factor input to help you fine tune the areas.


text:
How to apply texture onto model
Sorry for the question but I'm new to blender and have recently found this gun model on Sketchfab that I would like to use https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/ak47-with-scope-d4d9720f3677485b958ceecc02f7965c. After downloading it and opening up the .fbx file in Blender, I was shown the same model but with very weird textures.
The textures folder contains the following files but I am unsure on how to apply them to the gun model in Blender.

Yes, I have 5 different texture maps for each texture, how can I tell what type each map is.

If this is a question: (?) the file names are actually pretty bad and do not follow any convention so the only thing you can do is asking the author to be on the safe side. Otherwise just test them, My guess: MT = Metallic, NR = Normal, BC = Color, R = Roughness.


text:
How to remove the box and work with the vertices?
Hi I am new to Blender (and 3d design), I have seen that some people can do this.
I mean that they can create a cube, apply the "Subdivision Surface" modifier to it and be able to modify the object using the vertices that are formed when applying the modifier.
On the other hand, if I create a cube, and apply the modifier "Subdivision Surface", it looks like this

The object still has the shape of the cube and I can only modify it by modifying the surrounding cube. I would need to know how to remove the cube and be able to modify it using the shape of the object.
Thanks in advance.

Apply the modifier - click the little down arrow above the word "Simple", and select "apply"

See: how to apply a modifier

Note that there is a big difference between adding a modifier to the object and "applying" the modifier. Using modifiers is a non-destructive operation. Once you "apply" the modifier, the transformation is permanent. Read: applied modifiers are not visible

You can't edit the modified mesh until you apply the modifier, unfortunately.
Modifiers create virtual vertices/edges/faces, but they are not editable, transformations are based on the original mesh. The transformations can become permanent by applying the modifier.
So either apply the subsdivision surface modifier and work from there on, or work with the cube in edit mode.


text:
Constricting the camera animation to the inside of the wormhole
I just currently finished doing Gleb Alexandrov and Aidy Burrow's space VFX Elements course (the wormhole tutorial in particular) and had a question about camera animation. Does anyone know how I would be able to constrict the camera to the inside of the wormhole and to make the camera eventually fly out through the end of the wormhole? I'm having difficulty figuring this out so any tips/input would be greatly appreciated.

if the tunnel is made with a curve, the camera could follow the curve with a Follow Path constraint?

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/177314/is-it-possible-to-transform-an-armature-into-a-curve?


text:
addon parameters are not editable
I have a problem that when I select certain addons that require parameter changes, I'm not able to edit them, they appear greyed out.
I assume this is a system settings problem (since it happens across versions) and experience something similar when, for example, adding a circle.  I resolved this by changing "new objects enter into edit mode" in the "editing" settings.
Unfortunately even though this setting works for objects it doesn't work for things like the "fracture","ANT", "Sapling etc.  Any ideas?

Could you add a screenshot or two?

Sounds to me like you have global undo disabled. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/13820/599 and http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/886/599 and http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/8262/599


text:
How to correctly bake glossy/reflection from camera POV?
As seen in the comparison below, before, it looks right in the camera view; however, the glossy baking result appears to be projected from the normals instead of POV. I have been able to find very little information on the wiki about this.
Is there any way to keep the glossy baking result the same as the rendered image (from specific POV)?
Notice the reflection on both the ball and the ground.
Before:

After:

This was actually added as a feature a while ago, but later removed due to some bug reports about the other side of the object being black.

I see. Thanks for the info. I agree with you there, it is necessary to add them both as option. The current solution is hardly useful for baking strong glossy surface, which limits its own power.

You might want to explain your use-case on the mailing list to see if any other users feel the same way (and if any devs want to add this). ;)

Blender uses the normal as the camera ray vector when baking. While it's not possible to change this, it is possible to change the surface normal.
The trick then is to calculate a surface normal that produces the same reflection vector from the camera ray as the original surface normal would have from a custom camera position. You could do this with either a bunch of Cycles nodes, or with a OSL script:
shader osl_reflection_normal(
  vector FakeCamPos = 10,
  int IsCameraRay = 1,
  output normal ReflNormal = N)
{
    if (IsCameraRay)
    {
        // Normal pointing from FakeCamPos to here
        normal fakeCamNormal = normalize(P - FakeCamPos);

        // Reflect fakeCamNormal across the surface
        normal fakeReflection = reflect(fakeCamNormal, N);

        // For some reason I points towards the camera? Otherwise we'd use -I
        normal incidenceNormal = normalize(I);

        // The average of the incidence normal and the fake reflection normal gives us a normal that reflects one to the other.
        ReflNormal = normalize(fakeReflection + incidenceNormal);
    }
}

You'll want to plot in the camera position for FakeCamPos, and supply the "Is Camera Ray" from a Light Path node. The output goes into the Normal input of the glossy shader.

This is currently unsupported.


text:
How can I use one image as a texture for an entire model?
I have this texture file:

I want to apply this texture to these cubes (which I have joined together to be one object):

How do I apply one of each of the four textures to each of the cubes?

@Gwenn This question is specifically a UV texturing question, which IS directly related to Blender. Combining textures into one image is good practice for exporting models to be used with OpenGL or other 3D platforms.

Note that you can use the same image for different objects. There's no need to join them into one. Just make sure you UV unwrap each object and make sure you assign the image to the active uv layer.


text:
How to do a cloth simulation in Blender?
I have the following scene:

I applied the cloth simulation property to the cloth that is floating over the sphere. When the scene is animated, the cloth goes right through the ball.
How do I make a realistic simulation?

this seems too much like a request for tutorial.

For future reference see http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/a/6/12 -- Overly broad topics and lengthy howtos are off-topic.

http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/29/what-would-be-wrong-with-tutorials-as-long-as-they-describe-a-reusable-workflow - this should be reopened.

After discussion I understand why it was closed. I just suggest we tell the user why.

This is a valid question. And the answer is "Select the UV sphere and directly navigate to physics tab again and select collision in the first column, second row" as suggested by Aditia bellow.

First of all you need to create two geometry first are UV sphere and plane. Use shift+a to add a mesh. Now select the plane mesh and go to edit mode (press tab) select all (press a) then press w to call special menu and select subdivide. I prefer to increase the number of cuts to 10 (more are better but slower).
After this you can optionally add modifier subsurf and turn on shading smooth, for better look of the cloth.
Next, go back to object mode and with the plane still selected, navigate to physic tab in the property panel. Select cloth in the first column, third row.
Then select the UV sphere and directly navigate to physic tab again and select collision in the first column, second row.
Now you can start play the animation by pressing alt+a or the play button in timeline. The cloth sims now should start.

Worked great! You should add 'turn on smooth shading on the cloth' especially if you are only using 10 subdivisions.

How can I move the cloth upwards while still maintaining the look of the simulation?


text:
getattribute() in osl is not working
I'm trying to get the UV coordinates of from UVMap using getattribute() as follows :
#include "stdosl.h"

shader node_uv_map(
    string name = "",
    output point UV = point(0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
)
{
    if (name == "")
        getattribute("geom:uv", UV);
    else
        getattribute(name, UV);
}

with the name empty or containing the UVmap name there is no output

how to perform that correctly
is there another way to get the uvmap coordinates in osl
what are othor attribute that can be retrieved using getattribute beside these

Blender 2.7b

The texture only appeared after I added another Image Texture node (which is not realated to anything). Muting this node if enough to make the texture disappear.
The topic is also discussed on an older BA-Thread
You could use Input/UV-Map node to get the UV-coordinates:
Wiring the UV makes them accessible for getattributes

thanks that worked for me, this gives the active UVMap only so how can i choose another one through osl

@Chebhou you can have as many as you want by adding multiple UVMap -Nodes with different UV-Maps. (if I get you right)

i meant accessing them with their names getattribute("UVMap.001",UV)

@Chebhou added another example

I haven't used getattribute much, I'm thinking for this it would easier and cleaner to have multiple vector inputs and connect a uvmap node to the script node.

@sambler the problem with getattribute() extends to all other attributes not only UVmap for instance Getting a Light vector in OSL


text:
Transfer UV maps not working properly
I having problem transferring UV maps from one object to another. Objects are identical. Please see the image.
1)Object with good UV on the right, selected.

2)Object that i want transfer UV to. You can see the result after transfer.

What may be the problem?

Do both objects have the same mesh datablock?  You might want to post the .blend file to pasteall.org so people can download and investigate.

Do you have any modifiers on the objects?

What do you mean by transfer the UV's to? Why don't you copy the whole object with te good UV's and delete the other one?

I posted a blend file. There no is modifier Denis. Gladys, i don't know how to put on object in exact place of the second one, if i knew i would do it.

The problem is that the two objects are not identical even though they have the same Verts, Edges, Faces but the faces order is different which will cause the transfer to fail ( i guess the order difference is because they where the same object then have been separated or some import / export operation ).

An attempt to place another object at the same location as the bad one:

select the good object.
place the cursor at center ( Shift+C ).
duplicate and rotate around the cursor -72 degrees on the Z axis ( Shift+D ->R->Z->-72 ).
place the cursor at the origin of the good object ( not the duplicate ).
set the origin of the duplicate to the cursor.
move the duplicate object to the position of the bad object

Thank you Chebhou. Can this be considered a poor practice to model things in this way? So the seemingly identical objects have a different component order.

How did you get the face index numbers to show? "2108, 2100, 2109..." That could be useful. I can't seem to find anything about it in Blender's manual though.

Transfer the Object Data from the Active object to the Selected object before you transfer the UV maps.
Object Mode: Object > Make Links > Object Data
Object Mode: Object > Make Links > Transfer UV Maps
This will retain any vertex groups on the original object if rigging has been set up etc.
This is useful for creating symmetric UV maps.
Duplicate object, delete half of new object, add Mirror modifier, Tick the 'U' under textures in mirror modifier, create UV, apply mirror, transfer object data, transfer UV maps.

Object Data: An entity in the scene with location, scale, rotation. Used by scenes & groups.

Blender Manual: Data-Blocks

Try link Object Data and transfer uv map works. Thanks!

the second object has a view double vertices so you have to remove them. In edit mode select the object, then W --> remove doubles. Then UV unwrap again.

Unfortunately it did not helped. When i deleted Double verts from object with bad UV, transfer UV option was no longer available. When i delete double verts from both objects and do the transfer, resulting UV's are still not good.


text:
Rounded wireframe with big cells
I'm pretty new to Blender and I'm trying to create a perfectly round NURBS sphere. I need a wireframe of this sphere with big cells (like on the image below) but I also need curved (sic!) not straight edges of cells. Is there a way to do so?

First, add a UV Sphere to your scene. Now go into edit mode, make sure you are in Face select mode (press Ctrl + Tab and select Face) and press Ctrl+B. Make the resulting edges as large as desired. Now press Ctrl+I to invert the selection and then press Delete > Faces.

Now go into edit mode and select all by pressing A, and then W > Subdivide Smooth and change the subdivisions up or down as desired.

Now add a Solidify Modifier to your object to add some depth. You may also want to add a Bevel modifier while you are at it.

You should now have a nice smooth wireframe:

Works like a charm! Thanks. For the first steps we need the "face select mode".

Well there is a problem: with more subdivisions the edges still straight as they were without subdivisions. At least the horizontal ones.

You need to set the Smoothness value in the T menu to 1, or use Subdivide Smooth as I explained.

I've tried 1 (default), 2 and some other values. It looks better if I use more segments creating the UV sphere but with more segments the cells are narrower.

You went into edit mode, selected all faces, and pressed W > Subdivide Smooth? It has to be a bug. Did you add an entirely new mesh?

Yes I did. I'm almost happy now with an UV Sphere (30 segments, 15 circles) subdivided with Subdivide Smooth, so I'll try to find out if this is a bug of Blender 2.73 later. Thanks!

I did use Blender 2.72, so there might be a difference. Glad to help!


text:
"'NoneType' object has no attribute 'action'" error when looping over objects with Python
I keep getting an error when running this. Without the first for loop it does exactly what I needed, but i need it to work on all selected objects, or objects in scene. I am still very new to python. any help is appreciated.
sel_objs = [obj for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects]
for obj in sel_objs:
    obj.select = True
    ob = bpy.context.active_object
    action = ob.animation_data.action
    keyframes = []
    for fcu in action.fcurves:
        for kp in fcu.keyframe_points:
            if kp.co[0] not in keyframes:
                keyframes.append(kp.co[0])
    with open('blender_data.txt' , 'w') as f:
        for i in range(len(keyframes)):
            k = keyframes[i]
            bpy.context.scene.frame_set(k)
            f.write(ob.name + ', ')
            f.write(str(float(ob.location.x)) + ', ' + str(float(ob.location.y)) + ', ' + str(float(ob.location.z)) + ', ')
            f.write(str(float(ob.scale.x)) + ', ' + str(float(ob.scale.y)) + ', ' + str(float(ob.scale.z)) + ', ')
            f.write('%s \n' % (k))
    obj.select = False

Here is the error I am getting
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<blender_console>", line 4, in <module>
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'action'

I seem to have the same problem as this looping through selected objects one at a time but his solution did not work, or I dont fully understand. appreciate any input or direction.

Please state you Python experience. For example 0 month, 4 months , 8 months, 12 months.  Does the object in question have any keyframes set?

Do all objects have keyframes set?

They do not all have key frames. and experience is like 4 days

adding keyframes to each objcet removed the error thank you for your help

4 days.  All the fun yet to arrive.

What is script supposed to do?.  You have ob  and obj.  Each obj is one of the selected objects ob is always the active object and never changes.  The loc rot scale of ob is printed to a file on its frame locations N times, N being the number of selected objects.  The error you see is because ob doesn't have any animation data.  This can be tested for in script, unnecessarily adding keyframes to every object to run a script is IMO not an answer.  The file loop possibly should be the outer loop.  Have a feeling ob should be obj.

@Nburgess clearly you have the right to determine what is an answer for today and the future and no one should bully you.  Your question gives you the right to your decision. .  You can ask a different question on a different day.   And you may make different decisions about Blender on a different day.  Because you posed the question you have rights.

Are you trying to get something to work of reasonable quality in Python and Blender in the near future?  Are you trying to write the Best Python Script ever?

Add keyframes to all objects.  Keyframes are associated with actions.  Simplified explanation.
You have stated you 4 days of experience with Python, if I understand you correctly.  Thus my answer is based on working with that context.  Keyframes may be more familiar to you than Python. You may prefer to know more about Python slowly.  The choice is yours.
Remember you can pose related [idea questions] here at BSE with a single web page but try to limit it to a reasonable small task.
On the other hand some people actually get lucky and get people to write the entire script for them.
The following search here at Blender Stack Exchange with keywords
animation_data is not none
can you show you different approaches to handling the problem situation via Python.
I do have concern about the Python in the question with regard to file writing.  But you may consider asking that as a separate question.  One file name is used for writing in the Python at this point.  The file seems to be rewritten every time with only the last write being actually being persistent. That seems defective. I imagine you want to have data for all objects in the same file.
I suggest when the file writing is top priority, you pose another question.  The changes needed seem achievable in 88 seconds.  You should consider how many times you open the file.  I believe it should be one file open per invocation.  You know how to use for loops so if you think about it you will find the better placement of existing Python.
The file mode is 'w' which can mean ... delete and create fresh.
I would suggest you change it to 'a' for append. Once the code is more correct you may decide to use 'w' with a different filename everytime. The filename can include the time and date.  blender_data_D20180318_T120037.txt as as example you can improve. D for Date. T for time including seconds. Thus you would have a history to compare file versions.
You can delete parts of the file or the whole file for testing. I have not executed the Python so this is just a computer simulation mental simulation.  Currently the Python seems to write info for the last object only which seems defective.


text:
How do I close the gap in a mask inside UV/Image Editor?
This is my very first time of using masks and I am testing masks. I want to know how to mask areas of a video. FYI, I am new to mask nodes.
For any assistance, thanks in advance.

You can press Alt+C to Toggle Cyclic, which closes the selected splines. Pressing it again will re-open the mask spline.
This is also found in the Toolshelf (T) in the Mask tab> Mask Tools> Spline section or in the UV/Image Editor header under Mask> Toggle Cyclic.

If this has helped, you can 'accept' the answer. See: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work

I just re-edited my question. Now, I'm wonder how to remove the shaded area outside the maroon mask and how to lay cropped mask up top of video. Thanks in advance.

If you have another question this should be asked as a new, separate question, not an edit to an existing one.


text:
Rigged model and optionals controller (High Quantity Production way)
I'm looking for a way to manually control animations and optionals in the most easy way for my clients that have no idea how to use the Blender 2.79 Cycles or have never been into 3D before.
Let's say I've got a 3D modelled car, and my clients want that model rigged with all functioning parts and with all its optionals available.
With that in mind, my workflow nowadays is a mess like this:

SilverCarBlackRimsBlackInterior.blend
RedCarBlackRimsBlackInterior.blend
BlueCarBlackRimsBlackInterior.blend
SilverCarSilverRimsBlackInterior.blend
RedCarSilverRimsBlackInterior.blend
BlueCarSilverRimsBlackInterior.blend

and the list goes infinite with all versions of that car available to offer.
So, since this is humanly possible but really energy-consuming and annoying for me and for my clients, Isn't there an easier way to acchieve this into a simple .blend file?

I made this image just as refferential of what I would be looking for. A simple control or panel where I and my customers can configure the 3D model in the most simple and instant way. Most of my customers don't have time to watch tutorials or are not fully into 3D industry, so this is giving me bad user experience nowadays and I want to improve that issue.
Thanks in advance!

You could certainly write an addon to present a UI like that, but before going that far, have you tried using custom properties (with drivers)? Perhaps that might meet your needs, to some extent at least.

No, no idea about Custom Properties or Drivers usage. What limitations or features does it have in this particular case? Thank you!

Custom properties can only be numeric values. So it's perfect for things like "door open amount", but things like choosing a material not so much. However you could drive values in a material, e.g. how many metallic flecks to mix in, etc.

@gandalf3 in these two days of testing, I've managed to learn to make a "control" that is linked to the doors using Transform. So, that issue would be covered. Now I'm looking a way to control multiple lights with one parameter. Driving values in a material like you said looks way more customizable for the user, and thats exactly what I'm looking for. So, thank you for the advice and going to take a shot about it.

@gandalf3 I've just learn't about using Drivers, and I can certainly say that all this topic is covered. Testing along with a model using a controller for all those different properties, I was cappable to acchieve good results without a UI like I've posted. So, thank you for your knowledgements, now I'm looking forward to make these parameters easy to use. Thanks again!


text:
How do I change fluid material in a simulation
Been at it for a couple hours every youtube video they already have a material on their fluid but mine is just a bunch of particles not a liquid, I have 0 experience in liquid animations so any help would be appreciated as I could only find one other person with a similar problem, I did change the material of the cube that is the domain thinking it would change the fluid but it did not, yes the liquid still looks like that when I am not in wireframe, it doesn't even show up when I render.
I would like to share my blend file but could not figure out how.

You need to check the mesh checkbox to turn those particles into a mesh, you can find that in the domain fluid settings window. Then you can change the material.

you would also have to bake the simulation.to attach the .blend file, you can go to https://blend-exchange.com/

https://blend-exchange.com/

(It's already mentioned in the comments but to give this question an answer...)
You need to check the Mesh checkbox which you can find in the Fluid settings of the domain object. Then you can assign a material to the domain object which represents the fluid.

Thank you for the answser, and for the picture!!!


text:
2.9.X Theme to for 2.76b... our lab pc can't run version upper from 2.76b
2.9.X Theme to for 2.76b... our lab pc can't run version upper from 2.76b ...
i am teacher and i want teach blender to our student
our lab is old becouse we in thired world country (poor country)
i check every version and seem the 2.76b i called blender for poor's
it's only upper version work in that pc's
but i want theme to look 2.76b like  new 2.9 blender
is this possible
and from where i get manual and tutorial for 2.76b exactly ?
Thanks

Here is a 2.8 theme from Blendswap
Here is a 2.8 theme from Blenderartists.org
Please keep in mind that Blender 2.8+ also has a new Collection system (instead of layers) - which can't be changed using a theme.
Good luck :-)

Thanks For Replay ... seem 2.8 and 2.9 same interface?
because i ask about 2.9 and you wrote 2.8 ? i assume its same interface

Hello :). Yes, 2.8+ versions all share the same 'new' UI.

Thanks for the help


text:
Blender 2.9 weight-painting only selecting vertices rather than bones?
I am desperately clawing at this file that suddenly stopped letting me select the bones while weight painting and now only selects the vertices on the mesh. I can not change any weight value on the model. I really don't know how to be any more descriptive than "it's only selecting mesh vertices in weight paint mode" because I had just made some weight edits a few minutes before and changed no settings, and now it's refusing to let me select any bones.

Please show your work a well chosen set of screen captures.  This may get more readers to help you more quickly. The choice is yours.  Try to show a few work areas because this may give clues.  I suggest you start with an entire Blender screen capture.  The reader should look at the very areas of your capture to confirm you statements in the question.

In order to select bones/vertex groups with Ctrl click while in weight paint mode, you have to select the rig in object mode, then shift select the mesh, then switch to weight paint mode.
If you can select only vertices and the paint isn't working, probably you have activated one of theese little buttons, which limit the action of the brush to selected vertices/faces only.

YEA THAT WAS IT THANK YOU


text:
How can I fix the top of this object so that it doesn't look so much darker than the rest?
I'm trying to make coffee, but the top just looks so dark in comparison to the rest of the body.
It's like the bottom is super reflective and the top is very absorbant. Notice the darker part looks like some sort of lid laid on top

Please [edit] your question and add an image of your shader nodes.

Try changing the IOR of your Glass or Refractive Shader (whichever you're using).

I decided to re-do it out of frustration and after changing the IOR it looked a whole lot better! It also seems like I must've changed something else as well but that's old news... Thanks a lot!


text:
Adding Date via Python from csv - works fine in Viewport but can't be rendered - what's wrong?
I try to add the Date from a .csv file as text in Blender 2.91 via Python.
It creates for each row a new Text and works fine in Viewport (one date per frame) but when I try to render this code as animation Blender crashes, if rendered as image it shows all Dates layered on each other:
import csv
import bpy

def render_stock(csv_path, start, start_frame):
    with open(csv_path) as stock_csv:
        stock_ob = csv.reader(stock_csv.read().splitlines())

    stock_header = []
    stock_data = []

    for v in stock_ob:
        if not stock_header:
            stock_header = v
        else:
            v = [(float(v[0])),
                 (float(v[1])),
                 (float(v[2])),
                 float(v[3]),
                 str(v[4]),
                 str(v[5])]
            stock_data.append(v)
            scale_factor = 0.3

    frames = start_frame
    objs = []

    for counter in range(len(stock_data)):

        v = stock_data[counter]

        bpy.ops.object.text_add(location =(9,15,0.5), rotation =(1.7,0,-1.9))
        bpy.context.object.data.body = (v[5])

    def ani_handler(render):
        name = 'Text'
        objs = [obj for obj in render.objects.values() if name in obj.name]

        for i, obj in enumerate(objs):
            obj.hide_set(i != ((render.frame_current-1) % len(objs)))
    bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_pre.append(ani_handler)

render_stock('/"filepath to" .csv', (0, 0, 0), 0)

Wouldn't do it with hide / show. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/161107/15543

Tried it, but failed with the last line of code: KeyError: 'bpy_prop_collection[key]: key "2021-01-25" not found' (changes "Text" to v[5] in scene.objects.get and bpy.data.texts, the Text objects are Named by v[5] )

Another try...Now I used your code from the linked answer as it is. And it runs without error. I have one text-object named "Text" and another 61 text-objects Named Text.001, Text.002, etc. Still in the render picture the overlay problem exists./ Any suggestions?

Delete them?...

creates emptiness... I understand that in my code for every row in the csv a new text-object is added, as with your solution with every row a new line in the text-object should be created, so it works - or?

now it works for two of the text-objects... but with the third I got in trouble: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/209793/how-to-exclude-a-new-text-body-from-a-text-body-handler

Thanks to batFINGER, the new code from this link:
blender.stackexchange.com/a/161107/15543
gives a workaround.
First step: Inserting the Dates from the csv file into a new text file named "text".(by hand)
Second step: Putting the text_add line from above behind the csv loop with the text_body_handler as linked here. (run code and enjoy the Date in the rendering)
:)


text:
What is the difference between a Viewer and a Compositor node?
I was messing around with a scene earlier today and looked up some tutorials on chromatic aberration, and I noticed that all the tutorials I found had both a compositor node and a viewer node?
Is there any real important reason for using one over the other? Both export to the UV/Image Editor and allow saving out to .png files, and both seem to create an identical final image with my depth of field, glow, and chromatic aberration. Are there situations where one is better than another?

As per the manual
They are two of several output nodes and allow you see or save the working image in progress. At any point only one viewer and one composite node is active.

The Viewer node is a temporary, in-process viewer. Plug it in wherever
you would like to see an image or value-map in your node-tree.

and

The Composite node is where the actual output from the compositor is
connected to the renderer. Connecting a node to the Composite node
will output the result of that node's full tree to the Renderer,
leaving this node unconnected will result in a blank image. This node
is updated after each render, but also if you change things in your
node-tree (provided at least one finished input node is connected).

The Viewer is a temporary viewer. Use it when you want to see the progress of a node tree. It's also what the node that lets you view a backdrop, if the checkbox is selected.
The Composite node is the output for the final render. You should only have one.

Care to get a little more technical, or is that about as far as it gets?


text:
How do I cycle through the camera views?
When reviewing the existing cameras of a scene,
is there a way to quickly cycle through the views of all cameras?

You can try by binding the cameras to the markers. In the timeline, press M to add marker in specified frames. You can rename that frame by pressing Ctrl + M.
Assuming you have 2 cameras on viewport, then add two marker on timeline (adjust location of the marker diferently, ie : marker 1 : 1-20, marker 2 : 21-50). Now select the first camera, press Ctrl + 0 to set as active camera, make sure first marker selected, then in timeline press Ctrl + B to bind active camera to first marker.
Select the second marker, then set second camera as active again Ctrl + 0, hover the mouse on the timeline and press Ctrl + B.
Now, when you start the animation Alt + A, the camera should switch between first and second based on marker position.

If you just want to switch views without changing cameras on the timeline, just use ctrl+numpad0 after selecting the camera you want to view from.

run the following script:
import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene
currentcam = bpy.context.scene.camera
setcam = False

for ob in scene.objects:
    if ob.type == 'CAMERA':
        if ob == currentcam:
            setcam = True
        elif setcam:
            bpy.context.scene.camera = ob
            break

if currentcam == bpy.context.scene.camera:
    for ob in scene.objects:
        if ob.type == 'CAMERA':
            bpy.context.scene.camera = ob
            break


text:
How can I scale particle size over lifetime within a keyed physics system
I am trying to make an alka-zeltzer in a glass, creating bubbles that form a logo on the water surface. To do this I am using keyed particles and everything works fine.
However, I would like to have the particle's (object) size scale over each particle's lifetime. This is where I fail. I know the trick using a texture block with a color blend driving the particle's size, maybe against an object for mapping. It seems though that when using keyed particles, this is just ignored.
I'm wondering if I can get to a driver for the particle lifetime or age, as they must exist, because they are available as outputs on the particle-info node within cycles.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. This may be particle nodes territory. Is there a way around this?

This appears to be a bug, should be reported on the tracker.

Currently it is not really possible to drive particle size with a driver. One can drive them so they show in the 3D View with different sizes, but the render engines (BI and Cycles) don't see the size changes, unfortunately.
See the report in the Blender TODO tracker here: http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=264&aid=34946&group_id=9 . Some examples are included.

They can be made renderable by performing "Make Duplicates Real".


text:
Write Apple ProRes files from Blender?
Blender can read Apple ProRes video files.
Is there any way to write to that format?
I use a video workflow with Final Cut Pro X and used Blender for some retouching and compositing and would like to send the clips back to FCP.

It is likely wiser to adopt an image based pipeline and assert that all of your color transforms and bit fidelity remain intact.
Using an image as an intermediate will be vastly more effective. The granularity required to handle the color primaries, bit depth, and transfer curve out of a codec correctly is not currently possible within Blender nor many other mainstream applications, and will often result in incorrect output. Well documented issues such as Quicktime's perceptual noise addition, incorrect transfer curve / gamma, inconsistent vendor flag reading, etc. all make for the stuff of nightmare when dealing with codecs.
If you are careful, you can easily step to an intermediate image format and use the Baptiste Coudurier FFMBC project to encode and decode ProRes with much more control, quality, and accuracy.
While it is a fork of FFMPEG, FFMBC extends the needs of the encoding and decoding of ProRes and DNxHD to meet media broadcast needs.
Further links:

https://code.google.com/p/ffmbc/

I haven't experienced these problems with ProRes yet. It is a lossless format after all. And FCP really likes it. So I want to stay with it.

The problems are inherent to the fact that it is a codec, and the chances are that you have experienced them, but have been unaware. There are very good reasons why independent to higher end productions rally around EXR during effects and finishing work. This forum isn't well suited to discuss the nuances however. A final minor point, ProRes is not lossless per se, and every export to it will suffer. FCP only "likes it" because FCP is sold as a very Apple-centric ecosystem.

But blender isn't only used for renders, it can also be used for compositing or simply crop or whatever, why bother increasing twice the render time and process human wi'll have to do to export first img-sequence, then found ffmpeg command to re-transcode it, why not use internal ffmpeg of blender and put pro-res preset??

Because you aren’t saving time. You end up needing to make changes, or adjust the quality of the encoding for different deliveries, or make lighting adjustments, and on and on. Simply never render to codecs.

I am assuming since it's Apple based software, the format has some ties to QuickTime. The closest option you have is to export a video from Blender (excluding the default AVI formats) are

(formats that can be compiled into blender, not available on all systems)
   HDR TIFF EXR MPEG AVICODEC QUICKTIME CINEON DPX

Also, Quicktime support isn't available on Windows or Linux, so these can't read image/video formats supported by Quicktime.

FFMEPG apparently has ProRes support (both decoding and encoding), so there should be a way to access it from Blender once the developer exposes the setting in Blender.  But it doesn't look like it's possible now.
Source: http://transcoding.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/prores-ffmpeg/

@MikePan interesting it may be possible to add support through getting blender to use the codec in ffmpeg then, however we dont compile with all codecs enabled so would need investigation.

When outputting from blender you have a multitude of options with the FFMPEG libs.   It's even been hinted that you can output prores 422 on linux with a patch to the correct library.  However, blender is ill suited as an encoder in this respect, most specifically due to the "grey area" in legal issues pertaining to output formats like pro-res.  That said, my workflow with blender to prores has followed this pattern in the past:
blender output to images (tiff\tga)
Folder of images to sequence in FCP or another editor, applying the sound etc, then out to pro-res
This workflow has proven faster at encoding the video, and has even produced higher quality with compressed formats like mp4 (with the same settings).  The reason is simple enough.  I farm the image rendering, so the time it takes to render the frames is cut down considerably (I have 5 old computers running blender farming in linux, varying distros, and varying power, but still core for core a better option).  This produces a full format video similar to a celluloid reel of frames.  Placing this into a sequence shows this as fully rendered, applying a sound track lines up perfect (especially when from the original video file).  When doing this with source video for multi cam edits, I usually have to allow FCP to create the proxy for use in playback, and in adobe, render a preview.  But when this is done from an edl, imported and farmed after the edits are marked, it takes longer to render the images, but shorter overall to then output a finished video from them, and with parallel encodings running, I can output several finished file formats for different types of delivery (everything from youtube and blu-ray to dvd).  You are better off using a dedicated apple computer for the encoding of pro-res.  Occaisionally, I've even just used compressor to put the two (audio and video) together, though not recently.

related discussion here: https://developer.blender.org/T35615


text:
How to change Transform Orientation with keyboard in Ubuntu
How I can change Transform Orientation with the keyboard in Ubuntu? In some linux systems (and many others) Alt + Space are a system combination to show application menu and are captured by the OS.

So is Ctrl Alt Numpad 0 for Align Active Camera to View, which is super handy... I usually disable a bunch of the GNOME keyboard shortcuts. (For example, to minimize, I use [Alt Spacebar] + [N] instead of Ctrl Alt Numpad 0.)

Personally I'd change the desktop manager binding from alt to super, but in Blender you can change it by going into User Preferences > Input. Then type in the search box "Orientation". You can click on the "Alt Spacebar" field, after which you can give the wanted key combination for Orientation Selection.


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How do I set up a material with diffuse, normal and alpha (transparency) maps?
I'm finding it very difficult to set up a basic material with diffuse, alpha and normal maps. Although I've managed to create a material with diffuse and normal maps, I can't manage to get the alpha channel working correctly. I would like to use three separate maps as shown below:

Below is the desired result of combining the maps with a single spotlight shining from above.

Although I found a few examples of setting up materials with transparency online, I couldn't get anything to work correctly. Instead of me posting lots of pictures of my failed setup, could someone explain the correct way to combine these maps? I would really like to see both how to do it in the standard material/texture panels, and also in the node editor. I would like the result to appear in the real-time textured viewport mode.
In order to help explain what I am trying to set up, here is a picture of the current result of the material as it looks with lighting in my scene. I'm viewing using GLSL, but if I switch to multitexture, it's entirely black. I tried rendering it, but I just get the result shown here.

UPDATE: Partial Answer
Thanks to this tutorial, I managed to achieve the result I want if I'm rendering in cycles. The problem with this is that I want a clean real-time render that works in the viewport, so I'm still only half-way to a real answer. Here's my node setup for cycles:

However, as I said, I would like to see this kind of bump mapping working with alpha in the standard real-time view:

blender internal or cycles?

Multitexture illuminates per-vertex, so it will be entirely black where there are no vertices to illuminate (as is the case on a single quad).

David: I'm really looking for an answer that will allow me to see it working in real-time in the viewport, since rendering is not the goal. Is the setup different for the different renderers too?

I just updated the question with information about doing it in cycles. However, a weird thing I noticed in cycles is that the light does not appear to be hitting the object at the right angle; The illuminated area is off to one side, rather than perfectly centered, and I've no idea why this is.

The only problem I see in the node setup is that the normal map image texture should be put through a normal map node to convert the color output data of the image texture to the required normal input of the shader.

If you are working in Cycles, it isn't currently possible to view the alpha channel in the textured view. The rendered view is the only current workaround.

Thanks for your answer, but what about if I'm not using cycles? The game engine presumably supports rendering alpha cutout textures with normal maps, so I guess there is a way to set it up somehow.

Material view supports transparency.

@MrFlamey Are you using Blender internal render, Blender game render or cycles? Your question didn't make it clear.


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How to set the default fill type to NOTHING (Cone, Cylinder), once and for all?
I'm banging my head trying to find any documentation, but I can't seem to find anything about that matter.
Background:
I was sick of manually changing the default vertices for Circles, Cones and Cylinders to 12.
I found this script and it works just perfectly.
# To be saved in
#    scripts/startup/
# with a .py file extension.

from bpy.props import IntProperty
from bpy.types import (
    MESH_OT_primitive_circle_add,
    MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add,
    MESH_OT_primitive_cylinder_add,
    MESH_OT_primitive_uv_sphere_add,
)

MESH_OT_primitive_circle_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Vertices", default=12)
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Vertices", default=12)
MESH_OT_primitive_cylinder_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Vertices", default=12)
#MESH_OT_primitive_uv_sphere_add.segments = IntProperty(name="Segments", default=16)
#MESH_OT_primitive_uv_sphere_add.ring_count = IntProperty(name="Rings", default=8)

Problem:
Now, I'm still sick of having to change the default fill type to NOTHING.
I tried adding the following lines (one at a time, of course) to no avail:
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = StringProperty(name="End_Fill_Type", default='NOTHING')
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="End_Fill_Type", default=0)
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = StringProperty(name="Base_Fill_Type", default='NOTHING')
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Base_Fill_Type", default=0)
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = StringProperty(name="Cap_Fill_Type", default='NOTHING')
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Cap_Fill_Type", default=0)

I tried both with and without underscore (_).
And the same for Cylinder
Note:
I tried entering the following in a console window:
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cone_add(end_fill_type='NOTHING')

and also
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cylinder_add(end_fill_type='NOTHING')

and both worked flawlessly.

You can see the property names by hovering mouse above the field.

Note that you need to match this name in the first part of the script file before the =. The latter needs to define property in blender operator format. For the dropdown menu it's in fact enumerator type, not string. You can't really specify default value for enumerator but I found that this has the desired effect nonetheless. So the file should look like this (note you need to import EnumProperty in the beginning as well):
from bpy.props import IntProperty
from bpy.props import EnumProperty
from bpy.types import (
    MESH_OT_primitive_circle_add,
    MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add,
    MESH_OT_primitive_cylinder_add,
    MESH_OT_primitive_uv_sphere_add,
)

MESH_OT_primitive_circle_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Vertices", default=12)
MESH_OT_primitive_circle_add.fill_type = EnumProperty(items=[('NOTHING', 'Nothing', 'Tooltip'), ('NGON', 'Ngon', 'Tooltip'), ('TRIFAN', 'Triangle Fan', 'Tooltip')], name="Fill Type")
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.end_fill_type = EnumProperty(items=[('NOTHING', 'Nothing', 'Tooltip'), ('NGON', 'Ngon', 'Tooltip'), ('TRIFAN', 'Triangle Fan', 'Tooltip')], name="Fill Type")
MESH_OT_primitive_cylinder_add.end_fill_type = EnumProperty(items=[('NOTHING', 'Nothing', 'Tooltip'), ('NGON', 'Ngon', 'Tooltip'), ('TRIFAN', 'Triangle Fan', 'Tooltip')], name="Fill Type")
MESH_OT_primitive_cone_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Vertices", default=12)
MESH_OT_primitive_cylinder_add.vertices = IntProperty(name="Vertices", default=12)

If you need to create certain type of geometry often you might as well copy the operator that creates it and store it in script file or python console where you can execute it. You can store all the properties you can edit in the side panel.

Drag the top info bar down and right click to select and CTRL-C to copy the lines for quickly using them later. You can even make them their own operators, add them to menus or add keybinds to them.

THAAAAAAAAAAAANK YOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!


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Confused About Linked Rigs & Meshes
The majority of my question is identical to this one:
Cloth sim : collision with external linked group meshes
The OP found a workaround, so it was never really answered.  I wasn't sure if there was a way to "reactivate" the question, hence my duplicate.
I have a rig that I created with the Rigify add-on (first time I've used it, and little experience with rigs in general).  I believe I skinned & grouped it correctly, per the Humane Rigging videos.  I linked it from a second blend file and made a proxy.  I put a simple baggy robe mesh over the character mesh, with the intent of using the cloth simulation to make the robe flow properly as the character moves into the final position.
Here's where it gets tricky.  I need to add a collision modifier to the character mesh - but where is it?  It's not on the Outliner, and selecting it in the 3D View just selects the linked group.  Some experimenting showed that I can make a separate proxy for the mesh, but it's not connected to the rig.
I thought the second answer on this post was a solution, but I couldn't get it to work; I'm not sure it would be any different than the mesh proxy I already tried:
How can I modify the mesh of a linked character?
Any ideas, pointers to videos or tutorials, etc., are greatly appreciated.  I can post blend files if no one sees an obvious problem with what I'm doing.
[Update 1]  I've created four simple blend files to demonstrate the problem.  They're very simple, low-res examples to reduce the file size.

char.blend - a simple 4-bone FK armature with a rough cylindrical shape.
scene_appended.blend - a scene that appends char.blend, adds a collision modifier to the skin mesh, and drapes a cloth over it.  This works as expected.

In char.blend, for linking via a group, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to include the mesh in the group, so I did it both ways.

scene_linked-rig.blend - the same scene, but it links a group in char.blend containing just the armature (rig_group).
scene_linked-rig-skin.blend - the same scene, but it links a group in char.blend containing the armature and the skin mesh (rig-skin_group).

With (3) and (4), I have no idea what to do, since I can't find the mesh in order to attach the collision modifier.  I've tried all the combinations of "make local", "make single user", etc., that I can think of, but nothing seems to work.
[Update 2]  Playing more with these simple files, I discovered that adding the collision modifier in char.blend works.  Oddly, this didn't work with my real models.  Unless I did something wrong.  It's still not ideal, since I can't figure out how to change (or even find) the modifier in the scene if I need to.

I didn't do a very good job of stating the problem here, and it's actually broader than I described.  I'm going to abandon it and repost as 3-4 separate questions.
Can someone tell me the proper way to close out this question?  I could post an answer saying that I'm abandoning it, but I was wondering if there's a better way.

I think I found the answer, at least for this specific situation.  It was in "How can I modify the mesh of a linked character?", but it took me a while to figure out how to make it work.  Using scene_linked-rig-skin.blend above:

The rig (char.blend) is already linked in as a group and proxied, according to instructions found elsewhere.  The group contains the rig and the mesh (and should contain any other necessary objects).  Note that the "group instance" Skin is visible but outlined in dark red (as is the rig, which is in the same group).

I linked the Skin object from the same file (appending, as mentioned in the link above, seemed to do the same thing).  The Skin is outlined in blue.  The Physics tab options are all grayed out.

With the Skin still selected, I did "Object... -> Make Local -> Selected Objects".  The Skin outline changed to green and the Physics options became active.  I clicked on "Collision".

Now the cloth simulation works!  The Skin also follows the rig (you can't see it very well since it's under the cloth).

A few interesting notes:

The skin stays with the rig, even though it's not a child of the rig (at least not according to the Outliner).  [Update] As mentioned by Jerryno below, this is due to the armature constraint.  Parenting the skin to the rig isn't necessary (I had no idea!).
This still doesn't work in my "real" scene (i.e., the one that prompted me to ask this question).  But it does if I link my "real" rig into a new file.  I suspect some data-block is stuck somewhere.
The mesh data-block is still linked (and hence not editable).  This will make the file size smaller.  It can also be made local, if desired, by choosing "Selected Objects and Data" in step 3.
It only appears to work correctly if the 3D cursor is at the origin when the rig is linked.  The rig appears where the 3D cursor is, but the skin only appears at the origin, and the offset is fixed from then on.  If you move the (localized) skin to the rig, the deformations get all wonky.  Maybe someone else has a workaround for this.
If you want to tie the cloth to the armature (e.g., for clothing), CTRL-P will parent it to the proxy of the armature, and things won't work correctly.  Since you can't select the original armature directly, you have to then edit the armature modifier and choose the original armature.

add 1. The staying of the skin is not determined by its child relation but by its armature modifier. If you unparent an object from armature, and leave the modifier, it will still deform.


text:
Is there a way to force particles to follow a branched object?
I would like to make a particle system to flow through a branched object such as a tree or a light bolt. Forcing a particle system to flow through a path (e.g. Bezier Curve) is trivial using it as a force field if type:Curve Guide but since curves are categorically not branched it is not possible.
I have tried using a branched mesh to achieve the same results using the same recipe of Force Field>Curve Guide but the results are not the expected ones.
How would you go about it?
UPDATE:
This is one solution based on @lemon 's approach by using keyed particle systems
https://i.sstatic.net/hySKQ.jpg

Have you tried using a keyed PS?

I am not sure what do you mean, could you please elaborate a bit more?

In physics part, choose 'keyed', then you can indicate where the PS pass through in the relation part below. You can have this kind of things https://i.sstatic.net/iVa2X.gif. Each stage is a separate object having the same PS

An old answer about that (but still working) https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/62209/make-particles-go-to-the-target-object-and-stick-to-it/62213#62213

Gotcha! The idea is to make the path myself by using intermediate objects as key points instead of a path itself! Thanks I will try it now.

Hey, BTW you can have curves that branch, just select the curve handles, press v and select vector, and you'll have a jagged path.

Thanks for the tip - it is very useful for jagged paths but it is still a single path, right, handle can't bi- or tri-furcate, right?


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How to access the "Browse Image to be Linked" dropdown from an Image Texture node using python?
I am trying to access the "Browse Image" dropdown from an Image Texture node using python:

That is, I want to be able to draw this dropdown to a panel, so that it can be accessed and the image for the node can be set from the panel.
Is there a specific property associated with the Image Texture node that I can reference to do this?
i.e. something along the lines of:
row.prop(img_tex_node, 'some_property')

Thanks.

Nevermind, I answered my own question.
All I needed was this:
row.prop(img_tex_node, "image")

Simple!


text:
My model is not showing correctly in the viewport
I´ve been working on this model for some time now, i added some materials and added light, it had been working just fine , until i loaded the project today and my model is now like this...
Thanks for the attention.

Are you using a GPU by AMD? Check this post:  amd-gpu-material-in-material-preview-mode-and-rendered-mode-is-entirely-gray


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Icing doesn't stick to the donut in edit mode
I am following a tutorial from Blender Guru. But at the end you of the video, the icing had to stick to the donut. But with my icing the whole thing goes into the donut! I have tried the snapping option and change it to face mode. But the icing was more sticking on to the top. And I wanted the icing to stick more in the center of the donut. Can someone help me? This is the link of the video: https://youtu.be/6OTX3ZdYvEA
Here is a picture of the problem

You can pull out the icing with the Elastic Deform brush or Grab brush in Sculp mode. From the same angle as on the screenshot, drag the icing mesh with the mouse to the diagonal top left.
Or you can do the same in Edit mode but you have to select the hidden part of the icing first. Keep Proportional Editing on, and turn Snapping off.
Toggle to Local View (Numpad+/), select the verts that you want to move, toggle view back, and drag them out.
(With Ctrl+Tab you can switch between all modes.)

Thank you for your help. I've seen that grabbing a vertex and using the scroll wheel helped a lot! And I've made it a bit better with your method. So my problem is now solved! Thank you for helping me!


text:
Smooth edges after using spin tool
I am making a coffee cup from Blender Guru. He used in his video the spin tool to make the handle of the cup. But after he used the spin tool he had a very smooth handle. But mine handle has very weird edges. How could I fix or smooth these edges? Here are some photos.

What do I need to do to smooth those edges?
Thank you in advance!

hello please share your file: https://pasteall.org/blend/

You dont need so many loops, delete one problematic on upper part or few of them to make distribution more even ... or try to search smooth operator with those vertices selected and adjust Factor or Repeatness.

@moonboots I have uploaded the blend file

please share the URL ti has created, as vklidu says you need to dissolve some edge loops, at least on the top of the handle (Ctrl X), maybe it's the same on the bottom but it's better to check

@moonboots https://pasteall.org/media/1/b/1b8b1ac969b5ede1bcdf5d795ae87173.blend

@moonboots I have tried to press X and use the options Dissolve Vertices Dissolve Edges Dissolve Faces and Edge Loops But every option is making it worse. Only Dissolve Faces is doing nothing.

You have overlapping vertices at the bottom and probably somewhere else, so select all and press M > Merge by Distance:

This edge loop is too close to the one on the left, it creates this bad bump, switch to Edge select mode, select it and dissolve it with CtrlX:

Everything is smooth now! Thank you very much!

From what you've shown this is caused by distortions in the geometry near where the "wierd" stuff's happening.
The bottom of the handle looks like it may have duplicated geometry.  I'd recommend you start by selecting everything in the object and Merge by Distance (M key, the Distance options last one down in the pop-up).
The top of the handle shows some vertices out of position for a smooth surface.  There are a few different ways to fix (or at least improve) this kind of issue, this one requires the Mesh: Relax add-on (included with Blender) to be enabled.  Select the distorted vertices or faces, Ctrl-V > Relax (it's the last option in the Vertex menu) then expand the Parameters box (near lower left corner of the window) and up the number of iterations (not too many, what you're showing shouldn't take more than five, and three would probably work, even one might be enough).
However, following the instructions of that tutorial (if I'm looking at the right one) this should'nt've happened, you might want to go back and try it again, see if you can find what went wrong in the first place.  Both skill sets (doing it "right" the first time, fixing issues) are needed in 3D art.

I can't find the Relax option. Or did you mean something else?  My last option in the Vertex menu is Make Vertex Parent.

Sorry, that requires the Mesh: Relax add-on (included with Blender) to be enabled, I forgot.  I've edited my answer.


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Sequence from another scene imported into current scene causes only audio to render
I created a "blender scene" each for scene i am going to work Ex
"Sc_1","Sc_2","Sc_3"

Then i Create One more "Blender scene" called "Complete" and shift+A
add scenes "Sc_1","Sc_2","Sc_3"

I have set Render > Post-processing > Sequencer Only
When render or preview I see no image but hear audio. What could cause this?

Maybe related? http://blender.stackexchange.com/a/44208/2843

In the VSE preview window (where the video should appear) check the display properties (N) and make sure that the OpenGL render is switched off. As it shows only the 3D view in place of the rendered output or that of the compositor.
While there check the proxy display value, it should be No Proxy 100%.

@ 3pointedit it dose not works. But what is the logic ?

I guess it would be possible to loop a sequence into itself. That could cause Blender to crash.

Oh I see what is wrong, you cannot use a Scene Sequencer as output from a scene.
Therefore you cannot send one sequencer to another sequencer. You can only:
Image/movie > Sequencer
Scene Compositor > Sequencer
Scene 3D view  > Sequencer
While
Scene Sequencer =/= Sequencer

where do learn this? Is there any document which tells about how blender is structured? That would help me

Sorry but I couldn't find a reference however I do remember that the function was changed due to dependency conflicts. That is Blender can make mistakes calling the same function (sequencer rendering) at the same time. This also impacts on ability to use Drivers in the VSE.

@ashwin: since 2.77 we now have Nested Scene Strips support.

From way back in time, this quote from the 2.4 wiki on using alternate scene's output in the current scene VSE:

Sequencer from/to Compositor
  To go from the Compositor to the Sequencer, enable both "Do Sequence" and "Do Composite". In the Compositor, the image that is threaded to the Composite Output node is the image that will be processed in the Scene strip in the VSE.
  The way to go from the Sequencer to the Compositor is through a file store. Have one scene "Do Sequence" and output to an image sequence or mov/avi file. Then, in another scene, "Do Composite" and using an image input node to read in the image sequence or mov/avi file.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Render
So it's been like this for over a decade. I cannot find any reference to earlier ability to edit VSE scene in other VSE scene.


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Will lattice deform slow down a preview animation?
If I use lattice deform along with an armature, will it slow down my animation (speed of preview and render-time) compared same character being animated with just an armature?

This really depends on you system, and you asked two questions, one of which is primarily opinion based. sooooooo.....

How much should not be in there. It depends immensely on your scene and machine specs. Better or worse is not a good way to put it. You could post a question asking what uses they are better for though. I'm going to edit your question to make it a little more likely to survive on here.

Why don't you test it on very-high poly suzanne? Do you want me to do this for you? This site is not full of peasants to do your work, you should test this stuff yourself..on your system you will get best results. You know how to setup all 3 cases (armature, armature with lattice and mesh deform) and you can test the performance also yourself.. you have all the knowledge..


text:
Would the automatic removal of double vertices ever be undesirable?
While modelling an object in blender it's not unusual to have overlapping vertices that are exactly on top of each other. This happens easily when I extrude and manipulate the mesh and then change my mind later on.
So removing doubles tends to be a common operation. However, wouldn't it make more sense to have blender automatically do this to help improve workflow?
Are there any situations where I wouldn't want to remove double vertices?

If your geometry is good, double vertices removal is okay; however, if you do some lazy stuff when modeling you can have issues. For instance, I worked on a bookshelf once where I'd just extruded up the frame; when I got to the top when I started merging vertices I tore off my faces, meaning that I had to go through and manually redo the whole thing (I wound up taking out every vertex but the ones on the edges, then made faces between the remaining outer edges to get a single smooth surface).

Are you aware of 'Auto Merge' ?, this is a toggle that removes duplicates as you edit. Access on the right hand side of the 3d view header, next to render buttons.

@ideasman42, how is the Merge Distance handled with this toggled feature that you mention?

@MarcClintDion it uses a very low threshold (effectively zero), since this is meant to be used with snapping - where you don't just manually move it close-enough.

I started using it on a regular basis after you mentioned it here.  The auto-merge is excellent in combination with edge/vertex slide after a model has its textures baked since these tools allow for quick polygon reduction without altering the UV layout.  You do nice work. :)

One case would be if you didn't want to lose sharp edges.
When you apply the edge-split modifier, it will be splitting off faces based upon the angle. It will actually be splitting them individually so there will be doubled vertices. If you remove doubles, you'll lose the sharp edges.

"When you apply the edge-split modifier" exactly. My suggestion is "never ever apply the edge split modifier."

Agreed. I never apply it, even when I'm exporting a model.

Yes when using Blender for exporting to other applications. Not all exporters handle the "hard edges" attribute in Blender meshes in the same way and, often, the only way to have said hard edges is to use the edge-split modifier.
Not as bad when everything is being done in Blender, but that is not possible for commercial indie game development, external renderers (other than Cycles), etc.

There are a few reasons, but to list some that aren't already mentioned.

When doing subsurf modeling (or modeling with deform modifiers for that matter). Its possible that the cage overlaps at points that don't show up on the final output, but removing doubles will adversely effect the subsurf result.
Sometimes when your modeling you want the model to be manifold (water tight) with obvious inside and outside. In this case you may want to preserver a solid mesh shell and not worry about accidentally overlapping vertices while you edit.
Removing doubles can give unusual geometry (an edge with 3+ faces using it for example), such meshes are supported but often won't give good results with blenders tools.

You should also keep in mind that removing doubles always involves a merge distance, and that merge distance is relative to the object space, not the global space. So if you accidentally scaled the object to be really big and are then working on small detail, this feature might actually kill geometry that you carefully modeled because the distance between two points in your geometry is, relative to the object size, below the merge value.
On the other hand, the tool can sometimes actually be used to reduce complexity quite effectively, for example if you want to delete all loops that are close together, and without creating triangles where you wanted to preserve quads.


text:
Can I display text object like a mesh?
I have a text (that displays ammo), which looks rather sloppy when it [text] is close to the camera. How would I convert this to a mesh that will still function as a text? I know I can convert it with Alt+C, but it stops functioning as a text object. I saw some videos, and it looks like I will have to use the UV editor with each number separate. How can I have a text display as a mesh, but still keep its function as a text object?

Related: http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/14339/599

Almost have a working prototype ready for an answer-

You can do this with the special text property only found in text objects.

In this case, I am using Always ➨ And ➨ Property
The property actuator copies another property from a different object.
I am using the cube from this question to change the properties so you can see it updating.
I have two text objects, neither one of them have been transformed into a mesh. they both retain there edibility as a text object.
In this example, the text is white. see this question to change the text color.

"neither one of them have been transformed into a mesh. they both retain there edibility as a text object." I want them to be objects but retain text functions.

What kinda of text functions do you want them to have?

@X-27 so they don't look 8-bit when camera is close to them.


text:
What are the best graphics cards for cycles?
I'm considering having a system build solely for rendering for cycles (as kind of a single PC renderfarm). Since the GPUs would be most important here, I plan on having it build around those. I was wondering what would be the best GPU to go for? As far as I can find, 2 gtx 580's seem to be the best option, while two 560 ti's give more bang for the buck. Any chance newer videocards work as well? (600+series?)

This is considered off-topic, try blenderartists.

@Aldrik, perhaps a canonical answer would be more useful, as this will be asked many more times.

@zeffii I don't think so, answers will quickly become out of date and useless to other users.

canonical answers can include statements like 'this is time bound information, answers can change over a matter of weeks or months.' Spreadsheet as linked has time-stamped rows.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about hardware specifications and or reviews (read: http://meta.blender.stackexchange.com/questions/1/what-questions-should-be-definitely-off-topic)

We are cautious to avoid specific hardware questions, but I think this question got pummelled into the ground unfairly based on the technicality that the question includes names of hardware as examples. This is not an awful question, but please realize that the answer is going to be fluid. What you should have asked, something to the effect of `are there any benchmark test results for cycles that may help inform  my hardware considerations'

Here's a spreadsheet that collates data from many users running the same benchmark scene. The thread with active discussion and a copy of the scene is at BlenderArtists, This is the best we can do without relying on opinion.
Decide for yourself which gfx card makes sense.
Note: Different OS's, drivers and versions of Blender, can all significantly change render times. So you'll need to take that into consideration when comparing benchmarks.

Is this spreadsheet regularly updated? If so, then this answer is awesome. Haters gonna hate on questions like this, but I love seeing a good answer.

@WrayBowling yeah, a couple of updates this week.. at the time of this writing there are over 900 entries, enough to observe a trend.

authors: Дима Мусийчук


text:
Coil Mechanism for Vending Machine
I'd like to make an animation of a vending machine.  I'm looking for some pointers on how to make the coil turn and drop a snack.
I've made the coil from this link.  The coil is on a hard surface and there are two walls on either side of the coil.  I don't know how to approach the problem of getting the coil to turn and getting a box to move forward and then fall.  Any tips would be appreciated.

There are two ways you could do this:
Manually animate the coil:

Make your coil a passive rigid body and set the collision shape to Mesh. This will allow the concave coil to collide correctly with the object being pushed, however you may need to increase the number of Steps in Properties > Scene > Rigid body world to avoid glitches. I used a value of 120.

Animate the rotation of the coil. To do this, insert a rotation keyframe (I), then on a later frame, rotate the object and insert another keyframe:

You'll notice that as I have the coil tipped 2° downwards, I'll want to rotate on the local Z axis. A quick way to rotate around a local axis is by using a rotation order with the axis in question first. So in this case, either ZXY or ZYX. See Why are keyframes in global coords, instead of local coords? (Blender 2.70a)
Make your package object a rigid body. I used pretty much default settings.

Result:

Use a motor constraint:
By using this method the coil will react to the resistance of the package dragging against the tray, etc.
Also see my related answer here.

Set up the coil as in step 1 of the animated method.
Add a cube to act as the "motor" and mount point. I've rotated both the cube and the coil 92° so that they tilt downwards slightly:

Select the coil and then the cube (so that the cube is active) and press Connect in 3D view > Tool Shelf (T) > Physics > Rigid Body Tools > Constraints, then set the constraint type to Hinge:

Rotate the empty created by the Connect operator so that it's local Z axis is aligned with the axis around which you want the coil to rotate. In my case I've rotated it 92°:

The hinge constraint will act as a mount, holding the coil in place but allowing it to rotate around a single axis (defined by the local Z of the empty).
Again select the coil and the cube (with the cube active), and press connect. This time set the constraint type to motor to add a Motor constraint:

Select the new empty created by the connect operator and enable Angular Motor in Properties > Constraints:

Adjust the Target velocity to control the speed of the coil rotation.
Also note that I've rotated the motor empty 2° so that it's local X is aligned with the same axis as the hinge's local Z (for some reason the motor constraint rotates around the empties local X, while the hinge uses the local Z)
Optionally hide the cube.

Result:


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Why multiple blender animations are not showing up in unity when imported
I have followed numerous online tutorials and no matter how many times I watch/mimic exactly what they are doing, I still end up with ONE animation that plays everything at once. I cannot figure it out. Basically I just have two buttons and I would like them to be able to be pressed separately. I have created a left and right armature to control the left and right buttons, but no matter how many times I link/relink the animations or double check that only one animation is linked per armature, they still both press at the same time. A little insight on this would be greatly appreciated. Here is a dropbox link to the blend, I just want it fixed and to know what I am doing wrong. So lost right now.
Watched this tutorial. Seemed great, but doesn't seem to help me out any.
This is what the import looks like. As you can see, only the "RightButtonAction" animation.

I don't have unity to check but I see a difference that may help.
The right armature has keyframes on the bone (done in pose mode)
The left armature has keyframes on the armature itself (done in object mode)
It may be that unity doesn't support object animation on armatures which are expected to be animated in pose mode.


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Selecting a font in python panel
I'm trying to use prop_search to select a font that is loaded in the current blender file, similar to the example given here. The problem is I can't figure out where a collection of fonts for python to search through is.  This is what I've tried.
fonts = bpy.data
col.prop_search(fonts,"BlockFont",fonts,"fonts")

After a little more work I found it.
fonts = bpy.context.blend_data
scene = bpy.data.scenes['Scene']
col.prop_search(scene, "Font", fonts, "fonts")

For anyone else trying to use this, here's a quick breakdown.
The second argument is a variable to store the selected font in (see the link in the question for an example).  The first argument is where blender looks for that variable (in this case, the variable was created with bpy.types.Scene.Font = bpy.props.StringProperty(), so it needed to be passed bpy.data.scenes['Scene']) .  The last argument is what it populates the drop down list with, and the argument before that is where it looks for that property.
my problem was I was searching for the variable in the fonts instead of the scene where I created it, where of course it didn't exist.


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Using header window to explore python
I'm trying to (re)learn python scripting with Blender for a project I'm working on. It's made leaps and bounds in progress since I used it last, especially with the display of API commands in the pull down window.
Unfortunately, the best documentation I can find on it is here. From playing around with the text, it seems to have the ability to select lines (right click), and to copy them (CtrlC), and nothing else.
Now, I understand it isn't meant to do much, but are there any other shortcuts or tricks for using it? Particularly copying text, selecting lines one at a time gets old pretty quick.

As you said you have the right click mouse to select a line, you can select a block of line with B then click and drag for select or middle mouse click and drag for un-select. And you can select and un-select all the line with A.
You can delete all selected lines by pressing X.
As far as I know, the only way to copy a line is CtrlC.
My tip for selecting only one line is, if you have other lines selected, do A for un-select all and then copy your line.
Last thing, for navigating you can use the middle mouse wheel but you can also use the middle mouse wheel click then click and drag.

Thanks.  Playing around with it, it looks like b-shift will unselect lines as well.  Just curious, did you find this on the wiki or in the release notes?

I use blender every day for scripting, I found them and now use them. But it's the same hotkey than in the 3D view for example.

Playing around some more and I found how to list all the shortcuts, for any window.

Go to user preferences (CtrlAltU, or File > User Preferences).
Click on the input tab.
Options for each window are displayed, click on the arrow next to info.
All the keyboard commands are shown, clicking on the arrow again gives options to change it.
The only shortcut not already stated is R, which replays the last action (seems to work as ShiftR on my computer)