text:
Nested Propertygroups and CollectionProperty
I'm trying to create a sort of tree of nested Propertygroups, Where each Propertygroup can contain a list, or collectionproperty of new propertygroups that are the same type as itself.
This seems impossible to define, as you can't register a collectionproperty before the propertygroup type is defined. I've tried to use inheritance to solve it, but am getting nowhere.
Here's my code:
class DivisionProps(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    size: bpy.props.FloatProperty(
        name="Size",
        default=0,
        unit='LENGTH',
    )

bpy.utils.register_class(DivisionProps)

class DivisionProps(DivisionProps):
    divisions: bpy.props.CollectionProperty(type = DivisionProps)

bpy.utils.register_class(DivisionProps)
```

Hello ! It is not possible, and I would say it is not advisable anyway, you may want to think of a different way to structure your data. If you really want to do it like that, you need to maintain a constant ID key (integer, string) per property group instance and refer to it in your property group definition. You also need to maintain a list of all your property group instances and when you want to fetch a linked PG you want to iterate over your list of PGs and find the one which ID key matches the one that's stored in the property group instance.

Interesting, so you're suggesting instead of having an actual hierarchical structure, to use a "soft hierarchy", where all items are at the same level, they merely have a property pointing to another one as parent?
But I'm inclined to agree, Blender seems very lacking in scripting your own tree structures (UI for this will be a mess too), so this will be my best bet.

Well you can have a regular tree like structure, just not self-referencing items :)

Sure, I'm just in the mindset of Qt-like tree structures where you do iterate like this, it's mentally a bit easier for me...
There is some hope though: https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/ZQcbbc/?sorting=hot#


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Vertex wont snap to edge

I'm trying to get a vertex of one object to snape to the angled edge of a different object, and even though I have the snap feature turned on, and the snap feature set to edge, the vertex just passes by the edge.  I've tried both including the second object in edit mode (as seen in the gif) and not including it while in edit mode, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.  It's important that the Z location not change, so I'm moving the vertex strictly on the X or Y axis.  Since the edge is angled, there no easy way to know the precise coordinates of where I need the vertex to end up, otherwise I'd just type it in. Same reason I can't set my 3D cursor there.  Lacks the precision I desire, and right now I'm just eyeballing it which is sending my OCD into overdrive.  Please help!

The GIF is very low quality, try zooming in and recording it. Could you add the blendfile please ? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com

Snapping (Shift+Tab) works with the same object's edges, as well as with another object's edges. Try to play with an additional option of the snap tool (active, closest, median, center, etc).

I do not know what you are building, I just have a feeling that you do it wrong way. If you have to deal with such type of snapping, there must be an easy way, like extruding, loop-cutting, using normal transform orientation, etc. Just a thought.

One thing you can do is select the edge you want to snap the vertex on and then subdivide it, this way you have a new vertex on said edge that you can move to the location you want the snap to happen, then simply snap the two vertices together, and then remove doubles just to be sure you don't have ovelapping vertices.

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:
How do I move multiple vertices to the same point at the same time?

As the picture illustrates, I've already starting moving vertices on the Torus to the exact same point (X:0, Y:-49.5, Z:1.5).  The highlighted vertices still need to be moved to that point.  The already moved vertices were moved one at a time (I selected the vertex and then typed in the new coordinates).  I'd love to be able to highlight them all and type in the coordinates and they all move to that point, but it doesn't work that way (It treats them like one object and moves the "center" of that object to the point, which results in interesting but undesired behavior).  Is there a way to accomplish this so I don't have to click and type over and over again, but can simply select all the vertices I want to move and then move them with one simple action?
I've been using Blender since yesterday so I'm new, and the training videos didn't reveal anything helpful.

If I undertsand that correctly you want to press Alt+M > Collapse with desired vertices selected to merge them at one point (or At Center), then if necessary edit coordinates of new vertex.

Actually, I JUST figured it out! LOL

The trick is to go into edit mode, select the vertex that will be the final point for all other vertices, ctrl+S, move cursor to selection.  The select all the vertices you want to move, ctrl+s, move selection to cursor. Bob's your uncle!

@NicholasAlexanderFilip Could it be you mean shift? By the way, is there a reason you want all edges to meet at the rim instead of the middle?

If you do as Mr Zak suggests after you do that once then select the next two vertices (in the same order) and press SHIFT +R and it will repeat the last action avoiding the dropdown menu.

@Dontwalk Shift-R doesn't cease to surprise me. Great find.

The new method, ALTM, has already been mentioned. The other solution is to set the pivot point in the header to either active or cursor and then scale the selection to zero S0RETURN. Scaling or rotating around the active element is pretty cool since it makes the last selected, white vertex the center.
It's actually useful to know both ways because with scaling you can exclude an axis. Let's say you want to move them all to the XY position of some topology but leave Z unchanged. Then you can place the cursor on the target and use SSHIFT-Z0RETURN. There's just the additional step of W4 remove doubles.

Might want to note that scaling to zero with the set to cursor as in the asker's screenshot will collapse the selected vertices onto the 3D cursor directly, as opposed to just collapsing them onto a median central point as in the other modes

As I mentioned above, what I ended up doing was going into edit mode, selecting the vertex that will be the final point for all other vertices, pressed Shift+S and chose Move Cursor to Selection. Then I selected all the vertices I wanted to move, pressed Shift+S, and chose Move Selection to Cursor.

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


text:
Is there a way to turn off startup welcome screen?

I dont really need it and its kind of a nuisance.

not the place for an answer, but thank you too :D

It's right here in the Preferences (press Save user settings before restarting to test):

And don't forget to 'Save User Settings' to keep it that way.

I was checking the preferences for like 10 minutes :D i'm blind. Thanks. Eh, i have to wait 10 minutes to mark the answer as solved... Weird.

Where did it move to in 3.3? -- Edit: Oh gosh -- it's at the very top of the Interface menu -- I kept skipping over it without realizing because it's the very first checkbox.


text:
Group objects in the hierarchy
I want to group 3 objects in the hierarchy, so its sorted in unity's hierarchy, but when I CTRL+P the objects, the active object becomes an non individual object in unity and I cant select it in unity.
What a want: Group: 1, 2, 3.
What I get: Group: 2, 3.
Its really hard to explain this, at least for me, but maybe someone understands? I'll post pics of what i mean if needed.

Parent them all to an empty object.

Huh, kinda redundant, but it works. TY.


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Where do the collections go in 2.8+ when you hit Ctrl-G to make a group?

When I press Ctrl-G, the manual says it creates a collection with the selected items.
The screenshot shows my experience: select some meshes, press Ctrl-G, and I get a dialog box at the lower left.... and no other obvious effect. I dug around in the raw blend file using python and found I appear to have been creating collections with these commands, but they don't appear in the outliner? How does one use the hotkey to create a  usable collection?

Okay after a lot of digging it appears that Ctrl-G not creating a usable collection is actually known by the developers: Blender developer discussion thread.
Some of the devs on that thread say it needs to be fixed since the "Create Group" hotkey does nothing perceivable by the user. Others appear to want to leave it the way it is so that it can be used for a new "Common groups" feature when it is implemented. The discussion has been going on for about half a year and the current status appears to be that Ctrl-G does not do what one would expect from reading the documentation. At least I'm not missing something obvious.

That is a fairly accurate summary. While the shortcut does create a collection, it's not linked as you would expect. Perhaps the M shortcut is what you're looking for. It allows you to move the selected objects to a collection. You can also choose to create a new collection for them.

@RobertGützkow - Yes, I've been using those as workarounds.

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


text:
Keyframed animation from csv using animation nodes
I'm rather new to blender but would like to try to animate flows (in my case movements of animals between herds) using data in a csv file with the following structure:
movement#,Start_time,Origin_x, Origin_y, Destination_x, Destination_y
I've seen an excellent answer (here) with animation nodes to animate objects, but in the example, the location was available for each time step. Wouldn't be possible to do this with keyframes linked to location? The minimum "start_time" of the file could be set to 1 and the end keyframe could be a fixed value added to that or a calculated distance adjusted value in another column in the csv.
I've tried my best to develop it from the other example I mentioned, but I'm probably too "Green" on blender to make it work.
The goal is to animate several hundreds of movements using light streaks, but I'll get to that once (if) I manage to do the basics. Any help would be appreciated!

You create a loop and parse all the numbers, create an origin vector and a destination vector. Then in another loop, you use an Animate Vector Node to animate between both vectors, you subtract the parsed starting frame from the time and set the duration to the parsed duration. Use the output vector list to locate your objects and you are done. You can also cache the parsed loop for a performance boost.

Now animate and you will see the animation:

If you have an animal and you want to instance it and locate the instances, you could use the Object instancer node:

There is of course more to this, but it may be complicated for you at this stage.
Here is the file:

Thank you @OmarAhamad! From the example I get an idea how it works. I've managed to reproduce your example until the last "Vector list" node, that I'm probably too green in blender to add it. Must objects be manually created (1 per movement) or are (can) they be created from the list? Is there any chance you could share the blender file? Sorry for my ignorance, but visualization is just more like a hobby to me (if that is an excuse).

@Tnunes I edited the answer.

GREAT! Exactly what I was looking for. I'll start from there and see where I can get.


text:
Triangulation artifacts
After triangulation I've got these shading artifacts. how do I get rid of them?

Post a wire frame screenshot. Are you using sub-surf?

http://i.imgur.com/xIR6J6k.png

Your topology is a bit of a mess and its tough to tell if all the faces are planer. If they are, you could try the edge split modifier along that back edge. See this: https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/23597/26720


text:
Why is the preview render slower than the final render?
Firstly, sorry if that's a stupid question. I'm kinda noob :P
The thing is that "normal" rendering with GPU is slower than rendering in preview. I made sure that the resolution in which I render is the same as in the preview but it's still slower as if it was rendered with CPU.

I'm confused - are you saying that rendering with GPU is slower than rendering with the CPU or slower than doing a preview render (with OpenGL)?

OpenGL Render will be faster because it uses a different rasterization technique that uses a lot of shortcuts. Also, the materials aren't applied to it. The rendered viewport shading is also different from a final render because it sacrifices a lot of features for speed. Most notably, it uses dynamic bounding volume hierarchy to accelerate it and is one of the reasons the sampling looks weird in this viewport shading mode.

@UnholySheep
Slower that preview render.

I forgot to mention that I mean rendering using Cycles.

@hiya If you need to add more information you can use the [edit] link below your question.

If the question is about having the exact same sample count for preview and final render, and also roughly the same resolution, then the answer is that final render uses tile based rendering. Tiles of a size around 256x256 pixels usually perform best on GPU. That means, make the tile size bigger OR smaller, the final render (in most cases) will come out a bit slower. Now: the preview render basically samples the whole image as one tile. That means sampling one huge tile the size of your vieport space in pixels. Since that is a bit more inefficient on GPU, the render speed decreases.

Use rendering CPU to GPU, it can be faster then GPU
Change Render Setting
Use thisenter link description here

If you are rendering more colors, change to sampling to 200 to 10


text:
Import looks fine in texture preview but not material preview--why?
I'm new to Blender. I've imported an OBJ scene and am using Blender Internal to render. The preview looks fine in "texture" mode. But a single object (the door) becomes the default color in "material" mode and when rendered. I've compared the settings between the objects and they look the same to me but obviously are not. What should I be looking for and why would this happen with an OBJ & MTL file?
Thank you,
d. vyd

Basically you can't purely rely on imported materials, you have to make your own using the textures.

This has answered my main question regarding the missing material on the door--I will mark the question as answered. However, perhaps someone can explain why the wall and step materials seem to have been imported fine?

The importer does try to read and recreate the materials using the provided textures, it is however very unreliable and will often fail, especially for complex ones. Also viewport materials are meant as visual reference and are not representative of the final rendered appearance.


text:
Testing for overlap or collision while adding objects via Python?
My understanding is that objects can be added programmatically in Python fairly simply, such as:
import bpy
bpy.ops.mesh.primitive_cube_add(location=(1,0.0,2.0), radius=0.5)

However, in a generative art project, is it possible to test whether an added object overlaps (collides?) with a previously defined object and to modify its parameters if necessary and then retest? If this is indeed possible, can I also receive detailed information about the overlap/collision such as which object are involved, the amount of overlap, location of overlap, etc?
-d. vyd

see if this helps. https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/95616/generate-x-cubes-at-random-locations-but-not-inside-each-other

@Ratt, I appreciate the link. It looks like this approach will only work with cubes and spheres and other very simply shapes. It would either fail with slightly more complicated objects or would need to be overly cautious (intentionally large radius in collision test). Is there any way to use Blender's collision detection for arbitrarily shaped objects? I'm aware that this might be slow. Ideally, I would like objects to touch--but not overlap.

The script could be altered for a bounding box relatively easily, but if you are referring to a complete mesh collision test you would likely be better off adding the objects adding a rigid body physics type to it and running a physics simulation. The issue with that is the simulation would force objects to move out of each other as opposed to create them outside of each other. Perhaps updating your question with a bit more detail and examples of what type of objects (add some pictures) would help.

I consider this answered for now. @Ratt, I appreciate your link and suggestions.


text:
How to parent an object to another one but inherit the rotation from a third object?
I am rigging a robot leg and what I would like to do is to put a lateral bolt that should be fixed to the upper part of the leg and rotate when the knee rotates. What I did was to parent the bolt to the upper leg bone, and then add a copy rotation constraint for the x axis targeting the lower leg bone. I tried all the possible combinations of space (local to local, local to world, pose to local etc) but nothing worked, the bolt rotates not on itself but follows a circle path, moving far away from the leg. How would you achieve the result I'm looking for?
Thank you.

So the bolt needs to follow the upper leg, but to rotate when the lower leg rotates.
The copy rotation you used is good. But you need to involve an additional bone to obtain the result :

Here is the setting :

Add/extrude a new bone from the upper leg
Set it disconnected
Place its head at the center of the bolt
Align it with the lower leg bone and make sure that bolt bone and lower leg bone have the same roll (so that these two bones have the same local directions)
Assign the bolt vertices to this new/knee bolt's bone group of the mesh

Now (as you did), in pose mode, add a constraint to the knee bone like this :

Thank you very much, that's what I was looking for, I learned something useful for the future about how to rotate objects locally.


text:
Remove intersecting geometry from multiple objects
This is kind of hard to explain using words. Basically, I want to remove the intersecting part of a model for both objects. Sort of like the exclude function in Adobe Illustrator's pathfinder panel, but in 3d space.

I have a way that I've been doing it that takes way to long for how many times I need to replicate it. Here's how:

Use an intersect boolean to find where the two meshes intersect.
Duplicate the object with the boolean modiefier.
Remove the boolean modifier from the first object.
Apply the boolean modifier to the duplicated object. (I'll refer to it now as the intersect mesh)
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C and set Origin to Geometry. Then scale up the intersect mesh by a tiny amount. If I skip this step, step 6 results in this ugly mess:

Add a difference boolean modifier to both of the original objects and apply them both.

The end result is this:

Another possible solution would be to duplicate both objects and boolean the original two to their opposite duplicates, which takes just as long as the first way and it's a lot harder to keep track of object names.
Both processes take way to long and are very cumbersome. Is there any way to do this

Quicker
More accurately
With a greater amount of Objects (remove the intersections of all of them combined)

It would take some serious scripting to do this automatically over multiple objects.  I don't know of an Add-On to allow you to do this.  I will say though, your first process is more complicated than it needs to be.  (A.) Create two objects (B.) duplicate [Object1] (C.) Add Boolean to [Object1-Dup] (D.) Apply Boolean (E.) Add Boolean to [Object2] (F.) Apply Boolean. (G.) Delete [Object1].  In other words, you can cut out your step 3, 5, and 6.

Ok. Thanks for the reply. Do you know of any way to do this with another program besides blender?

I'm sorry, I don't.  A script to do this for a pair of objects may not be that complicated.

Alright. I know some pretty basic python, so I might be able to whip something up. Don't know about performing the same function with more than 2 objects, though. My guess is that it'll require a lot more booleans, and that'll definitely cause more problems. Thanks again for the support

For multiple object, you would need some kind of intersection detection (for deciding which objects to Boolean) and when more than two intersect with the same object, you'll probably need some kind of recursive algorithm.


text:
Exported model (done with cloud generator a-o) not showing probably
I am new to 3D design; and all my experience is with programming.
I used blender cloud generator add-on to produce a cloud, then exported it in (.dae) format. Instead of a cloud; I'm getting the raw shape only.
i.e if my cloud is composed of metaballs, the metaballs appear only.
Destination is Three.js project.
Screenshots:
-Blender:

-Imported Output in javascript:

Simulations and effects are not exportable, in collada or any other format. See https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/57531/fbx-export-why-there-are-no-materials-or-textures

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos Thank you very much for your feedback; saved me a lot of time


text:
Creating Holes in Cylinder for Lightsaber
I'm trying to create the graflex lightsaber, and im almost done. Although, I need help cutting 2 types of holes on the cylinder mesh (main body)

Circular hole in the mesh (Shown with arrow and circles) to reveal the geometry (the one with two small pins) I have under it
A square hole just above the word "cut"

You can refer to the reference image below
Thank you guys! I'd appreciate help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci1jBOm_5NY

I have a few pictures that I can set up to show you. First, you add 3 loopcuts through the area you are working in. After that, you select 4 faces to make the inset for the rectangle and then 6 for the circle. I select the inner faces after the inset on the area to be turned into a circle, and duplicate it and separate it from the mesh. In object mode, I select that set of faces and use Looptools > Circle to round them into a circle after shifting the view to top view down with selection by pressing Shift Numpad 7. Here I then turn on the magnet and select Faces and then just press G to grab and confirm without moving it - the circle is then projected to the cylinder underneath. Join them back together with ctrl-J and enter edit mode -  and then delete the faces underneath , and scale the circle to fit the hole.  I used alt-M top merge at last by selecting the outer ring vert and then the one in the circle. After completely welded back together, I inset the faces to create another edge loop and then delete the inner faces for the circle and the rectangle.

A faster way to punch a hole in a mesh is to use Knife Project and delete the selected faces with X. It's great when you have an organic shape and doing it as shown in the other post is not time-efficient.

If you don't mind ngons, then knife project can work but then you might as well go with BoolTool for that matter. Mine was to avoid a mess.


text:
Render image as Blenders viewport
Is it possible to have a model rendered as it's seen in the 3D view in Blender?
That means, no shadows, sharp edges and everything illuminated just like the image below?

Does the OpenGL option give you what you need? https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/opengl.html

Thanks rcgauer! That's exactly what I need. How do I go about accepting this answer now?

Max... not much of an answer, but I have posted it so that you can check to accept...

Also http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/15206/is-there-a-way-to-capture-the-viewport-in-blender-the-same-way-as-it-is-on-3ds-m

Sadly I didn't stumble upon the other question when I searched, but thanks to all for the help!

The OpenGL render should give you what you need. Find it either in the Info editor > Render > OpenGL Render image or in the 3D viewport header.  Read more about using it - OpenGL render.


text:
How to distinguish material and material slot
I have been creating and using materials in several projects now but not really understanding what I am doing. The confusion arises because the word Material seems to have two meanings and is used interchangeably. In one text I have read it is explained that Material has three slots - called Material, Texture and Image. Another says that a Material Slot comprises a Material and an Image. So Material in one meaning is a sub-set of Material in another meaning? But which way around is correct?
In the properties panel under the material button there are two + signs - one to add a material and the other to add a material slot. What is the difference?

Material Slots
A Material Slot is simply a selection of geometry elements. Nothing more. They define which material goes on which part of an object.
For a mesh object, a material slot contains a selection of mutually exclusive groups of faces (one face can only belong to exactly one material slot at a time) to which you may apply a material.
A material slot is a property of the geometry of an object data and is tied to its shape. At the most basic level for a mesh object, you can specify which discrete faces belong to which material slot. Under other object types, it is more limited but the principle still applies, you select a bunch of elements (like a continuous spline in a bezier curve, or a few characters in a text object) and assign it to one slot.
In other words, if you want to apply several materials to different parts of the same object, you create several slots to determine which material goes where.
Material Slots are not materials and hold no color or surface information whatsoever on their own. They are completely independent of material definitions.
Material slots do hold materials in them, and may commonly then have materials assigned or just remain empty. The same material can be applied to several different slots in the same object or shared across different objects, but one slot can only have one material assigned to it at any given time.
Material
A material, on the other hand, is a collection of information (surface properties, textures, colors, images, volumetric data among others) that define the appearance of a geometry either through its surface, volume or emission properties. It may or may not make use of image-based textures.
Materials can also be assigned to a slot in a "Per Object" or "Per Object-Data" basis. The difference is that if you apply a material "Per Object" every instance of that object can override that material independently per individual occurrence and have a different one in its place.
If you apply it "Per Object-data" to all objects sharing that object data (geometry) will have that same material applied to that one slot regardless, if you change the material assigned to that slot in one object, it will sync change it for all instances sharing that data.
Say for example the same car mesh that can have a yellow chassis in one place but a red on another while remaining a linked instance (per-object material), but the tires will always be black rubber regardless (per-object data forced material), if you change the tire material in one car it changes for all of the copies.

Materials cannot be assigned to an object directly, you need to add a material slot which you link to an actual material.
So clicking that plus button on the right side will add a new slot for a material. This won't create any material.

Then you can link it to an existing material...

or create & add a new material to the slot.

If you have a material linked and you click the plus button next to it's name, it will create a new material based on the current one and link it to the current slot.


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How to use Camera presets list
I have been exploring the camera settings in the object data tab and changed the camera by selecting (say) Galaxy S3 in the button marked camera presets. I am supposing that that changes the 'render camera' from its default to the focal length and sensor size of a Galaxy S3.

If that results in an equivalent focal length of 27mm do I need to do anything with that eg set the View lens in the properties panel to match it? It doesn't look like the latter impacts on the rendered view.
If I change the camera from default to S3 does this mean that if I map an photograph taken with a Galaxy S3 camera, that I have better chance of integrating it with objects I model?

But what is holding me up right now is

Once I have selected a particular camera in object data I cannot find a way back. I tried selecting Blender from the list of cameras but that retains the focal length of the S3 and maybe other parameters. How do I get back to default?

No, the viewport lens only effects the viewport when you are not in camera mode.
Yes, that's the idea.
Add a new camera to the scene. Shift + A -> Camera. Delete the camera. Now, select your original camera and go to the Object Data tab and change the Camera Data to the new camera's data (which is the default).


text:
Repeated animation
I am trying to animate the action of a clock escapement. The wheel is biased to anticlockwise rotation but restrained by the fork which reciprocates about its pivot. The first bunch of key frames are the wheel snapping round one notch before it is caught by the upper fork. The second bunch of key frames are the wheel being let go by the top of the fork and caught by the lower fork. There is a dwell between. (The animation covers 2PI/15 rotation of the wheel.)
I want to repeat this cycle but not return the wheel to zero each time. I have tried umpteen experiments with cycles, delta transforms and delta keyframes without success. Can someone kindly point me in the right direction please?

OP: Skip to step 5.
You can use a cyclic modifier with an offset.

Select the wheel (or whatever objects animation should be extrapolated).
Go to the graph editor.
RMB select the curve(s) in question. In this case it will probably be the Z rotation curve.
Press ShiftE and choose Make Cyclic. In the N Panel of the graph editor you can see the cyclic modifier which was added. You could also add the modifier with the dropdown menu. As you noted, right now the modifier will by truly cyclic and snap back to the first key after the last key.
Make the modifier cyclic with an offset, by choosing Repeat with Offset from the dropdown menu in the f-curve modifier.

Thanks. I went back to trying Cycles and found my problem. When you repeat a cycle of 48 frames in my case (1 to 48), Blender starts cycle No2 on frame 48 not on 49 thus losing one frame every cycle. If you give it 49 frames to repeat (0 to 48) then it accumulates frames at 48 per cycle and the animation works.


text:
How to repeat an action with offset in NLA?
Reading up to answer my question it seems that Blender once had an offset setting in NLA for use in conjunction with Repeat but that has been replaced with something else. I can't find out what it is.
I tried making a simple animation of the default cube of just a few keystrokes using the timeline and then using Cycles with Offset in the graph editor to repeat the action. Fine, but when viewed in the Action Editor, the repeat cycles cannot be seen and when pushed down to the NLA, the action strip is just the basic timeline animation with no repeats.
If I want to make an action strip comprising say 20 repeats of a cycle WITH OFFSET how can I push that action into the NLA or its cache so I can then use the full strip at will?

Look into ADD blending mode for NLA strip. Basically every copied NLA strip will be added to previous one

Can't find much on this. If I change Blending from Replace to Add it irrevocably doubles the size of the object (scaled at 1.0) in the first instance of the strip and does not offset transform on subsequent ones. I am putting them on the same NlaTrack. .

If you want to make it this way, you have to increase the lenght of the action manually. You can also use the Repeat function of the NLA editor below the red frame.

The repeat function in NLA has no offset function so building even this simple action manually seems to be the answer as you say. I can script it to make it easier.


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Why does my texture file not show up?
I'm new to Blender. Very, very new.
I wanted to use it for some gfx things but I just can't figure out how to see the textures in the models that I download. I use free3d.com to download models that usually come with an OBJ file and an MTL file. Whenever I import the OBJ file into Blender and I switch the viewport shading into 'Texture' everything is still gray. I have tried it with several other models that I have downloaded and it keeps on giving the same problem. Maybe I'm just missing something because I only just started using Blender, but if anyone could inform me about this, that would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!

Possible duplicate of .fbx export why there are no materials or textures?

Basically you have to manually create your own materials and texture them using the provided textures inside Blender and specifically for the render engine you plan on using

Thank you so much for replying! But where can I find the provided textures inside Blender?

Provided textures can't be found inside Blender, they should be saved on you hard drive along the downloaded models as regular image files, most commonly JPEG or PNG files. You then create materials in Blender and use those images as textures in them.

The thing is, I think the materials on the right (in this screenshot: https://prnt.sc/g5itty) are supposed to already have a texture but they're just not showing up? I have no idea how to find those textures or are they just simply non-existent?

Oh and! These are the only files that came with the download: https://prnt.sc/g5ivuf

Your downloaded models came with absolutely no textures at all, those in the list are materials, not textures. Role up your sleves, decide what render engine you want to use, activate it in the header, create some materials and download some textures from somewhere

I feel like such an idiot right now. Oh man..well, thank you anyway for helping me with this! At least now I know when I have textures or not. I appreciate it a lot!


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Two different objects at first then merge them, but keep them seperate on the former frames
I got two different objects, I want them to move seperately between first 40 seconds(frames), then want to merge them into one. However, if I would use CTRL+P after selecting the two, they also started to move together in the previous frames. I want two objects to be joint only after some point and want them to be seperate before that particular moment.
Thank you for your help!

There are a couple of techniques that could be used:

make a new Empty object E that is a child of object A that represents the position of object B after B and A lock together.  Give B a Copy Transforms constraint from Empty E, but keyframe its influence so it is 0 before they lock together and 1 after they lock together.
Keyframe A and B independently for the beginning, and after they lock together, you only have to keyframe A because B will copy its transform from empty E which moves with A because E is a child of A

Make 3 objects: A, B, and C.  C is a combination of a copy of A and a copy of B.  A and B are animated and renderable (the camera icon of the outliner) for the first part of the animation, but C is not renderable.  Then at the point where they combine A and B are keyframed to stop being renderable, and C is keyframed to become renderable, and then C is keyframed to move through the second part of the animation.
To create C you will need to make copies of A and B (shift-d duplicates, not linked duplicates) and then combine those copies without altering the original A and B.

Use a ChildOf constraint, you can animate the influence value so that it only follows the second object when you want it to.
On the frame the two objects come together keyframe the influence to 1.0 while the previous frame is keyframed at 0.0, then the next frame they will move together. You can also go the opposite way to stop the object following the other.
To keyframe the influence, place the mouse over the value and press I, or right click  the influence and choose Insert Keyframe.

The easy was to keyframe the location of the "child" when it is to be released is by using the Visual keying sets as described here.


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Can you use two computers to render in Cycles?
I have a fairly complex scene that I would like to render in cycles. However, it is taking forever (as I expected). I have two computers (a laptop and a desktop-both are Windows 10, neither has a graphics card, and from within the last 3 years.) Is it possible to somehow take advantage of both computer's power to render the scene more efficiently?

You should be warned: rendering a scene across two computers is ill advised.  Research has shown it leads to the purchase of a third computer.  And a fourth!

If you are rendering a single image
(Alternative solution)
Since you are using Cycles, you can render the same scene on the two computers using half the number of Render samples on each one, then compositing them (in GIMP or in Blender), superimposing one onto the other with 50% opacity.
The two computers must use two different values (like, 0 and 1) for "Seed", otherwise you'll only get the same exact image, with half the shading quality, twice.

Grant Davis in a comment suggests that each instance of blender should output an OpenEXR image, which allows for a finer memory representation of color, so that less information is lost on the way to the final image.
Once the two computers have created their renders and saved as .exr, open a new blender instance and set the render size to the same it was in your scene. Then create your compositing nodes: two image inputs and a mix node.
Here, each image was rendered with full global illumination at 128 samples. You can see the top one when I mute (M) the Mix node. The mixed version has a quality comparable to a 256 samples render.

For animations, Tooniis' solution works fine.

This in my mind is a better solution. But if the problem is in fact a memory bottleneck then neither might help.

this will not give the same result as rendering with 100 samples with the same seed. The only difference would be the noise pattern, but the render quality should be nearly identical, so it is not a problem at all.

If you use OpenEXR as the file format, EXR keeps additional information about the image that averaging the EXRs together creates an image that is closer to what blender would have produced. This post explains how they used this method:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-358277.html
http://rendergeek.com/understanding-openexr-formats/

If you are willing to invest time into setting it up, Blender DOES have a network rendering solution for multiple machine rendering (render farms/servers).
https://www.flamenco.io/
This way you can hook up both of your machines and split the render load between them.

If you are rendering an animation:
Render some frames on the laptop and some on the desktop, then combine the result files. Make sure you are rendering individual images not video. Render more frames on the faster machine and leave less for the slower one.
If you are rendering a single image:
Split your scene into 2 (or more) render layers, then render one/some layers on the laptop and the remaining one(s) on the desktop. After rendering you can combine the result rendered layers into 1 image using Blender itself or some image editing tool (like GIMP). Again, render the more complicated render layer(s) on the faster machine and leave the less complicated one(s) for the slower machine.

Instead of using layers I’d simply split the scene vertically/horizontally (like it’s done for threading). I imagine that using render layers may be less efficient or have side effects in cycles where basically everything affects everything.

Just curious, how to "simply" split the scene?

@JanMatys just split the objects into different render layers, render them on different computers then compose them into one final image.

A variation on the solutions mention here is one I've just started using:
Note this is for animations only, not stills.
Go to the render tab, under output and UN-check "Overwrite" and check "Placeholders". The default is the opposite to this.
Choose an output location that ALL computers can access. Then simply click the animation button. Repeat on all computers you have.
The first computer will render frame 1. the second will see there is a placeholder for frame 1 and start rendering frame 2 (making a placeholder too), the third will start to render frame 3. And so on..
This way all computers will co-operate with each other, rendering whatever frame needs rendering next.

This was the approach suggested in the official "Introduction to Blender" videos (see Blender YouTube channel). You may have meant to say "uncheck Overwrite", not "override"?

Thanks jules, I've corrected the word. Not seen that video, I think I heard about this method on Reddit.

Is that safe for animations that include things like smoke effects?

Also, is there a way to specify that on the command line, so I can start the renderers from a script without having to check the input file?

@SimonRichter You'd have to check/uncheck the checkboxes mentioned first, save the .blend file and then have something like this in your command line: "-o /some/network/location/my-anim#### -a" (the -a for animation, the #### will populate with the frame). Not sure about smoke effects, sorry.

@ScottHather, my point about smoke is that it needs a Bake run for continuity if I want to render single frames, so the question is mostly at which rendering stage the skip happens.

For an animation you make each machine render a different range of frames, as rendering an animation to a sequence of images is normally recommended it is similar to a normal render. Once finished you can add the image sequence to the vse and render to a movie file.
For a still image you can split the image up using the render border settings, like shown here so that each machine renders different parts of the final image, these can then be combined. With the crop to border disabled, and saved to an image format that supports alpha, such as png, you can open the images in gimp using open as layers and get each piece in place so you can then save the combined image. Having multiple images from the above script, you can use convert which is part of imagemagick to combine the images with convert chunk_* -layers flatten final.png

Another solution could be using a render farm like SheepIt Render Farm. It's easy to set up and it's free. The contra is that you "upload" the project to a third party (if the project is sensitive, it is better to go with local-only solutions) and that the content you can upload is restricted (no nudity or racism).

Install the software for your operative system in both machines https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/getstarted
Create an account.
Log in to the software with your account.
Upload a project to the website.
Wait until it is rendered by your computer and others.
Download the result.

Another drawback (if you see it as a negative point) is that while you have the program running it will render other people's projects. When you have a project uploaded, your computers have priority so you can turn the program off after the project is completed or, better, let it do some other project to help the community ;).

Crowdrender do a network render-farm addon. Pay attention to the setup instructions and it works a treat.
https://www.crowd-render.com/download


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How to have an object follow the surface of another object?
I have a bunch of planes as one object I'm using to create a crowd of people on a hilly terrain. I'm looking for a way to snap all the "people" to the curvature of the terrain, without have to grab each one individually and raise or lower it.

I tried the shrinkwrap modifier, but it flattens them out, rather than keeping them upright. Is there a modifier for something like this? Something like a surface deform modifier. Thanks!

Have you thought about using a Particle Emitter? You could Weight Paint the "hilly terrain" to control the density of the particles (people).

The density isn't the problem, it's making them follow the height of terrain I'm having troubles with.

You can use a Particle System.

I don't think the particle system isn't what I'm after. I'm also looking for a way to have fencing follow the terrain as well. You can see the fencing in the picture above.

You could use a "Lattice" but the planes/people wouldn't stay perpendicular to the surface of the terrain.

Related? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/10831/how-can-an-animated-object-kept-on-the-surface-of-an-ocean and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/26023/in-blender-3d-is-there-any-function-like-flow-along-surface-in-rhino-3d

A shrinkwrap constraint will position the object origin and not squash the whole mesh.

You can use a Particle System. Use your terrain as the emitter and the people as either an Object or a Group (Set their Origin to the bottom).
Set the Start and End time to 1.
Under Velocity change "Normal" to zero.

Choose either Object or Group (You'll need to separate your planes in Edit Mode press "P" and select Loose Parts). "Object" would be choosing one plane/person as the particle. With "Group" you could choose any number of planes/people for more variety (Select the planes in Object Mode and press CTRL +"G" to Group them).

Additionally you can have control over the Particle Systems density by Weight Painting and a Vertex Group. With your Emitter selected go into Weight Paint Mode and select an Add Brush (There also is a Subtract Brush).

Preform your Weight Painting. Blue represents the most density and red the least. Colors in between vary the density. This creates a Vertex Group with the default name "Group".

Go back to the Particle Emitter and under Vertex Groups > Density select or enter the name "Group".

Hey, thanks so much for the help. So I set the terrain up as the emitter, but I guess I don't know where to go from here.

I've edited the answer with some additional info. Ask if you need more...

Oh thanks, I see that now. However, that's just creating more particles rather than moving the existing ones.

Yes, it's a work around...

Well, I appreciate the help because I will be able to use this technique in the future, however I'm looking for a way to deform the existing object at the moment. I wonder if I can't use physics and animate them falling until they just collide with the terrain?


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Will new versions of Blender support my models from 2013 version?
I must use old (2013) version of blender for a bit of time.
I'm not doing so complex work, just simple Modeling & Unwrapping.
So i hope, if i will want to open my blender files in newer version, everything will be okay, right?

Please explain why you [must use old (2013)].  Just try your old file with the latest version today and test.  Most people would encourage you to use latest version for simple work.

It may be just a stretch to assume that "everything" will be okay, but Blender has long had backwards compatibility as part of its overall design philosophy, so that in almost all cases, you can load old blender content in newer versions, even retaining the UI of the older version.


text:
My system is slow, but can I run Blender better anyway?
this is my computer's system, I'm trying to use Blender 2.78, but it works so slow. Is there anything I can do about it?

Please edit your question, add more information and use the tool provide to upload images.

Thank you, man. i have already tried a bit older versions, but as they didn't work out either, i thought, problem isn't coming from choosing new version :) Now i'm downloading versions)))

Keep your expectations within reason and consider how much you are willing to commit to a hardware upgrade should you do so. Computer parts aren't necessarily cheap, so be sure to weigh the costa vs. benefits of a potential upgrade before diving headfirst into this. That said, here is some information about upgrading hardware.
3GB of RAM is limited with today's memory-hungry applications. Upgrading to 8GB or even 16GB won't magically turn your PC into a render powerhouse, but it is definitely a start.
Almost all RAM sticks are fairly simple to swap out, and shouldn't require too much technical know-how. However it is essential that you choose the correct type of RAM stick, else it will not fit onto your motherboard. If you're really unsure, take the PC to a local shop. Other upgrades, such as a CPU, are beyond the scope of this answer.
As for other tips to help performance, quit all nonessential applications when running Blender, and keep your CPU from running hot by ensuring the computer has substantial airflow i.e, keep it in an open area at room temperature and make sure the fans are operational.
Best of luck.


text:
single face has whole texture

Hello!
I need some help, I can't figure out why this single face has the whole texture I use for the whole face.
I'm a beginner and this is my first model, so this might be easy to fix, but I can't find any solution that works online.
thanks!
looks fine in editmode

Maybe related - https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/52379/apply-the-same-texture-to-multiple-faces. That face could be unwrapped alone from the rest of the mesh hence its scale on the UV map is way big compared to others. You could select it and part of the UV map it belongs to and stitch them or reunwrap once more with all selected, there might be other ways

Thanks for the answer! but no, its not way bigger compared to the others, it has the right size and is in the right place. When I re-unwrap it, it's still there

Did you compare size of the face or size of the UV island on the map? If texture changes its density on the mesh then first thing to edit is UV map. Can you include a screenshot of this face selected and UV editor opened and zoomed in (it's not visible on the shown above). Or you could upload the file and paste the link here.


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Delta Keyframes, how to use
If I want to keyframe a simple location change then I just set a key frame by moving the object to its initial location, press I, select location keyframe, move the timeline cursor to when the change ends, move object to next position, make another keyframe as before. The animation runs as expected.
If I do the same using delta keyframes FROM THE I DROP DOWN, I was expecting the object to move the same as above relative to whatever starting position I put the object in. But the object doesn't move. In the Properties, Object tab the delta transform numbers remain at zero. The object stays at the end of the cycle.
I know how to duplicate the object and type in numbers into the Object tab Delta transforms to produce the same movement but offset. I also know how to convert [all of the] keyframes to delta keyframes. I just do not understand what the purpose of delta keyframes in the I menu are for and how they work.

Delta transforms are used when you have some incorrect location in your animation, like if your animated object is at wrong place you can just adjust the location in Delta Transform.
If you don't use Delta transform for such repairing, you have to edit a particular keyframe by overwriting them.
For example, if you have a plane on which a cube is floating from one place to another, you will obviously make a Location keyframe by pressing I. But the problem arises when you want the same animation for another. Dupicate the animated cube at another place, and play the animation, you can't see the another cube in animation, you can see only one cube. Did it disappear?
No, it is just on the location where the original cube is lying during the animation.It has the same Location path which the original cube has, as it is been duplicated!
To fix this, you should use Delta Transform, assume that you duplicated the cube on X axis, now the path should move parallel to the original cube i.e on Y axis, but not on same X axis, so change the location of X axis in Delta Transform, and you'll get the parallel movement of both cubes i.e without affecting your animation movement.
What you will do in absence of Delta Transform?
As I mentioned above, you have to overwrite each keyframe by changing its location again and again by pressing I and selecting Location keyframe, depending upon the number of keyframes you have created. But this makes it easy if you want to change the initial location of any axis and make it permanent till the last keyframe. It will have the same animation but on different axis, which you have changed in Delta Transform.
Also Refer this.

I have found that by moving the object to each new position in the animation by manually changing the delta transforms cords in the Object tab followed by inserting a delta keyframe, I get the expected behaviour. With delta keyframes moving the object to its new positions in the viewport doesn't work. It wasn't obvious to me that you had to change the mode of moving the object about before inserting delta keyframes. That being the case it seems easier to set up the animation in the normal way and then convert all the keyframes to delta in Ctrl A.

ragim_w, I was able to get it to work as mentioned in the above answer, and without even setting a Delta keyframe. It was enough just to change the numerical value within a given Delta channel under Object Properties, and the animation was offset accordingly. I found that I only needed to keyframe the Delta channel if I wanted to change the extent of this offset OVER TIME. I don't know why the experience was different for you.


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VRML 2 export not visible
I am using Blender 2.7.8 on MacOS 10.12.3.
According to the wiki blender can export VRML2. And that's what I want to do.
I created an empty Blender file, imported an STL, applied a material and searched for the VRML2 entry in the "File -> Export" menu:

As you can see it's not there. But the (as far as I understand) responsible scripts are existing (location: /Applications/blender.app/Contents/Resources/2.78/scripts/addons/io_scene_vrml2).
Can you please tell me why the export vrml option is missing?

Activate it in the user preferences (addon tab, then look at 'import export' category : it is near the end of the list)

Go in user preference and under add-on tab search and activate the  add-on VRML2Export

I couldn't find a way to export .obj to .wrl in Blender 2.8. The only option in Blender is to export the .obj to .x3d and then use a script to convert the .x3d to .wrl. Though there is another way - not using Blender for that task. Instead you can use view3dscene. It is a viewer for many 3D models and it works like a charm!
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install view3dscene
view3dscene --write your_model.obj > your_model.wrl


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How to import a character into Unity with textures from BI?
So this has really got me stuck. I have created this character model with a simple rig below.

However when I put the viewport into material view you can see it goes black.
I've used the baked AO as a texture to which I bound to a material, you can see on the right side that it looks all linked, but it still stays black.
(I can't do this in cycles because the texture involves Ambient Occlusion which I baked.)

When I try to import my model and rig into Unity there is no texture at all on the model.
I'm really confused and would appreciate any help.
Thanks.

Is there any actual texture added to the material? Blender Internal can show the texture in the Texture shading mode without any texture assigned to the mesh (if all the mesh was selected when you choosed texture in the UV editor) This however won't make any difference for Unity as it doesn't know Blender's materials. To import texture there first save it as .png or any other suitable format (not sure Unity understands .psd) and import it as an asset, then apply to material there (not related to Blender)

I know somebodies still not getting the idea, here is the best solution for exporting from blender to unity with materials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjld8C482KA

Unity does not normally import textures along with meshes since this is in fact a poor design choice on your part, it's best to separate mesh from texture. Here is a document detailing what Unity can import from Blender with the .blend files.
Here is a post detailing the process of importing objects from Blender to Unity.
Brief step by step:

Generate a UV map for your mesh
Make the texture for the object
Save your texture file to a separate file. .jpg should do, or .png for textures with a lot of similar colors/few colors overall.
Save it as either a .blend or .fbx file to import to Unity
Import your object to Unity
Browse to find your object
Find your material options for your mesh, and drag your texture file from the file viewer into the texture/albedo slot

REMEMBER: Unity has limited import options from Blender, so don't use any nodes or anything that's not basic. You'll have to do all that work in Unity since it's the engine that will render it all.
Hope this helps

I am still new at the whole Unity thing. Thanks for your help though.

You're welcome. If you think my answer explained how to do it or gave you information you feel is important to answer your question, please consider marking it as the selected answer.


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How to flatten a mesh around an object
I would like to flatten a terrain mesh I generated using a racetrack mesh so the terrain appears flatter around the area where the track runs through, I've tried a few different modifiers for this and the closest one to what I needed was the cast modifier, unfortunately it only deforms with the 3 primitive shapes around the transform of the track and not the mesh itself. Is there a plausible way of doing this or would I have to sculpt the terrain manually?
The red circles in the picture below illustrate where I'd need the terrain to flatten out for the track to run through.
Thanks in advance.

Is your track generated using a curve modifier? I'm thinking you could make a "V" shaped boolean object extending upward to cut out a valley in the terrain.

that's a good idea I'll give that a shot and let you know how it turns out, thanks.


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Alt+Left Click doesn't select a loop of faces completely
I was following this tutorial: https://youtu.be/WxMwa0njGSM?t=18m50s
His faces have continuous "flows", but mine doesn't for some reason. I've removed doubles.

What could be causing this break of face flow?

Have you tried selecting the whole mesh and W > Remove Doubles? Also, go into wireframe view and make sure there aren't internal faces.

attach your file here https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ to see in detail what the problem is

Your topology is not clean. It's hard to say without the .blend, but the edge to the left of the right problem area for example looks suspicious, half selected and half black. Which suggests double faces or at least a double edge.

If you were able to select the left faceline in one go, it means the unselected face somehow sits on top of the line, seemingly unconnected to the rest. Remove double by default has a very tiny radius so it doesn't necessarily catch everything. And it only works on selected faces, so the culprits might not have been selected at the time. Could very well be that you accidentally created an ngon somewhere and the verts are basically on top of each other.
Clear your selection, go into Edge or Vertex Select Mode (they provide slightly different clues) and hit CTRLSHIFTALTM (Select Non Manifold).
This shortcut selects every edge that hasn't exactly 2 faces attached to it and is likely to show you part of the trouble.
The amount of selected verts in the upper right corner will help with the diagnosis as well.


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how can I select Animation in Action Editor (Blender Python)
i have a tiny problem, i search a Python Command the in [Dope Sheet > Action Editor]
choose/select a Animation (in Collection).
i saw the Python access bpy.data.actions["Walk_Anim"] but i can't find the exact reference.
her one example by my problem:
i use Blender v2.78 and i have the Animation:

" Crouch_Anim "
" Idle_Stand "
" Jump_Up "
" Walk_Anim "

my Skeleton use now "Walk_Anim" but i wish try to set him on "Idle_Stand" (but only with a Python Command)
my question is now, how is the right Python Command for the selecting the Animation in the Collection.
best regards
- TheDevil
P.s. i'm a newbie in BPy

The action editor displays the action of the currently selected object. Each object can only have one active action.
To alter the action used by an object, which is then displayed in the action editor, set the objects action property. The action is found in the objects animation_data
bpy.context.object.animation_data.action = bpy.data.action['Idle_Stand']

I had to use bpy.context.object.animation_data.action = bpy.data.actions.get("Idle_Stand") to select an action


text:
Difference Boolean causes problem with smooth shading
I've only recently started using blender and have been using the difference Boolean quite a bit. Most of the time there are no problems, however when trying to create a hole in a phone model I'm working on the result in smooth shading is a massive dark shape across the object. This does not appear when using flat shading.
Like I said, I'm new to blender so any help would be appreciated! I've looked through forums and videos but have found no answer.
Thanks.

Don't use booleans, use proper topology instead

try adding edge split modifier

Thanks! The Edge Split Modifier seems to have worked perfectly.


text:
Imported fbx with armature behaves weird in blender
I tried to import a posed model from dazstudio into blender but somehow the armatures are pretty messed up. Any help is appreciated! >.<
This is in dazstudio:

This one is in blender:

I tried to adjust some of the import settings in blender but none of them seems to work.
These are my current settings:

Is there a rest pose equivalent in DAZ you can try to export / import?

Have you tried Makehuman (http://makehumancommunity.org) or Manuel Bastioni Lab (http://www.manuelbastioni.com) these plugins are both free and Manuel Bastioni is fully integrated inside Blender, is really worth to check it out.
I had a similar issue importing FBX poses from Mixamo, the bones came all wrong, so what I did was:
1- import the pose without skin from mixamo into blender.
2- export that same pose as a BVH file from blender. (Can you export BVH from DAZ Studio?)
3- import a character from Makehuman into blender then apply the BVH to this character.
Hope it helps.


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How to set icosphere's radius
Is that possible to set the exact radius for a icosphere somehow? Or if not, how scale/size is related to its radius?
I tried several tutorials but when I measure it in my game, it does not match. The game engine I programmed is exact, so I think the problem is that the radius is not correct in the model.

The size property when adding an icosphere corresponds to the radius. What about it leads you to believe it is not correct? Have in mind that at their default subdivision they are not totally geometrically even.

You can't do this out of the gate. It is by default not proportional in size on the X & Y axis. This shape is way more about equal triangles than it is about radius of a sphere.
Look at the Width and Height properties when the object is at full scale.
Rotate about Z axis 17°
Look at the Width and Height properties when the object is at full scale again.
You might be thinking...
What If I rotate about Z axis 8.5°
now check your Z value and your line of thinking should get you the answer.
Once all your bounding box dimensions equal out, scale it up until it reaches 2.00, and the apply the scale.
Once you have done this, scale will represent the radius of your icosphere.

Also, you may want to look up the terms: inscribed & circumscribed, as this may affect the actual radius value you want to reference.


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Object Pointer Property in Adjust Last Operation panel gives weird results
I want to have an object field in the Adjust Last Operation panel: the object selected there would be used in several modifiers I add. However I noticed two things:

if I use the Eyedropper to select an object in the scene OR click the X icon, the panel closes without keeping the result
if I set objects from the dropdown list the first selected object is 'stuck' in there even if I select other objects

Here's a gif. First I try the eyedropper, next I chose objects from the list.

My code:
import bpy

class TEST_Prop(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    obj: bpy.props.PointerProperty(name = "Object", type = bpy.types.Object)

class TEST_OT_TestOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "test.test_operator"
    bl_label = "Test Operator with Object prop"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER", "UNDO"}

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.object

    # to reset the object
    def invoke(self, context, event):
        context.scene.TEST_Prop.obj = None
        return self.execute(context)

    def execute(self, context):
        ob = context.view_layer.objects.active
        shr_mod = ob.modifiers.new(name='Shrap',type='SHRINKWRAP')
        shr_mod.target = context.scene.TEST_Prop.obj or None
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        row = layout.row()
        row.prop(context.scene.TEST_Prop, "obj")

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_class(TEST_OT_TestOperator)
    bpy.utils.register_class(TEST_Prop)
    bpy.types.Scene.TEST_Prop = bpy.props.PointerProperty(type=TEST_Prop)

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(TEST_OT_TestOperator)
    bpy.utils.unregister_class(TEST_Prop)
    del bpy.types.Scene.TEST_Prop

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

What am I missing?

Operators only work with primitive properties as arguments (why you're not keeping the PointerProperty inside the operator). Not sure why it's not working, but my guess is operators aren't good at using the PointerProperty as part of its arguments. May need to check if there's an existing bug for this...
A simple workaround is to only store the prop as its name, and then use it
in your operator to find the given. Blender can even keep the same type of search UI with prop_search:
import bpy

class TEST_OT_TestOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "test.test_operator"
    bl_label = "Test Operator with Object prop"
    bl_options = {"REGISTER", "UNDO"}

    obj_name : bpy.props.StringProperty()

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return context.object

    def execute(self, context):
        ob = context.view_layer.objects.active
        shr_mod = ob.modifiers.new(name='Shrap',type='SHRINKWRAP')
        if self.obj_name in context.scene.objects:
            shr_mod.target = context.scene.objects[self.obj_name]
        else:
            shr_mod.target = Nonea
        return {'FINISHED'}

    def draw(self, context):
        layout = self.layout
        layout.prop_search(self, 'obj_name', context.scene, "objects")

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

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

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

I double checked your use cases and it worked for me :)

Thank you for explanation and the workaround! While this works, for me personally it won't work very well because clicking on X of the prop_search still closes the Adjust Last window and, more importantly, without the eyedropper this thing won't be much help for me (too many objects in a scene). I think I'll just use the Active Object as a target if more than 1 obj are selected. And yes, I'll check if there's a report for that.

Another solution is to display the object pointer field in a panel somewhere, select it and then execute the operator. But agreed you may as well use the active object to do it

Agreed, the lack of eyedropper is rough. But I agree with @Gorgious in using a panel and not rely so much on the last operation section. Blender has set it up that operators should only expose primitive prop argument - anything else doesn't work as well :/


text:
How do I turn off these bounding boxes?
When editing my model, it looks like this:

when I press P to go into 'game-mode' (or however it is called)
it looks like this.

This question is NOT about the Texture space bounding box (dashed orange or black, depending on selection state) around the selected object. This I can turn off in the properties area, in the objects tab, in the Display panel, by ticking off the Texture Space.
It is also not about the bounding boxes you get by selecting a different viewport shading. As you can tell by the right most object, the red bounding boxes are bigger than the objects Texture space, ... or viewport bounding box (I checked).
What are the red boxes surrounding my objects?
Why are some meshes green while others are not shown at all?

Uncheck "Show Physics Visualization."


text:
Some areas won't let me loop cut?
I'm having a few issues with Blender..
1. I'm trying to make a loop cut in this area:

But it won't let me make a loop cut there! There are other areas that I want to do loop cuts as well. I noticed in certain areas if I dissolved edges, I wasn't able to make loop cuts there anymore. How can I fix this?

I am trying to move a specific vertices, but it's doing this:

How can I move it to where I want to if that happens?

you only can make a loop cut in a quadrilateral face (4 edges)

Also related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/7990/why-does-loop-cut-and-slide-ignore-some-faces-but-not-others

Thanks for those topics Mr Zak. I'm new to the site and hadn't seen them. Using the knife tool works to create that loop cut once it has 4 edges.

Why is that 2nd thing happening though?

If you mean part of the question related to the 2nd screenshot then it's another question (which should be posted separately) and at the moment not clear one (did you want to move selected vertex or did you actually move it, what is not as expected etc). Anyway it's another question..


text:
Inside of mesh is see through when trying to make a hole?
I am trying to make a hole in this mesh:

but when I delete the vertices/faces, this happens:

How can I delete the top and bottom in the middle without this happening? I want the inside to look like how it does on the outside, not look like there is stuff missing.
What it looks like when rendered:

How does it look like when rendered, are they only missing in the viewport? Backface culling would've been my first guess, but that's not it according to you.

Just went into Rendered shading, and it looks like how it should. But if I import it into another program (like Roblox Studio) it looks like how it does with the inside missing and if the rendered shading was turned off.

So the screenshot isn't from Blender but Roblox Studio?

No, the screenshot is from Blender, I just mean that when I save the model like that, it shows it the same in that program as it does in Blender.

What version of Blender are you using? Anyway the behavior would make sense when at some point backface culling would be involved, because that discards faces with normals pointing away. Essentially you don't have faces with normals pointing inside. The proper way of solving this is by actually modelling the inside by extruding and offsetting the top ring and connecting it at the bottom.

Or using the Solidify modifier.

This looks normal to me.  The cylinder with which you started is not solid - it is hollow.  So when you round off the edge and then delete the end of the cylinder, you would expect to be left with that rounded edge only.  Blender doesn't automatically make hollow objects solid.
I presume you're making something like a mug.
Instead of deleting that end face, pull it down inside the mug to form the inside and bottom.
Alternatively, after deleting that face, select the edge of the remaining cylinder and Extrude it down inside.
Try following Blender Guru's "donut" tutorial in which he does exactly what I describe when creating a coffee cup.  You can find it here...
https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/blender-beginner-tutorial-series


text:
Increments for moving objects gets messed up?
Sometimes when I am in a project, somehow the increments (I guess this is what you call it) for moving objects gets messed up or reversed? Like see here:
This is what normally happens:

This is what happens when it gets glitched (it's like you are holding Control when moving it, but I'm not)

How do I fix this when it happens? I want it to just move like it does by default. If I wanted to move it that way, I would just hold down Control when doing so!
I hope this made sense. Thank you!

Simple, you probably hit Shift+Tab to enable "Snap during transform" (magnet icon on the 3d view menu)

You've accidentally enabled Snapping during transform (the little magnet icon) with Increment setting. So it's automatically trying to snap to the "grid" of the world when you move it around.
It's a super handy feature when modeling.
You can read more here Transform Snapping
Hope this clears it up. I highly recommend reading up on this feature and playing around with it, it's SUPER useful when polymodeling and moving things around.


text:
bmesh.ops.inset_region gives unexpected results
I want to create an object based on the active one with inset faces and modified vertex coordinates. Inset works as expected if I don't modify verts coordinates but if I do it gives me unexpected results. Do I need to somehow "recalculate" bmesh after I modify verts positions?
Here's the result I'm getting:

Here's a code I run on a Plane object. As an example I make every point of the object 1 unit higher. I tried to include different variants of .ensure_lookup_table() without any luck.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector

ob = bpy.context.object
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(ob.data)

for index, v in enumerate(bm.verts):
   v.co = v.co + Vector((0,0,index))

# insetting bmesh
inset_faces = bmesh.ops.inset_region(bm, faces = bm.faces, thickness=0.5, use_boundary=True, use_even_offset=True)

# creating mesh
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("mesh")
obj = bpy.data.objects.new("new_obj", mesh)
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(obj)

bm.to_mesh(obj.data)
obj.data.update()
bm.free()

What am I missing?

Update the normals.
After you "twist" face by index translation, the normals are not recalculated unless we explicitly call normal_update either on the bmesh instance, or on a per face basis.
Update Edge Info when using script in Edit Mode
Script with that edit, also optionally changed operator to inset individual.
import bpy
import bmesh
from mathutils import Vector

ob = bpy.context.object
bm = bmesh.new()
bm.from_mesh(ob.data)

for v in bm.verts:
   v.co.z += v.index

# update the normals
bm.normal_update()
# or on per face
'''
for f in bm.faces:
    f.normal_update()
'''
# insetting bmesh
inset_faces = bmesh.ops.inset_individual(
        bm,
        faces=bm.faces,
        thickness=0.5,
        #use_interpolate=True,
        use_even_offset=True)

# creating mesh
mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new("mesh")
obj = bpy.data.objects.new("new_obj", mesh)
bpy.context.scene.collection.objects.link(obj)

bm.to_mesh(obj.data)
obj.data.update()
bm.free()

That's what I was missing! Thank you!


text:
Evaluate a curve with a bevel as a curve, not a mesh in Geometry Nodes
If a curve has a bevel depth (aka radius) or bevel object (aka profile) it's automatically evaluated as a mesh in GeoNodes:

Is it somehow possible to use beveled curve in geo nodes without removing its bevel and reconstructing it in Geo Nodes?
Use case: I have a lot of curves with different profiles and bevels and I want to add some objects to them with a single geometry setup, without recreating every single radius and profile for each one of them.

Why don't you use distribute points on faces?

This looks like a limitation. A curve should not be automatically converted to a mesh in one case and not in the other, without any information given to the user as to why nor any way to control the behaviour. I think you should bring this to the developers' attention.

@Gorgious  It's deep in the system? The same as  a curve having to be converted to a mesh before being able to apply constructive modifiers? Anything which gives a curve a surface implicitly converts it to a mesh, further down the pipeline.

@RobinBetts yes I believe this is the explanation, too. I don't expect it to change but this question is a testimony to why this particular behavior could benefit from being communicated more clearly to the user. I think the correct workflow in this case is to keep the curve as a curve and not play with the bevel or extrude properties, and use another object to do it inside a new geometry nodes tree. That way the underlying curve data is usable in any GN tree, as a curve. But of course this means going all in "GN" or nothing from the start of a project.

@Gorgious ..Maybe the 'Legacy Impedance' is that modifiers are a stack, not a (Houdini-like) tree. If you could have more than one Geometry output to a GN group...   ...I don't know how radical 'Everything Nodes' is envisioned to be...

Reverse engineering of a mesh?
...or Mesh to Curve in a peculiar way?
Yes, this is partially possible with the following example...
Prerequisites are:

The original curve profile must consist of a simple geometric shape (circle, quad, etc.) with an even number of points
The original curve needs at least one subdivision (resolution higher than 1)

A curve is obtained which:

runs along the centerline of the mesh
has the same resolution as the mesh (not the original curve, but the evaluated points)
contains a relative value for the radius of each point

And this is how it works:

At the beginning, it is necessary to elicit whether the mesh was created with the Fill Caps option or not.
In addition, it must be checked whether the radius at the beginning or end of a curve had a value of 0, or not.
From these two factors and the number of total points, it is possible to find out the number of points that belong to the caps and that do not belong to the sides.
Since in a mesh of this type the points for the caps are always at the beginning, they can thus be easily removed.
At the same time, it is possible to determine the number of points that make up the profile.

Now that the points of the caps have been selected and we know our profile, it is relatively easy to extract two opposite sides from the rest of the mesh.

From these extracted opposite sides, the mean value is calculated point by point, which represents the position for an interior curve.

Finally, a value for the radius is also calculated based on this distance and transferred to the curve points.

Here is an overview of the entire node group:

Here is the blend file:

By the way, this example does not work with circles or other closed objects, but it can certainly be extended in this direction.

Interesting... I just wrote an answer for basically the same thing: I don't deal with the caps, but my algorithm should work for closed shapes. And it works for Blender 3.0:

The short answer to "Can I use the curve after it was converted to a mesh by curve bevel?" is no unfortunately. In order to keep the existing behavior of curve objects, the implicit conversion to mesh when the "bevel geometry" settings are used can't really be removed. However, like usual, nodes provide more flexibility, since you can pack multiple geometry types in a single node link.
This isn't exactly what you want, but one solution is to use the curve to mesh node in geometry nodes to generate the curve, and then join it with points so you can have both in one object.
With this solution you do have to move the bevel object and the radius to the modifier properties.
The separate components node is meant to suggest that the points can be used separately from the mesh in the next modifier.


text:
Getting a normal pass without normal maps (in Eevee)
I'm trying to get a normal pass without normal maps in it in Eevee: only geo normals. Currently my normal pass looks like the left image and I want a right image (the same scene rendered without materials)

I'm thinking of writing a script that'd be used only to render this pass: the script would basically disable bump nodes, disable lights (to render faster), disable other passes (to not overwrite them) render the pass, re-enables everything back. But I wonder if I'm missing something and there's an easier way?
p.s. rendering a Normals Matcap from workbench won't work with perspective cameras, I need true normals.

I didn't find a solution so decided to write a script. It uses my scene setup so there's no point of pasting the whole thing but I'll paste a pseudo code that explains my approach
import bpy
import time

# disabling things
def get_color_management_settings():
  # returns some current values from scene.display_settings and view_settings:
  # look, exposure, gamma, etc
  pass

def set_default_color_management_settings():
  # sets various display settings to a zeroed state
  # so that the render wouldn't be affected by custom gamma/exposure/color profile settings
  pass

def set_color_management_settings(values):
  # sets various display settings to previously saved settigns
  pass

def disable_passes():
  # disables all the render passes but normal: breaks connections in compositing tab
  # renames 'normal' pass to 'geo_normal'
  # returns everything to restore to defaults:
  # file_output_node
  # render_output_node
  # outputs_arr: array of sockets that were connected
  pass

def disable_materials():
  # for each material
  # disconnects Material Output from the shader node
  # creates a blank Diffuse node and connects Material Output with it
  # creates and returns a dict with mat_name: [original_input_node, original_input_socket]
  pass

def disable_lights():
  # gets and returns all the lights that aren't disabled in render
  # also disables them in render
  pass

def disable_volumes():
  # gets and returns all the objects with Volumetric materials
  # also disables them
  pass

# enabling things
def enable_passes(file_output_node, render_output_node, outputs_arr):
  # re-enables original nodes connections in the compositing tab
  # renames 'geo_normal' pass back to 'normal' pass
  pass

def enable_lights(lights):
  # re-enables all the lights that were disabled
  pass

def enable_materials(materials):
  # removes temporary Diffuse nodes
  # and reconnects original shader nodes with Material Output node
  pass

def enable_volumes(volumes):
  # re-enables objects with volumetric materials
  pass

def main():
  timeStart = time.perf_counter()

  # getting active color management settigs
  color_management_settings = get_color_management_settings()

  # setting default color management settings
  set_default_color_management_settings()

  # disable links in compositing
  file_output_node, render_output_node, outputs_arr = disable_passes()

  # disable objects with volumentric materials: saves around 30% of render time
  volumes = disable_volumes()

  # changes all materials to use a black diffuse node
  materials = disable_materials()

  # disable all the lights: saves render time
  lights = disable_lights()

  # render
  bpy.ops.render.render()

  # re-enable everything back
  enable_passes(file_output_node, render_output_node, outputs_arr)
  enable_volumes(volumes)
  enable_materials(materials)
  enable_lights(lights)
  set_color_management_settings(color_management_settings)
  timeEnd = time.perf_counter()

  # render takes about 1 second for simple scene, about 7-8 seconds for complex ones on 2070s
  print(f"time: {timeEnd - timeStart:0.4f} seconds")

main()

The result: normals_geo.png with geo normals and correct gamma, normals.png that comes from default render setup:


text:
region_data.view_location doesn't change after switching between workspaces
I'm trying to copy the viewport camera location/orientation from one workspace to another but the region_data props like .view_location or .view_matrix between the workspaces give me the same values.
Should I somehow force update the context or what am I missing? I've tried to add context.view_layer.update() and the DRAW_WIN_SWAP-thing from the Python Gotchas between the context calls without success.
rv3d_location = context.region_data.view_location
print(rv3d_location)

context.window.workspace = bpy.data.workspaces['Layout']

# context.view_layer.update() # didn't help
# bpy.ops.wm.redraw_timer(type='DRAW_WIN_SWAP', iterations=1) # also didn't help

rv3d_location = context.region_data.view_location
print(rv3d_location) # prints the same values

Try:  context.area.tag_redraw()

@Karan thank you for your reply, unfortunately it didn't work: still getting the same values

Try: rv3d_location = context.region_data.view_location.copy()

The same problem here a few months ago when workspace was changed by script. The sticking point: bpy.context.window.workspace = bpy.data.workspaces[ANY] toggles the workspace not before the script is finished.

"It’s not supported to immediately refresh the UI. That happens
delayed after scripts (and built-in operators) finish executing."

https://devtalk.blender.org/t/set-a-choosed-workspace-to-active/3318/3
Try:
import bpy
print("before:" , bpy.context.workspace)
bpy.context.window.workspace = bpy.data.workspaces['Layout']
print("after", bpy.context.workspace)

the same workspace will be returned.
So we need a trigger that will operate when script is finished. The message bus system is suitable for this. https://docs.blender.org/api/current/bpy.msgbus.html#module-bpy.msgbus
The script attaches an msgbus to window.workspace and saves the region_data of Scripting workspace before changed. Function msgbus_event is called after the script and sets the saved values in region_data of workspace Layout (tested 2.9.3 and 3.3.2)
import bpy

# get region_data from active ws
def get_region_data():
    area_v3d = [a for a in bpy.context.screen.areas if a.type == 'VIEW_3D']   # area View3D
    if area_v3d:
        region_v3d = [r for r in area_v3d[0].regions if r.type == 'WINDOW'][0]   # main region
        region_data_v3d = region_v3d.data                                        # region_data
        return region_data_v3d
    else:
        print("no 3DView in workspace '%s'" % bpy.context.workspace.name)   # e.g. ws Rendering
        return None

# msgbus callback
def msgbus_event():
    rv3d_new = get_region_data()  # get new region_data
    if rv3d_new:
        print_region_datas(rv3d_new)
      # set values
        rv3d_new.view_location = rv3d_old.view_location
        rv3d_new.view_matrix = rv3d_old.view_matrix
        # clear if only first change
        bpy.msgbus.clear_by_owner(bpy)

# print region values
def print_region_datas(rv3d):
    print("[%s]" % bpy.context.window.workspace.name)
    print("view location:", rv3d.view_location)
    print("view matrix:", rv3d.view_matrix)

# prevent double entries
def register():
    # msgbus clear
    bpy.msgbus.clear_by_owner(bpy)
    # msgbus new
    bpy.msgbus.subscribe_rna(key=(bpy.types.Window,"workspace"), owner=bpy, args=(), notify=msgbus_event,)
def unregister():
    bpy.msgbus.clear_by_owner(bpy)
if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

# testcall from ws Scripting
global rv3d_old                # available for msgbus_event
rv3d_old = get_region_data()   # region_data Scripting
print_region_datas(rv3d_old)
bpy.context.window.workspace = bpy.data.workspaces['Layout'] # change ws

Awesome — thank you for the explanation and the solution!


text:
Denoise is missing in 2.79
I just downloaded the official release of 2.79, and I'm missing the Denoise feature in my Render properties.  Is there some step I'm missing in order to activate it?

It's in the scene panel, not render.

Well that was a good 40 minutes wasted, wow I can't believe I missed it was on Render Layers, not Render.  Thanks for you rhelp @Mareck!


text:
Moving one vertex moves all connected vertices
Sometimes when I try to move a vertice it moves the triangles around it to. But it won't do it with a certain mesh. How do I make it so when I move the point it moves all the triangles connected to it?
notice how in the first picture I lift it and only one part comes up
but in the second picture all the shapes around it lift up too.
that's what I want to happen

Please add some images about what you are doing and trying to do, use edit under your question to add the images and use the tool provide for it.

Go to Edit mode, select everything by pressing A, press spacebar and type in "Remove doubles" and click that. That should fix your problem.

In the first case you have double vertices, you are lifting one, but there is another at the same place. Everything connected to the vertex you are lifting moves with it, but everything connected to the other one doesn't, because you are not moving the vertex.
To solve this problem for one spot, select both vertices (easily done with switching to wireframe mode [Z], and circle select [C]), and merge them into one ([Alt+M]-> At center).
If you have  a lot of these doubles, you can solve this for the entire mesh by selecting everything [A], and remove doubles ([Ctrl+V]-> Remove Doubles).


text:
How do i export with textures?
I'm trying to make a model for a mod and i'm not 100% sure how to export it with texture. I have searched all over the internet for tutorials but keep on failing. I know it probably me and you are annoyed that you keep on seeing this question.

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

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


text:
Any way to have more than 8 vertex paint slots?
Currently there is a limit of 8 vertex paints slots, is there anyway to have more than 8 slots?


text:
Nothing to export, 0/7 objects selected?
When I try to export this item as a collada, nothing exports. It will sometimes go through with the export (when I export as collada - default) but nothing is actually in the file. When I try to export as collada - avastar I get : 'Nothing to export' and the option to export 'Selection only' is grayed out.
I noticed that when the item is selected, in the top bar it says Objects : 0/7 which I assume means its not registering the object even though its physically there.
Any suggestions?

Please provide your .blend file

This file uses Avastar -

I've tried exporting as collada and it worked, and then imported the exported one and it worked as well.

I even tried exporting with a newer version of Blender - no success. It may be because of the Avastar addon?

Not sure, Do you want me to send you the exported collada .dae model?

Sure but I'm curious as to why when selected now.. it says Verts 0 - Faces 0 - Tris 0 - Objects 0/7 - Lamps 0/1 ... is there a setting that's wrong that im missing?

FYI I opened a previous iteration of this skirt and it is saying there is an object that is exportable. So some setting must have changed. I also tried to open the newest version of the skirt in a blender install that did not have the Avastar addon as I thought that might be causing the problem, and it was still unexportable.

that's weird as I was able to export it on my machine

I identified that there is an issue when I import a collada, and then save the file as .blend. When I reopen the .blend file, the collada object is not editable like shown above. How to fix it, I'm still not sure. I had to delete the object and re-import the collada, losing my rigging and uvs.

Don't answer your question when you want to give more details since it's not an answer to the question. It's better to edit the initial question.

Render Layers -> Layer -> Scene
Make sure the boxes, of which layer you want to export the meshes from, are checked. You can select multiple boxes while holding down SHIFT.


text:
blender lagging only with sliders
Blender seems to be running smoothly, but I am experiencing lag when I attempt to adjust the sliders of my rigged human mesh.
https://www.screencast.com/t/ZkR7tL44NlG
As you can see when i click/drag.. it freezes for a moment and then snaps to the correct size. But this makes it extremely difficult to test the mesh in all different sizes.
I also experience lag when the face count is too high but I figured that was normal?
I have a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics card

Does your model have any subsurf? If so, you could toggle it off and that could help.

No subsurf, and I deleted all of the extra layers so that it would be less bogged down. My scene currently has 23k verts 31k faces 45k tris


text:
Balloon Simulation - String is floating like balloon
I'm trying to simulate balloons gathering under a tent. I've finally figured out the stiffness and gravity of the balloon using a combo of soft body and rigid body modifiers, but the string is now the only issue.
(View from bottom looking up)

The string just continues to gather at the top instead of hang down. How do I make the balloon have negative gravity, and the string have positive gravity? Or.. is there another solution for it to remain hanging down?
The eventual goal is to add maybe 50 balloons to the scene to have them fill the tent with their strings hanging down.

Could you do this in 2 passes? First bake your balloon simulation, then pin your ribbons to the baked balloons in a new simulation, based on something like this example.

@cegaton My understanding was that the balloon and string are both soft body - and the issue is to have them each behaving using different field weights. The original example appears to have used the same soft body so the negative gravity used to produce a floating balloon results in the string also floating due to both sharing the same field weights.

You can create two separate soft body simulations - one for the balloon and the other for the string - and link them together via the Copy Location constraint.
Start by creating the balloon and then, in Edit mode, select just the vertex where you want to attach the string. On the Mesh properties add a new Vertex Group and name it 'Knot'. Assign the selected vertex to the group.
Create the string as a separate mesh as a string of vertices (you can add thickness via a Skin modifier). In Edit mode, select just the 'top' vertex and, again, add a vertex group and assign the selected vertex to the group. In Object mode, add Soft Body and use the new group in the Goal properties so only that vertex is pinned. Increase the Default goal strength to 1.0. Also, set the origin of the 'string' mesh to the location of that top vertex.
Now, add a Copy Location constraint to the string, specifying the balloon as the Target. Set the Vertex Group on the constraint to the 'Knot' vertex group. This should result in the string being tied to and following the balloon while still being a separate soft body (so they can have different Field Weights (ie, negative gravity for the balloon, positive gravity for the string)).
This should produce a result similar to the following :

I have finally created a balloon-release simulation that seems to work.  Here I use cloth (perhaps wasteful as the balloon rarely deforms), and I use a negative gravity weight on the balloon, but positive gravity weight on the string/ribbon.
If you make use of this blend file, please consider an up-vote for this answer, so I gain reputation points on this site.   Thanks.
It was a brain damaging exercise with blender, while is rather easy with 3ds Max (tears).
You're welcome!


text:
How Would i put this pattern on a curved surface?

Ok, so now i have made the arch around the window.Now i am trying to place the First pattern on the curved surface.
[
I have no clue how to place it on the curved plane

Shrinkwrap Modifier. But I think that texturing it would be easier.

@Jaedan Why do you want to add an extra mesh there? Wouldn't be easier to just texture that part since there is no geometry there- just a painting?


text:
How to texture curved road system / road? (UV's / Mapping)
So, to be brief, I am trying to create a system of roads from a top view of google maps.

I started out making the UV Map of the first segment and getting it in order, and hoping that when I extend the road the UV map would keep intact.
I can create the mesh fine, and as far as that goes, I have no problem. I am able to model it rather close to as seen on google maps, using extrude and rotate / translate.
I had the first section good at one point (of the road) but after that, the textures go weird.
(Since then I have messed about and now nothing works properly, in regards to texture mapping which is when these pictures were taken.)
So, my biggest question, is, how can I add a road texture to this curved road, that will follow the road and the curves?
I would use the bezier curve method for road creation, but unfortunately, when exported to the game I intend to use the road for, the poly-count is tremendously high. 20000+ whereas with this method, 600-ish.
I guess, essentially, what I'm trying to do, is create roads like this:

[![Road/UV Windows][3]][3]
So how would I go about that, as far as texturing?

So, like now, I got the texture following the road, but, it's blurring, is there any way to remove the blur but keep it following the road?
http://imgur.com/a/PIpOg

What did you try, and exactly what about the result did you not like? Please expand on "the textures go weird" with screenshots. A picture is worth 1,000 words.

I tried cube projection / uv re-map, and various methods to fix the texture blurring.
http://imgur.com/a/1Ui8A
1st picture is blurring effect I don't like. (how the textures got, what I considered weird.)
2nd picture is texture after cube projection mapping. Also don't like that.
Basically what I want is a nice smooth road texture that follows the road, not blurring or offsetting itself.

You're a genius! http://imgur.com/a/Iu0XC
The active quad thing did it! Looks great!
Thanks sooo much!