text:
why does it turn square when i merge vertices on a circular surface
When I merge two vertices, it turns into some kind of corner. I don't know how to explain it but yeah.

This is the expected behaviour under Subdivision.. that is the curvature interpolated on the new location of the vertex, moved from the smaller cylinder. Did you mean to create a new edge between the vertices (shortcut: F), instead of merging them? Or if you mean to create a smooth connection all the way round, the profile will become less square as you merge the others in the circumference.

No, I meant to merge them together.

Not quite clear from your question.. if you wanted to merge just one vertex, that is the resulting shape, as interpolated by Catmull-Clark Subdivision.
If you wanted to merge the entire circumference, CtrlE  > Bridge Edge Loops, with 'Merge', is an option:

Above, the two underlying square profiles being merged are C-C subdivided to approximations of circles. (If you want more accurate circles, 6 sides is really a practical minimum)


text:
How Can I Detect / select Seam edge in shader editor
How can select or detech seem edge in shader editor thank you :)
I want the wrinkle to appear around the , seem edge containing the normal map.

It's hard to understand what you mean. I think you are not using any terminology correctly. Seams are usually not 'selected' in the shader editor - that makes no sense as you work with nodes in shader editor, also edges or wrinkles do not contain normal maps - that also makes no sense. I suggest you edit the question and explain in more detail what you mean to ask. If you want to make wrinkles, you can use sculpting in Blender, you could bake higher resolution mesh detail to a normal map in order to be able to have a lower resolution mesh showing more detail.

If this is what you mean, this little GN modifier will grab the UV-seam edges and output  'Is UV seam' as an attribute on face-corners:

It splits all edges, transforms the mesh geometry to its own UV map, re-welds by distance, and  then transfers 'Is boundary edge' back to the original mesh, by face-corner index.
The output Attribute is available to shaders. The seam-bump, below, is procedurally generated from the mesh's UV map.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Geometry Nodes - Curve To Point - Rotation Problem for door
I want to add a door model between the two vertexes I selected in the geometry node. but I wonder how can I fix the reverberation of the doors in the corner? Thank you :)

video file

If I move to point, this setup not work.
Result.

Setup:

try this node setup:

result:

it's not a good idea to capture the tangent from points, which you are "moving" afterwards by resample curve.

try this node setup:

result:

it's not a good idea to capture the tangent from points, which you are "moving" afterwards by resample curve.

i don't understand why you are copying my answer into a comment....

I fix it, thak all for answer.
Fix: I add split Edge node, and fix.

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


text:
Getting the global coordinates of a vertex from mouse location
I have a some code here that I combined from other people to test out implementations on how to get the correct global coordinates of the vertex that your mouse is hoovering over.
There are 2 different functions that I try in this code to get the coordinates. One is bpy.ops.view3d.select() and the other view3d_utils.region_2d_to_location_3d(). The first one tries to select the vertex and returns the index of it so you can look up the coordinates of it and the second function tries to get the location based on your mouse X,Y coordinates and your view.
The bpy.ops.view3d.select() is working fine and returns the correct vertex but the region_2d_to_location_3d() doesn't really return the X,Y coordinates that are close to the vertex. Is there some kind of additional operation that you need to do for it to get the correct X,Y coordinates?
I've applied transformation to the mesh so there shouldn't be any local vs global issue.
import bpy
import bmesh
from bpy_extras import view3d_utils

class SimpleOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Tooltip"""
    bl_idname = "object.simple_operator"
    bl_label = "Simple Object Operator"

    @classmethod
    def poll(cls, context):
        return (context.object is not None and
                context.object.type == 'MESH' and
                context.object.data.is_editmode)

    def invoke(self, context, event):
        me = context.object.data
        bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)
        verts_sel = [v.select for v in bm.verts]
        edges_sel = [e.select for e in bm.edges]
        faces_sel = [f.select for f in bm.faces]

        loc = event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y

        #----region_2d_to_location_3d----
        sob = bpy.context.object
        region = bpy.context.region
        region3D = bpy.context.space_data.region_3d
        mouse_pos = [event.mouse_region_x, event.mouse_region_y]
        #The direction indicated by the mouse position from the current view
        view_vector = view3d_utils.region_2d_to_vector_3d(region, region3D, mouse_pos)
        #The 3D location in this direction
        ploc = view3d_utils.region_2d_to_location_3d(region, region3D, mouse_pos, view_vector)
        #The 3D location converted in object local coordinates
        ploc = sob.matrix_world.inverted() @ ploc
        print(ploc)
        #-------------------------------

        try:
            geom = bm.select_history[-1]
        except IndexError:
            geom = None

        ret = bpy.ops.view3d.select(extend=True, location=loc)
        if ret == {'PASS_THROUGH'}:
            self.report({'INFO'}, "no close-by geom")
            return {'CANCELLED'}

        try:
            geom2 = bm.select_history[-1]
            print("geom2 sel 1st", geom2.select)
        except IndexError:
            geom2 = None

        if geom is None:
            geom = geom2

        if isinstance(geom, bmesh.types.BMVert):
            geom_sel = verts_sel
            bm_geom = bm.verts
        elif isinstance(geom, bmesh.types.BMEdge):
            geom_sel = edges_sel
            bm_geom = bm.edges
        elif isinstance(geom, bmesh.types.BMFace):
            geom_sel = faces_sel
            bm_geom = bm.faces

        for sel, g in zip(geom_sel, bm_geom):
            if sel != g.select:
                g.select_set(False)
                bm.select_history.remove(g)
                bm.select_flush_mode()
                break

        self.report({'INFO'}, repr(geom))
        return {'FINISHED'}

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

register()


text:
Sharp Memory Increase While Selecting Different Objects in Edit Mode
Why does the memory-usage on my computer increase sharply with the number of line segments selected, when the line segment is selected first in edit mode? On average there is a 200Mb increase in memory usage for a single line segment! Regarding the model, I only have a multi-res modifier added, does it have something to do with that? Or is it simply a blender optimization problem or a windows memory problem? Sometimes even 64gb of memory will be used!

What do you mean, “when the line segment is selected first in edit mode“? There’s no other way to select a line segment a.k.a. edge, is there? One has to be in edit mode. Also, if it were not first, what would come first?

What happens when you are not using Multi-Res?

When I turn off multi-level precision, there is no change in memory usage.

When I'm in edit mode, the memory footprint increases dramatically every time I make a selection. So much so that not half an hour later, the memory is full and blender will tend to crash.


text:
SheepIt! Rendering produces weird icosphere-esque object
Whenever I render my scene in Blender (cycles) normally, It produces the following result (What I want):

Whenever I render it using SheepIt! (It is me rendering it) It produces the following:

I have no clue what that thing is. The two files are the same.

Figured out the problem. SheepIt! Does not support fluid, which is why it made that shape.

I think sheep it does support fluid... You just have to bake all the files into the blend.

@10Replies It does, but the total .BLEND has to be 500mb or less, which you cant fit any fluid into that doesnt look low-poly.

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


text:
Getting really fine details without taxing too much VRAM?
Alright, so I've used Photoshop to create a displacement map for some tire tracks going off trail (A crashed truck)

Blender registers this fine using this node setup:

I also have Displacement set to "True" in the material settings (So it actually displaces the geometry of the mesh, not just a bump map).
Now I am trying to figure out how I should SubSurf it. I've watched BlenderGuru's video on using Adaptive SubSurf modifiers, which seems like a really convenient way of achieving what I'm going for. Using the following settings produces the following results:

From what I know, having the dicing scale set to 1px should subdivide the mesh again every pixel, correct? That should mean a perfect output, right? So why does the one simply using a SubSurf of 5 look better?
Right now it almost looks like something out of the Lego Movie. I guess it could be the displacement map, but I don't think that's the case because the displacement map is 4096x4096, and I blurred the displacement map to avoid jagged edges this seems to produce.
I've hit a wall. I have 6GB of VRAM (GTX 1060) and 8GB of RAM, so I need to be conservative with my geometry. If anyone want's to look around and see if they can find a solution, I've included the .BLEND:

The 1px adaptive displacement is the more accurate one. The reason you see it as worse is because it exposes your displacement map for what it is: an 8bit file (and one with an odd value range at that).
Your standard 8bit integer images store values as integers (whole numbers) from 0-255. That means an 8bit integer displacement map has only 256 possible height levels. Worse, your map is very low contrast. The 'blank' value is 128 (I think you might have another misconception here, see below). The lowest value I could find in a quick check is 108, meaning your entire tire track has only 20 different heights in it. Obviously, you're not going to get smooth gradients over only 20 possible heights!
Unfortunately, painting in Photoshop is rasterized immediately, so you'll have to repaint in a 16 or 32bit file to fix this. Even just using 16bit gives you 2^8 more height possibilities than 8bit. And remember, you were only using about 1/10th of the 8bit range. So make a solid white 16bit file, and paint some tire tracks with a heavy hand, the deepest point in the track should be close to black.
Above I commented on your use of 128 as a "blank' value and recommended using full white on the repaint. The reason for this is how Cycles interprets the displacement height. Cycles' displacement system is designed around floating point inputs, and simply takes the value given as literal distance. Meaning the "blank" value is black, and negative numbers need to be used to displace downwards. Simply Photoshop isn't really conducive to painting negative values, it's easiest to paint in a 0-1 range then just subtract 1:
As far as memory savings go, this answer of mine might be useful as well: Render fails at tesselation with out of memory error

I'll give this a go and see how it works out. However, the reason I used perfect gray as the mid-range is because the map doesn't just extrude downwards, but also upwards. (The kicked-up snow around the tracks) If I used perfect white as the base-line, I wouldn't be able to do that.

Ah, ok. Gotcha.

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


text:
What node would allow me to edit the mapping coordinates individually?
I'm making a procedural texture, and I want to expose the following values so that they are controlled by a separate node.

I'm using the Cycles material node editor

If you just want the Scale values from the Mapping node, it is simpler to use the MixRGB. Just plug the vector in the input A, use the CombineXYZ for input B with your [scaleX, scaleY, scaleZ] values, operation to 'Multiply' and the factor to 1.


text:
Geometry Nodes Rotation Problem on Mesh Spline Circle
I'm currently 5 days into geometry nodes and I'm having a problem here.
I'm trying to make an array modifier that goes in a circular motion with a mesh spline.

But when I try to rotate it to it's position, it just looks wrong. but when I replaced it with a Mesh Circle Node, it works. But I want to make it with the circle Mesh Spline I made.

Any thoughts?
Here's the full nodes

Please insert your images directly into your question rather than making us click on links to see them! https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/how-to-upload-an-image-to-a-post

Hi, william, done for you, but do check out @JohnEason 's link

Unless yours is a deliberate exercise in the maths, maybe some elaboration of this starting-point will do it for you?

Duplicate of https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/259156/?

@quellenform and of quite a few others, if we search...  OK, let's tidy up.


text:
How to scale vertices in only top view but not impacting how they look in front view?
Hello everyone please look at the picture when I scale the shield in top view(constrains to X axle) the front view was also changed, is there any ways the scale only limits in top view but not changing everything in other views?
Thank you


text:
(location = location * 2.0) Doesn't work as (location *= 2.0)
Why this code works:
import bpy

location = bpy.context.object.location
location *= 2.0

And this doesn't:
import bpy

location = bpy.context.object.location
location = location * 2.0

And just to make things a little bit more confuse, why this works?
import bpy

bpy.context.object.location = bpy.context.object.location * 2.0

The three code are essentially the same thing, but only two of them work.
As far as I know A *= 2 is the same as A = A * 2. But why one works and the other doesn't when I use the "location" attribution?

I think this is  a Python question, not a Blender question: see here..

...further to above, In example 1 location is a reference to the objects bound location vector, and the *= statement is the equivalent of example 3.  In example 2, the location on the RHS of eq is ob.location but the result (LHS) is a new vector object, no longer refering to the blender object, that has the value of double the objects location vector.  Print it out and you will see the value is as expected, but since it is no longer the vector bound to the object it does not move the object.


text:
Modelling - Creating Tripod Object
I am trying to make a city landscape but I can't figure out how to make those fancy rocks on the beaches. I've tried multiple things but they don't seem to work out well. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
Edit - These are four conical sided rocks.

Here are some methods for a 4 studs shape:
First method (Boolean):

Create a cylinder (12 vertices), put its origin to its bottom.
Duplicate it with a shiftDenter.
Rotate the copy 120° (or whatever angle you need) on the Y axis.
Duplicate the second cylinder and rotate it 120° on the Z axis.
Again create a fourth cylinder and rotate it 120°.
Now use some Boolean modifiers to merge these 4 cylinder.
Remove doubles to make the final object clean. You should not have any vertices inside your mesh but if it happened just delete them.

Second method (non-Boolean):
1 - Create a cone of 3 vertices, Radius > 1, Depth > 1.5, it gives a 4 faces pyramid
2 - In Edit mode, select all the vertices, and bevel them with ctrl shift B
3 - Select the 4 hexagons of the shape
4 - Extrude the hexagons with alt E > Individual Faces
5 - You have a basic 4 studs shape
You can add a Subdivision Surface modifier, you can make each end round with W > Loop Tools > Circle, you can add Edge Loops, etc...

Third method (better non-Boolean):
1 - Create a cone of 3 vertices, Radius > 1, Depth > 1.5, it gives a 4 faces pyramid
2 - Subdivide each angle of the pyramid
3 - Select all the new vertices and scale up so that you have some kind of regular hexagons on each 4 faces of the shape
4 - Select all the faces and alt E > Extrude Individual
5 - Keep the end of each extrusion selected and W > Loop Tools > Circle
6 - You can add a Subdivision Surface modifier, can add Edge Loops, etc...

Neat. Now all that's left to do is make a few dozen, give 'em a bit of rigid body love, and see whether they interlock like the ones on the beach.

@moonboots I tried your method bit it doesn't look like the reference. In reference, all the four sides of the rock are intersecting without any spaces or gaps in them like a pipe joint. https://imgur.com/a/T1DenB2

Ashutosh, I've edited my post to propose another solution, I hope it fits your needs

Start with the cylinder. Shift +A add cylinder.
Rotate the cylinder to Y axis.
In the edit mode extrude one end of the cylinder and scale down.
Add one loop with Ctrl+R

In the edit mode move the mesh to get the pivot point edge of the cylinder.
Add Shift +A add empty.
Select the mesh and press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+C and select origin to 3D cursor.
Add a Array modifier from modifier tab. Increase the count 3 and select empty as object.

Finally adjust the shape and bevel the end with Ctrk+B

Atek, it's supposed to be a 4 sides shape, you've made a 3 sides shape

@moonboots look above in the reference image its 3 side

Actually these are for conical sided rocks. Thanks for the help though.

to me it's a 4 sides shape, anyway, here is a solution for 4 sides (in the 4th picture, just bevel the vertices with ctrl shift B), I don't know if it's the best though: https://www.zupimages.net/up/18/26/zgh4.jpg

@atek Actually I've visited this place and I know its a four-sided rock.

@AshutoshBudhdeo ok instead of 3 count u add 4 count. Nothing will change

@moonboots instead of 3 count add 4 count process will not change

Atek, it's not the same shape  ;)  consider it as a 4 face pyramid and each face has been extruded, that's why I used a 4 face pyramid as my initial shape, take a look at my method: https://www.zupimages.net/up/18/26/zgh4.jpg

@atek I tried adding 4 count in array but it doesn't seem to work out. It looks like a plus shape.

@moonboots I had tried the method you mentioned previously but it didn't work out since it does not merge all the four sides properly as in the reference. It leaves a bit of gap in between the four sides of the rock ;)

Second method explained in my post


text:
Can't Delete Sculpt Brushes

Can't remove these custom brushes, I've made these by mistake and there appears to be no way of removing them.
They are conflicting with my sculpting learning as it seems like random brushes are being picked.
Please don't say click on and press the "X" as it does nothing

Go into the Outliner, select Orphan Data, click on the Purge button:

It will remove all the brushes with a "0" name. To remove the "F" brushes (they have a fake user so that they are saved when you save your file), select them and click on the shield icon. You could also close and open your file, all the "0" brushes should disappear.


text:
How can i Support edges with Subsurf Modifier on a Concave shape?
I have tried everything,
from Supporting edge loops to creasing and Baveling.
Shrinkwrapping.
and even creating the Object flat and then bend it with Lattice.
But no metter what i tried its alawys ends up with some sort of Deform or  a Pinch.
and its seems to be a reoccurring problem when i ever i have something like in the following picture.
The Question is, how can i solve this issue?

could you please show the kind of object you're trying to achieve? Do you mean for example the angle of an L shape?

IM trying to round up the edges but keeping the surfaces Flat
https://imgur.com/a/Jow91YY

It would be easier with more edge loops but it seems to work fine like this.

As the additional edge loops tend to break the circle shape I created a circle to use it as a guide in order to keep the cylinder circular.

its almost the shape i wanted to create.
tough i want the upper part to not be as Smooth as well.
https://imgur.com/R0WrrKK
also. what do u mean you brought back the Circular Shape?!
how excactly,
i tried already using Shrinkwrap. but as i said already, i didnt do much good?

please show a reference picture as early as possible, it's very hard to guess what you want  ;)   "i want the upper part to not be as Smooth as well", what part of the upper part? The upper part of my object isn't smooth... Try to make a drawing of the final object for example

I posted a link with an image as a refference. at the same comment as i said it, please pay attention to, seriusly its incredibly frustrating when i need to repeat myself,                      this how u did it https://imgur.com/AMVlPDU
this is how is a crude version of what im trying to achive:
https://imgur.com/R0WrrKK

Well actually you need to repeat yourself because, maybe you don't realize, but what you ask is not clear at all, you show a round shape but in the same time you say that "i want the upper part to NOT be as Smooth as well", so is it supposed to be smooth or not smooth? People can't guess by themselves what you're the only one to know. Ok I'll give a try with smooth angle

plus your initial question was very vague and I needed to ask questions and to edit your post...

I sent u an image.
That reffering to the excact part of the model and how its differ then yours.
u had an angel on this part while the shape im trting to create is more concave.
im pretty sure its pretty easy to understand what i meant.
Any way I did a video screen cupture showing overall what I tried to do
and demonstrated my problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzncHcui3pA

nothing in your initial question could let us guess that's what you wanted, it would have been easy to DRAW your shape, but I've edited my answer, please check

if u need to understand what i said its one thing:
but when u ask me for a refference after i gave i already did posted a link to an image as a refference it comes off as a waiste of time cuse u asking to give u something i provided.
fact of the metter asside from this one bit part of the mesh that was still angular in ur version. the result u got is excactly what i was trying to create.
so its sounds like u did understood what i said.
Regardless of all that: i do apprichiate the time u have invested and tried to help me with it. and i do apprihchiate the help. so thank you very much!

your first question was not clear at all, the image you gave afterwards was not explicite at all, and you asked for contradictory things (smooth and not smooth)... you must put yourself in the shoes of people reading questions, you know what you want but they can't guess... anyway nice to see that this time I succeeded  ;)

Also, it would have made the things easier if I used more vertices for the central cylinder, but I wanted to keep low in vertices to see if it was possible

someone else told me the same thing
about the topo density.
so maybe it is the topo densitiy,
but i do wish to keep the denisity as low as possible so thank you!

BTW what did u when u said "you borught back the circulat shape"?

to make sure that my inner cylinder was a circle, I created a new circle and made sure my cylinder was following the shape of this circle. If the cylinder was a 16 (or 32) vertex circle it would have made the things much easier as I would not have used any additional vertex that would have broken the circular shape (the additional vertices that I had to create here to sharpen the edges), but it's always interesting to test what you can do with the minimum amount of vertices


text:
How to rig an IK leg with 2 knee joints (Animal Leg Rigging)
I'm trying to rig a leg with two joints and have been struggling for ages trying to add IK. The chain is 4 bones long so forms 2 knees (Fig 1).
Ideally I can imagine having 2 pole targets (Fig 2) but I don't see that the IK solver allows that.
The kind of poses that are difficult to achieve are having the knee joints pointing in different directions. This can be achieved by rotating the bone between the joints but it is awkward to animate and you lose the connection to the pole target (Fig 3)
Does anyone have any ideas how to rig this effectively?
Thanks!
Fig 1

Fig 2

Fig 3 (top view)

I don't know if that's the best idea but have you tried to create another IK on another of your bones, therefore a second controller and a second pole target? It would mean that your first chain would be shorter. Also, you talk about a current chain of 4, shouldn't it be 3?

Thanks for your suggestion @moonboots. I've tried adding a second IK to bone c using bone b as the target. As you say, I needed to shorten the first chain to clear the dependency cycle but that then means you can't use bone a to influence the whole leg.

@moonboots, yes, I should probably have described it as length 3. I included bone a, which I use as the IK target, as part of the chain but it isn't actually parented to bone b.

if you assign a IK to the bone D, with a controller on its bottom, perhaps with no pole target, but just a target controller, and assign a Child Of to this controller with the first controller as the Target (click on Set Inverse)? Also note that you can limit the IK bones rotations in Properties > Bone > Inverse Kinematics, so it doesn't go crazy.

You may also find it helpful to constrain the knees to only rotate on one axis. You can set this in the Inverse Kinematics section under the bone data tab in the settings window.

@moonboots Fantastic, works well, thanks! Was there a specific reason you suggested a 'child of' constraint on the joint 2 controller? Did you want to post as an answer I can accept or should I write up an answer?

I also experimented with using a damped track or track to constraint on bone D, rather than an IK. The damped track seems to give identical result, whereas the track to leads to slight differences.

The Child Of makes your second controller follow the move of your first, so that you don't always have to move the second one, I don't know if it's useful to you though. I'm going to test the Damped Track you're talking about. I tested the Track To but I was not sure about it.

oh yes it looks like Damped Track works better than the Track To, I'm going to add it to my answer.

Thanks @moonboots. Sorry, I should have clarified: was there a reason you suggested 'child of' rather than just parenting with offset? Was it just to make it switchable?

you're right, no reason   ;)

So, here is the solution we've found:

Create a controller for your foot, deparent it, parent the foot to this controller.
Choose this controller as the Target of your calf's IK.
The Chain Length of your calf's IK constraint must be 2.
Create a new controller at the bottom of your bone D.
Parent this second controller to the foot controller (Keep Offset).
Parent the pole target of your calf to the foot controller (Keep Offset).
Add a Copy Location constraint to your foot so that it sticks to the calf.
Add a Damped Track or an IK constraint to the bone D and choose the new controller as your Target

Also note that you can limit the IK bones rotations in Properties > Bone > Inverse Kinematics, or with a Limit Rotation constraint, depending on the bones and the chosen solution.

Rig it like a normal leg. There are no 2 knee joints. There is only 1 knee and heel. Almost every animal walks on it's fingers.
Provide a control for the heel like on every human rig - up/down lift and left/right pivot.

Thanks for your answer. There are examples where this isn't the case, such as frogs which are plantigrade so don't walk on their toes but have an arrangement as in the original question. This could also apply to hypothetical creatures or objects. I think the accepted answer handles these cases better and functions as I had in mind.


text:
Why won't Blender paint the picked color?
When I pick a color in the Image Editor, and then proceed to paint with the picked color, the paint does not match the color I picked..

Why does the painted color not match the color I picked?

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

could you please pack your image and share your file (only the image, remove the rest)? https://pasteall.org/blend/

It appears from the picture that you have not a single color, as I see darker shades of this color near the "outlet holes".   The color picker will pick the color from a single pixel.   Have you tried other nearby areas to pick from?


text:
How to dig an elliptical hole in blender (iphone)
I am a beginner,
My view builds a phone model, I don't know how to make the speaker part

you have a lot of tutorials on how to make holes in objects, don't use boolean though: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+how+to+make+holes+in+objects

Edit: My topology was quite ugly so I reworked a simpler one:

First of all, good day. It is very easy to make any kind of holes in blender and can be done in many different ways like. But the easiest way of doing it is by either doing Shift+Ctrl+B (Done on vertices) or Ctrl+B (Done on edges). These "expands" the edge/vertices in a way. Ill leave you to do the rest, I hope this helped and experiment with these too!


text:
Hair too rigid unable to get rid of right angle structure
My hair is not smooth and too stiff, how can I make it less of a right angle near the roots?

You might want to add more control points to the hair particles. The goal is the add some extra control points near the scalp/head so hair can bend nicely there.

To do so, make sure Selection Mode: Point is active to see the points. Select all roots by using the menu. Then select the next points via the menu (Select → Select More or hit Ctrl + NumPad +). Now you add another control point for each hair particle with Particle → Subdivide.
Extend the selection before subdivision or repeat the steps when you need more control points. The selection can also help you to comb or puff only the parts of the hair strands you want.
To see the effect you need to increase the number of path steps for the hair. There are 3 settings for this. One in the tool options for the Particle Edit mode. Then for the final Render and one more for the Viewport Display. The default values are 2 or 3, often too low to bend the hair properly.


text:
How do I remove the orange color that covers the mesh whenever I highlight the octahedral bones
I can't arrange the bones on the mesh properly whenever I highlight the octahedral bones because of the orange color coming from the bone, please how do I remove it.

Hello :). Please use https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/, not your phone camera

I havent seen anything like that before ... graphic card issue? OS specific bug? BTW Under Win10 you can use shortcut Win+Shift+S for screenshot.

If I highlight a B bone or octahedral bones that orange outline comes out


text:
Glass reflection distortion
Which factors should I look at to make the reflection as neat as that of the reference image?
Some of the thigs I've tried:

Increasing roughness, but still have too many distorted reflections and also I can't see the yellow sphere in the cube clearly like the reference image.

Changing variables on Ray visibility, but nothing seemed to work. Material of the cube is set to default material with : Specular 0.5 / Roughness 0 / Transmission 1 level

Reference

My Cube  – Bottom and left sides has way too many distortions.

Those things at the bottom are reflections (as you mentioned) so care about environment you use.
For distortion you can try to play with IOR value.
Another thing to care is curvature of your Cube - more rounded more distortions.
Here White environment with a bit of Beveled edges and IOR 1.15


text:
Objects with rigidbody physics slowly vibrate/rotate (Blender v 2.9)
I am trying to animate a simple scene in which apples fall from above into a bowl.

I added rigidbody physics to the bowl, made it passive, set the collision to mesh, and set the margin to 0.01.
I then placed the apple above the bowl, gave it rigidbody physics, kept it as an active object, set the collision to mesh, and finally, set the margin to 0.01.

When I hit the play button, the apple seems to be reaction normally at first, but when it hits the bowl, it starts to slowly vibrate and rotate.  Does anyone know why this is happening?  Any help would be appreciated.  I will give the link to my .blend file below.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1diR5tOaOeiv9fiF4Jidwxh641SpgHBZd/view?usp=sharing

This is common and can be eliminated by (1), setting the physics cache's 'END" frame to one that allows the object to fall and settle.  With the engine switched off at that frame there'll be no 'wrestlessness'.  The 2nd alternative when physics is still needed is to bake the object's fall into the bowl up to where it settles.  Once baked, get rid of it's physics properties altogether BEFORE playing the result. There will be two redundant physics strips left in the Dopesheet. Delete those strips also.  If still not right, save the project, exit Blender and reload.

Further to the above - Settings can be tweaked that will reduce this, even stop it but it's a flddly process, particularly for Newbies and is easily upset, cannot be guaranteed to work indefinitely.


text:
My computer won't let me render with eevee?
Why does eevee insta crash Blender whenever I render anything on my Mac mini?
I have 8GB RAM and I am using 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7, is my RAM just too dinky to be able to render using eevee??

In my experience Macs don't behave reliably with Eevee. See my previous similar question here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/175510/does-eevee-in-2-82-work-on-macbookpro-intel-integrated-graphics-cards which never received an official answer but a few comments.

Another user said he was able to render in Eevee with GPU graphics card. But I have tried on CPU and GPU Macbooks with the same result. I can render only very simple scenes in Eevee, with more complex scenes, the image will render in the render window and stay for a second, but then oddly it cuts to a grey image after Compositing. Oddly I can render animation in Eevee, but I haven't tried highres animations, although it will render scenes as animations that I am not able to render as still images in Eevee at very low res. It remains a mystery to me and potentially a bug on Macs running Blender

Ussually unsupported graphics card, see https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/ At home I have old iMac 2009 that render white in eevee or crash on Shadow or Cavity overlay from 2.82. iMacs 2013, 2017, 2020 at work works for me.

These comments are helpful thank you, I was sure it was my RAM that was the issue but I am able to render (slowly) using any other renderer in Blender no crashing.

I keep looking at possibly using eGPU with the Mac mini but I think it may be too advanced for me to make it work properly. I also don't know if it would solve the issue of eevee just flat out not working.


text:
How to keep relaxed water at start of simulation
Im trying to make a lava sim but as soon as i start the sim the liquid just splashes all over and takes like 2 full secs to settle down. Is there any way to make it settle immediately then react to objects inside the domain. Im trying to have something rise from the lava but simulating is very long since the lava goes all over the place and takes like 5 full seconds to settle down.

2 or 5 or too much emotions. I know that feeling :)

Set Flow object to XY dimension of Domain at a bottom so there are not a gaps between Domain boundary and Flow. Like the liquid (Flow) is in a rest shape.

Note: Previously I thought, liquid explosion can be caused by objects intersecting, but it doesn't matter, even with Effector inside - no movement on a surface before Effector starts to "raise", as you can see in frames 0-30.


text:
How to load a render from cloud-servis into compositor with passes?
I have a cloud rendered png image and I cannot find a way to load that rendered image into compositor as render layers. Of course i can import image with image node but, I cannot use passes like depth, AO, Mist etc. Also I cannot see that image as backdrop image. I have shared a screenshot in which you can see that image node doesn't have that many output pins.
How do I import my cloud rendered image in compositor to use all passes?

PNG is a terrible format for what you want to do, It doesn't contain any of the infornation you want, and even if you saved many different passes as different images the images are  of limited use as they are in display referred values. You need a format that keeps your scene referred data linear and unbound, and that can also save different layers. EXR multilayer is the only one that will work for that.

You have to render into OpenEXR  Multilayer (.EXR) output format to keep passes in saved file.
(PNG can't store these layers / passes.)

To see Backdrop you have to connect Viewer node.
(with Node Wrangler addon enabled, press Ctrl+Shift)

related: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/16152/save-all-render-passes-to-exr-image and https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/28740/how-can-i-render-all-render-passes-to-files-in-cycles/28764#28764

@susu ah :) so we can close it as dupli. I wasnt sure if there is not an issue also with some cloud servis limitations, but since accepted, no reason to keep it I would say.

No need to close as duplicate. The post answers the question correctly and informative. I just like to leave links for users to find information if they wish to use it (most just ignore links, but maybe it will help others).


text:
Marble rolls in a cylinder smooth animation
I have tried everything. To smoothly get the marble into the cylinder and that it rolls through the cylinder. And then goes out of the cylinder again.
I also tried to animate frame by frame but then it stutters. It should roll through the cylinder like a marble.
What is the best solution for this?

I found an example:
https://samvandewal.com/banners/Scene1.mp4
This is wat i want.

I have moved the marble per frame but I cannot make it roll smoothly when I animate it per frame.

I'm not sure I completely understand the goal either. Perhaps you could clarify with an edit to your question. Do you want the 'marble' to roll with the cylinder (as in, be picked up by it), or be rolled over and not be moved at all?

I want indeed the 'marble' to roll with the cylinder (as in, be picked up by it).
But I can't figure out how best to approach this.

your first gif looks alright... the cylinder picks the marble up and go, what's wrong with that one?

Rigid Bodies simulation
v01

Bake to Keyframes
manually adjusted details in Graph Editor
(to synchronize jump on time into hole out)

If you would need more details to RB I can extend answer.

v02
version with Rigid Body simulation only without postpro

to avoid jumping you need more smooth curvature of Cylinder
I had to add more colliders (planes) to push ball into Cylinder and two sides colliders to don't let ball fall from Cylinder
since the animation is slow you can set Collision Margin very low like 0.01 ( in case of cylinder even less 0.001 to keep ball distance from cylinder minimal)

Note:
It really depends what whole motion should looks like, because if you need only this simple result of v02, the Hook Modifier (Timaroberts suggestion) will work faster.
If I Baked to Keyframes this simulation and Decimated keyframes to clean up result, animation curve is really simple.

And result is almost the same

vklidu this is exactly what I mean but without bouncing. The marble has to roll smoothly in the cylinder. That is precisely the problem that it not smooth marble is rolling in the cylinder.

Answer edited to "v02"

Super thanks! I'm going to check this week to see exactly how you did it but this is exactly what I mean

A limit location constraint in X (given path in Y direction) may be another way to keep ball on same path as ring.

lol... edited while you were editing, re-edited Riggid -> Rigid

ups, thanks ... about constraint ...I tried RB Constraint > Generic > Linear and Object Constraint on Ball, but fails both for me can you be more specific where what how? Or link How to ... Thanks

Sure I've used limit or copy loc constraint in conjunction with RB before (prob pre 2.8) , couldn't get to work in Ver1 above.

This is accomplished via two empties, and a hook modifier.
Here are the steps:

Add an empty at the origin of the ring object, and parent the ring to
this empty. This will serve to control rotations and transform for
now.

Add a keyframe with I  at the first frame, (loc/rot/scale
is fine.

At the last frame move the empty to the end location, and rotate the
desired amount. Here it was 720 degrees in X axis. Add another
keyframe.

Find the frame where the ring will "pick up" the marble. The marble
will have a hook modifier added to it, and the entire abject needs a
vertex group for the modifier.

Add a second empty at the origin of the ring controller, and parent
this one to the first as well as the marble to the hook controller.
This empty will control the hook modifier. You can also add
additional rotational movement if desired. (I did in my example)

The hook looks like this:

The trick is to animate the strength property of the hook modifier as the ring rolls over the marble. By animating the strength off and on, as well as the starting and ending locations of the marble, you have complete control.

Here is the file from the gif above for a closer look:

@Timaroberts what is the marble  jump in a middle of circle?

Sorry he's in my question now

@vklidu before you posted your answer, my understanding was the OP wanted the ball to go all the way round the ring, hence the ’jump’ from the second empty.


text:
Image as Plane and Stroke Object - transparency issue
Need help to fix the stroke overlapping on the hand image, which is added as Images as Plane.

move a bit image object in Z axis?

I tried, but still its as transparent

You dont need to fix curve appearance, problem lies in imported Image as Plane that is by default set with Alpha Blend type.

Select Image object
go to Material Properties > Settings panel
change Blend Mode > Alpha Clip


text:
How would you make this lacquered texture on aluminium material?
I am still kind of new to Blender, and would like a bit of guidance. I've got one of the models done, but I didn't get the texture right. The panel is made of aluminium and then lacquered for the gloss.
This is what I want to achieve:

This is what I got:

I used only the Principled BSDF Shader—pumped up the Clearcoat for that lacquer effect, but it doesn't feel the same as in real life shot.
What part am I missing? Better lighting?

Be aware,  you can pump clearcoat up above 1. Type in, say, 20, and give it some roughness over a more glossy metal base? You should certainly be previewing in a suitable HDR environment.

Yes, definitely use an HDRi for fine tuning shiny materials. Also, the aluminum may be slightly anisotropic.

@RobinBetts wow, thank you for that tip, I will experiment with it and report back. Also, more glossy metal base—did you mean less rough base? Since it's metallic, doesn't that make it glossy? Just want to clarify. =)

@HISEROD good point on anisotropic. I added some of it later, but it would distort at the center point of the mass—it would look like a spiral galaxy of sorts, with obvious center point. How would you modify it so it looks more natural?

@DeliciousBacon You can use UV's for the tangent https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.91/render/shader_nodes/input/tangent.html

Maybe just something along these lines?

But perhaps including, as @moonboots has suggested, some small-scale noise in the clearcoat Normal.

@Delicious Bacon .. (My understanding only) ..  Metalness affects color contributions, not roughness .. it removes the diffuse contribution of the base color, and uses that instead to tint an entirely specular color, reflected from the environment. Roughness simulates microfacets, telling us which bits of the environment to reflect, from directions more or less  scattered around the normal. But .. oops, I should have taken a harder look a the the effect of IOR, especially on the contrast between direct and raking angles. Check that out.

It doesn't look much more complicated than a metallic material. Maybe you need to use a bit of Noise into the Roughness value to make it look more natural (a mix of grains and bigger spots. If you want to give it anisotropic, as it doesn't work in Eevee, just stretch the small Noise on one axis):


text:
How to make a smooth object look less 'lumpy'
I'm editing an object. Here's how it looks when editing:

and here's how it looks when rendered, with a subdivision surface modifier:

That outer surface just doesn't look as smooth as I'd like. You can sort of see where edges of the model are - some parts of it are slightly less curved than others, which gives it a slightly lumpy appearance. I'd like it to be a completely smooth, parabola-like surface instead.
I realise that what I mean might not be clear from the image above, so here's an exaggerated picture of how the shape currently looks to me, compared to what I'm trying to achieve:

I don't think the issue has to do with the coarseness of the final mesh, or with the shading, but rather, it's to do with how my very coarse model is being interpolated by the subdivision modifier, and the lack of control I'm able to exert over that process.
I can fix the shape by adding loop cuts and then fine-tuning their positions, but that takes a lot of manual fiddling, and it's rather time consuming because in this case the lumpiness can't really be seen without doing a full render. Because of this, I'm wondering if there's something I can do that will take my existing model and render it in a more smoothed-out way.
I am a beginner and may well be unaware of an obvious way to do this.
I tried changing the crease value of the edges that make up the curve to -1, but that didn't appreciably change the shape, and also introduced some Mach banding, for some reason. (I removed the image of this failed attempt, because I realised it was in danger of confusing the issue, since that image contains a different kind of non-smoothness than the one I'm asking about. Please don't edit that image back in again. If anyone wants to see it, it's in the edit history.)

you need more geometry in the mesh (or more subdivisions in the modifier) to get smoother curves. Or you can try modeling all of it with curves. Can you share your model?

I am not an expert or anything but the first thing I would ask is did you recalculate normal's? a face with a flipped normal can pull stuff out of shape. your mesh would be in edit mode select all in the mesh drop-down >  normal's > recalculate outside

+1 on @susu comment. You need a bit more topology to help smooth those transitions. Another great way to model cylindrical type objects is with curves. Lots of tutorials on that.

Try enabling autosmooth and then changing shading type to smooth

How much subdivisions do you have ? I tried making the it with the same geometry that you have except the fact that I have 32 vertecies for my cylinder .i got and quite satisfying result with 3 subdivisions and with auto smooth enabled ...

Remember that sub-surf will only divide your geometry it wont smooth out every thing unnecessarily. So adding loopcuts and creating that perfect curve will give you the best result I guess. I was just using a custom glass shader . I think the material also matters in such cases.

General response to comments: I understand that you need more geometry to make a better curve - that much is clear. The question then is whether that geometry can be generated automatically. What I want to avoid is manually fiddling with each individual loop cut. The lumpiness can only really be seen when doing a full render, so that's very time-consuming. I'd happily work out an equation for the radius as a function of x, if there's a way that could be entered somewhere.

@Nxdhin2005 by auto smooth do you mean Add Modifier -> Deform -> Smooth or something else? I tried that (after the subdivision modifier) but it had no noticeable effect.

I think I have 3 subdivisions in the render I posted, but increasing it doesn't have much effect. I believe the issue is not to do with the final mesh being too coarse, but to do with how it's interpolating the few data points I've given it.

@AD same question as the one I asked Nxdhin above: does "autosmooth" mean a smooth modifier or something else?

Another general response: I had no idea modelling with curves was even an option. (I've only really done the donut tutorial.) I'll look into that.

You can turn on autosmooth in object data properties panel -> Normals and enable autosmooth to smoothen out your shading -https://imgur.com/a/O27yN29

No need of modelling with a curve you can get good results with the cylinder itself. I hope smooth shading is enable cuz its necessary to toggle on auto smooth

Geometry cannot be created automatically as far as i know

@Nxdhin2005 I've tried turning on autosmooth, but it has no visible effect in this case. I don't think this is an issue with the shading at all - see my edit to the question

As I told I think the materials matter . The material may be exaggerating the irregularities. Sharing your file may prove helpful.(Since my glass shader doest have that..)

Autosmooth is a setting under the object properties panel just enable that and then in the 3d veiwport select the object and then select smooth shading by right-clickin.

I think modeling with a curve and use the Screw modifier on it, as seen in the answer to this question, could really simplify things. You would only need to manipulate a couple (possibly literally) of vertices.

@Fjoersteller that sounds like the right way to do it. I wasn't aware that kind of thing was possible before the comments to this question. I'll have a go at it tomorrow.

Here's a self-answer, based on information from the comments. There is a very nice trick to this, which is to model using Bézier curves instead of just relying on the subdivision surface modifier.
The basic procedure is to do shift-A -> Curve -> Bezier. Then in properties there's a curve panel where you can turn it into 2D, which makes editing easier. Then you can add a 'screw' modifier, followed by subdivision surface and, in my case, solidify.
Here's how the object looks modelled with curves:

The weird lumpiness has gone, and in addition, editing is much quicker and more painless, and it's easier to be accurate.
It looks like this when editing. I only have to change a couple of control points to change the slope of the curve - the geometry is generated automatically.


text:
Rendering multiple objects in the same environment
This is a basic (beginner) scene management question.
I'd like to produce a series of renders. Each contains a different set of objects, but they are all made out of the same set of materials and should all be lit and shot in exactly the same way.
I think the way to do this is to create multiple scenes in the same blend file. (Though if I'm wrong, and that's not the best way, please tell me.)
What I want to achieve is that certain things are the same across every scene (e.g. the lights and camera, the materials, objects that are part of the background, the compositing nodes, etc.), and if I change any of those things it will update all of the scenes automatically. But other things (the actual objects I'm modelling) should be unique to a single scene and not affect the others.
I guessed that the way to do this would be to create an "environment" scene, and then create linked copies of that for every object I want to model. I imagined I would then be able to add new objects to these linked copies without affecting the original, and that I would still be able to change the lighting, background etc. by editing the 'environment' scene.
However, it seems not to work like that. If I add an object to one of the linked copies, that object appears in the environment scene as well, and hence in all the other scenes. I don't seem to be able to add or delete an object from one scene without also affecting it in the others.
This leaves me a bit puzzled. It seems odd to be able to create linked copies of scenes if there isn't also some way to partially unlink them. Is there a way to add an object to the new scene only, without also changing the original? Or is there a better way to achieve what I'm trying to do? I imagine it's quite a common thing to do, but the documentation for scenes is rather sparse, and good explanations of the system are hard to find.

Have a look into view layers. When using cycles you can set individual collections to indirect only or just exclude them, which might be the best solution in this case...

Not sure if this is what you're trying to get but can't you put each set of objects as a collection and have the environment on a separate collection then you can just disable rendering of all collections but keep the environment and the set that you want to be rendered .

+1, I suppose that would work, but it seems a bit fiddly compared to using scenes, because the outliner will get cluttered up with a big list of collections

You can put collections inside collections you can have 1 Parent collection for the environment and a parent collection for each set of objects.

I stumbled upon the answer myself after asking the question.
You have to make sure you're not creating the object inside a collection. Then it works as I expected it to, creating the object only in the new scene and not in the original. I was creating it inside the default collection (the one called "Collection") without realising it. To create an object outside of this collection, click on the top-level item, called "Scene Collection", in the outliner, before creating the object.
I guess this happens because the collection itself is shared between the scenes. If you create a new collection in the linked scene, you can add to that collection without affecting the original. This makes sense and is probably quite useful for managing which objects are shared between scenes and which aren't.


text:
replace an existing mesh in Python
This is a very basic question about scripting, but I'm unable to find a useful answer.
I created a new .blend file and did the following:

rename the default collection ("Collection") to my_collection
rename the default cube object inside to my_object
rename the mesh inside that to my_mesh

Now I want to write a Python script that will do the following:

delete the data in my_mesh and replace it with a new mesh generated by Python code.

The reason I want to overwrite the mesh rather than generating a new one is that I'll be adding modifiers to the mesh and don't want them to disappear every time I re-run the script.
Calling bpy.data.meshes['my_mesh'].from_pydata(...) doesn't work. (The error message is Runtime error: internal error setting the array, which isn't super helpful.)
There is a similar question, Update/overwrite an existing mesh within a collection Python Blender, but the answer there works by deleting the old mesh and creating a new one with the same name, which will not preserve modifiers. Preserving modifiers is my main goal.
I'm using Blender 4.0 beta if that makes a difference.

Try creating a new mesh and set the obj.data to the new mesh. All modifiers will remain same.

Hello. In Blender you don't add modifiers to the mesh data block, you add them to the object data block, so swapping meshes won't remove nor change your modifiers.

@JayReigns thank you, that worked - see my self-answer

@Gorgious thank you also, that was helpful

This is a self-answer, collecting information from @JayReigns and @Gorgious in the comments.
The trick is that you have to create a new mesh first, then set my_obj.data to the new mesh, then delete the old mesh. If you delete the old mesh first then it will delete the object as well, thus losing the modifiers. (You can also just not delete the mesh, but then you end up with a buildup of unused meshes. I guess they will disappear when you delete the file, but I prefer to delete them proactively.)
The following script works as intended. There should be an object called "my_object" inside a collection called "my_collection". Running the script will replace the object's mesh with a triangle. You can then apply modifiers and run the script again to update the mesh with the modifiers still applied.
import bpy

# dummy mesh for testing purpopses
vertices = [
    (0,0,0),
    (0,0,1),
    (0,1,1),
]
edges = []
faces = [[0,1,2]]

my_col = bpy.data.collections.get("my_collection")

my_obj = bpy.data.objects.get("my_object")
# will be created if it doesn't already exist

# create a new mesh:
my_mesh = bpy.data.meshes.new('my_mesh')
my_mesh.from_pydata(vertices, edges, faces)
my_mesh.update()

if not my_obj:
    # create the object if it doesn't exist
    # (useful because when iterating the script
    # I kept accidentally deleting it)
    my_obj = bpy.data.objects.new("my_obj",my_mesh)
    my_col.objects.link(my_obj)
else:
    # replace the mesh and delete the old one
    old_mesh = my_obj.data
    my_obj.data = my_mesh
    bpy.data.meshes.remove(old_mesh)

Thanks for sharing your answer ! To answer your comment, I think you don't need to deselect objects since you're accessing everything by name and it's context-independant. Cheers

@Gorgious thanks, that makes sense and it seems to work fine without it, so I've edited to remove that line


text:
What is the correct way to make an asset that I use in a scene?
I'm fairly new to Blender. I'd like to be able to easily make assets that I will reuse, while working on a scene. (Assets could be models, but also materials etc.) I want to do this non-destructively, so I can edit the asset and have all the instances update. Specifically, I want to achieve the following:

I initially develop the asset in a simple, clutter-free environment with just a simple lighting setup, for quick rendering

Then I add multiple instances of my asset to a scene

The version in the simple environment and the versions in my scene stay linked, so that I can either edit the asset in its original simple environment, or I can edit it in the scene, and editing one of them will change the other.

The best / most convenient workflow for this doesn't seem to be obvious. Here's what I can think of so far:

Create a new blender file for the asset. This seems to be a non-starter, because you can't open two .blend files at once (on Mac), so I'd have to constantly save my file, reopen the other one, export the model, save the file, open the other file, import the model, and so on. There would be no hope of making small changes to the asset and instantly seeing the effect in context.

Design the asset in a new scene within my blender file and then instance it within the 'main' scene. Initially this seemed like the obvious right way to do it, but the problem is you then can't adjust the asset without switching to the other scene, as I described at Editing a material when it doesn't exist in the current scene.

Create the asset in the same scene, just far away from the main scene. This seems awkward, and all the content of the other scene slows down the rendered view.

Use view layers to swap between the 'real' scene and a test lighting setup, as suggested in the answer at Editing a material when it doesn't exist in the current scene. This seems like it would work, but that feature isn't designed for this and I have a hard time believing it's the right way to go about it.

Design the asset in a separate scene, but when I'm ready to put it into the main scene, copy it instead of instancing it, and then instance the copy. Then I can adjust it in context, but I lose the ability to go back and edit the asset in its own separate scene if I want to.

Use the asset browser: create a separate file for my asset, put it in the Assets folder, then drop it into my scene. There are multiple ways of adding it: link, append, and append (share data). Unfortunately none of these quite achieve what I want. Append (share data) comes the closest, since I can put multiple instances in my file, which are linked and I can edit them in the context of the scene. But I can't then save those changes back to the asset library1. This seems like kind of an idiotic design decision, since it almost solves the problem but then goes out of its way to make things awkward at the last step.

1well, I can if I move the whole scene into the asset library folder and save the changed version as a new asset. But then I lose the ability to edit it in its original file, with the simple lighting setup, so even that doesn't achieve what I want.
My guess is that a good way to do this does exist, but good workflows aren't necessarily obvious to a beginner, so I'm asking here.

"you can't open two .blend files at once", yes you can, just right click on the Blender icon that is on your window top bar, or use another Blender version

So you could open 2 Blender, change the asset in its original file, save, then save and revert your current file in order to reload the modified version of the asset

I've hit upon an answer that works for me.
The solution is to create the asset in a separate scene, but it matters how you link the asset into the main scene. Before I was doing Add > Collection Instance, but there's another way to link them that apparently does something different, and achieves what I was hoping for:

Create a new scene, model the asset, put everything in a collection

In the main scene, go into the outliner. This is the top right panel in edit mode by default. At the top there is a little icon that looks like a photograph. Click this and change it from "View Layer" to "Scenes".

Now you can see the collection you created for the asset in the other scene. Drag it into the 'Scene Collection' of the main scene while holding the Ctrl key. You have to start dragging first, then hold Ctrl while letting it go.

Set the outliner back to "View Layer".

Now you have an editable copy of the asset in the main scene, and it's linked to the original in the other scene so that changes to either of them will affect the other. You can then use "duplicate linked" to create more linked copies in the main scene.
I very much welcome comments explaining why this way of linking the collections behaves differently from the more obvious Add > Collection Instance one.

I guess the solution depends on many factors like your scene complexity, what are your assets, etc. I would try to manage it with the collections, and maybe use the View Layers as I said in your first question, each one set to see a specific collection or several collections.
But you say that "you can't open two .blend files at once", actually you can, just right click on the Blender icon on your Windows taskbar and click on Blender again, it will open a second Blender, then open a second file. Or open another version of Blender.
Once done, in the first blend, create your asset. In the second blend, create your scene and drop the asset. If you want to change the asset, do it in the original file, save, then in your scene file do a File > Save and File >Revert, it will reload the modified asset.


text:
Emission material not illuminating
Note: although the procedure described below does result in Eevee being used as the renderer, that wasn't intentional. So, not that it really matters, but this isn't a duplicate of the Eevee question, and the answer below telling me to change it to Cycles is correct.
I'm a complete newb. I'm interested in playing with shader nodes, but I'm failing at the first step: if I add an emission material it does not appear to iluminate anything.
Here's what I'm doing:

Create a new project

Delete the default light source, leave the default cube in place

Shift-A -> Mesh -> Plane

Move plane to somewhere above the cube

Go to shading workspace, which displays the shader node editor

Click on the plane

Delete the default "Principled BSDF" node

Add an 'Emission' node

Set the strength to anywhere from 50 to 500000

Connect 'Emission' output to 'Surface' input of the material output node

Render an image

I get this:

I have two questions:

Why is this happening? How can I get the emission surface to illuminate the cube?

Although the render looks like that, the preview looks like this:

On many YouTube videos I have seen people use a preview that looks the same as the finished render, but noisier because it uses less samples. How can I activate that? (I think the answer to the last one is probably "switch the preview renderer to Cycles," but I can't figure out how to do that.)
Here's where the plane is in relation to the cube. It's sort of hard to tell but it's about as far off the ground as the camera is, and from the camera's perspective it's above and to the right of the cube.

the plane is above the cube right?

@TheKalaakaar yes, above and off to one side a bit. I'll edit an image into the question shortly.

In Eevee the Emission won't enlight anything, switch to Cycles or use a light

@moonboots how do I do that? I asked how to switch it to cycles in the question.

Just choose cycles instead of Eevee in the render properties

I've answered, in the Render panel

In Eevee the Emission won't enlight anything, switch to Cycles or use a light.

Great, that works for the render output. My only other question is, how do I switch the preview window to use cycles as well?

@N.Virgo that is not possible

@TheKalaakaar hmm, I must be asking the wrong question. In many YouTube videos I've seen people using a realtime preview that looks like the cycles output only noisier, because it uses less samples. I'm asking how to activate that, so I can preview the effect of the emission surface.

@TheKalaakaar ah, I've got it. At the top right of the preview window there is a row of icons that look like spheres, one of which does what I was asking for.

@N.Virgo you must be talking about the denoising funtionality. This is available in cycles right below the sampling settings.

You don't. That's why you have four globe icons at the top-right of the 3D window for wireframe, solid, material preview and rendered view accessed by the Z-key pie menu.

@TheKalaakaar no, I was asking how to enable the rendered view, exactly as John Eason said. (I'm pretty sure "rendered view" is using Cycles for the preview.)

If you are in Cycles, Rendered Preview (fourth button) will use Cycles, if you are in Eevee il will use Eevee

...and Material Preview will always use Eevee because it's faster.

So basically object emisison doesn't work in Eevee
You can use object emission, but you will have to use probes for that. But believe me, if it's just a simple scene, you are better off using cycles. Because baking the probes can be a little bit annoying to have to wait for. This is beacuse every time you change the locaion of something, you will have to bake it again to recalculate according to the new lighting conditions.
Here I have set up an irradiance volume to show what light probes do.


text:
Why is the texture paint doing this?
Something has happened, this is texture paint mode. I already tried removing doubles, fixing normals...frustration supreme.

The part, which is purple, has different material applied then the rest of the dress.It's DiffuseMap.001 instead of DiffuseMap, they have different diffuse textures, so you can't paint both of them at the same time.

How can I merge it so it's all on one map?

You probably don't need few different materials assigned to this dress, as you are painting all of it by hand anyway, so just remove all materials except first.


text:
texture paint, only part of the mesh is paintable?
I'm super frustrated with this one, I've spent a lot of time on the mesh, got the uv's layed out all nice, and now when i go to paint it, it only lets me paint part of the sleeves. What am I doing wrong? I'd rather edit in photoshop so is there a way to just fill the uvs? I tried exporting the uv's and nothing showed up.

In the file you uploaded the image "yfbody.dds" doesn't exist. After creating a new image to replace "yfbody.dds" I am able to paint onto the model.
When exporting UV's you either need to select all the UV's you want included or turn on the All UV's option.


text:
Unseen UVs appear in Texture paint?
So through all of the little issues I've been able to find and fix online, this one has be stuck....

????Where are these extra shapes coming from and why can I only see them when I texture paint???? I can't select them through the uv panel or in edit mode. I've searched my mesh for double verts and such...the only thing I can think of was sometime in the past I may have made the faces double sided, the sleeves I think. But why can't I edit the uvs if that is the problem.
Please help I've been stuck on this one all day.
Link to blender file:

Hard to say without the actual .blend file to inspect further. You might want to upload it to http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ , then pasting the given link into your question by using the "edit" link below it.

You have mesh artifacts and double vertices from modeling in your geometry.

There are two possibilities to solve this.

Tab into Edit Mode, hit W and select "Remove Doubles". You need to unwrap your model after that again.
In your UV/Image Editor window, hit A to select everything, turn on "Keep UV and edit mode mesh selection in sync" (see image below), switch to Face Select mode, then select all the faces you want to get rid of. Move your mouse to the 3D View and hit X and select "Faces" to remove them.

Make sure to check and recalculate the face normals after that.

Thank you! I found that the artifacts were actually from the mirror modifier I had turned on. Followed the steps and #2 was definitely the answer. Thanks for teaching me a new button :) I appreciate you adding the gif and not a still


text:
What's the data_path of lamp energy? BUG?
I'm trying to insert a keyframe via python to animate energy lamp but i get this TypeError:
o.keyframe_insert(data_path='energy', frame=5)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<blender_console>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: bpy_struct.keyframe_insert() property "energy" not found

The data_path "energy" should be correct, as explained here how to find the data_path for scripted keyframes just rightclick the Energy property and select "Copy Data Path".
Distance property don't works too.
I tried this on several Blender version: 2.71, 2.74, 2.76b, 2.77
More:
I added manually the energy lamp animation and by checking this value:
bpy.context.object.data.animation_data.action.fcurves[0].data_path

i get still the same value 'energy'
It's a bug or i'm doing it wrong? There is some workaround?
SOLVED
I was confused by the fact that the property color was animatable directly from the lamp object otherwise energy and distance can be animated by lamp.data
The correct code
o.data.keyframe_insert(data_path='energy', frame=5)

Of the three choices my bet is that you're doing it wrong in that your o object is the lamp object, not the data part, or some other non LAMP data object.
import bpy
context = bpy.context
#o = bpy.data.objects.get("Lamp") # assumes you have an ob named Lamp
#o.data = bpy.data.lamps.get("Lamp")
o = context.active_object
if o:
    #o.energy
    print("%s (%s)" % (o.name, o.type), getattr(o, "energy", "Has NO energy property"))
    o = o.data
    #o.data.energy
    if o:
        print("%s (%s)" % (o.name, o.type), getattr(o, "energy",  "Has NO energy property"))

If you grab a datapath from the DATA Properties panel, eg mesh panel for mesh objects, the datapath will be resolvable on the data part.
context.active_object.data  (except for empties, whose data part is None)


text:
Blender 2.77 no longer orbits around the z axis when using scroll wheel or numpad 6, 4?
Does anyone have this problem and know how to fix it? I am used to being able to rotate around the global z with the number pad or using scrollwheel + ctrl + alt, without regard to which way my camera was currently facing. It is a habit formed over the last 10 years of blender use, and was a quick way to single out parts of a mesh when working. Now however, this appears to rotate around the viewport why (IE, it rotates around an imaginary fixed line drawn from the center top to center bottom of the viewport.) This change is really throwing off my work, and I have ground to a complete halt since installing blender 2.77 an hour ago.
Edit: Things I have tried so far, with no change:

Re-installing

Resetting to Factory

Switching Orbit from Turntable to Trackball
(I think the problem is that I am stuck in Trackball for some reason, but not sure.)

I think there was a design change in 2.77 that is going to be reverted to the old behavior in a soon-to-be-released 2.77a. See https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.77/rc

@jrboddie, thank you! I hope they make this an option, rather than a "my way or the highway" type fix. Ten years of habit is hard to break. is there any way to find out when revision "a" will be released?

This was considered a feature, but it's understandable why some are against it. On a related note, trackpad rotation of the Viewport has been changed as well and it's driving me nuts.

That's a new feature:

The View3D NumPad4/6 keys have no more a 'turntable' type of rotation, but (as all other rotating numpad keys) use a view axis (the vertical one, see T47263 and rBfe0ca82b232d).

As it caused some confusion, the developers for now reverted this new behaviour in 2.77a, so you should just update.

This might be obvious but you could just set the center of the viewport to the object you are working on by pressing Num .
Hopefully they will fix it in a future version but until then this might be the only way.

authors: Максим Роговский


text:
vertex based displace - assign random materials to resulting sides -
Thanks to @Gorgious for all the expertise in getting this to where it is.
I was previously looking to randomly grow faces up from an array of cubes and the best solution for this to use a mix of displacement along array of vertexes that then connect together through screw modifiers followed by solidify and shrinkwrap.
The result was this -

The mosaic is tied to empty than once moved controls  displacement.
TO achieve the effect below I'm using a colorRamp with constant sliders, but on the offchance I want to mix in different materials, as advised mixed them in using greater than operator and 'Random per island'.
Like this -

Question - is it possible to have this apply to individual sides after the transform? So that random can select that, from one 'block' the top face and the other ones can be of different colour?
Thanks in advance and again apologies if this is super-newbie, I'm only learning blender but it's looking super exciting (but complicated coming from AE background)

It's definitely possible, but just so we are on the same page, could you add a schematics or an example of the desired effet ?

I've followed along and got my fair share of @Gorgious Goodness.. if the Array mods are not applied, I'm already getting all faces of the cubes considered 'islands' from the POV of Random per Island. Maybe merging in the arrays merges islands.

@RobinBetts thanks :) Also a bit of advice if you want random values per face with the Random Per Island output : Use Smooth Shading or an Edge Split modifier and play with the angle value

hi guys, thanks a lot for your comments. This is 'kind of what I had in mind' - https://imgur.com/HWMiqli but that was back when I thought all I need is to apply displacement and that's job done. Basically at that point I'd assign 5-6 materials then apply to random faces. So in an ideal world I'm looking to combine visuals from that URL with this bouncing mosaic that you helped out with. Promise I'll pass on the knowledge!


text:
How to do UV Mapping in shape bottle
How to do UV Mapping for a bottle shaped like this?

You can select the vertical edges and mark seam them by right clicking.

Cylindrical UV unwrapping should do the job as the model resembles a cylinder and the topology is quads.  Unwrapped cylindrically, they are rectangles.


text:
Multiple independent force fields
I'd like to simulate the CO2 adsorption process in several spheres (nanoparticles). I am able to do it in one, but I am struggling when adding a second, third, etc... mainly because when introducing a second force field, the "CO2 particles" attach to the center of mass instead of each independent sphere.
Any suggestion?

Maybe Charge is appropriate  Linked from manual


text:
Can you use Python to create custom compositor nodes?
I want to create a Kuwahara Filter within Blender according to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDhN-JK3U9g. Is it possible to write a custom node for this kind of filter within Blender?
If it is possible, what are some resources I can look into to learn about scripting compositing nodes?

You could write a CPU shader in OSL, otherwise you can design a custom group using existing nodes.

I've added a less irritating link in your question, with greater density of information. In general, posts should not depend on external links but here, the central question is not dependent. You may be interested in this project, although it's rather old, now.

@RobinBetts May I ask why did you find the link irritating? I'm thinking of making some educational Youtube videos myself, but haven't yet figured a theme.

@MarkusvonBroady Welllll... I'm no expert.. but perhaps, here are a few pointers. 1. The 'Shocked Face' thumbnail. Curiously, omitted by  the link in question. 2. Give the video a title about one thing, and then spend most of it talking about something else. Chiefly, of course, yourself. 'How you personally feel about..' is a great cue-card, here. (Your dog... pineapple on pizza.. etc.). 3. Sound is important. Start  with: 'What's up, guys?' and ensure there's an irrelevant background track, levelled up enough to obscure narration and make concentration impossible. Hmm.. running out of roo

@RobinBetts Hahah, I've never seen you that irritated! That's a great recipe I will try to avoid.

Kuwahara Filter has been added to Blender: https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/177355/60486


text:
How can I create a border around a cylinder mesh that protrudes forwards
I have a cylinder mesh and I want to create a border around it that protrudes forwards. Would anyone be able to explain how I could do this? I know how to create edge loops, but im still finding this a bit difficult.
Here is a references example:

As you can see in the image there is a black border around the yellow mesh and it protrudes slightly forward. I want to create this protrusion.
Thanks everyone.

so I guess you need to play with some insets and extrusions? The black surfaces could also be different meshes, as it would be the case in reality

How is the face of the cylinder filled? If it's filled with a triangle fan (single central vertex) then you won't be able to add an edge loop. One way to add one is to duplicate the outer circle of vertices and build a ring off of that by extruding it inwards to make it solid then extrude those faces outward to give it depth.


text:
Where is Grease Pencil stroke snap mode in UI?
I found this: gpencil_stroke_snap_mode

gpencil_stroke_snap_mode
NONE All points, No snap.
ENDS End points, Snap to first and last points and interpolate.
FIRST First point, Snap
to first point.

But i can't find this settings in user interface. Where is it?

Here it is, works with Stroke Placement "Stroke" only:

Thank you for posting your question very clearly.
This is the reason why SNAP FIRST and SNAP LAST and LOOSE SNAP exist.
This was recently implemented.
When you START a drawing using the circle snap your drawing will conform to the first and last stroke point when you let go of the draw. If you draw and CLOSE the shape the snap will conform to first point to snap. And obviously if you don´t do any of these, you´ll have LOOSE snap.
I´m glad that you´re reading into this inside the API.
Thank you for your vote for this answer if you find what you were looking for
BFCT_Schiller

But where is it in UI? it's not implemented yet?

Select pencil (or brush), select stroke color. Go to the menu I show you. Select Circle, Draw in ANY FORM YOU LIKE: You can´t because you´ve been constrained to CIRCLE. CLOSE the circle if you keep drawing. Did you notice how it SNAPS to beginning? All righty, vote me as answer. THIS IS THE UI.

It doesn't snap to beginning..

I found it in the 2.78 Tool Shelf > Grease Pencil:

Oh, I found! 100 points for you for right direction


text:
How can I apply hair dynamics?
How can I apply hair dynamics?
I don't want to convert it, I want to continue to edit it in particle edit mode

I don't know free solution, but with paid Hair Tool you can convert simulated hair to  curves, and then attach those curves back as particle hairs - but this time with ability to edit them (comb, cut etc).

i don't know if you already figured this out, but when the hair is going all over the place, if you want the hair to move together like a head of hair or like a main, you need to set the voxel size high enough, 1.0 is a good start, and then set the hair target hair density to 0.5, and target strength to something like 0.01.  Goal strength i set to 0.3 for cloth and for hair.  That should get you going in the right direction.
Under field weights wind can be an issue, OH and your hair may to heavy at 0.3kg, try 0.08 kg to start, maybe less.
this the same answer I posted for another user for default settings, in addtion, you have to click hair dynamics.  You need to set the settings above, and then you'll likely need to lower some of the field settings, all of them are set to 1.0 by default.


text:
Cloth Pin Has No Effect?
As per tutorials:
1. Created and subdivided a plane
2. Made a vertex group of vertices along one edge.
3. Clicked cloth button in Physics tab, checked "Pinning" and assigned the vertex group.
Yet it just falls, without hanging on to the pin vertices. What did I miss?

The problem is you didn't actually assign the vertices to the vertex group. Once you create the vertex group, you click the Assign button to assign the selected vertices to the vertex group.
As shown below:

Muchos gracias.


text:
Renderfarm ERROR:EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
I have 4 computers running  blender where 2 of them are slaves, one is a master, and one is the client. I am using the Network Render Add-on.
After about 50% of the render is complete, I get the following error:

The slaves are idle, but the job just shows as queued:

I'm getting this error with both Cycles and Blender Render. But in Cycles, the render doesn't even start.
Does anyone know what is going on?

yes the slave machines have memory and rendering on cpu

An EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION can only ever be caused by a thread accessing virtual RAM that it's not supposed to. That's the only possible cause.
There are only two ways that can happen.
1) a thread is writing to a RAM location that belongs to another thread. I cannot stress enough how uncommon this case is for production applications. This is practically unheard of. If this ever happens (which is rare) it's a driver, not an application.
2) an application ran out of memory. It's NOT uncommon that a program will "detect" that there is no more available memory by just attempting to address some, getting told "STAHP!," and then crashing.
I suspect that you're loading a lot more than you think you are, or you have some kind of weird circular dependency that is just recursively loading stuff until it crashes. This has also happened when the GPU runs out of VRAM. There's a weird thing that when a GPU runs out of VRAM, sometimes nobody listens... consequently, the system keeps loading stuff, ignoring the fact that it's all going to RAM... and then Virtual RAM... and then crashes.
I'd recommend manually trying to render on each machine to make sure they're all working fine.

Unsolicited Advice
Really, the best way to network render if you have fewer than 10 machines is to set up a network drive (or Dropbox, but DB is slower) and have all your machines render separately (as if they were rendering by themselves) to that location. Turn on "Placeholder" and turn OFF "Overwrite." Each machine will attempt to render a frame by creating an empty file with the right name. Because "Overwrite" is OFF, when it sees that a file with that name already exists, it will skip to the next frame. It will continue skipping until it's able to create a placeholder. Then it will start rendering that frame. When it finishes rendering the frame, it'll attempt to create a placeholder for the next frame, and the cycle starts over again.
This method is great because it automatically balances the load among "differently-abled" machines. Each machine just renders the next frame in the sequence. You can also stop any machine at any time, and add any machine at any time, without disrupting the process. Especially if you've got them all loading the same Blender file from the same location (network or Dropbox), you don't have to spend a lot of time copying Blender scenes from one computer to another.
Note: If your frames are coming out too fast, or if your network is too slow, two machines might create the same placeholder at the same time, and that frame will (oddly) end up getting skipped. Just stop one of the machines, delete the skipped file, and start it again. That machine will skip to the gap, render that image, and then skip to the next missing frame.

Wow, thanks a lot. I'm new to network rendering, and will try out what you advised... :D

You're welcome ;-) Add a comment here, letting us know how it turns out!

Thanks I used the 3 machines all rendering in a common network directory and worked very well... and was also simple probably would have finished rendering a few hours ago thanks again for the advice


text:
Blender rendering transparent images
I am a blender noob, please bare with me
Whenever i render, i get this entire transparent image, nothing showing up. I've already tried changing transparent settings, not using GPU and restarting my computer, none of these worked.
EDIT: i figured out that it seems to be the text scene causing the problem. Swapping around the text and background seems to be working fine. Looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JzGj3mZDCA
My text scene is the only cycles scene i have, rest are in internal engine.
File:

Reasked, now with file
Any help appreciated!

I don't know why but I'm not able to download the .blend...

Now it should work

It rendered fine in my computer. The compositing tree is quite complex though, and there may be some issues with it. It did take a long time to process the post production, and while it did nothing displayed in the image viewer, instead a transparent background was in its place giving the impression of an empty render.

The result was quite disappointing too, a white blur over a black background, so there must definitely something wrong with it.

I tried on my Blender 2.78 and it renders this image:

Maybe it's what you want. I don't know.
I see the last node (before the composite one, I mean) is a blur.
If I delete it the image is this:

Is that what you want?
The compositing takes some time to process, and while he does in the Render on the Image Editor window is transparent. Maybe you din't wait enough to complete the compositing.


text:
Scale Texture with a Value-/Math-Node
in my node setup I have a value node. I want this node to influence the scaling of my mapping node.
Is there a way to achieve this? Or is there a math/vector node setup I can use to manipulate the scale of my texture?

I found an answer to my question:
Possible to control a Driver from a Group Node input slider?
Because the original question here is another one, I won't delete my post. Maybe it is helpful for someone.

If you only want to scale the texture, you can use a MixRGB node set to Multiply instead of the Mapping node, as in this example:

Well, thats even easier and with less nodes than the answer I found 10 seconds ago. thanks a lot


text:
Enabling rigid body physics on an object through Animation Nodes
I'm trying to use the Animation Nodes add-on to animate a practically infinite stream of envelopes falling into a (transparent) ballot box. I want one envelope to appear above the box every n frames, hang mid-air for a few frames, then fall through the hole into the pile of already generated envelopes. I need the physics simulator to handle the collisions.
What I'm currently doing is this: use an object instancer to create the envelopes, then divide time into periods so that envelope i becomes visible at period i. At period i + 10 frames, I then use a Python script to turn object.rigid_body.enabled to true.
That last part doesn't work however: the physics never get computed for the duplicated envelopes.
I'm guessing maybe this is because I'm changing the "dynamic" property through a script instead of keyframing it. However I don't know how to generate the keyframes I need through AN (or through a script connected to AN).
Here's my node setup:

The enable_physics script:
import bpy
object.rigid_body.enabled = enable
object.rigid_body.kinematic = enable

("Dynamic" is keyframed on this picture, but it's only for testing purposes on the parent object.)

The solution to this question seems to solve your problem as well. But additionally I had to to disable the kinematic line in the script (or use object.rigid_body.kinematic = not enable). HTH

Thanks! I ended up doing things differently however, without Animation Nodes - with a script to duplicate everything and change settings and animations programmatically. I'll post an answer there as soon as I've got time.


text:
Extrude curved surfaced by a constant distance
I'm trying to extrude an area inwards, so that the new boundary is a constant distance from the old boundary.  Essentially, the piece now has exactly the same size and shape as the hole that I have, but I want there to be a constant gap between my piece and the hole.
I've looked at this answer, but it doesn't give me what I want.
Here is the original object:

This is a sketch of what I want:

Here's what I have tried:
Extrude region:

Extrude region (vertex normals):

Extrude individual:

How can I get what I want?
Here is my file.
Thanks!
EDIT: Here is what happens if I use the solidify modifier:

It sort of works, but the distance between the new wall and the old one isn't uniform.  This is how it looks like (the distances highlighted in red should be uniform, but they aren't):

Did you try using solidify modifier?

Solidify modifier sort of does it, but distance from the original walls aren't very uniform (see my edit).  If there's no better way then I suppose this would have to do.  Pardon my lack of skills, I'm new to Blender.

If you apply the scale of the object that should fix the thickness.

How did you design that shape? Was it ever a bezier curve through the course of its existence? It looks like this would be far easier and more suited to do this with a Bezier Curve. They have an Offset property which allows doing exactly what you want to achieve. Also Extrude Region by Vertex Normals should do what you want, just a matter of controlling the direction correctly

It was designed using cylinders and planes.  All the "curved" surfaces are arcs that have exactly 2cm radius.

@Denis could you please elaborate what you mean by "apply the scale of the object"?  I don't see a "scale" option in the solidify modifier.

In Object mode, Ctrl+A and choose scale. Denis's combined comments solves your problem.

@cmomoney  Thank you!  I still don't know what "apply the object's transformation to its data" means, but it works!

Transformations done in Object mode are not directly applied to the mesh data. Your just basically transforming the "container" of the data.

please attach the file and you will get the solution soon

See Properties (N) > Transform > Scale XYZ is not 1 in all axis.
Since Modifier transformation is applied first on Object Data and Object Transformation after means Solidifier extrudes thickness and Object Transform squeeze that result.

To solve your issue Apply Scale Transformation (Ctrl+A)

What Object Transform is see this answer or check Manual.


text:
How to edit multiple external reference paths
I have a large directory tree of an old project created by someone else that has been moved around.
Now there are many blend files with broken absolute links to textures, alembic caches, render output paths etc.
I know that I can do it manually with Find missing files but all data is scattered in many places inside the main folder.
I figured that I would only need to change the first part of the paths like **D:\myfiles**projectX... > to **C:\Projects**projectX... .
Do you know of an addon or script that can help edit reference paths with find-replace like functionality?
Thanks!

In the menu under File > External Data there is Find Missing Files, this opens a dialogue box where you can navigate to the new folder containing the files. Okay, you knew that. You don't have to choose files separately, just the folder. And if you open the sidepanel with N, there is an option Find All. If you enable it, Blender also searches in subfolders.


text:
The Multiresolution modifier doesn't work as expected
So when I'm sculpting with the multi-resolution modifier, the changes I make change when I'm scrolling through to look at it from a better perspective (the middle mouse button and rotating it).  The tutorial I was following didn't have such a case. Is that expected?

are you talking about the Multiresolution modifier?

Oh yes! I will change the name in the question. Sorry

This is the Fast Navigate option.

Fast Navigate
  For multiresolution models, shows low resolution while navigating in the viewport.

It is a viewport optimization, which is useful if your high poly model is slowing down Blender. To disable it, go to the Tool Options in sculpt mode, then navigate to the Options section and disable Fast Navigate.


text:
Is there a way to realign a not aligned object, which tranforms has already been applied?
In this image i show an example of what i ask: http://prntscr.com/o8aa9c
Is there a way to put it on the grip flat. Let's say i can't reset tranforms to 0 because they have already been applied.
Mostly i talk about rotation, because translation, that would be easy, I would just snap it to grid, but it would not be flat on it.

Related https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/63506/set-object-local-axis-based-on-face-orientation

This is a duplicate answer: I can't find @moonboots' original. If found, feel free to delete this one.

Decide which face you want the object to lie flat on. In Edit Mode, select the face, and create a Custom Orientation from it. (In 2.79, CtrlAltSpace. In 2.8,Header > Orientations dropdown > '+')
With all the object's vertices selected, CtrlH hook them to a new Empty. They are now frozen, while you transform their local axis.
In Object Mode with the object to be aligned selected. In menu Header > Object > Transform, click 'Align to Custom Orientation'
Go to the object's modifier panel, find the Hook modifier, and apply it.

Now the object's local Z axis will be oriented normal to the chosen face, and it will be easy to rotate the object to align it with the world, or, by snapping, to any other face. You could, if you want to, ShiftAltO pt yhe origin to center of the face, too.

Maybe I did something wrong, but I couldn't get this answer to work, but when I swapped point 2 and 3 around, then reset the rotation to zero on the object to which the vertices were hooked, then it worked.

@Susan Thanks for the feedback..  I checked again..  I'm trying to, but  can't get it to fail. Maybe I'm doing something automatically..Don't try to rotate before applying the hook?

I'm in 2.79. Maybe that's the reason it doesn't work for me as written?  Also, I didn't explain everything I did properly.  I hooked the misaligned object's vertices to a plane I'd created in the center of the world (after I realigned that plane to the custom orientation.)  When I reset the rotation of the plane to zero, the misaligned object ended up under the plane with its origin above the plane. So I had to move the origin to the geometry, but I ended up with the "misaligned" object being parallel to the home grid. Its location was different but its rotation was right.

@Susan  Me, 279, and 280. You could introduce complications the way you describe.. I think it's better just to have a clean, independent, world-oriented empty to hook to. it's only there for a couple of minutes.. just to hold the mesh while you rotate the object. Combined parenting, constraints, orientations get my head spinning.. :D

@ Robin Betts OK - I was misunderstanding the directions. Where you said "while you transform the object to which they belong" I thought the vertices were hooked to and "belonged to" the Empty. Therefore I aligned the Empty instead of the misaligned object.
But the solution of putting a Plane on the same angle as the bottom face, sticking the object to the plane, then zeroing out the rotation of the Plane does put the geometry back how you want it.  I'll bear in mind your warnings though.  I only got the idea of doing it that way from your answer so either way, thanks.

@Susan  Ill go back and fix. Thanks