Reducing Rendering Time: Video Editing System Specs:

Intel i7 930 @ 2.80Ghz
16 GB DDR3 Gaming RAM
64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate
Nvidea GeForce GTX 780
1 TB Western Digital HDD (non-SSD)

Blender Settings:

Audio Dev: SDL
Compute Device: CUDA GeForce GTX 780
OpenSubdiv Compute: OpenMP
Memory Cache Limit: 10240
Anisotroptic Filtering: off
VBOs: ENABLED
Window Draw Method: Automatic, No MultiSample

So I have been using blender for youtube video's I've been making, since I need a free/open source video editor. I've been rather satisfied with the editing itself. With the rendering however, I have not.

I have rendered a 40 minute video in both Blender, and Adobe CS5 Premiere.

Video Specs:

Settings used for BOTH blender AND Premiere

1 video imported
2 images (intro & outro fade)
1 music track (outro for about 15 seconds)
Audio Codec: AAC (same as source)
Audio Rate: 192 kbps (same as source)
Stereo Audio (same as source)
Resolution: 1080p (same as source)
Framerate: 60fps (same as source)
Video Codec: H.264 (recorded in x264)
Video Rate: +-8000 mbps (same as source)
Format: MPEG-4 (same as source)

Blender Specific:

GOP size: 30
Tile Size: 256x256 (seemed to be the fastest?)
Start Resolution 64
Output: Xvid

What I found was fairly displeasing.

Blender takes up to 6 hours to render the video, and produce a file of about 2.5 GB.

Adobe Premier takes about 1 hour to render the video, and produce a file of about 1.9 GB.

Both programs I have configured to the best of my abilities to fulfill the recommendations set by Youtube/google, which can be found here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

Not only this, but whilst monitoring my components, I found the following things:

Blender uses 5 GB of RAM, about 20% of my CPU and about 5% of my GPU.

Premier uses 2 GB of RAM, about 75% of my CPU and about 1% of my GPU.

So my question is:
Can I configure blender in a way that it performs more favorably? (like Premiere)

I can accept it if it renders for say 2 hours, but if you take over 5 times as long as is required (apparently), then that definitely means I'll not be continue using blender for editing video's.

TL;DR:  No, because the Blender VSE is single-threaded.

I haven't done a code dive, but what it looks like Blender is doing is serially feeding each frame through its respective pipeline then into the encoder.  That means the only time Blender will multithread or use GPU when rendering video is if a specific frame uses a pipeline that multithreads.

You'll find this is also true of proxy generation.  Rebuilding proxies in Blender will always single thread.

For my workflow, I've gotten around this bottleneck by making use of a chunking and stitching method similar to bpsrender.

You should look into this, it enables blender to use more of your CPU. Detailed instructions in code.

https://github.com/mikeycal/the-video-editors-render-script-for-blender
Mikeycal made a python script that splits the video file into as many pieces as you have cpu cores so each core can work on a piece. At the end of the rendering, it assembles the pieces back together. I was getting almost twice as fast renders using the script.


Object are showing black in material view I just successfully rendered this clock tutorial. However all of the objects show black in material view. I've been searching online for an hour, found a lot of similar posts but none of the answers match my setup. I have out put nodes, im not in local view, and the light source's specular and diffuse options are checked. Can any one help point me in the right direction?

Example

(Link to my blender file)

Update:  I've been using my laptop for this project - a dell Inspiron - and recently opened the project on my main pc and selected my nvidia gpu for the hardware. For whatever reason the materials show fine. I think its related to the Intel Intgrated HD graphics on my laptop. Must be some kind of driver glitch. The bottom line seems to be that my laptop's integrated graphics don't work well with this aspect of Blender. Thanks for all the help though.

You may have a flipped normals. If you swap into edit mode and select one of its faces then ctrl-F to get your drop down and select "flip normal" may help.


My cursor doesn't stay in the window when scaling It used to be that my cursor would teleport to the other end of the window I was scaling or moving something. Is there a setting that I could have toggled that disabled this feature?

You can enable or disable the behaviour in the User Preferences(ctrl+alt+u), Input tab, under Mouse section. It's called Continuous Grab.

I should say there isn't. Use G, R and S keys to avoid it. Also, the keys allow more precision. Like S > 2.58.


Humanoid Rigify help: I tried everything but still getting: Warning: Bone Heat Weighting I know this is a duplicate issue, but could someone help me to understand why I'm getting this Bone Heat Weighting Failure.

I've gone through the forums and youtube and tried around 8 or so different suggest fixes, but no luck.

I'm fine with the module being one mesh. I've tried loosening vertices and I noticed it broke the mesh into parts with the finger and toe-nails separate. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the issue but I'm certainly fine with that all being one mesh.

Here's a couple different links to download my latest file post fix attempts:

or
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=48571

or the same via google drive:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1h5clTGbx5VgVXsM_of0sWlLiA1JV-adi

Also, if it's helpful, here is a blender file with the metarig before I generated the rig:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1J7K-05I6SjhW6dz2TkWKgoT3RJXrzX0W

If it turns out the issue has something to do with the fact that I deleted the meshes for the eyes and inside of the mouth. Here's the original model I was using:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xFYN7ueDiSUrRH8BI1XkZPzgifNrJ5yq

I simply deleted all the extra meshes to try and simplify my issue. Ideally I want to work with those other meshes and rigify, but I'm starting out simple.

I am not sure what is problem but I face this issue mostly when object has non uniform symmetry  while applying automatic weights so if u can make your object symmetrical your problem may solve


Mask modifier not rendering I applied a mask modifier to a sphere object. When I preview the render, the object is visible with the mask showing correctly:

However, when I render the scene, the object is invisible:

Not sure if I should apply the modifier or not. I made sure the object was visible in ray visibility and no other object is in front of it.

Also, when I don't render the modifier, the object renders correctly.

Ok, it seems that if a mask modifier is used with a subdivision surface modifier, the render and the viewport subdivisions have to be the same. I think the problem it's related to the cache of the baked simulation.

When I do that, the object renders correctly.


How can I uncomment "#" a line using python? I looking for this

#My line    <=== is commented

after running my python script

My line     <=== is uncommented

IS there any way to get an executable code by reading a commented line?

Yes it is possible, but not very useful. The following naive code attempts to change line 4 of its text block within Blender. The function modify takes 4 arguments.

name - the file name of the script
lineno - the line number to change (zero based)
orig - the original start of the string to change
repl - the replacement

So if you execute the script twice, the code will be commented again. The script will attempt to find its own file name in the last 2 lines. Only tested for Linux.

import bpy
import ntpath
#this is a comment
#print("Hello Blender!") # this is code

def modify(name, lineno, orig, repl):
    t = bpy.data.texts[name]
    s = t.as_string()
    l = s.splitlines()

    if l[lineno].startswith(orig):
        l[lineno] = l[lineno].replace(orig, repl, 1)
    elif l[lineno].startswith(repl):
        l[lineno] = l[lineno].replace(repl, orig, 1)

    t.from_string("\n".join(l))

head, tail = ntpath.split(__file__)
modify(tail or ntpath.basename(head),3,"#print","print")

apart from if-then clauses, no.
It's commented code for a reason, and that reason is for the interpreter to ignore it at all times.


Which is faster: A math node tree or an OSL shader? In terms of render times for Cycles materials, which is faster? A material node tree containing many (~20-50) math nodes or a single OSL shader script node performing the same calculation.

Answer is hard to give, so I will rephrase the question to will an OSL script node eventually be faster than an SVM node graph with math nodes. The answer to this question is yes. Then the next question, when will this benefit happen. this one depends on many parameters. Would I recomment to migrate to OSL script fore solely this reason? No.

I did a test on this subject. As GPU depends on many other stuff I will stick to a SVM CPU vs OSL CPU comparison.

Specs of my test machine:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz (8 cores)
Running on Linux
Using official Blender 2.79 release

Test scenes

I constructed 5 scenes for this test.

SVM-0: SVM without the math nodes

SVM-math: SVM with the math nodes

OSL-0: OSL without the math nodes

OSL-math: OSL with the math nodes

OSL-scipt: OSL with the script node

The scene uses around 12 math nodes. I used the emission shader as it will not scatter new rays.

SVM-0  SVM-math | OSL-0  OSL-math OSL-script
------ -------- | ------ -------- ----------
22.90  25.86    | 25.47  27.70    26.05
22.87  25.80    | 25.40  27.64    26.01
22.86  25.84    | 25.38  27.68    25.99
22.92  25.84    | 25.42  27.65    26.04
22.91  25.79    | 25.44  27.63    26.04
-----  -------- | ------ -------- ----------
22.892 25.826   | 25.422 27.660   26.026

What is important in these numbers:
 - SVM average time in the math nodes is 2.934
 - OSL average time in the math nodes is 2.238
 - OSL average time in script node is 0.604

SVM math nodes scales linear. Meaning adding more math nodes will add on average a constant performance penalty.

There is a positive effect on using script nodes. Where is the theoretically break even?

((26.026-22.892)/0.604)*12=62.2649

But different scenes will have different results. For example: the test scenes are constructed that the shader is full screen. Normally you have many different objects and materials in the scene. So let's calculate the number of samples that are needed.

1920*1080*128*62.2649 = 16526399569.92 # resolution * samples * breakeven

On my machine the benefit would happen around 16,526,399,569.92 samples that pass though a node graph where 62 mathnodes were replaced with a single script node.

Note: on different machines different things will happen and that can influence the results.

There are also other stuff to be aware off: SVM codebase is fully shared between CPU/Cuda/OpenCL. As GPU's don't have the ability to have a stack the cycles developers
came up with an idea to implement a fixed stack that could compile on all devices. This stack is limited to 256.
When node graphs get too large SVM will not become an option anymore so the artist might want to switch to OSL.

Would I still recommend it?

No. reason: other materials setup have other cost penalties in OSL. So this theoretically benefit in practice might be much higher. So for this reason I would stick to SVM.

It depends on the specific case.
Of course OSL is powerful tool for pattern generation in comparison with cycles' build in math node but you should realise that it doesn't support GPU rendering and it also increases your render time if you use non .tx format textures.

ps.
Remember that sometimes it's much faster to write a couple of lines of code instead of making a large node tree.


How can I make a single photorealistic bird feather? I want to make a feather more like the feather on the far left or like the feather on the far right of the second image. It can't just be a texture because I want it to look good up close.

Note: I am not making a whole bird. I do not need a fast rendering feather (although that would be nice as long as it doesn't sacrifice photorealism).

Creating the stalk thing:
To make the the stalk of the feather (or whatever it is called), create a UV sphere. Then, switch to wireframe view, go into edit mode, select the entire sphere and scale it down a bit. Next select the upper half of the sphere and move it upwards and make it smaller.

Setting up the actual feathery bits:
First, subdivide the middle bit by pressing ctrl + r and then scroll downwards a lot to get about 200 or 250 divisions. To set up for feather creation, use alt + RMB on one of inner edges . Then select the same face on the other side with shift + alt + RMB. Once you have the faces selected, create a new vertex group, and click the assign button. You can rename your vertex group if you wish by double clicking it.

I decided to remodel the tip of the feather to make it a bit longer and less spherical with proportional editing. This step is optional:

Particle system settings:
Now for the exciting bit.

Create a new particle system
Switch the particle type from emitter to hair
Enable advanced settings
Switch to vertex mode
Uncheck the box marked "random"
Set the density group to the vertex group we made earlier
adjust the length to something that you like

Combing:
Now for the super exciting part.

Switch to "particle edit" mode

Change the brush to "cut"

Cut away excess hair

Switch the brush to "comb"

Comb to satisfaction

And now you are done!
The only thing left to do is to change the hair render settings to whatever you want!
Here are the cycles thickness settings that I used:

And here are some renders:

In the macro render, you will notice that the feathers aren't quite attached to the stalk. You can fix this by adding a solidify modifier to the shaft and making it a bit thicker.

Turns out, (some) dinosuars had feathers, the little bas**rds.

There is no great single answer I am aware of to this issue. Here are approaches to consider depending upon your specific need:

** Individually modeled feathers with quills can be made with high fidelity. As noted by @IIBit, hair systems, and/or a particle system of particle systems -- How can particles be emitted from particles? -- require some patience but look great. They are a bugger to render and adding flight motion further complicates the deal.

** Using a combination of hair particles and meshes allows for some realism while using comparatively lighter meshes rather than purely particle-based approaches. See https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?232361-Quest-for-Photo-Real-Feathers for details. So you are using a feather texture -- either a photo or an image you create -- with alpha and a mesh.

** Using Blender's hair shapes can give satisfactory results at some distances. See https://blenderartists.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-282959.html for examples and https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:UK/2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Hair_Rendering for shape information.  That Golden Eagle is one of my all time favorite blender creations and whoever Ricardo 3D is, he gets a gold star for that model... I am envious.

The deinocherious above uses some of all of the approaches noted: the 'primary' feathers on the front arms are detail models with associated armature/bones, and a few others are true feathers; much of the remained are based on emu curly primitive feathers using Blender hair shapes.

You can also create a "heavy" particle system on your animal and then create color, normal and bump maps to create the appearance of feathers, as here:

) EDIT Had to remove this image until the museum opens...

When distance allows, this gives you the chance to add feathers for animated critters when used a "safe" distance from the camera.

Dinosaur Island, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3261302/, while not a blockbuster, gets props for their feathered dinos. I believe some of the CG was done in Blender....

Maya's dynamic paint feature has some options that help with feathers, but I am not aware of a 5-star solution anywhere other than through combinations of approaches... and I would welcome info on your results!


What's the quickest, easiest way to point the camera somewhere in blender? Often I want to just point the camera to an object or a specific area in my scene to get an idea of how it'll look in the render. What's the most painless hassle-free way to do this in blender?

A quick search on the blender wiki does not lend itself to easy look-up due to all the noise in the search result.

This question could probably be broken down into these two main questions:

How do I point a selected camera to the current 3d-cursor location in the scene?
How do I point the selected camera to the currently selected object(s) in the scene?

The absolute quickest way to do this is to find a good position in the 3d viewport by navigating as normal with the mouse. Next, select the camera and use Ctrl + Alt + Numpad 0 or from the 3d view header, View > Align View > Align Active Camera to View to position/point the camera in the direction you are facing in the viewport.
Alternatively, to point the camera towards an object, you can select the camera, add a Track To constraint to it (constraints can be added in the Constraints tab), choose the object in the Target field, -Z in the To field, and Y in the Up field.

The camera will now always point at the object no matter where it (the camera or object) is moved to. This way isn't very efficient however and it is much better to point the camera towards an empty and then position the empty wherever the point of interest lies.

The OP says: "How do I point a selected camera"...

The keyboard shortcut given in the accepted answer will move the 'active' camera, which is not necessarily the selected camera. A 'selected' camera and an 'active' camera can be two different cameras, if there is more than one camera in a scene.

A full explanation of how to make the selected camera into the active camera is here, for anyone on the same mission I was on: How can I make a camera the active one?

I'd set my view up first and had a tough time with all these keyboard shortcuts so for anyone new like me grappling with more than one camera in their scene.

UPDATED from comment below (Thanks Mr Zak):

Navigate by panning/zooming/rotating your 3D view to what you want.
Select camera (if not already selected)
ctl + Numpad 0  make selected camera active
Numpad 0 Return to desired view
ctl + alt + numpad 0 Align the camera to view.

It's actually a really neat set of shortcuts. Blender rocks!

I found that aligning an added camera to the view I'd created did not give me a result I expected. So I currently find it easier to select the (active) camera and move it using G + X/Y/Z or G + XX/YY/ZZ. There are answers above about setting up the camera to track to an empty and answers elsewhere about sorting the camera out, but this is a quick-n-dirty render I'm doing.

(I originally intended to add a short explanation that the selected and active cameras can be two different things just to give the inexperienced, like me, a 'heads-up' in the comments on the accepted answer, where it would be most useful - except I need 50 reputation points to do so and only have 35 at time of writing).


horizontal fluid troubles I'm trying to do a steady stream of liquid in a horizontal line. The idea is squirting out a straight stream of honey out of a nozzle. I've got gravity turned off so it never falls.
I can't seem to find any decent tutorials on 2.91, and the documentation basically states you need an inflow, domain, and any possible collisions, but I find it vague otherwise. I sometimes get it sorta working, and sometimes it does nothing. Not quite sure where I'm going wrong.
File attached, hopefully.
link to file

The manta flow integration isn't working that well.
It seems to be out of focus of current development goals, not sure why.
It has various issues, for example there is no world scale.
So essential a teacup can behave alike an ocean.
in 2.92 there is setting narrowband that might improve the rendering, for beams.
Another bug is that once the cache is made, its not refreshed on each setting change.
If you change some domain settings, you probaply dont see its effect.
What so far worked for me is to change the domain resolution, this forces a new cach rebuild, and new settings get effective. its a pain in the a** to do it like that but i dont know of other options.
Positive about this cache as compared tot he past you dont have to bake all frames before you see the result, and a needle preview option (unmeshed).

Updated answer
Though read the above parts as well.

Note some versions seem to have delete bake option now.
So you can quickly rebake the domain of the fluid. I used an alpha 2.92

For these kind of flows use a planar inflow it's an option which you can enable.
And when you do you can remove the surfaces pointing to unwanted directions (ea sides and the back surface).

Use liquid (not smoke)

Set the grid maybe a bit smaller

There is no need to put it surrounded by a fluid blocking object (if you use surface option), when you still want such an object have at least some surfaces stick out of the blocking object.

An extra trick is to set the object of the domain to smooth shading.
The're often highly detailed and smoothing really finishes it off to get that wet look.

I personally always use the latest alpha versions (its a choice), so i'm not sure if the other verrsions with manta have the free bake and bake buttons on the domain, i never kept track of it, though i think its new ??.
Freebake has the same effect of the altered fluid domain trik, to enforce new cache.
Result with workbench render, (higher cell size in domain) and more sub sampeling, to deal with high speed flows, result :
https://youtu.be/6Ic_pe8W8bY


Changing the pivot point and using it to snap to grid I initially learned how to model using Maya, and so I relate everything back to that way of working in 3d space. I want to start modeling in Blender but I am having trouble with some basics...

So in Maya, if I wanted to create a box and snap one its corners to the grid, I would create a box, hit the insert key, snap the pivot point to the corner vertex I want, and then use new pivot point to transform the box to the origin of my grid space.

...but in Blender I can snap the 3d cursor to a corner, and then when I try to move by increments to the origin it won't snap to the origin but instead, it will snap 1 grid unit from the current location.

What is the standard way to do something simple like this? When I search the manual, it seems like it doesn't understand my terminology. Pivot points work in rotation but not in transforming my object, so if I successfully set the 3d cursor to the corner I want and then type in 0,0,0 into the location coordinates, it centers the object on the origin instead of snapping the corner to the origin.

First go to the Edit mode of your Cube and select the vertex you want to snap the pivot to.

Then press ShiftS to open the Snap menu and select Cursor to Selected.  Now you will see the 3D Cursor appear at the vertex.

After that you have to quit the Edit Mode and go to the Object mode of the Cube, then press ShiftCtrlAltC to open Set Origin menu and choose Origin to 3D Cursor.

When thats been done, (still in object mode) press ShiftC  to make the 3D Cursor go back on the grid and while your Cube is selected press ShiftS and choose the second option Selection to Cursor.

Now this will snap your Cube on to the grid.

Blender has many modes for meshes.  Edit mode will move vertices.  Object mode will move the entire object.

Hit keyboard tab and select Edit.  You are now in edit mode for mesh.

Edit vertices.  Select vertices by clicking and shift clicking and move them with mouse by pressing the letter g, hit Enter to finish.  Vertex snapping can occur here.

When you are finished tap keyboard tab and select Object mode.

All of what I wrote above is best explained in a video tutorial.

Blender may have some compatibility keystrokes with Maya.

Here is tutorial series about Blender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6KPrc4uMw&list=PLda3VoSoc_TR7X7wfblBGiRz-bvhKpGkS


Why is rendered viewport faster than rendering individual frames? When I'm using rendered viewport it initially takes a while before rendering starts, but once it does, I can freely move around and rendering a new view happens almost instantaneously. When on the other hand I'm rendering a movie, for each frame Blender takes a significant amount of time before rendering even starts, usually doing the following:

Synchronizing object,
Updating images,
Updating meshes,
Updating Scene BVH,
Packing BVH,

Why does it do this? And is it possible to disable this to increase movie rendering speed?

It is possible to make the final render almost as fast as the viewport render, but you might not want to. The viewport render sacrifices a lot of features in order to make it update quickly. Firstly, it uses Direct Illumination only, which means that it basically only ever calculates 2 bounces. It also has a lot to do with whatever modifiers you're using. If you have a subsurf modifier that is set to 1 subdivisions for view and 4 subdivisions for render, then your final render has to deal with x^4 more polygons than the viewport does, which is obviously going to take longer.

There's also a little overhead in writing the frame to a file and then loading the next frame to start rendering, which the viewport doesn't have to do.

Lastly, the BVH acceleration structure (selected in the render settings) can make a critical difference in render speeds. IIRC, the viewport ONLY uses Dynamic BVH which spends a lot less time calculating the BVH (because things might move around), but each sample takes longer.

Details:
There are two parts to the render: setup and sampling. The right setup can make sampling faster, but if you have to do some complicated setup for every frame, that might actually take longer than the time you save on sampling. The part of the setup that matters is the Acceleration Structure, called a Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH). This is basically a way of organizing things so that they're easy to find. You can either have a Static BVH or a Dynamic BVH. A Static BVH takes longer to build, but makes sampling more efficient. The Dynamic BVH doesn't take as long to build, but it doesn't make sampling quite as efficient as Static. The other important difference is that with a Static BVH, nothing can move*. If anything moves, it has to be totally rebuilt. Whereas with a Dynamic BVH, if something moves from one frame to the next, the BVH can be updated much more quickly than with a Static BVH.

IIRC, there are also some features that aren't rendered at all for the viewport. I want to say that SSS, AO, and caustics aren't (or weren't) calculated at all for the viewport render. But I'm not sure what they are.

*To be honest, I'm not quite sure what "nothing can move" means, I just get this from the tooltip. You'd do well to do some research or experimentation. It's possible that a Static BVH can be reused even if objects translate, so long as the mesh doesn't deform. It's also possible that any change of any object from one frame to the next requires a complete Static BVH rebuild. I'm not sure.

I hope that helps!

I've had the same problem i searched it but got no clues and then i figured it out by myself here is what i was going through.

As  the purpose of BVH is already mentioned above and i was making it slow by increasing the preview of multiresolution 6 x for sculpting and when i reduced it to 5x BVH started working  fine .

Note: This totaly depends upon the system you are using  those who have a good system with a good graphic card might not face this problem.

Hope this help.


Shortcut for Back View (Ctrl 1) doesn't work This is really strange.

When I press Ctrl1 the view should switch to Back View, according to my preferences.

It's even listed correctly in the menu:

It doesn't do anything.

Ctrl3 for Left View is working, and Ctrl7 for Bottom View is also working.

I use Emulate Numpad as a standard always, even on machines where a numpad keyboard is available.

My OS is macOS Sierra. Blender version is 2.79.

The most bizarre thing is that it still doesn't work even after I Load Factory Settings (and re-enable Emulate Numpad). This makes me think it might not be my settings at all. (Possible bug?)

My Ctrl key and my 1 key are working just fine for all other uses, in Blender and in other apps.

It's really a hindrance when modeling. Any ideas?

Thanks.

The macOS Japanese text input implementation was interfering. By disabling it and using the Google IME instead I was able to regain normal functionality of my Ctrl key.

Anyone wanting to know more can read the question I posted on Ask Different that led to solving the mystery.

Just using the blender in full screen mode enable ctrl+1 to be active.


Fixing normals after separating mesh into new objects I have small problem, let say I have this mesh:

At the end it needs to be split into separate chunks/objects (in this example it's split in five chunks) like this:

The problem is that normals are wrong as opposed to original mesh which makes shading go wrong (visible seams between objects). I've tried to use Auto Smooth and it's quite better, but still worse than original mesh.

This mesh is just an example of my original mesh which at the end will be exported in order to be used in external game engine with OpenGL as a backend renderer, so for OpenGL it doesn't matter whether it's rendered as one object or not (I'm NOT using triangle strips) as long as normals are the same as were before. Is there a possibility to separate mesh into objects while maintaining original normals?

Thank you in advance.

Unfortunately Blender has no method to adjust vertex normals by hand, so the only way to fix this (well, sorta...) is to separate your mesh in a way that the vertex normals don't change their direction at the cuts.

In a nutshell this means cutting up your mesh in the areas where you have a more even geometry. Depending on your geometry this might not entirely fix your problem but it reduces the amount of difference in the shading significantly. Keep in mind that this also might increase the loopcuts, which results in more vertices/faces.

In the image below I marked the areas where I put the loopcuts with green arrows.

I created a Blender add-on for this exact purpose called TiNA which allows you to easily transfer normals between objects. TiNA basically turns the somewhat overwhelming Data Transfer Modifier into a set of more comprehensible operations.
There's a special branch for those using Blender 2.80 beta.

 Hotkey           | Operation
------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------
 Alt+N            | Transfer normals from selection to active object
 Shift+Alt+N      | Transfer normals from active object to all other selected objects
 Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N | Clear custom normals data for entire selection
 Alt+W            | Wrap normals

In your case you could transfer the normals from an unsplit duplicate by selecting all objects, and - with the unsplit duplicate as your active object - hitting Shift+Alt+N.


How do I disable click-drag-click behavior in blender? I am used to moving things with "click-drag-release" (holding down the mouse button and releasing it at the desired location).

How can I get Blender to emulate that kind of behavior?

(right now i have to click, then move, then click again) I wish to instead just hold down the mouse button.

Go to User preferences, open Input tab, find 3D View > 3D View (Global) rollout.

Now scroll almost all the way down, until you find Translate (the one that uses tweak as a key-binding instead of keyboard).
Open that rollout and enable Confirm on release checkbox.

This appears to be caused by a bug; however, it works fine if you change your preferences to select with the LMB instead.

To do this, press Ctrl+Alt+U, to open the User Preferences and then under the Editing tab, set Select with to Left. Now the select and 3D cursor buttons will be reversed.


How do I install patches? I found a hairdynamicscollition.txt patch for Blender that I wish to install.

How do I do it?

I tried to run it as a script, but when I do so in the text editor in Blender, a red mark is over the first sentence text in the script text, and the script doesn't work.

The simple answer is that you don't.

These patches are not intended for the end-user. They are intended to be used by developers to modify the source-code of Blender.

If you feel that you've got the skill-set to modify the source-code, more power to you! Unfortunately, most of us won't be much help. You'll get better support from the developers over at the Blender development project.


How should I model this? I am finding it hard to model this curved neck of the guitar since it is carved from a single piece of wood and am unable to keep a nice and clean topology. It would be great if someone could help me regarding this.
Thanks.

Instead of trying to model the curves manually, you could instead let the subsurf modifier do most of the heavy lifting for you.

An example of this might be something like:

id try using an inset and pull the face out. you can use subsurf to smooth things out whenyou finish the model or make it its own separate obj and subsurf now


Object displacement over LOD I am creating a scene for the game engine and setting up the ground now. I have different levels of details and thus want to keep my pieces as different objects. I duplicated it several times and added a Displace modifier set to Object Coordinates. The coordinates point to a plane object. I got the seamless result (as expected), but when the ground reaches where LOD switches level, I get this problem:

I guess this comes from the mesh being used by LOD, which is just invoked from its initial position. It also doesn't get the coordinates from the object using it. Do you have a way around ?

The simple answer is that modifiers aren't fully supported by the Game Engine.

While modifiers will typically be rendered by the Game Engine, they won't be updated by the engine. So what's happening is the displace modifier is being altered by the Game Engine at the point where it needs to change LOD, but because modifiers don't update correctly, it's just reverting to the flat version without displacement.

This answer has some additional information: Make modifiers update in the game engine

You're not out of luck, though. There are other ways to implement LOD in the BGE.

I am not sure that I am understanding your question correctly, so please tell me  if I'm not. I believe that you want to make an incline with the selected mesh, but instead of an incline, you currently have a sharp drop off.

Why bother with LOD? Why not just go into Edit Mode?

Way 1

If you go select the last cube and go into edit mode, you can select the two faces nearest to the 3 other meshes on the side and bring them down to the right level. To do this, I keyed G, then Z, then -1. LeftMouseButton to confirm.

Way 2

If you want to get fancier, you can select the entire mesh in Edit Mode by keying A once or twice until everything's selected. Then you can key W and select Subdivide. Do this twice.

Select the 32 faces that now make up the previously selected two sides of the mesh. Key O to turn on Proportional editing. Key G, then scroll to make the white circle bigger (do not confirm). Finish up with Z, then -1. Now use the LeftMouseButton to confirm.

Tab to reenter Object Mode. Whatever values you were using in your Subdivision surface object modifier for View: and Render:, subtract two. This method takes longer, but it gives the slope a gradient.

The original vid of this setup was too long, so I split it into four parts. Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Part four:

Final Notes

Here is the final result after Way 1:

Way 2:

Here is a .blend file with both ways in it:


Weird triangle pattern on edge of model Hi everyone I am trying to model a gun in blender and I am getting these wierd edge as you can see on the right hand side of the second image. There are some triangles or I don't know what that is. Does anyone know how to fix it?

From those images, I can only guess. Is it only visible in edit mode? Is it only on that edge? Have you tried to rule out usual suspects? Remove doubles, recalc normals?

Try this: add a bevel modifier to your object with segments > 2, does it disappear? if so you should be fine and this is only a viewport issue.


How to Have Selected Faces Emit Smoke I'm working on a very large scale project and I want to try to make an object with Smoke Inflow but only from certain faces. How would I select or define those certain faces in Edit Mode?

Anand mbs is correct about selecting faces, but to use those selected faces in a Smoke Simulation, you need to do some more stuff.

Selecting The Faces

At the bottom of the 3D Viewport and while in Edit Mode, you can click a button that looks the following to switch into Face Select mode.

However, also while in Edit Mode, you can key Ctrl + Tab to open a pop-up menu like the following. You can then either click the bottom option (Face) or key 3 to have Blender automatically select the third option down.

Separating Faces

We're not quite done yet. RMB select the first face and then Shift + RMB select the rest that you want smoke to emit from. Key Shift + D to duplicate the faces. Key P to bring up the SeParation pop-up menu. It looks like the following. Key 1 or click on Selection to separate the faces from the original mesh.

Smoke Simulation

Tab back into Object Mode. Select the mesh that is made up of the separated faces. This will be your Inflow object. It is also probably wise to Parent the faces mesh to the original. Parenting will guarantee that the faces mesh follows the original during transforms. Select the faces mesh, then the original, then key Ctrl + P and either 2 or select Object (Keep Transform) from the resulting pop-up menu.

you can change the selection mode from the above option. 1) vertices, 2) edge, 3) face.

Refer https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/meshes/selecting/faces.html

also refer this link


How to inset (or fill in) a complicated mesh? I have SVG of a tree. I want to make a 3D model of it. Also I want to add a texture on the front face (on the trunk) of this tree, to make it bumpy. But how can I add a 3d texture on it?
I extruded the perimeter, but how to fill in the rest?

There are a few ways that you could potentially approach this:

Manually select 4 vertices, press f to make a face, and repeat until you go crazy.
Select all of the vertices and press f to make an "n-gon", you'll quickly realize why n-gons are avoided.
Another option is the Face Tools built into Blender.

From the Manual:

  Fill

  The Fill option will create triangular faces from any group of selected edges or vertices, as long as they form one or more
  complete perimeters.

  Note, unlike creating n-gons, fill supports holes.

  Beauty Fill

  Mode: Edit Mode
  Menu: Mesh ‣ Faces ‣ Fill/Beautify Fill
  Hotkey: Alt-Shift-F

  Beautify Fill works only on selected existing faces. It [rearranges] selected triangles to obtain more “balanced” ones (i.e.
  less long thin triangles).

Check out the Manual link. It's got even more information.

To Fill in the mesh select all the vertices and hit "F" for face. this will fill in your space with an Ngon. When you go to uv unwrap it, select "project from view" so that your bump map will not get stretched. If you need help texturing it there are plenty of resources out there.
It also looks like you have extruded your vertices backward. If you want to fill in the front and back make sure and select the front ones and the back ones separately when you are filling them so that you get a clean structure.


Python Implementation of Track-to/aim constraint I'm writing a python script that creates a large number of objects and I'd like them all to point at a certain point in 3d space.

(left is what I've got, right is what I want)

Pretty much exactly like the 'Track-to' constraint, but I don't need it to update interactively or be animated, I just need to rotate each object when they are created. I also don't care about the up-direction at all, since the objects are cylindrically symmetrical.

I know how to create the objects, but I don't know how to aim them. I'm not good at maths, so I don't even know where to begin with this other than that it'll probably involve vectors and matrices (which I don't really understand).

The reason I don't want to use the existing constraint system is because it's a bit slow when dealing with a lot of objects, and I'd like to learn a bit about this sort of maths.

I can't explain the math to do it manually, but you can use python to create a constraint that will do the rotation for you. You can then apply the visual transform and delete the constraint if you don't want to leave it there.

targetobj = bpy.data.objects['Sphere']
pointyobj = bpy.data.objects['Cone']

ttc = pointyobj.constraints.new(type='TRACK_TO')
ttc.target = targetobj
ttc.track_axis = 'TRACK_Z'
# we don't care about the up_axis
# but default is Z and it needs to be different that track_axis
ttc.up_axis = 'UP_X'

bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='DESELECT')
pointyobj.select = True
bpy.ops.object.visual_transform_apply()

pointyobj.constraints.remove(ttc)

Not sure if it will help but I believe the trackto_evaluate function currently on line 965 of constraint.c is the math behind the constraint.

Join your objects. Control-J. See below.

For mathematical recreations you might see the link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigues%27_rotation_formula

Also consider free online books from your library if possible.
Computer Graphics, 3D Computer Graphics.

For Immediate Results

(01) Create a suitable emitter mesh for placement of your objects.  Duplicate your pointer object as archive .. Make mesh data single user.  Use Particles on emitter mesh with your object with a suitable center ..Particles will not copy constraints.  Set emission number to your taste.  See Blender Particles online educational videos if necessary on a video internet site.

(02) [Convert] Particles to Real Objects under Modifier Tab. You will have many new objects selected for user convenience.

(03) Group the new objects

(04) Add Constraint Track To on a single object of group .. the active object. Select whole group keeping the Active Object and ......[Copy constraints to selected objects].  You will have many objects pointing to the same target.  You may move target or group as whole to test.

If your computer has enough CPU Power I would stop at this step.  You might want to list the specs of your computer.  Many people use track to constraints ... they are dynamic and flexible and appreciated.  A couple of [Track to] constraints are your friends.

(04.5) If you cones are placed already ... you can use them in the next step.

(05) If it suits your tastes [Join] the objects of the group.  You will have one complex mesh composed of the original of the cones.  Join is Control-J in object mode .. See Blender menus.  You will have one [track to] constraint.  You can remove the constraint and rotate the complex mesh into place on last time ..since the mesh will move when the constraint is deleted.  Now there are now zero [track to] constraints.

Consider dupligroups.

In the image above is an emitter mesh, red cube target, original gold cone with constraint, backup of cone, particle system, converted particles in green and a copy to show that it is now a single mesh


Only render reflection of an object on an invisible object I have cubes on a glossy plane so they reflect on that plane. Is there a way to only render the reflection of the cube without rendering the plane itself? So I can get my cubes + the reflection with alpha? I want to be able to put the cubes on different pictures in photoshop and have the matching reflection.
I'm using cycles
Thank you in advance.

A bit late, but this can be done with two render layers.

Put the objects that are to be reflected on one layer and the mirror on another layer, and make sure that the camera and any light sources are visible on both those layers. Under Relations in the Object tab, make sure both layers are selected (hold Shift while clicking LMB to select more than one).

Go to Render Layers and add one render layer. Under Scene select the two layers on which your objects are.
On the first render layer, make sure only the layer containing the objects that are to be reflected is selected. Leave everything else unchanged.

On the second render layer, make sure only the layer containing the mirror is selected, and under Passes make sure only Glossy: Indirect is selected.

Now go to the compositor. Make sure you're on the Compositing tab and have enabled Use Nodes. One input and one output node should already be there. Leave those alone for now. Add another one one, Render Layers (ShiftA > I > R or Add > Input > Render Layers) and select the render layer containing your mirror. It should only have a single output socket, Glossy Indirect.

Add a Math node (ShiftA > N > M) and set it to Greater Than. Connect the Glossy Indirect to the upper input socket of the math node. This checks if the intensity of the colour is greater than the value specified in the lower input of the math node. Anything greater than this will be set to 1 and anything equal to or less than this will be set to 0. This output will be a mask, and the value you specify is the threshold at which to mask. Connect that to a Blur node (ShiftA > F > L). I'm using Gaussian and enabled the Bokeh option, but the exact settings are a matter of taste. I found that I liked this best, but you may prefer something different.

Add a Set Alpha node and connect the output from the blur node to the Alpha input and the Glossy Indirect output from the Render Layers node to the Image input.

Add an Alpha Over node, and connect the Image output from the first render layer to the upper input and the output from the Set Alpha to the lower input, the the output from the Alpha Over to the Image input of the Composite node that should already be there. Make sure Use Alpha is enabled.

I used a slight roughness on the glossy shader for the mirror, and this makes the reflections a bit blurry. This will cause some parts of the reflection to have very low intensity, but still greater than 0, which can make it appear as if the mirror is showing although there are no reflections (i.e. black edges around the reflections). The threshold (the value in the Math node) controls how much of these will be visible. The blur node blurs the mask slightly, to get the reflections to blend better with a background image. If your mirror's roughness is set to 0.000, you may get good results with a threshold of 0 and no blur node.

Since this uses the fact that reflections are indirect light, it will not work as expected if the objects whose reflections you want to see emit light. And using Glossy: Direct instead, will also make the reflections of the environment visible. Remedying that will be a bit more complicated. If needed, I'll look into that too, but for now, this is what I have.

The result...

And the .blend I've used in this example.

The PBR Dielectric node group used in the included .blend was taken from
How to Make Photorealistic PBR Materials - Part 1 courtesy of Andrew Price.

You can accomplish that with material nodes, playing and understanding the Light Path node. The documentation is https://www.blender.org/manual/render/cycles/settings/light_paths.html
you may also find many tutorials on youtube regarding the light path node.


Blender 2.8x - Particle Color based on actual color of emitter Looking for a way to set the color of each particle to the exact color from where it was emitted.

Trying to make a 2d image plane dissolve effect.

Checked this thread but its not doing what I am trying to achieve:
Particle Color based on where the particle is emitted?

I'd like to get something like this:

Thanks to @Lumpengnom at https://blenderartists.org/
I found the solution!

Important steps are:

1.) Add a texture coordinate node, connect UV to vector and enable the "from Instance" check-mark.

2.) Use Cycles renderer, also for preview!, otherwhise you will not so the right result which is very irritating.

Here is a quick video tutorial:
https://youtu.be/8W1J8hYjK9g


Make Part Of Material Transparent I want to make the blue part transparent and the non-blue part not transparent, there are no vertices where the grey part is so I can't just make a new material.

What you can do is that you can edit a copy of the texture in an image making program like Paint.net.

First, make the area where the non-blue strands are black and the blue areas grey or white. If you want the blue area to be translucent (between opaque and transparent), choose grey. If you want it to be fully transparent, choose white. After you do that, save the image as a separate image file (I'll call it alpha.png).

Now go to Blender. Go to Cycles Render.

Then, go to the material's nodes in the Node Editor. Add an Image Texture node and load alpha.png in it. Connect its Color to a Transparent BSDF's Color. Then, add a Mix Shader node. In one Shader socket on the left side, put the Transparent BSDF. In the other, put the BSDF your actual texture (NOT alpha.png) is connected to. Finally, take the shader socket on the right side and connect to the Material Output.

Here's the explanation; connecting alpha.png to the Transparent BSDF creates something called an alpha. White means fully transparent, grey means between transparent and opaque (translucent) and black means opaque.


How to see the python script used for an addon in a .blend file Some time ago, I wrote some scripts to rotate vectors in blender. I am not a blender expert. I have the files. I want to see the python script that I wrote.
The files work fine but although I can see the console and blender runs the code, I can't find out how to see the code.
For completeness I wrote the script inside the python editor built into blender. When I open the .blend file, the script runs automatically and generates the 3D image.
Can I do this?

split the screen and change the 3d viewport to text editor , click on the Open and select your python file , and you should get it , and i think you can also open them in notepad(not sure , try that for future)


Is there a way to get rid of this square artifact coming from lens distortion? I've got a noisy render that I'd like to composite with slight lens distortion (Fit=True, Distort=0.03, Dispersion=0.001):

I'm noticing a repeating pattern of square artifacts in the output of the lens distortion node. Here is zoomed in on the lens-distorted image:

Is there a way to improve the quality of this lens distortion?

This is not a bug.  It is simply how the the image manipulation algorithm works.  This must be fairly common since Corel seems to use a similar algorithm in Paint Shop Pro:

It's worth noting that the square pattern only appears close to the center... outside the center it becomes more like a concentric circular pattern radiating out.

The reason for these artifacts is that you are distorting an image made up of square pixels.  Ideally, this is what would happen to the pixel array:

However, you obviously cannot distort the pixels themselves and still have a proper 2D array that can be read by typical image software. So you must do some sort of combination of deleting and averaging of pixels.  Because that can't be done on a pixel level (there are no fractions of pixels), the image must be subdivided into sections in order to deal with each subset.  In the center, it makes sense to do this in square sections (since the distortion is minimal), but on the edges it should be concentric sections (since the distortion is circular in nature).

A uniformly noisy image (with large, flat, mono-chromatic planes) is pretty much the worst case scenario for this algorithm because of the contrast between individual pixels on sections that would otherwise have little variation.  You probably wouldn't even notice the artifacts on a smooth image unless you were really pixel-peeping. Here's the same distortion applied to an image rendered at 500 samples:

In short, this is to be expected.  The only way I know to reduce the effect is to apply noise reduction before distortion in your Composite node chain, or start with a less noisy image.  Essentially, the lower the contrast between individual pixels, the less visible the artifacts will be.

Are you saving and loading your render between steps?

This looks more like a JPEG blocking artifact than any kind of interpolation / rounding bug, but it only applies if you're saving the output from rendering the noisy image and reloading it to apply the lens distortion.

See https://photo.stackexchange.com/a/29646 for an example, the last sample image with visual block structure. If this is the case, saving as PNG or TGA or nearly anything other than JPG will fix the squares, since it's the JPG format itself that's adding them.


Hard Surface Texturing I'm currently working on a set of hard surface models, one of which I'd like to start texturing. Loosely speaking the model is a Tank and is a fairly early version,

What I'd like to know is if anyone can point me towards a good resource for learning to properly texture hard surfaces?

This is a pretty solid tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlMVx7HZH14

But all I really did to find it is google Blender Texturing video.

Try looking on BlenderCookie, too.


Colors in object mode are different to render mode Alright so I have been trying to figure this out when I am in object mode making materials for my low poly island when I texture a face the color is dark that when I would be in render mode.
When I pick the color it shows differently to what is shown, I have factory reset and still not fixed.

The problem am seeing there is SPECULAR problem.

The solution will be to change the SPECULAR COLOR to something dark,

or

Change the SPECULAR INTENSITY from 0.5 to 0 in the material panel


Blender 2.8 UV Does not appear? I'm having difficulty with this one. I've used UV unwrap on simple objects and texture painted them just fine. However I cannot get an unwrapped UV to show up in the editor on this model. I'm certain I'm missing something basic but my Google fu has ran out.

I've got everything selected, have used Project to View on this example but doesn't make a difference really. What am I missing? Any help gratefully received.

Am on Dec 26th build of Blender 2.8 but it's been like this for a while. May be nothing to do with it being 2.8 I realised.

You can trying to make a new Workspace

I had that problem with the OLD (2.79) files

I had the same problem and nothing and no advice online helped, what I did was save the file I was working on , opened a new blender, append my job from previous and all worked again !


import animation channels independently I wonder if I can import keyframes (with a python script) only as x keyframe. It seems like I can only set the whole object location at a keyframe, but I want only set the x location, since y location may have different keyframes. Is there any solution for this?
I cant get it to work with object.insert_keyframe(data_path='location', frame = key.frame)

Otherwise I don't understand why the channels can be exported independently.
I already tried to import the specific x value by setting the current frames to the keyframe and use the objects frame location for y and z value.

Select the animated object, in the dopesheet select all keyframes you want to copy, Ctrl C to copy in the clipboard, select the new object, select the channel to be animated, set the cursor to the first frame where you want the copied animation to start, Ctrl V to paste the single animation channel.

Right click on the x-channel in the 3D Viewport's Right Side Property panel and select Insert Single Keyframe.


How to achieve clean Topology at joining edge of dissimilar features? How can this topology be improved? Multiple attempts and several hours later, I have failed to create a successful all-quad mesh again. I keep trying to visualize face loops that define the edges I need on this object (a screw), but it is very difficult to join these dissimilar sections of geometry together. I have been watching tutorials/speed modelling sessions in an attempt to gain some further insight.

I am guessing that the round part needs to be spherical-ish, because if the verts are not distributed evenly, then it will appear lumpy instead of round/smooth...though clearly, the perimeter loop where the plus shaped area meets the round part has not-evenly-distributed verts all along that edge...

I tried to join the two edges and redistribute the verts to make them spherical, but it looks terrible. Here was that attempt (notice that the ridge is wavy and uneven...), I abandoned this approach after it seemed to be a lost cause:

And here is a later attempt, the round part is a bit lumpy/not-smooth...I also realized that there was a triangle here later on too (how would someone fix that? start completely over, since adding geometry would change the number of verts at the joining edge between the two surfaces?):

In Blender most of us would not model a screw by joining two separate meshes, one for the curvature and the other for the groove.

Other 3d packages such as AutoCAD / SolidWorks (and free alternatives) have a different internal representation of shapes. That's why boolean 'carving' is great for those kinds of programs. In those packages geometry remains a mathematical entity until converted to mesh-geometry for export.

In Blender we use mesh geometry (verts, edges, faces) all the way, and that means a different approach is worth considering. You've noticed that trying to match up two very different sections of mesh can be quite a  hassle.

Proportional Editing to the rescue!

I'd go for geometry roughly similar to this.

And the use Proportional Edition, move, to push the upper verts into that nice curve. Getting a dome curvature is the smaller problem with this kind of geometry. The biggest issue is thinking ahead about where you want sharp corners and you can do that as a flat surface first and extrude parts down later.

Enable proportional editing and press G to start moving, and Z to exclude the XY movement. Use Shift+Mouse wheel to adjust the sphere of influence. See the manual for more information about proportional editing
.

The outcome: (with some corrections to the base)

Above and below all quads with a shrink wrap.

Please beware of impure and unchaste images below.
Consider a boolean modifier A difference B. Sphere minus Cross Sign. You may have already done this.  The cross sign has a bevel modifier.

Press Apply.  You may use a higher resolution sphere (more vertices) for a sharper result.


Rotating skirt effect, possible with cloth simulation? I wonder if the rotating skirt effect is possible with cloth simulation.

I tried that and from the 100's frame I rotated the body, but the cloth did not rotate even though I pinned the cloth to the cylinder. The file can be downloaded from here.

PS: I followed the answer and got a similar effect, though crude.

Think of the geometry of the image you uploaded:

You need more subdivisions on the fabric. Faces don't curve, bend or twist. The edges will always be straight. To create any kind of curvature you need subdivisions. The extra geometry will allow you to create the transitions and facilitate the different folds and twists of the fabric that you show in the reference image.

An example of possible topology to play with:

Step by step

Make a Vertex Group and assign it to the top loop.

Add a Hook > Hook to New Object. A new empty is created, and the vertex group is now controlled by it. The idea is that only the pinned vertices move independently than the rest of the fabric, and they pull the rest of the surfaces as they move. By moving the empty you can do that now.

Add a Cloth modifier to the object, and make the vertex group the Pin Group.

(note that the order of the modifiers matters here.)

For a softer surface you might want to add a subsurf modifier at the bottom of the stack.

Animate the rotation of the empty (or parent the empty to the body of the dancer)

The quality of the simulation depends largely on the quality steps. Play with the weight, stiffness, damping, tension and shear of the fabric until you are happy ever after.

Cloth sim gives good shape key timing while animation.


Surface Shader live Camera Projection I need help with a live a surface shader camera projection.
This video, using maya,  shows exactly what I want to do in blender:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=JsnPYpDqhRk

would be thankful for any help

You need the UV Project Modifier.

Make a Material with your Texture
In the Object Data Tab of the Properties create a new UV Map
In the Modifier Tab add the UV Project Modifier, select your Image and your UV and check Override Image.
Add a new Camera to the Scene and put it in the UV Project Modifier Tab as Projector
Go into Textured Mode (AltZ)

This is the node tree you are looking for :

To apply on a selection only, use material assignment or vertex colors.


Is it possible to have Smooth Shading on by default? Is it possible to have Smooth Shading on by default for every object created? I can't seem to find a way to do this in the User Preferences. Turning on Smooth Shading is an action I need to perform 95% of the time, it would be nice if I could skip it. Apologies if this is more a "feature request" but I think I may have just missed the option in Preferences.

It is kind of possible to write an add-on for this with Python. There does not seem to be a nice way to trigger an operator(what smooth shading is in Blender apparently) every time an object is created, but it is possible to check the count of objects in the file every time scene is updated. Scene gets updated all the time so that is a whole lot of unnecessary checks, but it seems there is no nice or elegant way to do this. I am not entirely sure I can honestly recommend using it but this hack seems to work and it's the only way to do it I can think of. It shades anything new to the scene smooth. Pasting and duplicating will trigger it as well. You can save it to a .py file and install it as an add-on if you really need this functionality. You may also want to do something about ugly shading with sharp edges so you may want to uncomment the line enabling auto smooth.

bl_info = {
    "name": "Smooth shade new objects",
    "author": "-",
    "version": (1, 0),
    "blender": (2, 79, 0),
    "location": "Works every time new objects are added",
    "description": "Shades everything added to the scene smooth",
    "warning": "",
    "wiki_url": "",
    "category": "Mesh",
    }

import bpy
from bpy.app.handlers import persistent

bpy.last_count = 0

@persistent
def smooth_handler(dummy):

    if len(bpy.data.objects) < bpy.last_count:
        bpy.last_count = len(bpy.data.objects)
    elif len(bpy.data.objects) > bpy.last_count:
        bpy.last_count = len(bpy.data.objects)
        if bpy.context.object != None:
            #bpy.context.object.data.use_auto_smooth = True
            bpy.ops.object.shade_smooth()

def register():
    bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post.clear()
    bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post.append(smooth_handler)

def unregister():
    bpy.app.handlers.scene_update_post.clear()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

you can do it with the startup file (the layout with the cube, camer.lamp setted by default) select the cube in edit mode, press w and select smooth shading, and you can also turn on auto smooth as well. and then go to file, save start up file. and like this you will have this already done on that cube for example, but if you add a new object for example a cilinder it wont be smooth shaded you will have to do the same process.


What is the Python script to create nodes? Is there a way to convert nodes (or nodes group) into Python script automatically?

If not what is the python script to:

create a node and set his position
attach a node to another and choose the input and output (and found the name of the input/output script)
create a group
choose if we want to create the node in the compositor or for a cycles shader
mute a node

Here is a repo that does exactly what you want. It has a ready-to-run python script that can be run from the command line in the background without opening the blender GUI. It creates a water material on a surface mesh for a convecting bubble - this is done with 2 different shaders and mixing them using a mixer shader. The script loops through the different files and renders the images as jpeg. The images are also there in the repo. Just clone the repo and run the command given in the README file in the terminal. This scripting was done with Blender v2.78.

https://github.com/nataraj2/BlenderScripting


How to resume editing How do you resume your editing if its saved as a .blend file, I tried editing a video sequence I saved it with .blend, now when I open it with blender its showing a blank output with strips, How do I resume my editing ?

Found.. Had to do file->external data->Automatically pack into blend,
and then save as .blend unfortunately lost the edited sequence


Properties window missing? I opened a blend file and the far right properties panel is completely gone.  The only way I an access it is to change either the top or bottom info bar to the properties but I want it to the generic way, where I have all three panels on my screen. There's no other option to add a side panel that I can find and I'm getting extremely frustrated because when I open a new file, all my windows are there, but this one file just won't open with the freaking side panel!

You are in the 3D view, and only the 3D view. You need to open the properties editor along side of the 3D view.

Move your mouse to the top right corner. The three little hashes in the corner are a button to split and join windows (editors).  What you need to do is click then drag that button to the left.
Now in that new window change it to the properties editor.

Now the reason you got into this situation is because you opened a file that was saved with this view.
To remedy this (instead of changing the view like I described above) you can simply open the file and leave the "Load UI" option unchecked. That will open the file but use the layout from your startup file.

Shift + Space This is the shortcut for that bar show and hide.


How do I rig a BB-8 robot? I have made a BB-8 robot from the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie, now I want to rig it so the head will stay on top when I move the body.

Here is some reference footage of what it looks like moving.

How can I create the lag in the head moment seen when the robot starts or stops?

Further more, how can I make the body rotate when I simply move it?

The basic key to getting the head to react to the motion of the body is using the Slow Parent function. Similar results can be achieved with soft body or cloth sim, however, this method has the advantage of no simulation baking.

The slow parent function is then used the drive the rotation of the head around the center of the body, so that acceleration causes the head to "lag" behind the body.

Setup

First we will set up the rotation of the ball based on location. Start with the ball, next, add an empty. This  will be the control for your droid. I chose the type of circle, and rotated it by 90 degrees along the X axis, and set the display size to 1.1, to create something that looks like a belt:

Next, I named it Ctrl (name your emtpies now, or you will become hopelessly confused).

We want our ball to be at the location of our control object. We could parent it, but that might cause conflict over the rotation later. Instead we will use a copy location constraint, with the object set to Ctrl. leave all other settings as they stand.

In order to have the ball rotate correctly, we will need two drivers, linked to the X and Y location of the control object respectively.

To add a driver, select the ball, and go into the object properties. In the X and Y rotation boxes, enter a pound sign (#).

Next, enter the graph editor, it is time to setup some drivers! Switch to driver mode:

Starting with the X Euler Rotation, we need to add a variable, var. Use single property, and set the object to Ctrl (aren't you glad we named it :D). Into the data bath box, enter location[1]. This will get the Y location of our droid. Set the expression to -var.

Repeat for the Y Euler Rotation, except use location[0] in the data path.
 and var (not negative) for the expression this time.

Our rotation is now set up, but lets quickly look back to the expression we used, -var. This might not seem logical at first, since you'd think we'd need to multiply be π and some number of degrees etc; however, we aren't working with degrees we are working with radians. 1 Radian is equal to a turn such that the each point on the circumference of the is moved along by a distance equal to the radius of the circle in the direction of rotation. Basically, if our droid has a radius of 1, it will turn 180 degrees when we travel π radius. So, when our droid moves π units, it will rotate by 180 degrees, which is the correct rotation. Note the actual expression should be -var * 1 since it is location * radius in blender units. If your droid has a radius other then one, be sure the put the multiplication in there.

After writing this, I did a couple tests, and I am now convinced that the above method of driving rotation produces incorrect results. I am still searching for a definitive answer to this, at least the above method has the benefit of producing reasonably convincing results, so it is being left in.

Now, its on to the head. This is where the slow parent comes back in. For this portion, we will need three new empties all added at the origin. Name these "Drag", "Face", and "Point".

We'll deal with drag first. It needs to be parented to Ctrl, but with slow parent under relation extras checked. The offset will control the amount of forward motion the head has when the droid moves. I liked a value of 1.8, but set it to whatever looks right for you.

Drag now, as it name implies, drags behind the droid. We can use this to drive the position of the head.

Lets work on "face" next. This empty should face drag, hence the name. To do this, we need to use a track to constraint. Add a track to constraint and set the target to drag, that is all that needs to be done. leave the other settings at default. Finally, add a copy location constraint to face, set to Ctrl, like the one we used on the sphere earlier.

Finally it is time to work with "Point". Point works by pointing to the location of the center of the head. when the head is parented to point, it will move to this location on the outside of the sphere. The set up for point consists of two constraints and a driver.

The first constraint is yet another copy location set to Ctrl, like we had earlier. With "Face" and the droid body. The second constraint is a copy rotation constraint, which should have the target set to "Face: and only the X axis checked:

Finally, we need to set up a driver that uses "Drag" to animate the position of the head. In the X rotation property of "Point" add a driver by entering the pound sign (#), and proceed into the graph editor.

Add anther variable, but this time set it from Single Property to Distance and select the Ctrl and Drag objects. Finally, enter var into the expression.

Last but not least, parent BB8's Head to the "Point" object.

Lets watch our droid roll!

Note: The head may act strangely while you position the droid or jump to a different position in the timeline. However, when you play back a completed animation, it should act normally.

For the bottom ball maybe you could put a bone in it and rotate it to make it seem like it’s rolling. Or you could parent the head to the ball and rotate the ball normally. Rigging may not even be required.


How can I fix these artifacts? I am trying to model this hammer. I used Looptools instead of Boolean as less destructive but it seems these artifacts are inevitable. I included the .blend file.
It was mainly a combination of Looptools and insetting/extruding parts that caused this mesh to be a bit of a mess.

You should observe what effect Subdivision Surface modifier has on different geometry. In this case the topology you modelled is just not good for it. If you have concave faces in your model the result of Subdivision Surface modifier will often be undesired:

This problem can only be fixed by modelling correct geometry for the modifier. You can have the modifier added and model things with it visible to see what results you get in real time while modelling. In some cases adding edge loops(ctrl + r) will help you, in some cases joining some vertices(j) or using the knife tool(k) in order to avoid concave faces might improve the situation. I cannot describe all the possible scenarios in this answer because of how many of them can be so my advice would be to experiment and see for yourself. Don't forget that you do not have to use Subdivision Surface modifier at all and can also achieve the same results using other modelling techniques. In many cases modelling inorganic shapes one can get better results simply using bevel(ctrl+b) operation.

That artifact mostly is a result of booleans, or other modelling tricks,bad bevels, but mostly booleans.
I just found this out too, but you can just add a modifier named
EDGE SPLIT

for me, it solves that artifact resulted by booleans or bad bevels


Bevel and Resolution Multiple Selected Curves I imported an SVG Character and grouped/parented it in an empty object for easier positioning.

I selected all (A+shift left click method) the character objects (hair, eyes, pants, etc:) However, when I try to bevel it only bevels what was first selected.

Is there a way in Blender to "Bevel and Resolution Multiple Selected Curves" without having to do it individually?

Either press the Alt key while clicking a property to assign it to all selected objects; or assign the bevel object to one of the curves, then right click over the property and choose Copy to Selected option.

Select the curves you want to bevel and set the parameters for the active curve.
press CTRL + L and select Object Data to transfer the settings to the other curves.


Questions about the Light Path node I would like to increase my shading skills by understanding the light path node a little bit better. I am a little bit confused as to how this node works, mainly in terms of how some node setups have different output sockets being added together, as well as what is being measured for ray length, and depth.
The first thing that is quite hard for my brain to understand is, how it is possible to mix the camera rays and the glossy rays (like in the picture), as well as turn it into color information. How does the light path node convert the camera ray/glossy ray information into color information? This part stumps me, I can't quite visualize what happens here.
The other thing that stumps me is what is being measured for ray length and depth. In the blender manual, the ray length has this definition:

Distance traveled by the light ray from the last bounce or camera.

and the ray depth has this definition:

Number of times the ray has been reflected or transmitted on interaction with a surface.

From these definitions it is measuring 'a ray', my question is which single ray are both of these options measuring (or am I thinking about this in the wrong way)? From my understanding, aren't there thousands and thousands of rays that are bouncing around?

Question 1:
Light Path node outputs a single value between 0 and 1.
When plugged directly into RGB input, they correspond to black and white.
Example using the mentioned Ray Length output. The longer the distance, the higher the value.

Question 2:
The values are calculated for each ray hitting a surface.

Direct view - 0 bounces
Mirror reflection - 1 bounce
Glass panes - 1 to 3 bounces

Lately I've used is glossy ray, and it works like a question with an answer of yes or no, true or false, white or black.
So i used this output as factor in a mix. I hope this helped.
For the other part of the question, I'm not sure but i think it is as it says, the depth is an integer number showing the bounces, but the length is a float.


Can you paint multiple texture layers simultaneously? There are tons of textures on the web that provide different images for color/albedo, reflectivity, bump, normal maps, displacement maps, etc... Suitable for PBR shaders, for example.

I'd like to be able to paint on a mesh in 3D using stencil or clone such that all of the source layers get transferred to the appropriate destination layers subject to the UV map.  I.e. A single brush stroke transfers correctly transformed texture layers to my object.

Can Blender do this?  If not, are there any plugins for this?

I believe other programs (substance painter?) do this. But I'm hoping to stick with Blender for now?

I believe you are looking for a mix of Sculpt Mode and Texture Paint mode. They work similarly as ZBrush, allowing you to sculpt in high poly mode, export a normal map, and also paint the UV maps directly over the model. There is no need for extra plugins, Blender does that natively. Just click on "Object Mode" and try the other modes.

You might also try Sculptris, by Pixologic. It's freeware (gratis, but not libre), like a very bare-bones version of ZBrush.


zoom and pan are not working on the mouse Orbiting around objects with the  MMB, or ⎇ Alt LMB is working, and zooming is working with ⇧ Shift+/-,

However panning using ⇧ Shift LMB or ⎇ Alt LMB, and ⇧ Shift MMB are not functioning anymore. Neither is zooming in/out with scroll wheel. I've reset to factory defaults and restarted Blender several times.

My system:

  macOS Sierra
  Version 10.12.4

  MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
  Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
  Memory 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
  Startup Disk Macintosh HD
  Graphics

  NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB
  Intel HD Grphics 4000 1536 MB

  Serial Number C02J71T5DKQ4

My storage and files are being accessed from an external drive.

after restarting Blender many times over 2 days, and loading factory settings, finally decided to try changing orbit turntable to trackball instead, everything worked normally again once I did that. Changed back to turntable and saved to test it, things still working normally. problem solved.(so far). i`ll update this if status changes again.


Extracting parallax data from only two photos to help reconstruct a 3D scene In terms of integrating Blender renders with existing photographs, is there a way to create a set of Blender mesh points using the parallax info between just a pair of stereo photographs?

I've gotten good at regular camera tracking with video, and also using BLAM for static images, but what I'd really like to do is take two very clear and stable stereo images and extract as many good 3D points from them as possible, without resorting to also videoing in order to reconstruct the scene.

Or you could try point cloud reconstruction software which are free to download using Visual SFM and Meshlab. There are a few tutorials on the subject on youtube. As the question you are asking will require substantial write up, it's best to point you to some tutorials.

I learn this in 3 hours last night. However you may need more than 2 images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6eqW6yk50k

Yes, there is a way, because there is an image processing package called Hugin (available for free), with tutorials from http://hugin.sourceforge.net/ which does exactly what you want.

I have downloaded it and tried to do exactly what you wish, but I've not yet mastered Hugin. I do perceive that it might be more doable with some images than with others. I have it, I'm trying to learn it, but I have to say that for me, it's been more difficult than Blender. .

Tutorial link: http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/perspective/


Drawing/sketches in blender I'm pretty new to 3d modelling and have been working through a lot of tutorials. Something I see come up often is users importing sketches of objects such as people, the then seem to create the model around these front, top and side view sketches.

Would anyone be able to link me to a tutorial explaining this feature and its benfits, tricks, how to do it properly?

Sorry if this thread already exists. I couldn't find one

Thanks

You could follow this
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Modeling_a_Wolf_from_Guide_Images, keeping this in mind https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Background_Images

It seems suited to a beginner, to me.

My personal advice: the most precise (all views well aligned, same scale, absolutely still subject) front/side/top view you can get, the better.


Keyed particles work on viewport but not in render, also they are not affected by force fields When making a particle system with keyed physics, it works in viewport but the particles do not show properly in the final render. They reappear from the world center when all the previous particles die. Also the particles of the keyed particle system are not affected by force fields.

See the link for screen recording and the sample file.

The problem shows in blender 2.80 and 2.81 but not in 2.79.

I think this might be a bug in blender 2.8 but I hope you can help me to solve it.

screencast

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iHwAM4mmqMhqjmfCOXsXbziubV17bbsO/view?usp=sharing

sample file

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oSP_xRjhFfo1ZBMhNjsHvpAj8H05HfQo/view?usp=sharing

Whenever I had this problem in the past with smoke, it was because you have to manually click the bake button in the cache section and cannot just play the sequencer for a bake. That could be the problem.

I am experiencing the same problem.
I did find a tutorial with a workaround implementing a third particle set. Unfortunately I have to recreate the workaround each time I change the keyed animation transform.

I hope you find this link helpful.

Blender Beyond Basics #4: Fun with Transformations - Blender Tutorial


Is it possible to move the view with holding spacebar? So right now when I want to move the view I use shift middle mouse button and move. But is it possible to move the view with spacebar and moving the mouse?

In Blender 2.79 (and maybe 2.8, but I haven't seen that) go to File/User Settings, click on the Input tab at the top, and there you have the different areas with their commands and hotkeys.  At the top is a field where "Name" is written - click on that and change it to "key binding" then you can type in the known hotkey in the Search field, (where there's a magnifying glass) to find the command you want, and then you can change it..  I typed "shift" and "middle" and before I typed "mouse button" the command was shown underneath with the hotkeys next to it - you can click on "mouse" and change it to keyboard, then in the field beside it and press on the spacebar

Edit -  I just reread your question and you want it to be Spacebar plus Mouse - so try clicking around and finding out what your options are - that's the place to do it anyway.

no :) click shift and middle mouse button and drag the mouse to strafe across the screen.


How do I highlight unwelded UV vertex? While working in editing mode, I noticed that the UV image on the object looked garbled so I clicked on the vertex to see where it was on the UV editor. Turns out when I edited the area to remove a 5 sided face it caused a point to appear in 2 different parts, in other words, the UV point wasn't welded and not at a seam. Then I stumbled into another unwelded stray point.

Got me to wondering...
Is there was a way to highlight all points that are not fully welded in the UV editor?

Found a way to do what you wanted, but it takes some steps and a addon, TexTools for Blender:

https://blenderartists.org/t/textools-for-blender/700811

http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/

Place the Addon into: C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\2.79\scripts\addons, so it can appear in your addon list in blender.

Here's the steps if you wanted to do this way, we're essentially just creating a mesh from the uv map, extruding it, and applying a subdivision surface modifier, where the mesh get's crumppled it's a breaking point in the UV.

So, step 1, gather your mesh and uv map together.

Step 2, using the addon, in the uv editor apply the function, Create UV Mesh.

Step 3, show it in solid form, by going in the object properties and setting the display mode.

Step 4, select the new mesh and extrude it.

Step 5, apply the subdivision modifier to see where the mesh breaks, that's a UV point break.

Step 6, using the information give on step 5, check the uv map where the mesh breaked on the subdivision modifier. There are your UV points break highlighted.

A ugly 6 steps solution, but it works.

The add-on is highly recommended if you like more tools for UVing, just a tip,

Cheers,

If I undestand you correctly, you could change the selection mode to face select button down in the menu and then select all the faces by pressing a. Then you can go back to vertex select and press Ctrl + i to invert the selection


Boolean doesn't work? I am trying to use the difference mode to make a hole.

But when I select Difference and the object it does this?

I removed all the doubles and recalculated normals on both objects but it still does this?

Blend file

It was a scale / normals problem : your objects scales were negative.

I applied rotations and scales ctrlA, then adjusted the normals (in edit mode ctrlN for both objects).

Then your model is ready for the boolean (difference) :

There is also a couple add-ons to fall back on if regular Boolean does not work. These are 'Booltool' and 'Booltron'


Why is Ctrl + J not doing anything? I'm trying to follow this tutorial: Create a Realistic City - Blender Tutorial

At timestamp 6:38, he selected all of the objects (using A) then joined them together using Ctrl+J. However, when I use Ctrl+J, nothing seems to happen.

I am using Blender v2.78

This can be a solution in GUI:

Step one: make sure the ojects that you want to join are of the same type, i.e. all are meshes.

Step two: select the first object.

Step three: select the second object.

Step four: click 'Join' button shown in the screenshot here (yellow arrow)

Use Ctrl + J just at the beginning. When you import the city, press A then press Ctrl + J. It worked for me, hope it works for you, too.


Saving a rendered picture with selected Buffer? I was told that when you have a rendered picture and then save it, it would be saved the way it is shown in the uv/image editor. What i mean by that are the several buffers (color and alpha, color, alpha, z-buffer). Unfortunately when im saving my pictures the buffer i selected is not being respected and i always get the same picture no matter which buffer i used. Does anybody know what could be wrong?

Nope, saving the image from the Image Editor will save the "Color and Alpha" channel no matter what channel is selected.

If you want to save one of the other passes you will have to use the compositor.

The Render Layers node is the output of what blender rendered (there are lots of passes you have access to).
The Composite node will be what is displayed in the Image Editor as the Render Result.

With the two nodes connected like in the image above (Render Layers Image output to the Image input of the Composite node) you will get the exact same thing as what you could save before.

However taking the Alpha out of the Render Layers node will give you a grayscale image of just the alpha. (In most cases there is no reason to do this because if you are saving to an image that supports transparency then the alpha channel is the same as the output here.)

Now the last option in the image editor is Z depth. If you simply take the Z and plug it in to the Image output, you will get an image that looks all white. However all the values are there, they are just over 1. (If you save to an image format the supports full floats, exr is the most common, then you will have access to all the values.) But if you are saving to a png, or just want to visualize the Z data, add a Normalize node (like in the picture). That node will compress all the values to fit between 0 and 1, which is the range that your monitor can display, and a png can hold.

Now if you want to save multiple passes all at once, you can use the File Output node.

To add outputs to the file output node open up the properties region with N then click on the large "Add Input" button.

another way is to use a screen shot program like Greenshot, works for me every time! as seen in this picture:

Hope i helped :)


Rotation speed setting? Just wondering if there is any add on, feature, tool or third party software to set an object too rotate at a certain speed during animations such as making a wheel rotate at 1000 rpm or something like a drill drilling at 150 rpm. Any answer is appreciated. Thanks.

For this you need to do a little math. We need to find out how much the wheel spins withing 1 second.

Let's say you render at 30fps and one rotation equals 360°. First we have convert rotations per minute into rotations per second. Then we have to convert rotations per second into degrees per second.

1000rpm / 60s = 16.667rps

We multiply 360° by 16.667rps to get how many degrees it spins in a second.

16.667rps * 360° = 6000°ps

The wheel spins ~6000° per second. To find out how many degrees it spins in a frame, divide the spins per second (6000°) by the number of frames per second (30fps).

6000° / 30 = 500°

The wheel needs to spin 500° per frame to complete 1000rpm.

To do that, go to frame 1 and set a keyframe at 0° rotation. Then set a keyframe at 500° rotation on frame 2. To make it continue speaking, location the rotation fcurve in the graph editor, select it and press ⇧ ShiftE > Linear Extrapolation. (See this related answer.)

You can also use this online calculator.

If you want it to increase your rotation speed try changing the frame rate to a faster setting and adjust your animation to suit it.


"stitched" style panorama in Blender? (NOT equirectangular) I'm looking for a quick solution to creating curvilinear perspective renderings in Blender. Specifically, I want the kind of panorama you'd get if you shot a panorama on a camera or were drawing a wide-angle drawing of what's around you, turning your head.

Rob Adams has good examples of the goal here:
http://www.treeshark.com/treeblog/?p=301

Equirectangular is close but it seems to be designed to keep vertical lines straight. I'm looking for curvature on both vertical and horizontal lines.

Has anyone done this? I'd prefer to avoid doing this the hard way, stitching together renders into a panorama. A script could do that, I'm sure, but even that would be somewhat clunky in terms of interactivity.

If you want a spherical perspective as your link suggests, then fisheye equisolid is the type of camera you want to use. You can find it by activating the Cycles render engine, then selecting Panoramic in the Camera type and then Fisheye Equisolid in the panorama type.

You can also do it the "post-prod" way by first rendering using a rectilinear camera (called "Perspective" in Blender) because it renders faster and has a 1 on 1 correspondence with your viewport, and then use the "Lens distortion" node in the compositor. However, this one gives an elliptical distortion if your image is a rectangle (just like a Fisheye Equidistant camera). You'd have to set up a node tree to get the real spherical distortion. It could be done using a displacement node; some gradient textures and some math nodes, but you may get some subtle sub-pixel artifacts due to discontinuities in the gradient texture node.
My web search didn't give me any result for someone who already set up a node tree for that particular projection but maybe I missed it.

The easiest solution is to render your movie with "normal" lens to a video file, then get its output you can project like a texture on other object and have any kind of deformation / lens you like.


Object is mirrored at incorrect location Having a spot of trouble, I'm new to blender, I've added mirrors to meshes fine no problems, but I'm now trying to mirror a mesh and its not mirroring where I want it to be, I need the mesh to be in the same location on the other side of the tank

The object that you have set as the Mirror Object ('Cylinder') on the object you want to mirror ('Cylinder.010') is not at the centre of your tank, therefore, neither is the mirroring.

If you still want to use a Mirror Object then choose a different object to use as your Mirror Object (one that has it's origin at the centre of the tank).

For example, here I change the Mirror Object to be 'Cube.004' and the mirroring is correct:

Snap cursor to center or object center then snap origin to cursor.


How to recreate the lighting of a reference illustration, with low sun and pink shades on the mountains I am fairly new to blender and am wanting to create this particular lighting.

I can do the background in illustrator so it's just the pinky kinda light I'm having trouble with.

I was able to recreate it with two lights, a (lightly emitting) backdrop, and a very dark, but slightly violet tinted, world.

Breakdown

The lights are Area lamps with a fairly big size (for soft shadows), illuminating from the two sides, slightly towards the horizon. One is bright pink/orange (750W), the other is a slightly less bright (500W) blue/violet.

An alternative, if you'd like to have more realistic shadows, is a three-light setup, with one sharper, brighter pink light coming from the direction of the sun: see pic below ↓

The world, as you can see, is dark violet (because the ground in the foreground is in a violet shade).
The backdrop is just an image with low relative emission (1.0). Actually I used a mesh plane and circle with a gradient texture.
The ground is just a default principled material with no specularity.

I also used a high focal length (100mm) camera.

Results

(these are based on the two-light setup)

Eevee

Cycles

Note: I picked the backdrop color with the color picker from your reference image, but they appear duller in my render because I used the default Filmic Color Management settings. Depending on the kind of color you want to give to your scene, you might opt for a different color management scheme.

The file

This was created with an alpha version of Blender (2.82), so it may have compatibility issues.

Maybe making the sun a low emission light could help.


Can't get rid of that white-alpha-border! If I press the "include alpha-button" in the Mix-Color-Node, I get white borders. Otherwise i've got a perfect alpha but no blue background.

Use the Alpha Over Node instead of the mix node. Color -> Alpha Over

This will also work if you use an image instead of a RGB node.

If you lower the Width in the Film Panel under the render tab from 1.0 to 0.01 the border will dissolve.