Make a mask from a black and white video I have created a black and white video of a transition that I want to use in the video editor but I see that the masking tools require a vector type object. Is it possible to simply use the black and white channels in the video I created to mask a video in the sequencer or to quickly create a vector mask from a black and white video to then be used in the video editor? Basically I want the top video layer to show in the white areas of the video and the bottom layer to show in the black area.

I will answer my own question by posting this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXsrkg31VRI


Is it possible to create a render layer with no depth of field? I find that using depth of field (DOF) distorts the render pass masks, especially for very out of focus objects with a low f-stop (large aperture).  I am trying to get around this by making a separate render layer with no DOF which I will only use for pass index masks.  But I have not found a way to use no DOF on a specific render layer.  So is it possible to tell blender to not use any DOF in a specific render layer, either directly or by using a different camera?

You can use multiple scenes:

Add a new scene by pressing the + at the top of the screen and selecting Link Objects:

This will link the objects into a new scene. This way modifying any object will change it in both scenes.
In the new scene, select the camera and unlink it from the first scene by pressing U> Object Data. Then set the camera's aperture size to 0 to disable DoF. Note that the aperture must be set to radius for this to work.
Then you can get the render results of both scenes in the compositor by using multiple renderlayer nodes:

Note that each scene has it's own compositing node tree, so it might be confusing if you have composite nodes in both scenes. I usually like to keep all the composite nodes in one scene.

If you add any new objects to one scene, they can be linked to the other scene by selecting them and pressing ⎈ CtrlL> Link objects to scene and then selecting the scene you want to link to.

I presume you are using Cycles.

You should not use camera Depth of Field but instead use the Z value pass (enabled by default in your render layers) in the compositor (ex. with Defocus node).


v2.8 beta EEVEE, transparent mask is black instead of transparent I need to apply an alpha texture mask over a texture material in order to be transparent in the viewport. As is, it is black in EEVEE.

How do I modify this file to make the viewport show the mask as a transparent in the 3d view?

For it to work I changed the Blend Mode to Apha Clip. That's all it needed for it to work.

Materials tab> Options> Blend Mode> Alpha Clip

Eric, this only seems to work if Eevee is active in all viewports.

For example, if i change one viewport to shaded, then the alpha texture disappears completely from all other viewports. Anyone experiencing this behaviour?


Cycles/ CUDA out of memory (sometimes) like many other posts, I am getting CUDA error: out of memory when I am rendering out many images for an animation.

But- when I close Blender, and restart the rendering process from the stopped image, then the rendering works fine again for a while.  This really confuses me- because if the scene requires larger memory than GPU's memory, shouldn't it have an error message all the time?

I am curious- is there a function in Blender rendering, where the GPU memory starts to save and accumulate for a faster rendering?  In the attached image- I noticed that another memory number does get larger as I render out more and more images in one rendering session.

Can someone explain what this number is? And how I can avoid this out of memory problem when rendering out large number of images (say more than 3000 pictures)?

Thanks!

Memory on the left is your VRAM and on the right it's your RAM.

441Mb of VRAM is not much though, what's your GPU? You probably want to upgrade if you are going to use it to render.

You can also try to optimize your scene, easiest way to do this is to bake as much things as you can, lower texture resolution and your number of polygons, create instances instead of duplicating object data. Also you can probably reduce lights bounces but I'm not certain this would help.

That or just render with your CPU (it will take longer but will store data in RAM instead of VRAM). How much RAM do you have?

Google 'Cycles Optimization VRAM' for more info on the subject.

Here you'll find a way to launch Blender in debug mode to troubleshoot memory usage: How do I see what is using Memory?

I would suggest checking where you save your images. If you render say 200 images in one file then change the output of the images to a separate file and continue this process until its finished.

Otherwise your scene just has an extremely high face count and therefore causes the memory usage to boost up. Try using the decimate modifier to help with this.


Flipped keyframes - weird result (walk cycle) I'm working on walk cycle animation for a rigged character and I have a problem.

If I copy keyframes of the pose I made, and duplicate flipped keyframes via Ctrl+C -> Ctrl+Shift+V - I get a weird result, the legs are pointed to wrong directions and so on.

Why could it happen and how can I fix it?
Thank you in advance!

I believe that is the feature that allows you to copy keyframes and reverse the transformations of bones. Not sure exactly how it works but I use it for walk cycle. It reverses the initial pose of the character to form the middle pose of a walk cycle


How can the Bokeh Image node be used? From the wiki:

  With the Bokeh Image node you can generate a reference image for blurs.

What are some example uses for this node?

The bokeh Image controls the shape of the out-of-focus area for the Bokeh blur node.

Generally, octagonal and circular shapes are very common for most camera lenses. If no bokeh image is supplied, then a circular bokeh is assumed.

bokeh is lens blur. the fun thing about it though is how the cameras aperture changes the shape of points of illumination to mimic that of the camera. of course blender doesnt have a real camera so we have to fake the effect. it can be done in the lense settings but it is often more convienient to  use the nodes.

take a look at these video lessons i made recently on this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwmicmIxXA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE_XdMID89o


Python path for allowing animation of viewport and render visibility of objects EDIT: It turns out I formulated this question out of a misunderstanding of my own old code. See @batFINGER and @scurest answers.
I'm working on a script which automates some animation, which includes turning on and off objects' viewport and render visibility with Object.hide_viewport and Object.hide_render. These objects will be created with the script.
In the Object Properties tab under 'Visibility', there is a button besides the 'Show in Viewports' and 'Show in Renders' buttons that allows these settings to show up in the Dope Sheet and be animated. I've attached a photo of these buttons, highlighted in red. How can I access these 'Animate property.' buttons with Python? As in what value do they change? Nothing shows up when hovering over this button with Python Tooltips on, nor does anything show up in the scripting info view when I click this button. Or is there an alternate way to do this?
Thanks!

Keyframe Insert / Delete.
Further to the answer of @scurest

Mouse over the property after setting to refresh the panel
Every object in blender has a keyframe_insert and keyframe_delete method.   It does everything required, eg if the object has no animation data or action it adds them, then adds the keyframe.
Set the value, insert the keyframe. eg hide the object at frame 10
>>> C.object.hide_viewport = True
>>> C.object.keyframe_insert('hide_viewport', frame=10)
True

Can pass the frame, or it defaults to the current frame of the scene.

Please Try
bpy.context.object.hide_viewport = True
bpy.context.object.hide_render = False

#Python Console
>>> bpy.context.object
bpy.data.objects['Text.023']

bpy.data.objects['Text.023'].hide_viewport
True

>>> bpy.data.objects['Text.023'].hide_viewport = False

Of course in the script you would refer to a particular object or sequence of objects by name or as part of a collection
Strongly related.
Selecting an object via scripting?


Cycles Render is showing black silhouette I'm running into the attached issue when trying to render my model. I'm fairly new to blender and am using a free model form the internet to practice on. I'm not sure what is going on here.

I've done some googling prior to submitting this and none of the solutions I found resolved my issue.

https://imgur.com/vpirao5

I found out the issue. I had some masks turned on...


How to add audio to Blender 2D animation? All the tutorials I have seen for adding audio to a 2D animation in Blender involved using the video editor. Is there any way where you can just directly import audio to your animation?

In the top row you should have

2D Animation | 2D Full Canvas | Compositing | Rendering | +

Click the "+" in the sub-menu of Video Editing click Video Editing.
In the Video Editing tab navigate to your sound file.
Drag and drop the sound file anywhere into the sequencer.

The sound file is directly in your animation.

Go back to the 2D Animation tab and play your animation to see.

In the Video Sequencer (shift f8), in the dropdown menus, under "Add" -> "Sound". You can cut it and move it around, the same as the video strips.

The sound should play on the same frames that they would on imported video (even if there's no "video", per say)


Fill particles in a container I have tried everything to fill an invisible container with particles but the particles just seems to sinks to the bottom and they don't fill the container. I am trying to create something like in the video below how balls take the shape and fill up the space i want to create something like this. Please help.

Edit : have also tried the molecular script but that doesn't seem to work as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgUipRRin0k&t=16s

You can use rigid body physics to simulate the particles filling a containing mesh. This is a different approach from using the particle system.

1) Create the container geometry. Make sure there is an opening for the particles to enter.

2) Create the particles to fill the container. The particles can be created by add a single sphere to the scene. Then using 3 array modifiers to generate the collection of spheres. Apply the modifiers. (see explaination) Then, in edit mode partitioning the mesh using  P> Selection to separate the selection into a new object (see explanation ) When done, you should have the container and particles which will fill it.

3) Add a solid body physics to the container. Duplicate the settings shown here. The default settings are modified do the container will hold something, but not move during the simulation. Also, the mesh is used to contain the particles.

4) Apply solid body physics to a single sphere. The default settings are modified to allow the spheres to move and to ensure that the sphere stop moving relatively quickly once in the container.

5) Copy the physics settings to all of the spheres. Select all of the spheres, deselect the sphere with physics, reselect it last so it is the active object. Then use the physics toolbar to apply the physics to all selected objects. (see explanation

6) Set the final timestep for the simulation to 100.

7) The default physics settings may not get the desired results. Modify the physics setting for higher accuracy. Depending on the number of particles, it might be necessary to tradeoff accuracy for simulation time by decreasing the number of iterations and steps. Once done, press 'Bake All Dynamics'. It may take several minutes to complete the simulation. The progress bar in the info bar will show the progress in the simulation. Once done, the simulation that was used in the animation will be completed.

8) If the simulation is settled down on the last frame, this is a reasonable approximation of the filling in the container.

An example with an alternative container.

This solution can be used for any shape container. More particles can be used, the simulation times will be higher with more particles.

Blend file -

Change the Physics type in the Particles System to Fluid, you might need to tweak the parameter's to get the desired results.


How to pull sequencer data from the top left corner and to the right lower corner Using batFINGERs example from here I get the data from the lower right corner to the top left corner. Is there a way to read the data in the opposite direction?

Example here: How to get a clip's source media starting and ending frame numbers?

EDIT: I just realized that the order of the list is the order clips are added to the timeline and not the order the clips are located in the timelines. So reversing the loop is not the solution.

Python's sorted() can use a custom function that defines the key to use when sorting a list and it also has a reverse option.

def start(strip):
    return strip.frame_start

def end(strip):
    return strip.frame_start + strip.frame_final_duration

Then you can sort by start or end frame with

seq_strips = bpy.context.scene.sequence_editor.sequences

strips_by_start = sorted(seq_strips, key=start)

strips_reversed = sorted(seq_strips, key=end, reverse=True)

Here's some help:

Just use reversed(...) on that collection like reversed(vse.sequences_all) in the case of this script and you're done...


How to show accidentally hidden menu bar? Here is the blender window I have:

As you see, it doesn't have the menu that is usually displayed at the top of the screen.

How can I get the menu back?

You probably Maximized the active window.

To go back, try hovering your cursor over the Main 3D view, and type in the following key combination:

Shift + Spacebar

Not exactly sure what menu you are looking for but just change the dropdown for one of your screens to this icon.

You may have to move screens around to get them back to the place you want.

Click the box of any of the green circles and choos the "i" icon.


How to create a 3D virus envelope like this in image below? I got the lipid bi-layer but just a plane of it, I need to make a aspherical envelope of virus, how can I recreate it in blender?

Link

The virus model and the animation of the merging into a cell wall can be generated using animation nodes.

Overview

The virus is formed from 3 meshes for the exterior surface, the interior surface, and the contents. Two additional meshes are used for the lipids and proteins on the surface. Animation nodes are used to place the lipids and proteins on the surfaces.
To animate the merge of the virus and a cell wall, the animation nodes are used to move the lipids and proteins from their initial position to their final position. This is done by moving the location of these items along an interpolated path between the initial and final mesh.
This example was done using Blender 2.79 and Animation Nodes 2.0.

Creation of the Virus

Create a lipid model. Once this is created, choose a scale so it can be used for the virus and the cell wall.

Create a model of the surface proteins. This should be in proportion to the size of the lipid model.

Add a small 'Ico Sphere' to represent the contents of the virus.
Add a larger 'Ico Sphere' to model the interior surface of the virus before the merge. The image below shows the virus contents and the inner surface.

Add another, even larger 'Ico Sphere' to model the exterior surface of the virus. The exterior sphere should be placed so the distance between it and the interior sphere is about equal to twice the length of the tails on the lipids.
Create the animation node trees as shown below for the inner and outer surfaces. The key concept is that the mesh for the ico sphere has vertices with both location and orientation (normals). This can be used to position the lipids and proteins. By mixing the lipids and proteins randomly on the exterior of the virus, the desired 3D structure is obtained.

Animation of the Merge

To move the lipids/proteins the animation is broken into 4 equivalent parts: the interior of the virus, the exterior of the virus, the top of the cell membrane, and the bottom of the cell membrane. For these 4 parts, the same kind of solution is applied. A source mesh is used to initially place the lipids/proteins. A destination mesh is used to define the location at the end of the animation.
For the sake of brevity, only the exterior of the virus will be explained in detail. A similar approach is used for the interior, top surface, and bottom surface. The ico sphere for the exterior is created. The mesh is duplicated and edited into a flat surface. This surface is made so the lipids/proteins will follow a simple path from the eco-sphere mesh to the flat mesh.

An animation node network is created to position the lipids and proteins as shown below. The position and the normal for the vertices is used to the lipids/proteins change their orientation when moving.

Similar networks are created for the interior, top, and bottom.
The meshes for the interior and exterior of the virus are animated moving towards and through the cell membrane. This helps make the merge look smoother.
The virus contents are animated moving with the interior and exterior meshes and finally into the cell.

The blend file can be found here:

The key technique to create this animation was by Jacob Verburgt at Milwaukee School of Engineering, Class of 2018. His original animation is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cV8KBup7Eo

Thanks to Brenticus to pointing to his animation on Reddit.

Make a few cuts in an ico sphere
Then use a particle system, to instance the 'skin particles' on the ico sphere.
Next use shape keys for the deformation animation.

PS maybe 2D will be be easier to understand.


What does the Mantaflow 'time' setting for noise do? Does anyone know what the 'time' setting for noise is supposed to do?
I've made a sim, and I'm trying to make the noise move/develop/scintillate more slowly. Which I'd sort of assumed the 'time' control was for, but my findings would make it appear otherwise...

So here's the same sim, with multiple different 'time' settings for the noise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNbeHS5C3xE&feature=youtu.be

It's a bit difficult to watch eight at once, so I knocked it back to four:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ghOibSh5vA&feature=youtu.be

I can't see much of a difference between them, I definitely can't see a 1000 times difference between 0.01 & 10!

Here's the smoke zoomed a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9JsSyI-im8&feature=youtu.be

Still not seeing terribly much difference! Am I using the control wrong?
I mean the tool-tip says 'animation time of noise', which you'd think made the noise faster or slower, no?

I must admit I've only used Mantaflow for Gas sims so far, so this control may well be fantastic for 'wet' fluid sims, but does anyone know how to slow the noise down in a gas sim?

For that matter - does anyone have any docs for Mantaflow in general?!?

My understanding is that the time factor basically acts as a control for the coordinates of the noise. So it just changes the position and look of the noise, but not really related to time in the sense of how the noise behaves over time.

Sort of had this answered on the BA forum: basically it's a bit of a grey area!!!
It's at the bottom of this post / thread (at the moment anyway!).

https://blenderartists.org/t/lets-talk-about-mantaflow/644346/675

Ta all!


How to make all faces flip to the right/consistent direction? What's happening is that I have tried to flip the normals, inside and out, but there are always faces which have to be flipped!

Normals recalculated

Inside View

If I flip them again, all faces get flipped and end up horrible and, not working at all. So how can I make all of the faces flip to the right direction?

TL;DR: Select all and press ShiftN to Recalculate Normals (CtrlN in 2.7x and earlier).

I think this is problem you are having: some of the normals are always facing the wrong direction.
If you have the whole mesh selected when you flip normals then you are just toggling between the backwards faces and the correct faces, what faces are backwards. You are flipping the whole mesh, the correct parts will become backwards.
Whilst in Edit Mode, with the whole mesh selected, Recalculate the normals. That should fix the problem.
If recalculating the normals does not fix it, then you will have to go through your mesh and select only the faces that are backwards then flip normals.
I think you want the inside of the scope to point towards the inside. That is a case where Recalculate will probably not work. If the inside cylinder is unconnected from the rest of the mesh, then just hover the mouse over the inner cilinder and press L.

Select the entire model by pressing, A then Ctrl+N to change the normals to face out.


blender is painting only in black in texture painting mode I am new. just started learning. I have added material and unwrapped UV. blender is painting only in black in texture painting mode. Please help.

here is the snapshot. I don't know if it was supposed to happen. I am new and most of times blender doesn't work how tutorials describe it's working. It took me whole day to figure it out. :D


Cycles not available in 2.77? I can't select cycles as render engine. I have tried changing the user preferences as well as re-installing blender.

Any ideas?

never mind I had to change blender render to cycle render


Vertex sliding along line until intersection Is there a way to slide a vertex along a line until an intersection of another line, which has no vertex at said intersection like it is shown in the picture?

I am a total beginner in blender and couldn't figure this out by searching for tutorials,

3 options to create a vertex at the intersection between two edges:

Activate and use The tinyCAD shipped add on > V2X: 'Vertex at Intersection'
EExtrude the edges to make faces, select them, and search for 'Intersect' (Spacebar in 2.79, F3 in 2.80). Check the 'Self Intersect' option. Delete excess vertices.

Create a plane below the edges, and Knife Project the edges down onto the plane, which will create a vertex at the intersection between the projected edges, (and possibly some surplus geometry) That vertex can become a snap target, or you can duplicate the edges out of the plane.

This last method can sometimes be quite useful ..  the lines only have to intersect in your chosen projection, which you define by the orientation of your plane, before  Shift Numpad 7 aligning your view to it, to execute the Knife Project.

Slide using Shift+V

Make sure snapping is on.. and set to vertex - closest .. and you will snap to the vertex on intersection.


Can Blender 2.79 Fluid Physics act on Rigid Body objects? I'm trying to have a flow of water rotate a solid-body propeller in Blender 2.79.
But before I went any deeper, I got curious about a comment by a Blender Artist saying this:

  The fluid simulation does not interact with other objects but other objects can interact with the fluid sim. Set an object to be an obstacle in the fluid settings and you'll have to keyframe animate it's movement. It's movement will then interact with the fluid.

This was back in 2013. Is this statement still true today. If fluids can't help, can I use Particle Physics, or do I need to extend the current Physics Engine by code?

Thanks in advance.

Yes!!!
After 2 days of work, I can finally say: It is Possible!
See the picture below.

You can watch the full animation Here on Youtube 11s Video
By the way, no it is not a keyframed animation of the turbine that you are seeing. It is pure physics.

The author wrote under the linked youtube video:

In Blender, Rigid Bodies effects on Fluids are very to implement. However, for long, the reverse interaction was dubbed impossible. No more! Using Blender Particles to emit particles, then converting them to rigid bodies and finally applying Cube Suffer on the resulting animation.
In this video, I'm using a modified version of Cube Surfer to make able to utilize simple meshes (not particles as in the original version).
If there's enough likes, I might post a detailed tutorial.


Change diffuse color for all selected objects in scene with python So what I'm trying to do is use the "bpy.context.selected_objects" and get the material index from it somehow but I have no experience coding in python and I want to use that in "mat = (Here)" so I can then use "mat.diffuse_color" to change all the materials colors to the same color.

I know it's kinda like asking someone to write code for me but to me it only seems like I need help with 1 line and I don't want to learn a new language just to execute 1 script and likely never use it again. I just really need to change all the material colors because I have a large scene with over 1000 objects and all together there are over 250 materials so doing it manually is a very lengthy process as I have 8 more scenes similar to it.

Note: I can't make them the same material as they have textures applied to them.

You don't have to access the material index, since you have access to an object's active material. This will do what you're aiming for:

import bpy

r,g,b = (0.1, 0.5, 0.7) # Set color RGB value

# Iterate over all the selected objects
for o in bpy.context.selected_objects:
    # Set the active materials diffuse color to the specified RGB
    o.active_material.diffuse_color = (r,g,b)

To set the material for many objects at once: apply the material to an object, then press control-L. This is a "link" menu. You can then link the material from the Active object to all the selected. This menu allows you to copy modifiers or even geometry from the active object to all selected.


Light Path node works weirdly for Background For some reason, LightPath node doesn't work expectedly. When I plug in 'Is Diffuse Ray' output, I want to exclude all Diffuse rays but they stay. It works for Glossy ray and Camera ray, but why don't work for diffuse rays

Here I have added more explanation for my question above
For Glossy shader, all work exactly how expected: for Cycles engine and HDRI background I can exclude Glossy surfaces from the scene (make a mask)

But for Diffuse shader, when I use Cycle engine and HDRI I can exclude diffuse surfaces, for some reason, it doesn't work how it works for Glossy shader shown above

But when I try to use a flat colour background for Cycles, It becomes possible to exclude diffuse surfaces

or with HDRI but switch to Eevee it also works well

Okay, in the end, my simple question is why when I am using HDRI background and Cycle I can exclude Diffuse surfaces how it works well  for Glossy surfaces for instance

Using a Mix Shader node and 2 background nodes will give you better results and more flexibility than multiplying the strength of the entire world. you can also sorta "mask" it out and add whatever youd like on the 2nd background node and show one thing in the sky but for diffuse light bounces to react to another thing.

but if you absolutely need to use the node's strength, then doing it without any sort of multiply works, if u need to multiply it, then add a multiply node and/or an invert node to change the background's strength, with shouldnt be a problem with my method since the strength socket is available
EDIT: with what u said in comments, that would need to be done in the compositing of the scene. you would need to enable diffuse layers for indirect diffuse, then use that as a mask/factor for the other ndoes

this will take all light bounces coming from diffuse surfaces to the camera and use them as a factor, take note this will also affect other diffuse indirect bounces though. or, you can play around with materials and use the light path node on them and experiment a little


What Texture Map is This? I downloaded an fbx which came with a diffuse and normal map along with a third map which I really don't know what it is. Also, how would I hook this up to a Principled BSDF?

I am not sure what the texture is, but the color needs to go to Metallic, Specular, and Anistropic with the alpha in the roughness.


Material opacity not working I'm trying to use a texture and maps for a chain-link fence, nut for some reason when I try to use opacity it makes the whole thing turn black

this is what mine looks like

and this is what it should look like

I got the maps from here: https://3dtextures.me/2019/10/01/metal-fence-001/
no matter what i do it won't change

What render engine are you using? Are you rendering on the GPU?
If you are using EEVEE, check the blend method of the material: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/materials/settings.html#blend-mode
If you are using Cycles and are rendering on the GPU, try rendering on the CPU. It may be a GPU driver problem.
If the problem still persists, call your mom. :-)


How can I compare different renders? I am rendering an object and am making changes and then rendering again. Is there any way to compare my different renders. By compare I mean just quickly swap between the different renders so I can see the minute changes. My interest in is in this to be quick way to judge my last change.

Saving the individual renders to a file and then using an image viewer would allow me to do this, however it is tedious and time consuming. Is there a way to do this in blender?

In the UV editor, you can select different render slots.  Select Slot 1, for instance, render... then select Slot 2, render again.  Switch back and forth between the slots to compare using J and Alt + J

EDIT:
Only adding by request... in addition to using J and Alt + J, Lukas also pointed out in his answer that the number keys at the top of the keyboard (not Numpad) can be used to select the slot to view.

It should be noted that pressing J will auto-cycle the renders.  If you only have renders in slots 1, 4, and 8, it will only cycle those slots.  So it can be handy.

You could of course render them to files and upload them to comparison websites like this one online-image-comparison.com or using Desktop/CLI-Tools.


How to Import a model with textures applied? I have downloaded a model from this website.

It comes with all the textures as .tga files.

I want to import all the files into blender so it looks exactly as it does on the website, textures applied and everything.
I've searched around for how to do this with no results.

Can someone help or guide me through doing this?

You would need to enable the 3DS Import/Export Addon in the User Preferences (Menu: File / User Preferences)

Then Import the .3ds file (Menu: File / Import 3D Studio (.3ds)
some of the UVMaps don't match the textures you would need to reassign them.

Enable Transparency in the Material Settings for glas parts:

You would also need a few lamps in your scene, in Object Mode ALamp/Hemi and place them e.g. in front of the model, then you will also see the textures.

Using Blender 2.73a just go to
File > Import > Wavefront (.obj)
Browse from the extracted downloaded folder for file .obj extension (in my case it is DBR9.obj of size 2.8Mb.)
The whole beautiful complete frame of the car model should open right away in your editor.
I just played for Blender for an hour and it is fun to learn up.


Possible to hide mesh/texture at a perpendicular viewing angle? Is it possible to create a mesh that becomes invisible at certain viewing angles? Id like the mesh or texture to become invisible as it approaches a perpendicular viewing angle.

Current mesh.

How it looks from certain angle.

In Cycles.

The idea is to compare view vector (from the "camera data" input node) to the normal of the faces (from "texture coordinate" input node).

If you calculate the dot product it will be low when these two previous vectors are nearly orthogonal.

So, just compare the resulting value to some threshold.

1- Each input is converted to world

2- The threshold ("greater than" or "lower than" depending on the way you want to use it after)

3- Combined with your texture transparency

Note: viewing the image in your question, you may also have an alpha values issue (it's not certain but possible)

Comparison node replaced by a colorramp. To be tuned: type of the ramp (cardinal), values of the control points.


How to set a given Island margin for UV? I am building assets in blender for use in UE4.

For UV maps and light maps I need to have 2 texels spacing around each island (i.e. 4 texels minimum between islands). To calculate what spacing I need in 0-1 space I use the formula 1/[lightmap size]*2 (e.g. 1/64*2 = 0.032 for a 64x64 map) to convert.

At first I naively plugged this value into the "Margin" parameter of the Unwrap function but this gave me a much too small margin in 0-1 space. Actually, A value of 1 (the maximum) for "Margin"  translates into a margin of 0.111 in 0-1 space. Hmm.

2 questions:

What is the math behind the "Margin" parameter of the Unwrap function?
What is the process to get a margin of a given number of texels (besides trial and error which is time consuming)?

From my tests, CTRL + P works fine and gives the correct pixel separation where the Lightmap pack actually seems incorrect.

When using the Lightmap pack it seems that the separation is not based on pixels where packing it or setting it in the UV unwrap setting it seems correct to me.

Regards,
Kyle


Rendering using both GPU and CPU is not possible For some reason I'm unable to render on CPU+GPU. I've checked on 2 different computers and it's not available. One setup is Threadripper + GTX 1070, and the other one Intel i9 + GTX 1080.

Is it a matter of supported processors or I have to activate it somehow?
I'm using Blender 2.79b

In fact it IS possible. You need to download a branch like this:

http://graphicall.org/1240

...and many others on this site. Open Settings and in the System pane You will find settings as on the image below. Hope it helps, buddy.

Sincerely, Jan

REM: Sometimes using GPU+CPU could be SLOWER then using GPU only!

Using CPU and GPU at the same time is not supported in Cycles yet. To get this functionality you would need to switch to another renderer like the AMD ProRender.


When animate nodes names are translated, the Chinese will not display properly Obviously he only supports English, but what can I do to make it show Chinese
(I tried Unicode)

def setup(self):
    self.label = "B网格网格BMesh Mesh"

great！


Curves and Booleans Woes The Story
I am attempting to make a 3d representation of the following SUPER complicated model in a 3d-printer(.stl) friendly way. (I know it's not great quality, but it's literally the best reference image I could find!)

I've been busting my ass and learning a lot through trial and error, but here's what I have so far.

As you can see, it's curvy as heck and has lots of intersecting/overlapping geometry. I think it actually looks pretty good on screen, but unfortunately it doesn't transfer well to .stl at all.
The Problem
With a shape this complicated, I knew there was no way I could shape the curves by hand. I found some tutorials on using array and curve modifiers and I really just jump in and messed up a lot before I finally figured out how to make it at least look presentable. But now I've run into a whole new problem.
My "clever" approach was to do the whole thing with just a couple winding curves and the mirror modifier then hopefully purge all the intersecting geometry with Boolean Difference modifiers.
The issue I'm having is Boolean difference is giving me frustratingly inconsistent results. I don't know how to troubleshoot it, and I don't know of any other approach to salvage this model I've already sunk several hours of time into.
For some parts of the model, it works great, Especially ones with the curves and the spheres. In other places, specifically that big center cylinder and the curves with each other, the boolean modifier generates extra surfaces and deletes others.
Everything I'm reading now says boolean modifiers only work well with consistent, basic shapes. But how can I do what I'm trying to do without them?
Thank you so much in advance! It's my first post here, but it won't be my last!
(edited to add the .blend file)

I have a method that may help you in this case.

This method works best if you don't have truly vertical surfaces, but there are workarounds to this if you are willing to adopt it in your meshes.

The first recommended step is to take the bottom most surfaces and scale them outward, so that you have a slight slope to your vertical walls.

The next step should solve the rest for you:
This is a fairly long step-by-step, so I chose to link to it from another post here, if this is a problem at all from the moderators, I would be glad to duplicate it here - just let me know.

After you recreate your mesh using the Z-Pass method, you should be able to easily re-scale your bottom most parts of the mesh to get it looking like you intended, if you so choose by applying the displacement modifier, and manipulating the bottom faces to be what you desire.


Why does removing the dot from bl_idname break my addon? I've made an export script, sorry to say much of it is copy paste coding.

It was working fine, but now:

There should be an extra menuitem 'Waveller' -- it was there and it was working, but it has just disappeared!  ARGH!

I must have done a nono while refactoring the code.

I have tried removing and adding in:

What is going wrong?

Here is my code:

bl_info = {
    "name":         "Waveller",
    "author":       "π",
    "version":      (0, 0),
    "blender":      (2, 6, 2),
    "location":     "File > Import-Export > Waveller",
    "description":  "Export Verts and Faces in Waveller Format",
    "warning":      "",
    "wiki_url":     "http://www.waveller.com",
    "category":     "Import-Export"
}

if "bpy" in locals():
    import imp
    if "export_waveller" in locals():
        imp.reload( export_waveller )
else:
    import bpy

from bpy.props import StringProperty, BoolProperty

class WavellerExporter( bpy.types.Operator ):
    '''Save in Waveller format'''
    bl_idname = "export_waveller.vert"
    bl_label = "Export Waveller"

    filepath = StringProperty(
            subtype='FILE_PATH',
            )

    check_existing = BoolProperty(
            name = "Check Existing",
            description = "Check and warn on overwriting existing files",
            default = True,
            options = { 'HIDDEN' },
            )

    def execute( self, context ):
        from . import export_waveller
        export_waveller.export_all( self.filepath )

        return {'FINISHED'}

    def invoke( self, context, event ):
        if not self.filepath:
            self.filepath = bpy.data.filepath
        # bpy.path.ensure_ext(bpy.data.filepath, "")
        wm = context.window_manager
        wm.fileselect_add( self )
        return { 'RUNNING_MODAL' }

def menu_export( self, context ):
    self.layout.operator(
                         WavellerExporter.bl_idname,
                         text = "Waveller"
                         )

def register():
    bpy.utils.register_module( __name__ )

    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_export.append( menu_export )

def unregister():
    bpy.utils.unregister_module( __name__ )

    bpy.types.INFO_MT_file_export.remove( menu_export )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    register()

I did do a bit of fiddling, I remember changing:

bl_idname = "export_waveller.vert"

to

bl_idname = "export_waveller"

(changing it back doesn't fix this)

Well if anyone can put me right I'm very grateful. Also, corrections to any hideousnesses you see lurking in the code are most welcome!

It was that line!

Can anyone tell me why I'm not allowed to change bl_idname from "export_waveller.vert" to "export_waveller"?

My only guess is that this string is used as a token somewhere, and changing it creates some disparity.

I don't see why resetting factory settings doesn't cure this...

Anyone?


Final rendering add reflection on materials When final rendering add reflection on materials. But I don't know how to delete. I'd like to delete reflection on materials.

You most likely have lights in the scene that are hidden in the viewport. Go to the outliner, enable the render visibillity buttons by opening the filter menu in the top right and check if any of the disabled lights are enabled in the render.


Why/how does tile size effect performance? The general wisdom is "for CPU use 32x32 tiles, for GPU use 128x128 or bigger, depending on your card".  But why?

Why should a CPU need much smaller sizes than a GPU?  I know this has something to do with CPUs doing multiple tiles at a time, but I still don't see how this effects tile size choice.

Why does tile size even effect render times at all?  Isn't cycles tracing the same number of samples no matter what?

So how should I determine what tile size I should use?

I am looking for a technical answer as to how tile size effects performance and why different hardware should have radically different tile sizes.

The difference and why there are different optimal bucket sizes comes from the size and design of on chip cache/memory of cpu or gpu.

The gpu has a massive amount of cores. But they are dumb and cannot do much logic. They have a big data throughput though - so that's why is good to give them a big chunk of data. There will be a lot of parallelization done on that data and each core will do it's dumb thing over and over again till it's done. The parallelization happens internally in gpu, so in reality you would have to assign like 2x2 or 4x4 tile to each of those little cores, but you would have 3000 of those tiles. But since they share cache/vram, you assign a big tile to them. Therefore the more CUDA cores, the bigger tile. It's worth noting that Kepler, Maxwell or Pascall cuda cores are not equal, so it's best to test the ideal tile size between generations.

When mixing different gpus (if you must), it's generally best to go with the tile size of the least powerfull one. Many commercial renderers divide the last tile into smaller ones, so the cores/gpus that are finished can still render. This does not happen yet with Cycles, so it might happen that the last tile can end up as a job for the slowest gpu, and if the tile is too big, the rest of gpus will wait too long for the next frame doing nothing.
The cpu has low amount of cores, but comparably to gpu's cores they are super-powerful. Each such core can operate on a bigger chunk of data, and since individual cores do not share cache, you have that many tiles as you have cores (actually threads). Each core has approx 4-16MB of cache and that reflects the optimal tile size.

GPU - CPU Is not common, though in fact it has been listed that CPU is a slow render due to its state. GPU though is a common usage of rendering in blender.
You should probably switch to the original renderer GPU. It has a faster performance of tile rendering and it is a more common usage of memory and physical use to GPU, Graphics Card  and Memory usage.

CPU 1200x1200 tiles 00:03:54 Estimated Through Gloss and Rays
GPU 1200x1200 tiles 00:00:37 Estimated Through Gloss and Rays

Estimation will be faster by GPU.                                             It will also depend on your computer's hardware and how good it is.
GPU-CPU

  For advanced help or more info, please go to...
  https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions or
  https://www.blenderguru.com
  :)


Bone Constraint Copy Scale on multiple bones in chain bug? I'm trying to make a chain of 8 parented bones stretch on the y axis using the copy scale constraint and a separate controller bone, but using it with more than two bones causes all the parented bones to scale infinitely. Logically, this doesn't make sense. if the controlling bone is scaled to 2, all the bones in the chain should be at a scale of 2. Is this a bug or am I missing something with parenting?

I didn't know about the inherited parenting, disabling that fixed the problem


How to bake normals using modifiers only? I have an UV-unwrapped base mesh that I want to bake tangent normals into. Only detail I need is a few bevel modifiers and a subdivision surface. How can I bake the smooth version without using cage objects etc?

You can bake world normals instead of tangent ones


Fire Not Showing In Rendered view or LookDev but in other views Eevee I've been losing my mind about this. Looked all over the place tried what others have. Nothing works.

I've designed a throne room and the braziers I have next to the throne must have fire. I add the smoke physics and what not. Everything looks good. Until I decide to look at it in Rendered View. Nothing was there. My fire was gone. Did the attribute thing by changing the flame attribute from "Flame" to "flame" restarted Blender. Nothing worked. Please help me out before I put a fist through my laptop.

Can you post a screenshot of your fire material nodes? And do you have Volumetrics enabled for Cycles and EEVEE?

this is old but I think I discovered your issue.  I had the same thing.  Your emission strength needs to be raised above 0.  Similar to the one above, if it's 0 you won't see anything in any view but solid.


Making glass Orbs with effects inside Does anyone know how this type of an orb could be created using Blender?

I've tried using Glass material with an invisible Emission object inside that would emit tiny spheres but without an Environment it looks weird and very bleak.

No matter what lighting I experimented with I don't get such a nice-looking orb. Any suggestion is highly appreciated!

Final result

It's extremely simple setup. The one from your image.

Steps

Create UV Sphere and add to it Glass Shader.
Add Plane with choosen image, use Emission Shader for this. You can use Images as Plane Addon then you need to switch from Diffuse to Emission.
Place Plane behind Sphere and...
That's it.

Final thoughts:

If you want clear background behind the orb, select Plane and in Object tab > Cycles Settings, uncheck Ray Visibility > Camera.

Maybe this Video could help improve it. It covers most things to do with IOR and Environment. You will need an environment map to create that awesome effect. Volumetrics are also used in that pic.
https://youtu.be/kSp3pHA_tRM


Normal Map Artifacts Im trying to bake a high poly mesh onto a low poly mesh, but it bakes incorrectly, it does it for both blender baking and substance painter, so it's something with the mesh for sure.

Yeah, i figured it was my UV, the uv had some intersecting parts, so just had to get some more seams on the mesh, funny how you figure these obvious problems out once you've spent hours trying to figure them out, just to realize your problem after posting it on a forum sigh...


Fac input in Blender I understand fac to represent the percentage of the second shader to be applied. I recall seeing examples where the fac value is set 1.0 and still there a node connected to the first shader input. With fac being 1.0 the first shader input should not be even considered, what is the use of doing this?

One of the big uses for this is for keyframing the Fac: value. In Blender, you cannot keyframe Node Tree Connections, so instead, you might have to fake it by keyframing a Fac: value.

Say that you have an animation, and you want your object to be there, be there, be there, and then suddenly be gone. Well, your first try might be having your shader connect to your Material Output and then keyframing a Transparent BSDF jumping to the Material Output connection at some point. That can't happen, though, so you can have your material and the Transparent BSDF fed into a Mix Shader, and keyframe (I while hovering over the Fac:) it to turn from 0.0 to 1.0 at a certain frame.

If this helps at all, the fac is stored as a raw number value, from 0 to 1. It is not complicated, if you know how to use it. It can be used as a variable in any functions you want to include in your node setup, so long as both the domain and the range (speaking in nerdy terms) are 0 to 1.


How do I rotate some text? I'm making a logo in blender. I originally converted a PNG to SVG and then imported it to Blender but that made a really messy mesh. So now I'm making it straight in blender.

Here's what I've got so far:

I basically just typed it out and then extruded it using the Solidify modifier.

But I can't rotate it, or move it. I tried converting it to curve and then mesh but it still won't rotate. Also converting it messes up the mesh pretty bad.

Any clue what's going on?

Also if there are ways I could improve my workflow, let me know. Is there a better way to extrude the text? I also plan on curving it around a circle, towards the camera (so not like around a ball like you would see in photoshop but in the 3rd dimension like a hug or something)

If you 'typed it out' in Blender I'm assuming you used the text tool. If that is the case, then you have been wasting time, since it is still a curve object and will also have a messed up topology.

Text tools are just a special type of Bezier curve objects, so if you plan on converting to mesh might as well have just used the one imported from SVG you already had directly.

Curve objects are actually an underrated and powerful modeling tool to use, if you don't plan on converting to a mesh object later. That will often lead to triangulated uneven topology, unless you do some serious manual cleanup work.

If you don't plan on doing any heavy edits and shape modifications I'd recommend leaving them as curves objects.

Create your text then in Object Mode press Alt + C > Convert to Curve, then use the built in curve properties (not a Solidify modifier) for extrusion. You'll have the added benefit of procedural non destructive beveling and allow easy tweaking of the character's shapes by controlling the bezier curve handles in edit mode.

About rotation I'm assuming you want to rotate each character individually, if that's the case you either have to rotate them in Edit Mode individually (after converting to Bezier Curve or Mesh) or separate each character into it's own object (L to select all linked geometry and P to separate), then rotating each individually in Object Mode

If you plan on doing geometry heavy changes to you logo however, then I'd recommend a different approach and start from scratch modeling you logo as a mesh. It may be harder at the beginning, but with a good starting topology it may well compensate in the long run

Right click on it then hit R, to rotate. Hope this helps!


Bending arm causes odd deformation I am attempting to make a simple rig. Whenever I try to bend any body parts, particularly the arms and legs, however, they leave an odd gap where they are bent

I need the arm to bend in a smooth way like in the picture below, does anyone know how?

I have attempted to change the weight painting, and I have tried searching through forums, but I have been unable to find any solution to this problem yet.

Blend file

might be caused because you have a low poly figure with (high?) subdivision.
The subdevision performs a smooth over the low poly figure.
creating artifacts.

copy your blend file, apply subdiv, then do another autoweights with bones.

Its always is a bit tricky but it might look better.
Sometimes people add extra bonus just to keep things stable, (ea rigify feed solution)..
placing of the bones is essential


Drawing 2D in Blender I was wondering

There was this image on Blender.org, but how to make it?

Greace pencil is sure but rendering and other I don't know

Kind regards :)

I don't think this is made entirely with the grease pencil. For results like that you should take a look at freestyle line rendering.


Is it possible to convert displacement node to "baked" geometry (OBJ, FBX, etc)? I'm wondering if the displacement achieved using a displacement node in cycles can be "baked" into a mesh with traditional geometry. Is that possible?

Nope, not that I know of if you are referring to the adaptive subdivision with the experimental option enable that displacement only happens at render time.


How to apply scale to a multi user object I have two cushions, and one of the cushions is an instance of another(object data synchronized). So I wanted to unwrap the cushion, but it came out odd because the scale is wrong.So I am wondering: How to apply the scale to this object which is an instance of another one?(basically to a multi-user object)

You can't apply scale on multi-user object data. You will have to make the single user objects. U > Single User

You can relink the object data after applying the scale. See this answer for more information on relinking.

Unfortunately you cannot apply the scale of linked from another file objects. The reason this is so is because it is an exact copy from the original file and so you cannot change many parameters


Hair renders different than the preview I made the eyelashes for my mesh and though it will be fine as it looks in the picture

Particle Edit
Object mode
but after I render the eyelashes look very messy
like this

What I am doing wrong?
Here my Hair settings

Thanks in advance

The subdivision surface setting on the mesh was different and view/render. the problem got solved by changing this.

Look for normal editing (blendforweb or inner blender normal edit modifiers)for your curves/meshes or try edit normals at Paricle/advanced hair/Velocity shelf


Desaturated video after rendering I use Blender's video editing capabilities and noticed that the resulting video seems to have less intensive colors:

The one on the left is the original, the right video was rendered with Blender.

The original video is in a mov container and  ffprobe says this about the video stream:

  h264 (Constrained Baseline) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuvj420p(pc, bt709)

I added the original video in a new video editing project, and did the following:

defined a rendering range
set this in the output properties:

container: Matroska
video output quality: Lossless
encoding speed: Good
audio codec: AAC

Is there a way I can avoid losing the color intensity?

Here's a link the original video.

Blender version is 2.82, running on Arch Linux 5.6.12.

Following Leander's suggestion, I created some PNGs from the original video file with ffmpeg -ss 00:30 -i MV* -t 00:01 images_%03d.png.
Then I imported one of those images into Blender, and exported it again. Color was set to RGB, 8 bit color depth, compression was 15%:

Left: extracted with ffmpeg. Right: imported and exported with Blender.

Since all outputs and original video opened in QT and Blender is "desaturated" in the same way, I would say that it is more like wrong interpretation of colours in VLC. There is also noticeable contrast in VLC that totally flatten black parts (hairs) = loose all the rest of details that wasn't destroyed by camera and compression already.

Original video and rendered VSE PNG inside Blender ...

... they perfectly match (top row on bottom row with blend type - Different). I used curves to bring contrast in extreme values to see result better. Completely black.

BTW also your screen of PNG's match perfectly.

But result differs when the same data (video and render is opened in VLC.

Rendering into QuickTime H.264, opened in QT, produce differences only due compression artefacts.

check the color management perhaps filmic is active here altering the colors.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/color_management.html


Can you reduce detail with a normal/bump map? The usual workflow is to take a high detail model, such as a sculpt, create a lower detail copy, then bake a normal map off the high detail to use on the low. Is it viable to do the reverse?

I need to keep the overall geometry of my model intact for various reasons, but I would actually like to eliminate certain surface details with a texture within some parts of my material setup, while having the rest of the geometry intact for other parts.

Note that I don't necessarily mean a lower detail model in terms of vertex count, but rather in visible details. For example, here are two UV spheres. One has been crumpled. If I rendered it, it would have complex shading due to being crumpled, and the wireframe sphere would have smooth shading.

I want to give the crumpled sphere the smooth shading of the non-crumpled sphere, but keep it's geometry complex. This would cause it's silhouette to still have the high detail of the crumpled sphere.

Can this be done?

In the case of a spherical object, it is pretty simple. Just add a Normal Edit modifier and enable Auto Smooth in the Normals panel of the Object Data menu.

Before:

After:

You can always go into sculpting mode, hit s for a smooth brush and smooth as much as you'd like.


How to create and design hoops net and attach ot to a hoop? I wanted to add the torus object and attach net on the torus object in blender. I am not sure how to make a circular net and attach it to a torus object.

Final:

Net/Rope:

I've made the net from Bezier Curve just by extruding vertices and tweaking handles. I've added Mirror and Array modifiers at the beginning to have constant overview of my whole shape. Array count should be even to number of hooks on you rim. Also Relative Offset is a bit smaller than 1 to overlap lines, this will give fake knots on rope.

At the end you will need to add Curve modifier with selected Bezier Circle from the Rim shape.

Next add Bevel to our net:

Now you will need to scale a bit on X axis our whole Bezier Curve (net) because adding Bevel will add also a little offset to it.

When everything is looking as you want duplicate this shape and move it to another layer - just in case.

Last thing before going further is to convert Bezier Curve (net) to mesh.

Cloth:

Add Cylinder with exact same radius and height as our net/rim and some Loop Cuts.

Add Surface Deform modifier to our net select created Cylinder and hit Bind.

Scale/Move/Tweak Cylinder with Proportional Editing to get basic net shape. Our net will follow this modifications due to Surface Deform modifier.

Add Vertex Group to our Cylinder and Assign to it top Edge Loop.

Add Cloth sim to Cylinder and tweak settings. I encourage you to test different values for different cloth behavior.

Now you can hide Cylinder.

Final thoughts and blend file:

I haven't used any complicated methods, all links provided should explain every step and if not - any question should be answered here or with many tutorials around the web. Also with provided blend file you should easily figure it out.

  Remember to Apply Scale and Rotation to meshes.

Blend file:

This is a quick and rough method to create the net.

First add a plane object. Subdivide it several times.
Add decimate modifier and choose undivide, iteration 1 to make subdivision diagonal.
Then add wireframe modifier to create net. Add subdivision surface modifier and choose simple.
Then add a bezier circle and add curve modifier to the net and choose the bezier circle as object. Now experiment with choosing axes in curve modifier until you get right. Lastly change the size of beziercircle accordingly.
Add cloth physics to the net object. Select one side (choose the correct side by expermenting) of the net plane and add to vertex group. Choose that vertex group in pinning under cloth physics and run simulation.

you can get the blend file from here.

Hope it helped.


Shading artifacts caused by boolean modifier I tried applying a boolean modifier so I could make some holes inside a mesh, but the result was horrible shading. I've tried smooth lighting and an edge split modifier with sharp edges, but still nothing so far. I even added a new knife cut near the ends so it wouldn't be as noticeable. It's really bugging me, please help! Split concave edges just made a bunch of triangles with even worse shading.

Try selecting your entire mesh in edit mode and hit [ctrl + n] to recalculate normals. This should fix the shading..


How to understand the math behind Andrew Price's embedding his beer within his glass I just watched the Blender Guru video How to Make a Beer in Blender and stopped at the point where it advises us to make the liquid slightly larger in diameter than the inner diameter of the glass - approximately half way between the inner and outer walls.

I then turned to Fluid in a Glass
(and why you’ve been doing it wrong your whole life) where the video points. Although the wording there isn't exactly correct, I think that I understand the point. In the glass shader where you specify IOR, you are not actually specifying the index of refraction of the material inside the volume defined by the mesh. You are actually only specifying the ratio of the index of refractions of the spaces on either side of the mesh. And that's all that Snell's Law actually needs when applied to a single interface:

$$ \mathbf{n_1} \sin(\theta_1) = \mathbf{n_2} \sin(\theta_2) $$

$$  \sin(\theta_1) = \frac{\mathbf{n_2}}{\mathbf{n_1}} \sin(\theta_2) $$

$$  \theta_1 = \sin^{-1}\left(\frac{\mathbf{n_2}}{\mathbf{n_1}} \sin(\theta_2)\right) $$

The problem is that in the physical world, the interface between liquid and glass has a very small index difference - the ratio is nearly 1.0. This is why some transparent object can seem to almost completely disappear when submerged in water.

But it seems to me that the workaround of embedding the liquid into the glass is not going to have the desired effect - if the desired effect is to get closer to a realistic image. It creates two interfaces and each has a large ratio of indices of refraction of something like 1.3 or 1.4, or 1/1.3 and 1/1.4 depending on the directions of the normals.

Question: Wouldn't embedding the liquid inside the glass wall as described in the video produce physically wrong and unrealistic refraction? Since there is just one interface, using two meshes that just touch, or overlap seems like it's just asking for trouble. From a rendering point of view, meshes are interfaces between physical materials, even though we say that we assign "materials" to them we're actually assigning surface characteristics.

edit: I've just found an excellent explanation here, yes the IOR < 1 technique should be correct and a single mesh for the glass-liquid interface used.

I'll use an index of refraction of 1.4 and 1.3 for glass and liquid respectively in the following discussion just to make it simpler.

Wouldn't a more realistic method be to just use a single mesh for the boundary between glass and liquid, and choose IOR = 0.93 with the normals pointing out, or IOR = 1.08 with the normals pointing in?

That doesn't mean that there is an actual index of refraction is 0.93, it just means that when rays pass between the space inside the glass mesh and the space inside the liquid mesh they will be refracted and (Fresnel) reflected based on the correct physics for a single interface between materials within indices of refraction of 1.4 and 1.3?

note: This would require the top of the liquid to have a different mesh or at least a different material, with the IOR set to 1.3 for the correct liquid-air interface behavior. Or you could just put foam on top.

Putting the liquid inside of the glass wall forces the ratio given by Snell's law. Blender gives the inverse of the refraction index when exiting the glass. This brings the refraction back to that of the environment. So, if the ray enters the fluid just before it exits the glass, you get the ratio you're looking for. Yes, this means an inaccurate IOR for the small distance between these surfaces, but unless you're doing an extreme closeup of the edge of this manifold, I don't think you will ever see it in a render.

Your other options are creating a mesh for the liquid that has an ior that corrects for this ratio, but where does that mesh lie? Is it exactly on the glass mesh? In this case you get the same flickering artifacts seen with doubled faces elsewhere. If you space this mesh just beyond where the ray exits the glass, you will have inaccurate results which are more visible in renders. You can of course make a completely new mesh at the interface that is a combination of the glass and the beer, but what happens if you need the beer to slosh around? This turns into a very complex animation.

So, basically putting the beer slightly inside of the glass gives you semi accurate results that seem to give the best trade-offs for accuracy and usability. It's easy to animate, it eliminates the need for multiple meshes and separate materials for the sides and top of the beer. I'm trying to explain this without illustrations, but hopefully you follow.

I think I heard an explanation somewhere that our real world does this sort of refraction very accurately, the real world is analog and not digital. 3d models and the math behind it are at best an close estimate to the real world, often these estimate would not work in extreme cases like the liquid and glass interface. So there needs to be a way (A cheat), so blender developer made it possible to replicate that effect via making that liquid model sticking itself into the glass.

It's important to have a good clear knowledge on the math behind Snell's law for making close approximate renders to the real world. But unfortunately, the math is really an estimate to the complex quantum physics behavior of light.

Another point is that sometimes physically accurate method rendering engine comes at a cost. The physically accurate system often have the limitation when it comes to real production value because they are so bent on accuracy they take much longer to produce imagery, from a business vantage point it's bad.

NOTE
An engineer on the youtube once said, a scientist job is to find the absolute answer to the question and an engineer tweaks those absolute truths so that knowledge can be transferred to a useful and profitable cause in real world application. We need both scientist and engineers.


Black holes / Water in glass I try to render mineral water bottle filled with water in Cycles. For testing purposes I use super simple model with absolute flat lighting filled with white color.

What is bothering me are the black spots on the render. I mean, I know there should be some strange curves generated by IOR, but in the complete white environment black patches should`nt appear.

What should I do, to avoid them? I`m attaching images with the render result.

I know that lighting and model are dull, but I use them to exclude any unnecesarry factors. My render settings are:

This is my latest bottle atempt with photo lighting. It looks better, but on the top of the bottle strange curves appeared. I think that it is caused by plastic rings on the bottle, but it look unnatural. I think that I`m missing something, because I still dont have control on this render behavior.

These "black spots" are actualy supposed to be there.

Look at these images with similar dark spots

It is actually more prevalent in thicker objects so if you really don't like it, try making the glass thinner

This images has a glass with much thicker walls.

Check the hdri lighting with this seen !

Hope this will work for you ! check it ]1


how to keep your model scale from an animation? I was animating a model and noticed that on a frame that the scale there looked a lot better then the current scale my model has by default. What I would like to know is how to I apply the scale of the model in that frame so that it's now the model's permanent scale if that makes sense?
This is the default model scale:
[![Model and character design are property of CraftyMaelyss][1]][1]
And this is the scale I want my model to be:
[![Model and character design are property of CraftyMaelyss][2]][2]
I read somewhere that Ctrl + A should do it, so I tried it and it didn't work. Does anyone know how to do this?

Choose the object (not the armature), go to the frame you want it to be and apply the armature modifier.


How do I put an image as texture on a triangular object? I am using the cloth simulator to create an a triangular flag. Everythig works fine, but now I have been asked to put a in image on this flag. So I add the image as plane, it creates a rectangular plane, however when changing this to a triangle, it screws the image. I would like just to cut the parts of the image that do not belong to the triangle, without deforming the image.

Load  your image in a UV/image editor window, set the 3D viewport in a position that views the triangle from the top, go to edit mode, select all vertices, U to Unwrap and choose "project from view". Then, in the UV/image editor window you can Grab, Rotate, scale the UV map to fit exactly the part of the image you want in your flag. At the end of the process you will have to assign this image to the flag material as an image texture.

All I did was texture the triangular flag and instead of using UV mapping, selected Generate.  Scaled it to suit with the sliders in the Mapping tab.  The texturing wasn't shown in the gif from your bent pole question because it sent the gif to 9 MB !

The flag -

If when scaling, bits of the repeat images appear near the edges, take the image into Gimp and expand the canvas out so there is plenty of vacant space (bkd or aplpha layer) around the object pictured.


I can't import materials or textures from OBJ or 3DS I am trying to import an object and the zip file I obtained had the .OBJ plus the images that correspond to the materials, but when I import it and I go to the materials and/or textures of the object, they aren't there.

Also, I tried to import a 3DS file with its MTL, but when I open the materials window, the materials are there, with different names but they are all the same, therefore the object appears all grey.

I would really appreciate if someone could help me out!

Thank you very much for your time!

Strangely, I had a similar problem with 3DS in cycles, but was able to apply textures and materials perfectly in Blender render.

In Blender Render, I needed to play around in the materials and textures panel a little, opening one of the image files. The rest were automatically applied, but I needed to add a lamp to see it.

For Cycles, I had to open nodes and do the textures that way.


why is my mesh not moving correctly with weight paint mode? here is my an image of my mesh.

For some strange reason i red weight paint is not working. how can i fix thi

I Managed to find a solution.

Go into 'object mode' select the figure mesh(not the armature), and look at the vertex groups assign to that specific mesh. My problem was that my vertex groups were all out of alignment (The vertices were spread in placed i didnt intend to put).

So i deleted all of my Vertex groups, and stated assigning new one with the correct vertices.


Strange lines on the mesh Somehow these strange lines have appeared on my mesh. Also, when I try to assign a material to a part of the mesh, everything gets distorted. How do I fix this?
The distorted mesh:

I've tried to clear parenting, but that didn't seem to work.

I've managed to fix those artifacts. Here's something what might help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T3QdLJOBF8


Problem setting parent with automatic weights I've been following this tutorial here and around 10:16 he presses CtrP to set the parent to armature with automatic weights. When I try to follow I don't get that same menu. I've checked that I'm in the correct mode and the correct objects are highlighted. What am I doing wrong?

Select the object and the armature in this order; mesh, then armature. The armature must be the active object to get the options you are looking for. You have the mesh as the active object.
(lighter orange color is the active object)

I found that problem too and what I would do is select the armature first then select the mesh second, so both should be highlighted/selected now. Then press ctrl P and you should get the same menu that you saw in the video

(this had me stumped too)


Having trouble making a twisting animation more realistic I am new to animating in blender, and I have been using the curve modifier to create a specific looking circle, but I want to animate it to make it look like it twists from a circle to a figure eight. The problem is, I tried using shape keys with one as the original circle and one as the final figure eight, but then, of course, it just moves in a linear fashion from circle to figure eight, but this isn't realistic. When you take a rubber band and twist it to make a figure eight you don't move it linearly to the eight, you twist the band around. Does anyone have any idea on how to do this? I've tried using intermediate shape keys, but it doesn't flow smoothly it abruptly stops at the intermediate step and continues. I would appreciate any help.

This might be a good place to model the band as a curve (with a rectangular curve Bevel object,) and use the shipped Animall add-on, which enables you to key-frame control-points, and their tilt values.
This animation is of a default Curve > Circle, subdivided once. The three vertices at each end are rotated in opposite directions, while the entire circle rotates through 90 to present the figure-of-eight to the camera. Animall permits the keying of tilts, rotations, locations of the control-points to keep everything more or less in shape.

(v2.91 .blend file)

Consider at least two options.

Hook Modifier. Rotate along its axis with the appropriate point selection.
Simple deform modifier with twist enabled as shown below.

In the image above are three stages of view.  Shape Keys and Hook Modifier.  With more care the viewer can remove some of the flaws.  You see a twist empty controller for twist of the bottom half and an organizing controller.
The below image is a quick approximation to the question.  Perhaps a better approximation will come.  At the moment you are seeing a view convenient for this candidate answer.


How can I test if a mechanism works well before printing? I'm not new in Blender but I'm really new in 3d print. I want to do a mechanism with, lets say, two gears and one handle, and I want to test, rotating the handle, if the mechanism works well before printing.
The only solution that I found is use the rigid body simulator and drop a mesh to one of the gears and see rotate.
But what I need if there any way to rotate a handle and see if the gears works well each other before print the model.

I want to rotate the handler to test the model, is that posible?

Thanks in advance!

UPDATE:

After search a bit more I found a solution :D I use the Rigid body physic to simulate the mechanism.
I add a constrain to the red gear to act like a motor, so the gear rotate by itself. I saw the use of the constrain in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcO8ovnr_Z0 (wich I recommend to see)
Thanks for the answers!

This gif probe that I made it (?)

What you may want to try is you can import it into a website called Onshape, it is a free cad software, it requires an account but after that you should be good. You can import meshes into it, there are many tutorials online if you need help.

There is a generator for gears on woodgears.
Maybe try it for your gears.

http://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/template.html


Shadow in transparent background in blender 2.77 cycles I heard about shadow in newer version in blender 2.77 without any compositing and i don't how to do that,anyone tell me how to add shadow in transparent background in blender 2.77 cycles.

Try going in "Film" and check "Transparent" and make it Gaussian.


How to make certain objects not effected by a light source. Cycles I have a light in the scene and I want to make only one object in the scene unaffected by this light.  Preferably without compositing render layers.  Is this possible in cycles?

If there is only one light within the entire scene you could set the material that object has to shadeless.


Volumetric Lighting help I'm trying to render out an image with light emitting from an object, but I am very new to Cycles.

How can I achieve an effect like this easily?

It's only for a single frame, so it can be a simple fake to look like that. Thanks!

Nevermind! I solved it! I had to put cones jutting out with some shaders applied, and point lamps behind them. See some of the other volumetric lighting questions for the nodes to use!


RTX 2070 I can't open Blender I've installed another GPU card RTX 2070 in the second PCIex16 motherboard slot. Not a SLI connection. Both cards were previously installed in this machine separately with the drivers updated for both. Blender doesn't want to open. A video card and driver with support for OpenGL 3.3 or higher required. Why am I getting this message? TY.

Here is how I made it work. I had to flash the bios. If you are like me playing with the settings all the time you need to reset the bios by taking out the little round battery on the mobo. Depending on your mobo, the flash reset button next to the usb slots on the mobo didn't work for me, it might work for you. After that blender will open and both cards are seen in Cuda and Optix. Indeed there is some work but I'm pretty happy with the result right now. However render time is not cut in half though. More like 35% less with two cards.


Roughness broken in Eevee? I can't get comparable results between Eevee and Substance. The texture maps always look way too shiny.

I've used the Principled Shader quite a bit and know all its nuances (non-color data for the channels that need it, ect.)

Here are some screenshots of my issue. I'd love to know why I can't get this to work. Any help here would be much appreciated! Thanks.

For anyone else that comes across this, I don't think PNGs are the culprit. Instead, if you change the interpolation from Linear (default) to Closest, it should look about as close as it can to Cycles.

OK SO... I forgot that Blender doesn't like .png files. Avoid them and everything shows up fine. -__-


Wood Splitting By hitting object How can i animate a wood splitting into 2 parts? Just like by hitting some axes.
I tried rigging and also Boolean modifier ,but it did work as i want.In rendering ,It show that they already are separate objects.

I didn't try that, but I think you can use use a complete version of the wood object and when the axe hit it, hide it (by a keyframe) and show that splitted one.


Blender 2.8 UV Sculpt Brush not showing Well, I was triying to edit some UVs on the latest Blender 2.8 Beta build, and when I tried to use the traditional UV sculpt tool from Blender's uv editor, I couldn't,  the brush simply does not show up, so I can't use it.

So the question is: Am I missing something or is this a bug from the current build?

If I'm correct, this icons activate the UV sculpt brush functionality but currently they do nothing.

Also I already made sure to have the UV Sculpt option activated

If you create a blend file in 2.79 and then open it with 2.8 the UV sculpt works.


Why object doesn't emit light? I followed this tutorial. Rechecked, but still no light on a surface from emitting object.
Here is properties of the emitting object and the world:

I created new project and it works now, seems to be just Blender's glitch.

Try unchecking Indirect lighting and set Gather to Raytrace.


It is possible repeat a set of commands for multiple objects? I have 645 objects and I would like to repeat the same commands for each one.
I followed this tutorial:
Is there a way to repeat a set of actions on an object?
But the script gives me an error.
    import bpy

bpy.ops.material.new()
bpy.ops.node.add_node(type="ShaderNodeAttribute", use_transform=True)
bpy.ops.node.translate_attach_remove_on_cancel(TRANSFORM_OT_translate={"value":(-1405.21, -1784.65, 0), "orient_type":'GLOBAL', "orient_matrix":((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1)), "orient_matrix_type":'GLOBAL', "constraint_axis":(False, False, False), "mirror":True, "use_proportional_edit":False, "proportional_edit_falloff":'SMOOTH', "proportional_size":1, "use_proportional_connected":False, "use_proportional_projected":False, "snap":False, "snap_target":'CLOSEST', "snap_point":(0, 0, 0), "snap_align":False, "snap_normal":(0, 0, 0), "gpencil_strokes":False, "cursor_transform":False, "texture_space":False, "remove_on_cancel":True, "release_confirm":False, "use_accurate":False, "use_automerge_and_split":False}, NODE_OT_attach={}, NODE_OT_insert_offset={})
bpy.data.materials["Materiale"].node_tree.nodes["Attributo"].attribute_name = "Col"
bpy.ops.node.link(detach=False)

So I run these commands for one object, then select the others and run the script, but it gives me an error.
I don't know how to use Blender or Python well but I need it for my thesis work.
Thanks to anyone who wants to help me.

Using bpy.ops is really not recommended, as it needs context. The context will be wrong.
I suggest this instead:
If you want to create only 1 data block of a material:
import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene

mat = bpy.data.materials.new("My Material")
mat.use_nodes = True
nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
node_attribute = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeAttribute")
node_attribute.location = (-1405.21, -1784.65)
node_attribute.attribute_name = "Col"

for o in scene.objects:
    if o.type =='MESH':
        o.data.materials.append(mat)

If you want to create a new material for each object instead:
import bpy

scene = bpy.context.scene

for idx ,o in enumerate(scene.objects):
    if o.type == 'MESH':
        mat = bpy.data.materials.new("My Material_"+str(idx)) #to make your personal index into name (if you want)
        mat.use_nodes = True
        nodes = mat.node_tree.nodes
        node_attribute = nodes.new(type="ShaderNodeAttribute")
        node_attribute.location = (-1405.21, -1784.65)
        node_attribute.attribute_name = "Col"

        o.data.materials.append(mat)

Note:
If you want work only on selected objects , you have to replace for o in scene.objects:with for o in bpy.context.selected_objects:

You can try something along the lines if
for obj in bpy.context.selected_objects:
   bpy.ops.material.new()
   ...

Although bpy.ops are operators intended for use through the UI, not direct indicated use in scripting.


Rigging a Bone to a Mesh When I try to Rig an armature with automatic weights nothing is happening.
 And yes I am clicking the mesh then clicking the armature.

Is`nt the armature supposed to follow the mesh.

Both must be aligned.

The automatic weight will find the closest mesh to deform.

See the test below.

The first test: I aligned the first and make parenting with authomatic weights. It deforms perfectly.

The second test: I just apllied the same parenting but with armature and object not aligned. It will deform just the mesh closed to the bones.


How to duplicate render layer could be render layer duplicated? With all its properties and freestyle settings preserved ?

There is only button for adding, but newly added layer is not set.

At the top of your Blender window, select Cycles Render.
In the Screen-layout drop-down, select Compositing.
At the bottom of that panel, put a check next to Use Nodes.

You can now branch the Render Layers Image output to several nodes.
You get to decide which nodes to use.  Just Add whichever ones you need,
then send the output from your nodes to Composite Image.


Render just part of a final image from Cycles? I'm using an older Nvidia chip that hates running viewport renders, and I need to check if changes to the materials on a few objects not far from the center of my scene are (I'm rendering a floorplan with an orthographic camera from above, so I'm looking down on objects and want to check if the displacement materials are working correctly).

Is there any way to select a bit of the image and have it render first or without having to render the rest of the image? I'm aware that you can tell the image to render from an edge, but my stuff's about equidistant from either side of the scene.

Ctrl + B in the 3D Viewport or the Camera View will allow you to drag while holding  LMB select the area of the image you want to render. If you want to clear the border, press Ctrl + Alt + B.

Shift + B also still works in Camera View but is only there for compatibility and will be replaced entirely by Ctrl + B in future versions.

For "Render->Render Image" (F12 ) to render only part of the image you also need to have Render->Dimensions->Border enabled.

One option is to change the focal length of the camera. This has the advantage of working in all views, not just orthographic. It keeps the perspective of the camera the same, so it doesn't affect lighting or distortion, but instead works much like zooming on a real-life camera.

Select the camera in the 3D View or Outliner, then go to the Camera tab in the Properties menu. Under lens, you can change the 'focal length' (in perspective or panoramic view) or 'orthographic scale' (in orthographic view).

Original render:

Zoomed render:

Notice that the lighting levels on each of the panels of the sphere remain unchanged between renders.


Mirrored circle not showing in edit-mode I am using Blender 2.78. I enabled "Display modifier" but it is still not visible in editmode.

Vertices not visible ....

vertices now visible in edit mode .....

Thank all for your answer.

I found another solution:

Add Circle
(Modifier) Mirror
Choose wireframe
Go Edit Mode
Move (G-key)

Now it is visible in editmode and objectmode.


Typing G+X or R+X is not working. Instead is asking me if I want to delete When I hit GX I'm expecting movement along the $X$ axis by an amount I type in.
Similarly, I'd expect RX$90$ to rotate the selected object(s) about the $X$-axis $90$°. Instead, the $X$ is taken as a delete command and I get a dialog box asking if OK to delete.
Is this a change in Blender or am I doing something wrong? I'd really like to be able to type SZ and a number or RX and a number.

Most likely you inadvertently deleted the shortcut in the keymaps, or you set it to something else, overriding it. Clicking on Restore in the keymaps in the preferences should clear the modification.

I have the same issue. If I hit G then X, it asks me if I want to delete the object instead of locking X axis. Can't change angle by numbers with R either.
Solved:
You need to hold the mouse button pressed while rotating/moving, and then you can press x/y/z and numeric values. Hope it helped.


Applying two materials I'm trying to apply two materials to an object -- one of them is a transparent PNG graphic which is supposed to be placed on top of another. What I do is select the object, go into Edit Mode, create a new material slot, select the two, and assign them. However, when I assign the PNG material, the one below it disappears -- I can see inside of my object.

Here I have the PNG graphic layered on top of the purple color provided by that second BSDF. However, when I try attaching the image texture to the base color of this BSDF, the texture does not cover the entire face of the object. Instead, it results in what is seen here:

The face of the object is black, displaying the pattern in a box rather than covering the whole object.

You just need 1 material.
In the shader editor use this node setup and you get what you want:

UPDATE:
setup with two images:
important: the "upper" image must have pixels with alpha < 1 inside of the png (in my case here the "toppng")

Here's the node setup to lay a semi-transparent PNG over another, tiled image texture material.


BPY add keyframe to each curve after importing a sequence of .SVG files here my first ever attempt to patch a simple python script for Blender 2.9 that could import a series of of svg files that conform an animation.
I want to be able to enable and disable their visibility so to simulate an animation, this is to be sent to a software called OsciStudio that generates sound from the objects on the viewport.
What I have tried is this:
import bpy
import glob
import os

# path to your folder

importDir = "/Volumes/250GB/16mm/rotoscope/stillsprecol/select/"
print("Importing all SVG from this directory", importDir)

os.chdir(importDir)

for files in glob.glob("*.svg"):
    print( files, "... imported!" )
    bpy.ops.import_curve.svg(filepath=files)
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')

for i, obj in enumerate(bpy.context.selected_objects, 1):
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
    obj.name = "Curve" + str(i)

    obj.location = (3.0, 4.0, 10.0)
    obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=1)

Importing works fine, i get all the files layered and selected, then moved to the specified location and theres one key frame added on the timeline!
But have no idea on how to add a keyframe to each layer, progressively and separated by 10 frames.
I'm using blender 2.9 under OS X
TIA for any, really any, help

check this out:
for files in glob.glob("*.svg"):
    print( files, "... imported!" )
    bpy.ops.import_curve.svg(filepath=files)
    bpy.ops.object.select_all(action='SELECT')

for i, obj in enumerate(bpy.context.selected_objects, 1):
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
    obj.name = "Curve" + str(i)

    for x in [10,20,30,40,50]: # the indentation in this line is important!!!
        obj.location = (0.0 + x , 0.0, 0.0) # ADAPT HERE

        obj.keyframe_insert(data_path="location", frame=x)

of course you have to adapt the line with "adapt here" to use some mathematics so that you get your progressiveley -> i have no idea what values you want to have there ;)
and of course you can do the "for x in " with a nicer loop...my version is for sure not the most elegant one - but the laziest one ;)


How to keyframe a shapekey I am trying to animate a simple scene to test the shape key I added to the object but I tried to keyframe the shape key but I couldn't.

When I keyframe the object after changing the shape key then I go to the next frame and change the shape key to what I want and play the scene the object doesn't change at all

All the tutorials I found were for blender 2.4 which is i guess outdated

How can I keyframe a shapekey?

Just by going by the description of your process for inserting keyframes it sounds like you are only creating 1 keyframe.

The process to animate a property is to:

Set the value of the property (in this case the 'Value' property of the shapekey)
Insert a keyframe by pressing I with the cursor over the Value property.
Move to a different frame in the timeline.
Set the property to a new value.
Insert a second keyframe on the property.

Keyframes have to be inserted at every point in the timeline where you want the property to change to a specific value.

Hover the mouse over the value of your Shape Key and then press the I key to create the keyframe for the shape key value.


Baking error with multi-tiled UV map While searching for examples in baking I found this question Export "Project from view" texture as uv texture . On that page one responder provided a blend file. I downloaded it, tried to follow the steps and encountered a problem.

The model is unwrapped in such a way that it spreads across 4 different tiles: (I understand why and I also do this in my own projects, so it's a lot easy to manage)
The problem is:
When I bake the texture on the left to the layout on the right, the resulting texture is just a fraction of the tile (0,0).

But when I cram those 4 tiles into just 1 tile it bakes correctly:

Even when I tried to UVs -> Export UV Layout to use for pics in this question, Blender exported only the tile (0.0).

How to make Blender respect multi-tiled UV maps and how to make this particular example work (without collapsing all into 1 tile)?

Notes:
renderer used is Cycles
different UV tiles doesn't mean different UV maps
I have no idea where exactly the original asker got that model from

Always layout UVs up and right from 0,0. Otherwise this will happen. Never go left and down.


Whether someone has done a user defined version of Blinn-Phong (not Blinn and not Phong separately) reflection model in the node editor? Actually, I am interested in working with Blinn-Phong reflection model in my rendering process, but unfortunately, there is no such a reflection model in Blender.
(Yes, It has Blinn and Phong reflection models separately, but I need the third one, Blinn-Phong)I've read somewhere that the Blender CookTorr reflection model is actually the Blinn-Phong model but I could not understand how to set the specular exponent (shiny) of the Bilnn-Phong model using CookTorr input parameters (Hardness maybe?)
Since I am new in using Blender, I want to know is there any possibility to define Blinn-Phong reflection model as a user defined reflection model? If yes, should I use Blender "Node Editor" to define a new material?
Has anyone done this before? (Blinn-Phong is a well-known reflection model, isn't it?)
If yes, it would be appreciated to let me have a look :-)
Thanks

Q. I want to know is there any possibility to define Blinn-Phong reflection model as a user defined reflection model?

A. Yes

Q.If yes, should I use Blender "Node Editor" to define a new material?

A. Yes

Q. Has anyone done this before?

A. Yes, quite so.

I will try not to write a 2718 page treatise here.  Cycles render engine is designed as a photo realistic (PR) physics based renderer. Blender render is a respectable renderer different than cycles.  I am trying to give you some terms for further research.  Your public library probably has electronic titles on Cycles and there is the general internet and there are just a few video tutorials on video websites.

If we look at the node system for Cycles we are delivered fragments with geometric surface normal information, camera information and more.  Vector operations resulting in scalars such as dot product are available and are quite relevant to shading.  So you have the freedom to write original or not so original shaders.  Your results can be physics based or artistically styled.  Many relevant math functions are available such as sine, cosine, modulus. Your image is as unlimited as your creativity.

Know that dot product and vector product are your BFF when shading.  Just remember to get some sleep once in a while.  Try to take breaks every 8 hours of writing material nodes.


Issue when Exporting Mesh to UnrealEd Hello friends this is my first post here.. I just started my own project after tons of procrastinating, and after maybe 2 horus of Blender tutorials, i made a model. It's a submarine, i know it looks like a bomb but it's just the basic version, and it looks somewhat fine on Blender (and it's not finished yet).

Now This is how the imported mesh looks on Unreal.

How it looks on UnrealEd Now the problem comes when importing it to UnrealEd, it seems like it smooths out the edges of the Mesh. There msut be a problem when exporting right?

It looks ok if i uncheck the Apply Modifiers box, but it only renders half the submarine (Considering Mirror is a Blender modifier) and if i leave it checked it'll end up looking like pic 2. Even when selecting faces (which was the recommended option in the tutorial)

tl;dr Mesh looks ugly on unreal what should i do?

Oh my. After a some search i've come up with the answers.

Followed This and This which are basically the same answer. Worked like a charm.


Rigid object behaving differently in Object and Edit mode? Ok, so I'm a total noob at this. However, It seems weird that an object, in this case a modified cube shape, behaves differently when dropped from a hight depending on if it is viewed in object or edit mode. Im using the 2.8 Beta. In Edit mode, my object drops and hits a passive floor plane, bounces a bit and comes to rest. All good. When I switch to object mode however, the object drops and hits the floor normally, but after that it won't fall over! It just stands there on an awkward angle and moves a little in super slo-mo!?

Any ideas?

I have just solved the problem!

I exported the object from my Blender file as an .obj file and imported it back. Now it behaves perfectly with physics and other stuff!


Clamp Settings for Getting Rid of Fireflies To get rid of fireflies in blender cycles, under the sampling do I change the indirect clamp to .98 or the direct clamp to .98 or both?

First clamp cut the light value to the maximum you put so try first using hight values and then lowering from that as if you put it too low it will remove some light that is "real".

Second, you want to cut first the indirect light as it's normally what make more fireflies and direct light value is higher.

I recommend to start using a value of 100 or 10 in "clamp indirect", and reducing from it.

I always use a value of 9.0. Be careful with that. If you increase that value a lot your scene will lose brightness. If it continues rendering many fireflies I would try other tips:

Increasing the number of samples
Reducing the specular color below or equal to RGB(0.8, 0.8, 0.8)
Using bilateral blur node on compositing


Why can I no longer easily navigate inside of this mesh? While originally modeling a mesh, I was able to easily re-orient my view to inside of the mesh.  In the process, I made the following changes:

made the mesh completely hollow (removed some extraneous faces from the inside)
added texture

Now I can't seem to navigate or zoom into the mesh like I was doing earlier.  All I can do is get ridiculously close to the outer surface.  Even in wireframe mode, I either can't do this or it seems as if everything is zoomed in much too close to do anything productive.

You're likely in Orthographic view, rather than Perspective View. Press 5 on your numeric keypad to toggle between the two.

If for some reason you want to stay in orthographic view and still see the inside of the mesh.

Some options:

Hide faces that obscure the interior.
Use mask modifier on meshes to mask out some geometry.
Use view-clipping feature (⎇ AltB)
Invert the normals of your mesh (⎈ Ctrl⇧ ShiftN) and enable backface culling in 3D view > Properties

You are in Orthographic View, just Press "5" to switch to Perspective View, now you can zoom to the inside of the object.