How to Convert Material Displacement to a Mesh? So I created this complex (for me) node network to create mountains. I didn't sculpt them, it's just a plane subdivided a lot with a subdivision surface mod. So the actual mountain is only visible in render mode. So in 3d space it's just a plane. My question is: How can I make the displacement as actual mesh? Like in 3d view I can see and edit the mountains. I want to do this because: 1) decrease render time and 2) I want to create a village underneath the mountain.
Please tell me the process of how to do this. I tried searching for tutorials but all of them already have a high poly mesh that the want to bake. I hope you will understand what I want and go easy on me because this is new for me :)

the rest of the images:
https://imgur.com/a/8saQdIY

I baked my noise nodes and in the bake settings used the emit option. I got a black and white image and saved it as a openexr because I used a 32 bit image. Then I used a displacement mod with the image I baked. But I'm getting only a small part of my mountains. What did I do wrong?

[![enter image description here][4]][4]
what i get with normal in displacement mod
[4]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BrrbQ.jpg

What you can do is using a Displace modifier instead of a Displacement node.
To get the same result as your current 3D reliefs, you need to save the black and white image texture you're using in your Displacement node.
Either this image is already existing as one unique image and in that case it will be easy to load it into your Displace modifier, or it's made of a mix of several nodes, in that case I guess you'll need to bake the b&w texture.
To do so, make sure you're in Cycles Render, plug your nodes so that the b&w composition is displayed as a diffuse image on the surface of your plane. Create a new Image Texture in your Shader Editor, don't plug it into anything, inside this Image Texture click New to create a new black image, call it Displace Image for example, keep this node selected.
In the Render panel > Bake, choose Bake Type > Diffuse, disable Direct and Indirect, enable Color, click on Bake, the image called Displaced Image should now be the b&w displacement image.
Once you get your b&w image, use it in the Displace modifier: Create a Displace modifier, click on Texture > New, in the Properties panel > Texture, in the dropdown menu, select Displaced Image.
With the same b&w image, you'll have the same effect, on the left Displacement node, on the right Displace modifier:

The problem with baking the black and white picture is that it's limited to number between 0 and 1, which cuts of the upper part of my mountain :S i cannot achieve what I've done with modifiers I believe, but going to certainly try again... sad because like that it's kinda useless as soon as you need to place the mesh and especially place other meshes on to the displaced one. I also tried to play with a map range node, but that just eliminates far too much detail and when i try to strech it in the z direction it's actually not the same, so something there is a bit odd as well.


Enabling GPU rendering for Cycles? I want to enable GPU rendering, but there is no option in User Preferences > System:

Why is this? How can I get cycles to render using my GPU?

Ensure GPU Support

Currently cycles supports CUDA (Nvidia) devices and has experimental support for OpenCL devices as of 2.75 (added in B7f447). If you are using an AMD/ATI graphics card, see the OpenCL section below. If you are running an older NVIDIA card, ie the Geforce series, support is extremely limited and these are not officially supported, see How to enable GPU rendering on older Nvidia GPUs?

CUDA/NVIDIA

Cycles only supports CUDA GPUs with a CUDA compute ability of 3.0 or higher. To use CUDA, check to make sure your GPU is on this list of CUDA capable GPUs and has a ranking of at least 3.0.

Install Latest Drivers

If your GPU has a CUDA compute ability greater than or equal to 3.0 and you still don't have the option to enable GPU rendering, you can check a couple more things:

Ensure you are using the proprietary drivers distributed by Nvidia and that your GPU drivers are up to date.
If you are compiling Blender from source, ensure you have the CUDA development toolkit installed.

Below are instructions for various operating systems. If you are still having issues after trying all the steps listed in this post, try asking for support on BlenderArtists.
This site is not well suited to localized troubleshooting discussions often needed to untangle unusual hardware/driver issues.

Linux

Run as root
Due to an issue with some versions of the nvidia drivers, you must run blender (or any other program which uses cuda) as root before you can use any cuda features as a normal user. See this thread for more detail.

Ubuntu-based Distributions

Open your driver manager and select the recommended driver and Apply Changes.

You can also use the terminal to install the latest stable driver.

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
    $ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

For linux Mint, Ubuntu and Debian variants (and maybe other distributions) you will need to install the package nvidia-modprobe which will detect your nvidia CUDA device and make it available for blender. Read this answer for further instructions

Debian Jesse

Please note that these instructions were put together in June 2015 on Debian Jesse. Although Debian is a very stable distribution, it isn't unlikely that this will be out of date on Debian Stretch. If you have more up to date information, please feel free to edit this.

Before we can install the drivers, we will need to install the kernel headers from the contrib nonfree repository. If this repository hasn't been added already, open /etc/apt/sources.list with nano:

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

And add:

deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

For Debian to recognize the repository, we will need to refresh the package list:

$ sudo apt-get update

Once this is done, the headers can be installed:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') nvidia-kernel-dkms

With some sed magic, this will install the correct headers for your version of the kernel.

Now we need to blacklist (disable) the open source nouveau driver. To do this, we will create an Xorg configuration file:

$ sudo mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
$ sudo echo -e 'Section "Device"\n\tIdentifier "My GPU"\n\tDriver "nvidia"\nEndSection' > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf

And reboot the computer.

$ reboot

All that is required afterwards, is to install cuda:

$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-toolkit

For more in depth information, please see https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers (only covers the drivers, not cuda). If you are running a GTX 970 or 980 you will need a special build of cuda available here.

Arch Linux

Identifying your GPU:

From the Arch wiki:

  If you don't know what GPU you have, you can find out by running:

$ lspci -k | grep -A 2 -i "VGA"

Drivers and CUDA:

For Arch Linux, installing proprietary Nvidia drivers for your GPU can be as simple as installing the nvidia package and then rebooting:

# pacman -S nvidia
# systemctl reboot

If you are compiling Blender from source, you will also need the CUDA toolkit. You can get it by installing the cuda package:

# pacman -S cuda

Windows 7

Find out what GPU you have in the Device Manager. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> Device Manager), then open the Display adapters tree.

To find out the architecture of your Windows installation, open a command prompt (search for cmd in the start menu) and run wmic os get osarchitecture.

Alternatively, you can get this information from a GUI by going to Start -> Control Panel -> System and Security -> System or by using the keyboard shortcut Windows KeyPause.

Go to the Nvidia Website and select your driver.

Finally, download and install the proper driver for your architecture. I am assuming you know how to use installers.

Nvidia Optimus:
If you're running Blender on a notebook with Nvidia Optimus, make sure it uses the dedicated GPU. Either configure Blender to always use the dedicated over the integrated GPU in the Nvidia Control Panel, or right-click Blender.exe (or a shortcut to Blender) and select the Nvidia GPU in the the Run with graphics processor menu:

OS X

Install the latest Nvidia Driver for you graphics card. You can download them from the Nvidia website.

Open the CUDADriver.pkg file by double clicking it.

Go through the installer.

If it installed correctly, there should be a new CUDA option in the System Preferences (the only time you need to go here is to install updates):

Finally after you have installed your drivers:

Restart your computer
Start Blender.
There should now be an option in the Blender's settings allowing you to select CUDA and your GPU:

Then select the GPU in Render settings > Render > Device:

OpenCL

As of blender 2.75, AMD HD 7xxx+ GPUs are officially supported.
Other OpenCL devices may work, and can be tested by force-enabling OpenCL with an environment variable:

CYCLES_OPENCL_SPLIT_KERNEL_TEST=1

Also see Is it possible to do OpenCL rendering on Intel processors?

Ubuntu/Debian

On Ubuntu/debian you may need to install  ocl-icd-opencl-dev package

ArchLinux

Nvidia OpenCL
To get OpenCL working for nvidia GPUs, ensure that the opencl-nvidia package is installed:

# pacman -S opencl-nvidia

Then run blender with the environment variable set to 1:

CYCLES_OPENCL_SPLIT_KERNEL_TEST=1 blender

In the User Preferences > System there should now be an OpenCL option:

If it's selected, rendering on the GPU will now use opencl.
Note that the first time you try to render, blender will have to first compile the necessary kernels which may some time.

Sharing my recent experience with 2.8

If both, the CPU and the GPU are checked, in the "Preferences / System", Blender will prioritaze the CPU and the render will be slower.

When I unchecked the CPU, I only could see 1 "processing square" in the render time, but really fast, 1/6 of the old render total time.

I hope this help someone.


How to select scale x,y,z keyframes all at once in graph editor For a simple scaling animation, I am trying to change the bezier curve for all three dimensions at the same time. I know that I can box select the keyframe itself and move it with g, but I cannot figure out how to grab the handles for all three dimensions at the same time.

Thanks for the help :)

In the Graph Editor, on the right side you will see the sidebar that shows you all objects and items that have some animation attached to it. Select your object from that list and make sure to widen the drop menu of it beside its name. There you will see the different axis. Using Shift select all of the. Next in the actual editor press A once or twice so all handles are selected and then press S to scale all of them.

To select all the keyframes, click Control+A.


Particle and Fluid Forces driven by motion vector image data (XYZ vectors). Optical Flow I'm looking into how to achieve forces in Blender particles and fluids driven by motion vector image data.  Think "optical flow".  This is possible in Nuke, Houdini, and other packages.  It appears like the functionality may be there in Blender but I haven't been successful in getting it to work correctly.  I'm wondering if some of you out there have had success.  Thank you kindly for your help.

hmm just brainstorming.  Convert motion vectors to points use those points (make sure to keep points to a limited number) to act as effectors in a fluid sim. So you have to probably write a script that converts pixel location x,y,z data into points.  There is software out there but that's the extent of my knowledge on this.

I use this with the depth data from structure scanner to make a per frame point cloud.  It might work with standard motion vectors. Its a start.

https://github.com/arthare/stac_sample_decoder


How to remove "jumps" of trackpoints in Camera tracking when moving them? Since I moved my trackpoints I got this jumps where the line of a trackpoint jumps from the red to the green curve(and the other way around).
This happened to points that I moved, so maybe that's the reason. Is there a simple solution, or do I have to replace all these trackpoints?

see blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14330/… –  cegaton 56 mins ago

So my answer is solved now I think. After reading this I know, that the "jumps" the lines are doing are caused by moving them. Because if you move one its speed increases immensely. And if the lines indicate the speed of a tracker, they will go up too. That's causing the jumps.

The other points where the red and the green line is connected. A new Trackpoint was created.

You need to track those markers again, and then resolve the camera motion. To do this, go to the "Motion Tracking" prespective, by chosing it from this menu:

Then select the markers that need to be tracked, open the Toolshelf (press T) and go to the subsection "Track" and click the track button, as shown here:

:


I cannot see my background image This has really bugged me, I am trying to follow a tutorial on modelling but I cannot see my background image. I have gone through many youtube videos but everything they suggest, I have already done. I am in orthographic mode, I am in front mode (I set it to appear in all views) and I've set the opacity to 0.5.

Here's a screenshot of my screen.

As Lemon mentioned in the comments,

You dont seem to have a color space.

Its weird it even let you have a blank one.
Maybe try choosing the drop down, if that doesnt work try restarting Blender.

Just choose sRGB if you dont have Filmic.

Background images work with cameras, push the Numpad 0 button to set the camera in view. 2.76b and you can also use Numpad 5 to switch view mode

Num 0


I want to make a flatened cube take the shape of a face I am hoping to get some assistance in something I need for a project.

I am needing the cube here in the photos to actually take a fairly accurate impression of that face into the cube.

for my images attached,
I have created a cube that has been subdivided a bunch of times in EDIT MODE

I have simply moved the most center vertices with proportional editing enabled to make my 2nd image, but getting accurate face impression manually would take too much time and would like to know if there is a modifier that can be used then finally applied to make it stay like it?

Many Thanks

In front ortho view bake a displacement map of the face and apply it later to the subdivided plane. Later extrude the edges of the plane and make a face to close it.

Try changing the snapping element to face, and then in edit mode move the object towards the face object.


Texture Painting Transparent I have a problem with texture painting in Blender.
I can't seem to get the transparency to show up in the viewport.

I have made the material transparent. Painted the texture.
But it just appears white like here.

But I'd like for it to actually be transparent in the viewport.
GLSL is active too, btw.

You can do that in GLSL Textured Viewport Shading

First open material tab, enable Transparency and set Alpha to 0

Then open Texture tab, select the texture you are painting on and in Influence section enable Alpha

Transparency won't show on viewport when using Blender Cycles (as far as I know, but don't quote me on that), you have to be using Blender Render. On my scene this happened by accident but it might help you, this object doesn't have any materials or textures, I just have the image selected on the UV/Image Editor and as you can see the transparency is showing on viewport. So you can do this while you work on it and then later when you want to render it just add the materials and textures.


Why does an object with a glossy shader render in black? When I apply a glossy shader to the material of my text, the text becomes just black. Why?

I have lamp and everything, but the problem persists.
The text is red before I add the glossy shader.
I'm using Cycles render.

Thanks!

What you are missing is proper lighting and an environment to be reflected on the object.
Since this question gets asked a lot I'll try to address some common misunderstandings on dealing with glossy objects in general, this shoudl be helpful not only black shiny objects, but metallic or glass ones
A glossy surface is like a mirror.
When you stand in front of a mirror what do you see?
Yourself and whatever is behind you...
Do you see the surface of the mirror?
Hardly, unless is dirty, fogged or scratched.
If you shine a flashlight into the mirror what happens? Does the mirror get brighter? Or is the light reflected back at you? What should you pay attention to, lighting the mirror or lighting the objects that are being reflected in the mirror?...
Problem #1
Glossy objects render black, glossy material is not working "as expected":

A perfectly glossy object, with no roughness, will reflect all the light perfectly "as expected" If the scene has no environment or other objects, glossy surfaces will reflect... nothing: hence the blackness...
Problem #2
The glossy object is dark or I just see small bright dots
If my glossy objects are dark I can just add lights or make the light in the scene brighter and then my objects will not be dark.
Yes and No.
Adding more lights or making them brighter will not work as well, the tiny spots where the lights are reflected on the object will get brighter but the shape of the object will not be revealed.
Light rays hitting on a glossy surface or mirror like surfaces get reflected from the surface in an equal amount and a the symmetrical angle to the one of incoming light. – in comparison with diffuse reflection – in which the light gets scattered all along the surface of the object in different amounts on other directions, depending on roughness.
As an example:

Image by GianniG46
Light on a diffuse shader gets scattered all over the surface in many directions and reveals the complete shape of the object. All surfaces will reflect some light one way or another.

Light on a glossy shader bounces straight back or out of view, and will only visible in a very small part of the surface of the object: in this example is only a tiny little white spot.

So what that means in plain English is that that the lights, no matter how bright or how many they are in the scene, will only be visible at a certain angle. If they happen to be at the angle in which the light rays get reflected straight into the camera lens they will be visible as bright spots, but they are not really "lighting" the object.
Here's an example with a ridiculous amount of lamps, the more lamps the harder it is to understand the shiny objects.

Problem #3
If I just set the environment to be something else other than black things look odd and flat
Let's set the environment to be gray for example.

Yes! We're finally getting seeing the objects and reflections!... But wait.. it look very strange and flat indeed and I don't want a cartoon look...
Since the environment is irradiating light evenly in every direction it can be be hard to tell the object apart from the background. All surfaces are getting equal amounts of light she shapes are not clear.
In the image above there is some color on the glossy shader... but for other objects with no color, this kind of homogeneous lighting, the object could appear totally camouflaged: where the reflections are all essentially the same color and as bright as the background. To understand shapes we need a variety of values that will help our brain know if the object is straight of curved or if it has any depth.

OK I get it, but how do I see my glossy object properly?
To reveal the surface of a glossy object you need to reflect something on it.
In this case, a few large planes (or area lights) with an emission shader strategically placed at an angle to maximize reflections, will make our object finally look like something!

Start by placing a single very large plane with an emitter in the scene and see how is being reflected on the surface. Move it around the scene, and notice how the placement helps you reveal or not the shape and qualities of your object. Add additional emitters or just planes with a white surface. Find the correct placement for them. Having gaps in between the emitters/reflectors will help you reveal the contours and subtle shapes of the object.
But don't limit yourself to planes or lights, be creative. The challenge is finding something interesting to reflect on the surface of your objects!

Depending on what you are after, using an HDR image as the environment and light source might give you more natural reflections.

Look online for links on "how to photograph reflective objects",  The same techniques apply for 3D rendering.
You will realize that they all do the same: they are not just photographing an object, but mostly focusing on what is being reflected on the surface of the object.
This link might help: http://project52pros.com/2014pros/assignment-thirty-five-photographing-a-very-shiny-object/

The simple answer to your question:

You do not have any light sources in your scene.  Looking at your outliner, there is no lamp nor an object which you have some sort of emission.  Place a lamp in the scene OR ensure that your world background color settings are not black, this will fix your issue.


How to pack all linked data inside the current .blend file I'm working on an animated short. I am trying to send my final results to a render farm because I don't have the processing power to render it on my computer. Each shot is in a separate linked .blend file, and the render service cannot see the linked data.
Note : All paths are relative and File->External Data->Pack All Into .blend doesn't do it

Is there a way to send a linked file as its own isolated .blend, with its own path data?

There is now an add-on (BlendFile Utils) that comes with Blender (2.77 and newer).

That supports packing a file and all its dependencies into an archive.

Note that this is a stand-alone tool which can be run from the command line, the same code used on the Blender-Cloud for downloading blend's as zipfiles and was used for exporting Blend files to the renderfarm for the short film Cosmos Laundromat.

I found that when I tried this, it did actually archive all the images I was using in the composite, however when I opened the .blend file it created and checked the image input nodes, they were not actually pointing to the archived images.

It's not an ideal solution either because files on our render farm are on a separate partition from the working files.

Unfortunately there is a different file structure between my local environment and the remote render farm so I'm not sure how to point to the files which are already in the remote location.  When I try and edit the note to write in the path where I know the files to exist blender won't let me save the node because on my local machine that path does not actually exist.

There must be some process for remote vs local file paths.


Why does the 3D view have trouble with clip start <=0.01 Earlier I've answered a question where the issue was that in edit mode, the 3D view fully or partially renders the mesh as if limit selection to visible was not ticked, when the 3D view clip start is set to 0.01 or lower, (or apparently when the 3D view clip end is set to 100000 or higher and view is set to Ortho - but I'm more interested in the first scenario).
If someone here knows, I'd really love to know why this is happening. The default values are 0.1 and 1000. So you'd expect not to run into such an issue when changing the values to 0.01 and 100 for example. By default 1 Blender unit equals 1 meter, this means that if you want to keep this default but work on an object that is the size of something that you can hold in your hand, then you'll run into this issue. Designing objects that are the size of your palm is not a very rare thing to do.
Furthermore, this issue does not happen when the 3D view is set to camera. Doesn't that prove that it should be able to work as expected in user view as well? Or is there even a way to get rid of this issue when working with a view clip start of 0.01 in Edit Mode? It should also be noted that sculpt mode is not affected either.

From my purely theoretical and limited technical knowledge on the matter real time rendered scenes (like in OpenGL or DirectX) use a Z depth buffer to determine the distance to camera of any object or vertex on screen.

That Z buffer is basically a black and white image of the screen, where for every pixel there can be a a value from 0 to 255 (black to white) for distance information. This image is then used to determine what is visible and what is not and build the viewport image. (There may be other wizardry involved for increased precision like double precision or using other color channels for more possible depth values, by my technical knowledge is limited here)

If the clipping distances (Start and End)are too far apart these 255 (or whatever) shades of grey are not gonna cut it and will not be enough for all the possible depth differences on screen, so artifacts and errors start appearing on screen, like the so called Z-Fighting on co-planar or coinciding faces, or these seemingly ghost-like edges and see-through faces in your mesh.

Now in theory changing clipping values but keeping them in sync should have no ill effects, but there are probably other variables like your graphics card capabilities, drivers, etc.

I would also like to know more about this, so if Blender developer, programmer or someone with more technical knowledge care correct me or enlighten us, I would be very grateful.


Change armature origin in 2.8 How can I change the origin of an armature without the body melting? I'm working on a FBX armature in 2.8. I've tried all the set origin choices but nothing works.

I imported an armature from MakeHuman where the origin of the model was center of mass. I wanted the origin to be at the bottom of the feet, but couldn't find a simple answer. Turns out there is one.
In edit mode, I selected a vertex from each heel, then Right Click -> Snap Vertices -> Cursor to Selected to move the cursor where I wanted it. You'll have to figure out how to get the cursor where you want it on your model, but it will likely be similar.
From here, Blender 2.80 normally allows switching to Object Mode, then Right Click -> Set Origin -> Origin to 3D Cursor. With the armature, that option doesn't exist anywhere in the right-click context menu.
Instead, you have to (again from Object Mode), use the main menu up top. Select your armature, then click Object -> Set Origin -> Origin to 3D Cursor.

Did you try setting the origin with the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + C. It works in blender 2.79.


Is there any way to animate specific vertices instead of the whole object? I'm starting to do my first form of (somewhat) major animation in blender, before I've only done things like keyframes on text extrude, object size movement, etc. I want to warp an object in a specific sort, but I've tried creating keyframes on vector positions, and it doesn't seem to work! Is there any way to animate specific vertices instead of the whole object? Thanks!

To do this you need to create shapekeys and then keyframe their influence/strength.

Shapekeys are essentially alternative shapes for you mesh that allow you to interpolate between them and the base shape of the mesh.

see the blender manual for more details

Use this addon. Enables animating almost everything.


How to properly model the Volute on a Capital of an Ancient Greek Column? I'm trying to figure out how to properly model the top part of the Ancient Greek Column. Can someone explain the easiest way to do so?

This is the base I did:

You can download it here: https://ufile.io/1eb83

Concerning the main part to do it quickly...

The idea is to notice we have a kind of spiral which is more or less the equivalent of outer and inner circles.

We know too that a subsurface modifier can do a circle from square/straight lines.

That's what we use here :

Simply follow the reference image with the fewest vertices has possible.

To do that, preset a subsurface modifier in order to view step by step the rendered curve as you add vertices.

Here I have chosen to have 5 points for half of a circle with a subdivision surface set to two:

To obtain the image above, begin to add just the contour lines. Then use the F2 addon to fill the faces (it is really quick! https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Modeling/F2).
The important point is to have the same amount of vertices for the inner and outer part (so that they correspond and you can make faces all around).

A trick: don't close totally the face on the right of the inner circle (that will be easier for the loop cuts later).

Now... we just have a flat surface, but nearly all is composed of quads and edge loops.

From that, "loop cut and slide" with CtrlR at the center.

Then validate and move down Z this line:

Now enforce the flat parts, either adding another loop cut or beveling:

Complete filing the hole we let before, extruding the outer part and eventually add another subdivision level the the subsurface modifier.

Note: for the thinner details, as said in the comments, use normal maps or others... or spend more time to model it...

I'm guessing the curves are what's troubling you.
My suggestion is to just grab a vertice and start extruding along the curves. Then start making your topology better by filling quads between vertices. To create the groove of the curve, I would suggest just extruding inwards many times until you have something that looks nice. Don't be afraid to just do what you can in the corners and sharp edges of the mesh. Even if it looks ugly up-close, it should look good from further away.
Don't forget to use a mirror modifier, so that you only have to model one side of the mesh.
I hope this helps.


2.79b Blender texture paint stroke oddity https://i.imgur.com/fooqOYA.png
Strokes have these "bounding box" or "update area" like discolorations. They are cleared once I Undo, and so remove one of the strokes. Only in UV/Image Editor, does not appear in 3D view.

Edit: It was something with the file itself it seems, for when I copied my work onto startup file those Discolorations (they are only visual, not color information) in UV/image editor did not appear anymore.
Its not the first time that I run into it, will try to be more conscious of when it happens and update here.

Suggestion is to have a fresh start.
Delete the Brush in question and create a new one.  Use the new Brush and see if the problem persists.

You may have changed a setting unintentionally. There are many settings in Blender that you or I or some others may not have the time to track down at the moment. In the sense of triage you may have more important things to occupy your concerns.


Different keystrokes to hide I noticed that sometimes ctrl-L selects all and sometimes A works instead.  What is the difference between the two?

A will select all geometry.
⎈ CtrlL will select all geometry that is connected to your current selection.
For example, from this state in edit mode:

Pressing A will result in this:

Pressing ⎈ CtrlL will result in this:

A selects all geometry.
ctrlL selects linked geometry. In edit mode, if you have geometry selected, it would let you select all of the geometry connected. Here is a quote from docs.blender.org:

Select geometry connected to already selected elements. This is often useful when a mesh has disconnected, overlapping parts, where isolating it any other way would be tedious.


Can bones influence textures? I have a character with non-spherical eyes. Is there another way to move the pupils without resorting to re-positioning the UV map permanently? Like say... assigning the texture to a bone?

you can assign a texture to a mesh, them assign that mesh to a bone.


Cannot light portions of object with point light I am setting up a simple scene with only a single object, a truck, and a point light. It seems that regardless of where I put the light, the hood (among other portions) of the truck won't be lit. Here's an example:

My first thought was that it was a problem with the materials on the truck. But the material on the hood is the same as that on the top and sides, so I don't think that it is the issue.

I also replaced all of the materials with the default one (diffuse intensity 0.8 and specular intensity 0.5) to see just the contribution from lighting more clearly:

Is there some other reason that might be making it impossible to light certain portions of the object?

Other possibly relevant information: In the images above, the light is a bit above the driver's seat of the truck, but the problem remains even if it is directly on top of the hood. I have had better luck with Hemi lights, but would prefer to use point lights if possible. I am using Blender Internal rendering. I am also happy to post more images (the car rendered with shadeless textures, the actual blend file, etc) in the follow-up.

While im not a Pro. I Think, I THINK. You should try increasing the strength of the Light. Or try using multiple lights. I Could also say Try to Transparent the background and Raise the color of the background to a bright color Preferrably a Bright White This will make the Background transparent, And the objects in the rendered image will be Nice and bright.
If you want to have the background grey i won't reccomend the latter.

One of my renders of a character for one of my games. With one default pointlight just above the head, Not bright, I Would like it more bright.
Now i have changed the Strength of the Pointlight to 900.
As you may notice the ribs are more bright And so are alot of the other parts.


Can't access custom properties of a linked characters proxy rig I have a rigified character.
I added a custom property to the rig object to drive a shape key on the face. It works as expected in the original file: the custom property slider of the rig drives the shape key on the face.

For ease of iteration, I link the rig (as a collection) into my animation file and make a proxy out of the rig so I can animate it. Animating the rig controls works as desired.

The problem is: the Custom properties of said rig are greyed out and inaccessible in the files where the rig is linked.
This makes it impossible to animate the shape keys for the face.

Is there a way to unlock custom properties in a linked proxy rig ?
if not, is there a workaround people use to animate custom properties on a linked rig ?

Here is a screen shot of the Rig's data panel after it has been linked and proxied. if you look at the bottom, the smirk property I wish to animate is locked. Is there a way to set it up so it stays accessible even when linked, like other properties of the piccolo_rig object are ?

I decided to use a workaround. Being able to use the custom properties would be a slick option as far as UI / user friendliness goes.
But for now I've decided to create one bone per face shape and treat them like sliders where translating the bone in Y axis would drive the face shape.
This works in linked files.
If anyone wants more details about this setup I can write up something.

I think you will have to drive the custom property value with a bone, so it will be "proxied".


Join two meshes at the intersection within edit mode Problem

Curiosity question here, I have the problem where I have created two meshes have inside the same object (so we are inside edit mode) with the purpose of combining both of them as one joined mesh

For example, as illustrated here:

Question

In the picture, I have two mesh object that are disjoint, One 'large shell' mesh and rectangular square mesh. I wish to join these two faces as I showed in the picture and then clean up the unneeded vertices. Is there a way to do this within edit mode?

Cheers

Press "SPACE", select search, type "intersect".
Click "Intersect (Boolean)".
Select "Union" from the dropdown menu.
Done.

select two mesh you want to join in object mode. Then press Ctrl+J.


Toggle wireframe mode with hotkey How do I toggle in and out of wireframe mode with my keyboard? Is there a hotkey for this?

I'm a beginner (obviously). I thought I could find this in the "view" menu, but it either doesn't exist or I have horrendous eyesight. Thanks!

In any mode, if you want to switch between wireframe and solid use Z.
You can also use Alt+Z for toggling x-ray.
Alternatively, you can use the viewport header.
Take a look at the manual.

First select the concerned objects and Press 4 to go to wireframe mode. Press 5 to get out of it.


What is this and how do I get rid of it? I have no idea what that white ring is or how I applied it. Here's a picture of it in edit mode:
I want to get rid of it but I don't know how to go about doing so. I'd appreciate some help. If needed, here is the file: https://pasteall.org/blend/07f0ab12a84944e69b2afd50cf7d3f6f

The issue is being caused by the presence of an extra face inside the mug. Its a quick fix; in edit mode, select it and press  X  > Faces.

Also note that there's an Ngon near the base of the mug that could use some splitting, for uniformity's sake. In edit mode, select the top and bottom vertices and press  J .

This should do it, good luck!

Ok I found the problem. There is a face on that ring, and you have to delete it. I thing you accidentally made a face there and that is why you can't chose the whole ring if you select it with Alt + LMB

I am not sure if I made it clear, but look for a face which if shouldn't be there.


Light issue when joining two objects? I'm fairly new to Blender (and modeling in general), and I have an issue that occurs when trying to join two objects! I'm trying to attach a weapon to the hand of a human, but when I do so, the lighting for either object messes up completely!
I've done this before with similar models without this issue ever happening, so I can't figure out why it does so in this case! I would really appreciate it if I could get some help on this matter! :)

Lemon and Aoradon, you solved my problem! It appears it was the mirror transform I had used that somehow caused this problem to occur! Flipping it back and applying all modifiers/scales/etc. before copying it in and joining it with the other mesh, completely solved my issue!

Thank you guys very much :)


Blender running out of memory in renders, but having no problem in previews I am dealing with problem of... Out of memory in cuMemAlloc(&device_pointer, size)
Even though settings are the same in render mode and preview mode I have never encountered this issue in the second one and have it all the time in the first one.
Note I am rendering on gtx 980ti, memory Peak is usually slightly above 4000M.
If there are no fixes and you have no idea where the problem is. I at least would like to save what I see in preview mode.

preview is not the same as rendering..
you can run out of memory buy a heavier GPU card if your out of memory.
or use a renderfarm or split up the work in layer scenes


Fix intersecting faces in blender I have a complicated geometry with some really small (not very visible) self-intersecting faces to fix, like below:

I have tried to use the shrinkwrap modifier and wrapped a fine-meshed cube on its surface. However, even though the cube is very finely meshed, the approximation is still not good:

I can use remesh modifier to fix the self-intersecting faces, but it requires an astronomical amount of vertices (deep octree) to maintain the geometry.

Could anyone please help with some ideas? Thank you!

What was the step that introduced this geometry problems? In general it's better to avoid geometry problems at all than to try to fix it. So i would suggest to have an eye at your workflow.

At this point i would retopology such a problematic mesh by hand now. No algorithm can know which vertices to keep and which not. So there is imho at this stage no way around manual work.

Have you tried this:

Switch to edit mode
Select all vertices
Select Remove Doubles


Default cube not displayed When I start Blender, the default cube is not displayed. Instead, only the center point of it is shown. When I add other meshes, I also see only the center point. How do I exit this strange mode?

EDIT:
I just found out, my other models now look crazy:

This one has a problem in user perspective:

may be u have done this way so the cube is invisible and only the pivot point visible


When I move a body part the mirrored body part moves too I added rigs to my body and, when I move the arm, the other one moves too, but the other one's bones stay in the same way. What can I do?

it will happen , because mirror objects should move just like the real life


Does an HDR environment texture affect the Shadow pass? I am compositing a scene using a standard process in Cycles, and it worked correctly as long as I had my lighting setup in the scene, however when I switched to HDR, my Shadow pass seems to become a solid black. Why is this, and how can it be avoided?

My node setup:

The HDR environment does not affect the shadow pass. At all. The problem originated with the removal of the lighting setup.

In other words, the shadow pass only supports lamps. Mesh lights and world lighting will not affect it. See Why does the shadow pass not account for mesh lights?

Please note as of Blender 1.79 there is a new shadow catcher that can generate a shadow from HDRI light source.  I've tried the release candidate and it's great.  Saves all the multi-layer rendering and filtering stuff!

However it should be noted that only the shadows are catpured and not reflections.


Making a 3D Live Wallpaper with Blender only What I want to do is create 3D scene animation in Blender then turn it into live wallpaper on my laptop.

I did consider Wallpaper Engine but the question is - Can I use the 3D scene where the path of recording camera took place in Blender then import the file to Wallpaper Engine to make it a live Wallpaper?

Example:
Exo Zombies Carrier Lobby Theme

You can record it in Blender then save it as video file to be used in Wallpaper Engine.


Why does Blender not update the screen properly, despite not lagging? Whenever I do something (for example use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out) I need to press another key for my initial action to be recorded and updated. It is really frustrating and I can not work like this, being an absolute beginner with 3D modeling and animations.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

My guess would be that you are looking for the "Release Confirms" option in the "Editing" tab of the "User Preferences" window.


How to apply multiple image textures and bake them into 1 image I have tried searching the web have not found a clear solution to this.
What I would like to achieve is to apply multiple image textures to a model

https://imgur.com/SdFc3pQ

and the model in blender

https://imgur.com/rA6AX1x

EDIT: the video basically says to install the node wrangler plugin in blender and then use ctrl + shift + T, in the node editor with the principled BSDF selected, to select all textures

Probably this is what you need to start
Move to the minute  00:09:29

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMbc2e_SN_Y&feature=youtu.be

Hope that helps.

Good Luck


My rendered turns out extremely bright even though there is no light in the scene. The floor in the rendered view is also white. How do I fix this? Here are pictures of why render and of my scene.

In the shader editor under world remove an emission node if it's plugged into your world output and add light to the scene.

By default 2.8 uses a built in HDR environment, that lights the scene. You can switch it off and use the scene lights and world in the viewport shading section.


What auto rigging system should I use to rig my character? Rigify is messing up and buggy right from the converting stage.
Makehuman I have to limit my rigs to MHX2 imports. I've tried all the optional import rigs for MHX and they all lack in some measure.
Those are the ones I've tried.
I tried making my own rig but that is problematic as I can't seem to make a rig that is robust enough.
I'd like to find something that will quickly set up a rig ready to do animation with my models.
I'm trying to avoid bottleneck situations where it takes a lot of manual editing just get some aspect done, for example: I'd like to import a BVH in one click instead of having to assign each bone.
I have dozens of models and I'd like to at least get 1 completely working rig per day or sooner.

I'd like to find a rigging system that has the following:

Easy to animate FK and IK.
Phoneme mouth shapes.
Facial Expression controls.
Versatile hand controls.
Can take BVH input.
Versatile ability to use mesh deform or direct weight paint rigging.
Ability to easily add spring or jiggle systems.
Quickly go from model to rigged character.
Mostly biped but if it can do quadrupeds bonus.
Cloth simulation bonus.

Have you looked into Auto-Rig Pro(ARP)? It's a purchasable add-on. From the reviews and videos that I have seen, it looks pretty solid.


Missing Open Shading Language in Cycle Renderer Check Box Was reading up some interesting answers on animating noise. Until, I found out that blender 2.75 doesn't have the same interface as shown on the image below.

Does anyone know how to turn on Open Shading Language in the cycle renderer? Following the post here How to animate noise texture "seed"? I was not able to see the noise on screen at all. It outputs the noise as plain white.

OSL isn't available on GPU. If you are already set to CPU, it's possible your version of blender was compiled without it. Are you using an official build from blender.org? (btw, any particular reason for using 2.75? The latest version is currently 2.76) – gandalf3


How to bend nurbs surfaces I modeled a simple flat square, adding thickness by extruding.
Now I want the Surface to not be flat but a Kind of buldged.
How do I accomplish that?

I reckon you are new to 3d modeling , hence the question seems strange since you started out with a box. Nurbs modeling is a completely different beast. Let me try to help you out.

First of all, just like ibalazscs says nurbs are seldom used these days, its has proven itself to be quite a clumsy tool in regards to modeling. We deploy something else call "box modeling". Basically starting from a box or a simple plain we can create an estimate of an object surface and later add a modifier "Subdivision Surface"

This is what I mean ... on the left is a model that started out as a plane. I extruded the edges and created a draft form. After which I add a modifier to the model (Copied and selected highlighted in orange)...

After that there is a further step you may need to do to complete the look of a nice smooth curve surface.

The thing about curved surface in a 3d world is that you need more than one face to create the illusion of a curved surface. Yes illusion! All the surface you see in a 3d software are planes... using smooth surface shader those straight and flat planes hides their true edges, making them look like a smooth surface. Without smooth shader the model would look like this...

And here is the exact same model with the same number in vertex and face count, smooth shading applied...

Lastly, here are the steps to apply smooth shader...

Select the model.
Hit Tab to enter edit mode.
Hit W to display special drop down menu.
Select "Shade Smooth" from list.

Ok my active 3d-time lies 13 years behind me. I used to model with 3d-max and Maya. I am new to blender and absolutly flashed what this package can do.

Yesterday I reduced my question to my core problem. In my sparetime I want to model a logo. That logo is rounded and has nice curves. Thats why I decided to start with nurbs.

That's the logo and I am open to the ways you would model.


Rigging a surface for game engine Let's say I have a surface, which is divided as follows:

  A   B   C   D
0 +---+---+---+
  |   |   |   |
1 +---+---+---+
  |   |   |   |
2 +---+---+---+
  |   |   |   |
3 +---+---+---+

This surface also have a subdivision-surface modifier added to it, with level 3.
What I want to achieve is, when I grab each of the above points, the other points should "react" along with it as well.

So for example: if I grab A:0 my grab will also effect its closest neighbors: B:0, B:1 and A:1 as well. Now, here comes the hard part, which I couldn't solve because of the dependency cycles it might generate when I try it with bones: if I grab B:0 it should effect C:0, C:1, B:1, A:1 and A:0 as well. Which basically means, "for one second" B:0 becomes the parent of A:0, which of course is not possible, as I already assigned B:0 as a child of A:0.

So what I'm looking for is either a trick to have this grid like bone rig, or some other solutions (such as a 2D lattice or anything) which is available through BGE.

Thanks in advance!

So you want something like proportional edit, where you can grab any vertex and the neigbouring ones move along with it as well?

To do this, simply making sure the weightings (between the bones and the mesh) extend so that some vertices are controlled by multiple bones.

So this is the weight normally:

And this is it expanded:

If you expand all of them, then, although the neighbouring bones won't actually move, there will be the right effect (As far as I understand what you want):

In this case, I could probably have expanded the area of effect some more. And, you may notice you have to move the bone further to get the deflection you want. This is because the vertices you are moving are also influenced by the surrounding 8 bones, so will not move quite so much.

you can do this with Glsl script,

or python and maybe gsl nodes,

and with bones.

if you need physics to work,
I think the only possibility is python,

(scaling and moving physics objects and deforming the graphics mesh however you feel like)


Glass material is transparent only when object is selected As you can see, I would like to get similar effect in rendering as in material view mode but I'm don't know what could cause the problem. I've used Kitchen_glass material form Archipack standard library and there are two layers of glass on the door and single  layer over screen. Other side is barely visible when rendered and screen light is not visible at all (this is not actual light).

Update

I found out that the shadow from the glass was obscuring inside.
I've turned the "Cast" property off and now I can see through the fist glass, however I cannot see through the second glass when it's sits in the right place:

You might have probably deleted the glass material. So you have to delete your object and add another one.

You can watch the following tutorial
https://youtu.be/p5q_P8WQegQ
https://youtu.be/I685JGTCpCU

Hope it helps.


Parent shaking when hit play in bge I have a character  with an empty object as parent with the hand bone. I use this empty to parent the guns and I have a gun inside of it, when play the animation the weapon stay static inside the empty just like I wanted, but, my problem is  when I hit P to play the game the don't stay static inside the empty object, the weapon keeps shaking inside the empty object. someone knows ho to fix it? what am I doing wrong? There's another better way to parent a gun to gun to the characters hand? thanks in advance.

I had a similar problem when tinkering with the BGE.  I had a rudimentary cannon and large sponge rubber shells so no one gets hurt.  The empty was used to move the shells out of the barrel .  It was too close to the barrel if I remember properly and would sort of tremble.  It was long time ago but I can go back into that project and even send it to you if you want.

Try removing the parentage, move the empty about a little, then re-parent it, see if the problem goes away...

unparent it, Undo, Set to original Rotation, It works on me :)


PNG animation render, saving images without a file type So this is probably a simple solve and most likely due to me adding a setting that I shouldn't have.

So for all of my other animations I have done, I render each step as a PNG image and then use the Image Sequencer to render the final animation, and it works well. But this time around, all of the rendered images are not saved as PNGs but rather saved without a file type but can still be opened via Chrome.

Any ideas how I can get Blender to save these renders as a PNG?

Specs:
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB,
Windows 10,
intel i7,
8GB RAM,
Blender 2.79

In the Render panel in Input, check "File extensions"

(They are saved without a file extension, which is not the same as a file type.)

I realized that the file extension was not ticked... So I checked File Extensions checbox in the Render tab > Output panel and now rendered images are saved with extension.


How to copy Modifiers I must be doing something wrong, I select my object which has two modifiers, press space, search for "Copy Modifier", and select it. I get the error message

"The object the data pointer refers to is not a valid modifier"

I have also had no luck with copying stuff like Materials.

Searching the error message in the source code shows 3 occurances, it appears that the "Copy Modifiers" operator is only available for some freestyle settings.

blender-2.69\source\blender\editors\render\render_shading.c
            BKE_report(op->reports, RPT_ERROR, "The object the data pointer refers to is not a valid modifier");
            BKE_report(op->reports, RPT_ERROR, "The object the data pointer refers to is not a valid modifier");
            BKE_report(op->reports, RPT_ERROR, "The object the data pointer refers to is not a valid modifier");

As described here Add the Same Modifier to Multiple Objects at Once? you could link the modifiers using Ctrl-L (Make Links) and select Modifiers.

Python:

bpy.ops.object.make_links_data(type='MODIFIERS')

You need to run these copy operators in a proper context, or they won't know what to copy.

In Properties Editor, use the Copy button in the Modifiers tab to duplicate.
In Material tab, use the Material Specials menu button (red arrow) and chose Copy Material.Paste Material with Material.001 selected would copy the material settings over and make it purple as well. It does not create a new material or replace the slot by Material.


How can I connect a set of disconnected vertices with a line through all of them How can I connect a set of disconnected vertices with a line through all of them?
I tried
V but it shows the error of "cannot rip multiple disconnected vertices"
F just creates a face but I would like to have a line
"connect vertice path" gives "invalid selection order"
"connect vertice" doesn't show any change

What can I do? Appreciate all your help.
Thanks guys

Select two vertices and create an edge between them, repeat for each edge you want.

With two vertices selected blender will create an edge, with three or more vertices it will create an edge between each vertex as well as a face that is surrounded by all of them. If the vertices are aligned the face will be too small to be seen even though it is there.

You could select the vertices from one end to the other and create a face, then use X->Only Faces to only have edges, but this will still leave an extra edge from the first to last, and the remaining edges will only be worthwhile if you select them one by one in the right order, if you use select all then you can get edges between random vertices in the row.

This is a drawback of using the same operator to create edges and faces, the number of selected vertices is the only factor that decides if a face is created, so to create only edges you need to select two vertices and create one edge at a time. As you may want to create edges between all the vertices you have in the grid, you may want to fill in the grid with faces (enabling the F2 addon might help), then select everything and delete only faces to have only edges remaining.

If you enable vertex snapping and auto-merge you could select the first vertex and press E to extrude it and snap the new vertex to the next vertex, then repeat for each edge.

In your given image it's look simple just select all vertices and press F
If you are working on large projects then you need automatic jointer magnet button is also helpful


Cycles selective reflection I have bottle, "table" and it all lit by environment texture (HDRi). How to setup scene so that the world texture affect the bottle but is invisible (doesn't reflect the table)? The only object reflecting in table should be the bottle. I've tryed the Light Path node for the table, but without luck.

There is no simple way for doing this because blender doesn't have proper ligth linking settings. You can try uncheck glossy from the ray visibility of your world,
but that's not ideal.

What you can do is put your HDR on two sphere objects, instead of world.
One of them with glossy uncheck from visibility rays.

Have two render layer one for the table the other one for the glass and exclude the reflective world for the first one.


Blender not loading properly I have installed Blender 2.76b in my computer. But when I open blender, it does not load fully and only icons are visible. This is how it looks:

I have installed Unity 5 in my system and that is working fine.
Can anyone give a solution to this problem?

Thanks in advance.

This is commonly because you installed Blender as one user (administrator) and are running it as a different user.

From http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?196976-My-Blender-2-5-Interface-is-Mostly-Empty

  Happens when you run Blender as a different user as who installed it (Windows).
  Reason: The blender folder in User-Folder / Appdata /Roaming is required but only there for the user who installed it
  Workaround: Always run Blender as the primary user (Run as Administrator) or: Copy the Blender Foundation folder from Appdata/Roaming of the primary user to your account's folder.

So, Blender doesn't have access to some of the folders it needs because they are on another user's account. This could also apply to some Python scripts. If Python was installed by another user, you might not have access to it on your account.

Hope that helps!


How to increase performance in the View Port? I have model that has 100 000 cubes forming a 2d grid from a birds-eye view. The cubes are very simple in geometry, but still, with 100-200k it's hard to perform some tasks around the viewport.

Are there some options to remove and increase the performance? I've already disabled ambient occlusion, but it's still sometimes slow. Any advice?

NOTE: I don't want to cut the grid into multiple meshes and separate it in different layers if possible.

If your cubes have more than 8 verts then I suggest using a decimate modifier. But not applying it. It will reduce the polycount and you can just undo it for a final render by deleting the modifier.


How to make cube A size following cube B size? (boolean for window/door) ie; I have cube001 for boolean, and cube002 for window frame/leaf, so when I resize high/length of cube002(window mesh) the boolean cube (cube001) is changed too, how to do this?

If you freeze the scale, it's not like

else
http://take.ms/CTUFw


Cant change animation action from move to hit With blender an 3D artist made me an unit with 6 animations. When I downloaded the file I was able to change all animations. But now I cant. Even if I select the shield and after that I cant change animation to another.

My unit walks, but when I change animation to hit , it still walks. No idea how to fix it.

On my Dope Sheet I see "a collection of F curves for animation" with the namings "walk, stay, hit..". When i change them and press Alt+A (to start animation), it still walks, no matter what I do. I am weak in blender, forgot everything so long ago. And I try so many buttons, but still cant change the character to hit. Please help with suggestions (in noob talk please).

It might be possible that you have some action strips stuck in NLA editor (thus not giving you an opportunity to change the action). Go to NLA editor (it's a panel type) and see if there is anything besides your desired action. In any case, try to remove any NLA layers/strips related to the armature.

I hope it helps.

Since I'm not that good with blender, you probably shouldn't trust my answer that much, but I'll try to help anyways.

From what you wrote, I think you might need to better understand the concept of keyframing. If you don't, I'll save you some time and simply explain it now.

Simply put, keyframing is where you say, "At this time, I want this object to be at point A, and at this time, I want the same object to be at point B." Then, the computer patches in everything in the middle, creating an animation. Search up, "Blender keyframing tutorial" on youtube if you need more help.

Unless if I misunderstood your question, thats all the advice I can give you. Perhaps someone with better knowledge will come around and help you. Good luck!


Is my mesh too complex? So I got a toilet model from blendswap, since I needed a toilet for a house. I then tried importing that .fbx file to UE4, but it freezed. Looked it up, and the most common answer was that the mesh is probably high poly. So my question is, is it high poly? The toilet is just a background object.

The picture might help to explain the problem.

Yes, your model is probably too detailed for a game scene background. Moreover, since it's a rather simplex geometry, the face count may be easily reduced with no noticeable effect on its appearance. As it was pointed out, you currently have almost 25,000 faces, that are unnecessarily too many for the surface of your toilet.

(Note: high-poly and low-poly mean high or low polygon count, polygons being your mesh's faces)

"Decimate" the number of faces

From the Properties window, Modifiers panel, click "Add modifier" and select "Decimate". Your face count is displayed as "Faces: Xxxx" on the bottom of the "Decimate" box.

The three methods (Collapse, Un-Subdivide and Planar) are described here: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/modifiers/generate/decimate.html

To see any effect, you must:

on "Collapse", reduce the ratio (try something around 0.33: it'll reduce the face count by two thirds)
on "Un-Subdivide", increase the number of iterations to 1 or 2
on "Planar", change the threshold angle to 3-4 degrees.

(choose one of the three, whichever looks the best)

When you change these values, you can see the updated number of faces updated under your slider. Also, your model gets updated live in the 3D-view. Choose the lowest number of faces that still keeps the appearance good and smooth enough.

Once you are done, hit "Apply" in the decimate box.

The face count is displayed in your window's header: in your scene there are just two objects with a total face count of 24,552 (which is quite a large number). Also, it's evident from the image that you have a high-poly mesh.


How to pan around the shader editor on a mac? I just opened Blender and I opened the shader editor for the first time. I wanted to read the properties of the node which is there, but I can not since it falls outside the view. I hold my middle mouse button to pan, but that made it only zoom in/out.
How can I pan my view in the shader editor?

In Blender 2.92 go to Preferences Keymap View2D Pan View:


Shadow Catcher blocks background image in 2.8 I'm pretty new to blender, and as I was getting used to 2.79, 2.8 landed and confused me ever more. I was wondering why the Shadow Catcher blocks the background image I set even if I checked transparent under Film.

Found out an answer. I should've just searched tutorials instead of troubleshooting forums instead.

Here's the link that helped.
https://www.blendernation.com/2017/04/17/use-new-blender-shadow-catcher/

So I apparently just needed to hit render and mix up some nodes in the compositor.

Thanks to the people who took their time to correct my post as well!


How to model a fluid like object without particle system or fluid simulation What I had in mind is something like this:

Now I know it probably can be done with particle system and metaballs (something like this ) or fluid simulation.

Thing is that in order to do it with metaballs you need a quite powerful PC to handle all the polygons and same thing with fluid simulation ( and I also have 0 experience when it comes to fluids sim). Is there a way to make object like in images with bend modifier or even maybe sculpting, any idea?

You could try using a displacement modifier with a texture.

I tried using a clouds texture and a stucci texture, which came up with a decent result. Didn't look to much like the image, but if you have a better base mesh, and just keep messing around with adding more textures, and adjusting size and strength, you should be able to come up with a good answer.

p.s. you need to add another displacement modifier for each new texture you add.


How to close view windows? I would like to close some view windows that I opened accidentally.

See the image below:

Edit: another note: I tried searching for the solution, but only found things like "Join Area", which don't seem to work in this situation.

Click and drag on the corner with the grabber (same one for making a new window) and drag DIRECTLY over the neighboring panel that you want to make disappear (if you drag anywhere else, you'll make a new panel). This will make a grey arrow which shows you which panel will get put on top of the other. Release the mouse button when your cursor is over the panel you want to go away.
Two caveats:

when you click and drag, you must immediately cross the boundary between two panels, before dragging anywhere else. THEN it will make the grey arrow. If you click and drag into the same panel, you'll create a new panel.
you can only join two windows that share a COMPLETE edge. If you have one full window on the left, and two windows (one on top of the other) on the right, then you have to join the two windows on the right together before you can join the window on the left.

Now, using this knowledge, you have a bit of a puzzle to solve. You have to close each of the windows in the red square individually. So I'd start with the smallest one first. Join it with the one with which it shares a complete edge, and the go to the next-smallest.
This is exactly what you need: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMBi1R7KB48

You can also do this if you're pixel-precise:


Floor plane reflection For testing purposes I have created a simple HDRI with HDR Light Studio that is visible in the reflection of the box.

Now I want a floor plane reflecting the exact box above without interacting with the scene at all. But the reflection on the box has changed when the floor is visible.

In the "Objects"-Tab I can disable the glossy-rays for the floor so the reflection of the box looks as desired. But this way the reflected box won't show any reflections at all.

Is there an other workaround for it? Blender scene is added.

As for the reason why it is happening, it is because the main direction of where your HDRI's light is coming from is from the bottom right corner of your image, and the floor is blocking that.

In order to fix that, if you go to the node editor, change the view to world shader and add a mapping and texture coordinate node for your HDRI, you can adjust the tilt of the HDRI.  If you connect the generate output of the Texture Coordinate node to the input of the mapping node and the output of the mapping node to the input of the Environment Texture, then you can control the angle of the HDRI.

You can use the rotation values in the Mapping node to adjust the HDRI's angle.


Weight painting not moving model as expected I am trying to weight paint my model but no matter what weight I paint or assign to the verts, I can't get the skin stretching effect I want. They all act as if they have full weight and only the verts next to the ones I painted stretch.

Add verts to head and then rotate to test. Only the faces next to the verts selected stretches.

I go into edit mode and assign the line of vert's bellow at a very low weight but when I go to rotate, they move as if assigned at full weight.

A weight of 1 (red) means, that your mesh will react 100% to the bone movement.
A weight of 0 (blue) means, that your mesh will not react at all.

So, if you want a more natural behavior, select the lower vertices of the head and assign a weight of 0.5 (green). These vertices will only be partially affected. You can go further and have several transition loops:
Assign it like this to the top bone.

And assign reverse weights to the bottom bone.

Try not to paint everything red and maybe add more vertex to the joint


What Are the Differences between Smoke Collision Types? What are the technical differences between Rigid, Static, and Animated smoke collision types?

In the Documentation, it says that:

  Smoke can collide with mesh objects, using the 'Collision' option in
  smoke. Currently only static collision objects are supported.

However, the other collision types are obviously doing something. If they are all simply acting the same, why is there currently an option to use the other types, and what will the differences be once the other types are implemented?

In reply to dukejib's answer,

Animated

I scaled the domain, so the smoke cannot go around the animated brick on the Y axis to make the effects of the brick passing through more obvious:

Here is the same test baked with different collision types:

Animated:

Rigid:

Static:

All are identical as far as I can tell.

Rigid

The same seems to be true with the rigid body test:

Rigid:

Animated:

Static:

Input from a developer or someone who can look at the code to see if these collision types really are the same would be nice. ;)

This is my theory:

"Static" means a non-animated, non-moving object

"Rigid" means a non-animated, (possibly) moving object

"Animated" means an animated (shape keys, armatures, etc.), (possibly) moving object.

Tests won't resolve the issue, since, as the original question points out, they're currently all the same.

Here's my theory: I've heard talk about using volumetrics in the game engine.  When that happens, the interactions between static, rigid, and animated objects is going to be essential - it would be a waste to calculate everything if you weren't having the smoke interact with animated objects, for instance.  My theory is that they are currently "the same" because it does not matter outside of the game engine - it doesn't have to be specified, and resources are not delegated real-time as they are in the game engine.  But in the game engine, you DO need to label an object as static, rigid, or animated - and that goes for smoke as well.  Essentially, the technical difference between all of the above would be the same for any other object in the game engine - a necessary setting that tells physics how to interact with it to optimize resources.

In Blender 2.68, all three options are supported for smoke.

Animated: used with objects with animation. It allows the smoke simulator to calculate the predefined animation path of the object. It leaves the path of animation from smoke simulation.
Rigid: used with rigid bodies. To use this option, set an object as a Rigid Body and a rigid Smoke collider. This allows a smoke trail behind rigid body, within the domain of the smoke.

This is what I understand about these options with simple test.

Check out this file.

Layer 1 = Animated
Layer 2 = Rigid


how to create fluid simulation in glass? how to create fluid simulation in glass?

There is a video you should be able to figure out the minor  changes but other wise there.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YgwKPP2ZEjI


3d Volume from 2d Texture is it somehow possible to generate volumetric information from a 2D Image Texture?

I experimented already quite a bit, but with no succes. I thought about using the RGB, or better said, the BW-Information to generate the missing vector.

An alternative which i thought would work, was to use the image as a input Position for a gradient (spheric), since the gradients are all volumetric by themselves. Also, with no succes.

The mockup was created by using an empty and its object coordinates as gradient input vector.

Thanks in advance!

Here's a clunky sort of first step (maybe not towards where you want to go):

Make a height-map of the subject (Mist Pass, 0-1, front to back of a containing cube)

Set up a node tree something like this:

Where each shading point asks whether, in 0-1 generated texture coordinate space, its Z value is close to the R value in the depth map for its XY. If it is, it lights up.

(Sorry to be confusing, but here, XY has been mapped to XZ, and Y checked against the map, to get Suzanne facing down Y)

The 'Close to' node group just returns 1 if Value1 and Value2 are within Delta of one another, 0 otherwise.

The 'Less Than' node checks if the Y value is close to 1, to get rid of the background, 'beyond everything' values in the depth map.

This is the result:

I tried projecting height-maps down X and Z as well, which could be encoded in G and B of the texture, but they were not automatically calibrated for position or scale, I may just have slipped up somewhere.

But I thought , anyway, it would be better to go for a spherical height map: bake a displacement map of the subject from an enclosing sphere, and store it as, say, a Mercator projection? And then, instead of using Z as the lookup, use the shading point's angles, theta and phi from the origin, to look up the point in the texture to check against.

Then you could use Alpha to store depth, and R,G and B to store R,G and B, to get colored (but not fully covered) volumes.

But since there will be lots of gotchas, and I'm not @Rich Sedman, that may take a while.

Default Cube with a Color Ramp powered from the Gradient Texture set to Quadratic Sphere

Now with the Generated Texture coordinates tweaked to place the center at the centre of the Default Cube

Using Emission Shader because it looks cool.


How to make a somewhat stiff pneumatic tube? I tried using softbody physics on a path, but, the path then behaves like a string rather than a stiff tube. I want the  pneumatic tube to behave something like the tubes in this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klLI5skuwj4

You can use a cloth simulation for this.

Scene Setup
To begin with, I added a simple bezier curve, then edited and beveled it. I then converted it to a mesh object, and built the other simple cuboid mesh object you can see in the pictures.
Next, go into edit mode on the curve (now a mesh), and select the ending vertices to setup a vertex group to pin them. Add a new vertex group and assign these verts to it.

Parent the curve to the cuboid mesh (that means the curve mesh becomes the child of the other), and add a cloth simulation in the physics tab of the properties panel.
Note: All of the above should be trivial, but if you need more information, let me know.
Cloth Simulation Setup

I disabled everything in the cloth settings except for pinned vertex group.

I started with the "leather" preset, as I felt that was closest to the desired physics settings.

The quality steps is not super important to keep high, but will be noticeable if set low (e.g., below 5).

If the speed multiplier is set lower, things look more like string (they move faster); if set high, it looks more like the desired tubing (I used a value of 3 in the demo).

Make sure to setup the vertex group for pinned verts by enabling "pinning" and then setup a vertex group (assign the vertices that are on the edges of the tube) for it.

I decreased the "bending" relative to the leather preset. As the tooltip says, it basically sets the size of the waves: higher is bigger, lower is smaller.

I increased the "structural" stiffness factor because the tubing has a more stiff overall stiffness than leather would.

I decreased the "spring" damping from 25 to 15, because I wanted a bit more jiggling when I did the shake animation.

I increased the "air" damping to slow it down further. This seems to behave similarly to the "multiplier" setting, although the values are entirely different.

please find a blend file with a rigged cable under this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/abactz3bu7olldv/Rigged_Cable.blend?dl=0

It may suit your needs. It uses the cloth simulation technique as well, but the solution is extended using a set of hook modifiers. If you do so, the circular cross shape of the cable (or tube) will not get lost at collisions. regarding on the number of hooks you set, the more accurate your simulation will be.

regards,

pixelpoems.de


Blender 2.8 Smoke Sim Bug Recently, I started using 2.8 for smoke simulation. Everything looks normal until I render it out. Though I can preview the smoke in the viewport(render mode), it does not appear in the final render(F12).
Then, I found out that I have to bake the smoke in order to render it out. I even saw some article in the forum stated it is "mandatory" to have your smoke baked.
But is it? I mean I'm not a expert in blender but I pretty sure that baking is not mandatory back in 2.79, right?
Is this some kind of bug or something, any suggestion?

(BTW, I'm using cycles in the 2.8)

THX

You don’t need to bake.
Try adding a Volume Scatter node to Smoke Domain and connect it to Volume input of the material. Also delete the standart BSDF.


How can I make an object only visible through certain material Hi I am trying to make a certain object only visible through another object with transparent material

lets say object named car and the other object named glass i can see the car if i look through glass but i can't see the car otherwise like looking through another glass or looking to car directly only looking through that glass shows me the car

Basically Masking object's material transparency to another material

Example Image

How can i achieve this?
Any help is appreciated

Here is what i found with similar effect but only works with grease pencil

Here is what i found with similar effect but works for every glass material

I am new here so if i asked my question at the wrong place please correct me

It depends on your scene and what you need but you could use Light Paths node to make some condition that only one of your glass objects meet. For example you could have two glass planes, but one has another plane in front of it that has a transparent shader:

You can see the visibility of the orange shader is controlled by Light Paths node's transparency depth output that is 0 when we look through glass, but becomes 1 when there is a plane with transparent shader in front of that glass. You can see what happens if I move the transparent plane.

In such cases mask transparency option is the solution. Anyway, that's Blender Internal.


Problem selecting in edit mode Is it normal to have to select in object mode before moving into edit mode. At the moment if i have not selected something in object mode and i go to edit mode i can not select it. I have tried to save it to help but this makes no difference,

Yes it is normal. If you don't select an object you won't be able to enter its edit mode. You'll enter the edit mode of the object you've selected. In the 2.80 you'll be able to be in multiple edit modes at once, which is amazing. Try it out! NB: You still need to select objects you want to enter the edit mode.

This was similar to mine..
I noticed that if you Delete the Object in Edit Mode Like Select all faces and delete them and if you switch to Object mode and re-switch it to Edit mode without selecting any other object, you will enter into Edit mode.
It may be possible that it have an existence as it was not deleted from Object Mode as a combined Object.

Solution is may be you select the object you mentioned and now you can't select that invisible type object so you will not enter edit mode without selecting an Object.


Modelling and texturing specific wood flooring I was wondering how you'd go about modelling and texturing the wooden floor that can be seen in the painting below.

Of course the "module" is a square and the four wooden planks around it, but doing that and then applying an array to it would not give the same pattern (there would be twice the number of wooden planks around the squares).

Also when I tried to do it it looked really flat and "same-y", and wanted to know how to texture it so it looks more real and making the veins more "bumpy" and having the creases around the planks. WIP below so you can see what I mean.

Should I texture each plank one by one? How do I make it more varied/bumpy/veiny/dirty/creasy as in the original painting?

Thanks in advance.

The small bumps can be done using a normal map which essentially are images that tell Blender that the surface is not smooth, and to extrude the mesh in and out on the flat planes according to the normal map. There is a pretty good tutorial on how to generate normal maps from texture images here.

To apply the normal map to your object, head over to the shading workspace.

Add a new image texture node and open the normal map image. At the bottom of the image texture, make sure you select "Non-Color" under the Color Space drop-down menu.

Connect the color output into a Normal Map node, and that into the Normal input for the principled BDSF node.

If you want to go even further with realism, consider checking out this tutorial by Blender Guru. It's using an older version of Blender, but the same principles still apply. The only main difference would be in setting up the nodes for the reflection maps and all.


Blender Puple Mesh issue with texturing Im still new to blender but I found this problem... Im using the latest version and I found out,
I had a small project with a TON of textures and was looking really good, but I came back online
the following day and I found that all my textures have turned purple??? I have no idea what happened
 but all the original textures have disappeared. If anyone could help that would be awesome.

Thanks

Yes this is a really common issue and im surprised that it hasn't been answered before... its imply just saying that your mesh has no material data, so say you have allocated it to a image texture node, you have no image set to it (no image data for the mesh). so make sure you have at least one material properties to it.

Thanks.


Gaussian Blur Blender Material Node I was wondering if there is a way to do Gaussian Blur effect on a generated texture in blender. Currently I blur images by mixing gain and then subtract them from the vector but this creates more a a distortion effect.

I tried finding a way to average pixels but I this does not seem possible in the node editor.

Does anyone know how I can tackle this problem?

You can go to the compositor and add a blue node, set it to fast gaussian and enable relative, then set the x and y values to suit your needs.
Make sure you connect an image pipe to it though... if your using Images, you can find an image node in inputs category in the composition menu


BMesh polygons with holes Is it possible to create a BMesh polygon (BMFace) with holes via Python?

Use case. I need that for my addons that import geographical data. A polygon for Rome has a hole for Vatican City.

Polygons in Mesh or BMesh aren't permitted to have holes in the sense of providing a perimeter and adding an internal part to subtract. This means considering alternatives.

You can construct an irregular polygon / Ngon.

But it will contain at least two duplicated vertices for that pathway between the cutout and the perimeter.

You could script a mesh.fill(), which could take two given edge outlines and fill from the outer edges inwards. (will add script when I have time)

Alternatively you might use a counter intuitive solution namely a 2D Curve (of straight parts) : code included in link


Texture bake stuck at 100% Hi all first question here, I looked all over the internet but didn't see anything so I signed up here. Im baking a texture, at 400 samples and it took a day to get to 100%. Its been at the 100% done mark for about 6 hours now.Blender is still responding but my texture hasn't finished baking. Im afraid to touch anything. What should I do. The bar is there at 100% with the X. the image i was baking to is still black with the smart project laid out. I did a test bake which turned out fine and went for high quality next. I think blender is just being buggy. I don't know what to do besides hit the x and be disappointed I have to start over. I heard someone got stuck at 50%, reopened the file, and the bake appeared.Sounds to good to be true. Is there a cool recovery mode or save record of what has been done so I don't have to start over? Is there anything I can do besides start hitting x's and closing everything? WHY I was so close.

Uninstall and reinstall blender I did that and it worked!


blender 2.79b graph editor not showing graphs I opened it up like the tut vid said and I see no graphs for anything, I've clicked all of the button, and such and still nothing, what am i doing wrong, or is it blender?

I downloaded the .blend and saw that just select the frames to appear in the rendering. Hold 'shift' and go by clicking on them.

Then just render.


How do I set object origin normal to a face? I have the following object:

How do I modify the origin so that the origin has the X axis normal to the face shown, but the object itself remains in the same position in space?

Because you've applied the rotation to your model, the easiest possible way to do this is rotating it manually.

Turn on the snapping tool by using the magnet icon in the bottom toolbar and set the snap element to Increment.

Enter top view by pressing Numpad 7, then enter Orthographic Mode by pressing Numpad 5. Use the keys G,Z to rotate along the Z axis and hold Shift until the flat faces facing the x axis are exact straight lines.

While still in object mode, use Ctrl+A and click Rotation to reset the rotation to 0,0,0.

With Pictures:

I dont know if i get the question correctly but maybe it helps you to go into object mode, open N menu and check the rotation in the transform tab (first tab). Hope that is what youre looking for


How to prevent disconnection between two objects, while rigging? I'm trying to rig my character and I don't know how to prevent disconnection between 2 objects when in Pose mode. The problem is shown in the image below. How do I make the foot stick to the joint (ball) no matter where I move the IK?

For non-stretchy leg you should duplicate the foot bone and lets name it Target. The target bone has no parent and is the target of IK constraint. The foot bone is connected to the leg and copies the rotation of target bone with constraint.
Here is how it should look:

I think you dont need the heel bone but if you do you can leave it parented to the Foot bone. Its also good to uncheck Deform for Target bone since it will only control the ik and not deform anything.

For the stretchy-leg set stretch of Leg and chains bones to 1:

But you will not end up with a much pleasing result, the stretchy rig is much more complicated.

If you need to implement also reverse-foot rig or you want to have more advanced stretchy leg you can ask a question specific to that or try the rigify addon, it will do all the work for you.

You'll probably need to set the parent of the bones, and make sure the Connected option is checked in the bone properties panel.


python -- apply/run script for every array instance individually I have the following blender scene setup:

(notice the python script, will be mentioned soon in question)

As you can see, there are many boards being duplicated to form a wall.

The thing is: in real life, the middle support board is usually different for each board, like this:

So basically, I want to randomly set the Z position within the range of the top beam and bottom beam (of the boards in my scene) so that the middle support-beam is randomly positioned, reapplied for each array instance. So I went ahead and made a python script that randomly sets the beam'ss Z position from the top beam to bottom beam, and currently whenever I hit "Run Script", it re-randomly sets the position of the beam, exactly how I wanted.

The problem:
As you can see, all of the array instances are the same, but I want it to randomly move the beam (a.k.a., somehow re-apply the script) for every array instance, but I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

Anyone?

Distribute copies.
Further to @moonboots answer can copy and distribute the object. Each copy shares the one mesh.
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
from random import uniform

def array(context, count, rel_offset=Vector(), rnd_var_range=(0, 0), rnd_var_dir=Vector()):
    scene = context.scene
    for ob in context.selected_objects:
        mw = ob.matrix_world
        R = mw.to_quaternion().to_matrix()
        offset =  R * rel_offset.dot(ob.dimensions) * rel_offset.normalized()
        copies = count - 1

        for i in range(copies):
            copy = ob.copy()
            t = copy.matrix_world.translation
            t  += (i + 1) * offset
            copy.delta_location = uniform(*rnd_var_range) * rnd_var_dir
            copy.select = True
            scene.objects.link(copy)

# test call

context = bpy.context

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((1.1 , 0, 0)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((0, 0, 1.1)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

Result of running script with Suzanne selected. The variation of both arrays in test call are in local Y direction.
The same script updated to Blender 2.8 API
import bpy
from mathutils import Vector
from random import uniform

def array(context, count, rel_offset=Vector(), rnd_var_range=(0, 0), rnd_var_dir=Vector()):
    scene = context.scene
    for ob in context.selected_objects:
        mw = ob.matrix_world
        R = mw.to_quaternion().to_matrix()
        offset =  R @ (rel_offset.dot(ob.dimensions) * rel_offset.normalized())
        copies = count - 1

        for i in range(copies):
            copy = ob.copy()
            t = copy.matrix_world.translation
            t  += (i + 1) * offset
            copy.delta_location = uniform(*rnd_var_range) * rnd_var_dir
            context.collection.objects.link(copy)
            copy.select_set(state=True)
            context.view_layer.objects.active = copy

# test call

context = bpy.context

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((1.1 , 0, 0)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

array(context,
    count = 5,
    rel_offset = Vector((0, 0, 1.1)),
    rnd_var_dir = Vector((0, 1, 0)),
    rnd_var_range = (-1, 1))

Main changes are:

@ operator is now used for matrix/vector component-wise multiplication
selection of an object in context is now done with copy.select_set(state=True)
The link must now be done via collections and not view_layer

I am not sure if you can change the data for individual instance of the array modifier, since, I guess, the instances share the same data block.

One option is to apply the modifier, so as to combine the data of all objects into the parent object. This will complicate the calculations, though. The other option would be creating separate object for each instance. The most obvious way to do this is to copy the mesh data mesh = bpy.data.objects[x].data.copy() and use it to create a new objectobj = bpy.data.objects.new('new_obj', mesh) followed by bpy.context.scene.objects.link(obj). The objects location can be changed after it's linked into the scene.


Why can't I use put Render Layers in a node group? (Compositor) When I try to create a node group that includes the Render Layers node, I get an error saying it can't create a group with that node. Is there a reason why or some way around it? I don't want to have to plug the input into every single copy of my node group.

Probably because that is a group in its own. A render group. And so Blender just will not let you do that.


How to render Hair in Renderman I am new to Renderman and I can't figure out how to render hair. I tried finding info but I can only find how to do it in Maya which doesn't have the same workflow. I found this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bfbu6IH1XRQ&t=314s but it is in spanish. I tried following along and it seems like I did everything right, but still no luck.

Ok I guess something was going on with "IT". After restarting it works the same as Cycles.

Just a glitch.


Fake user in UV Editor. What is it for? I wonder what is the Fake User in UV Editor for. Since I know you can't restore the render result after closing Blender (without saving). Any ideas?

Why is it there?

It's basically because of Object Oriented Programming. In OOP, for matter of coding efficiency, you tend to create sub-classes of classes to re-use some or all of their properties. Since Image Textures and the Render Result slot derive from the same parent class, they inherit all those properties. The fake user property is already part of the parent, so there is actually no way for the child class NOT to have it.

Keep in mind that you're not setting a fake user on the render result itself, but on the datablock displaying it. Think of it as a container. This container inherits from ID, which holds the use_fake_user property.

How could it make sense?

Well, there is a case where you can make use of it. The Render Result slot isn't just the pixels, it's a whole datablock with properties attatched. One of those properties is a Render Slot name per slot. If you set the fake user, names you give to render slots will be preserved upon file save. In the example below, I created a render slot named Demo. When saving and reloading, the named slot is kept. If you don't set a fake user, you lose that data.

I GUESS (!) you can add a Fake User to the Render Result because Blender itself treats the render output like a temporary texture (that will be gone after closing, yes); and because it is treatened like a texture, you can add a Fake User to it.

For any "real" texture, the Fake User prevents the texture to get lost if you don´t use the texture in any way (material/node/UV layout etc.) but still want it in the file.


Cloth simulation doesn't work for particular object I'm trying to follow this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGB-EePxWI
But when I apply the cloth modifier and playback, the object doesn't drop as it generally would
I'm pressing playback in object mode; The simulation works correctly for a new object, but not the one I edited
No pinning. I'm trying to simulate a free-fall
Blender v2.82a

I had the same problem. Took me over half an hour to figure out.
The problem is caused by duplicated vertices.
To fix it switch to edit mode.
Press Alt + H to make sure there is nothing hidden. Then select all vertices A and then press M to merge them by distance.
Have a look at the status bar: 148 vertices removed. Switch back to object mode. Play the simulation. It works again.

Pressing playback is not a good way to review the cloth simulation. You need to let the computer calculate the equations and mathematical things for the cloth so that you can see them correctly. You do this for the first time only and then you will be able to playback because the baking process results can be saved on your hard drive.
How to bake cloth simulation:

Select your cloth in object mode.
Go to the physics settings (By clicking on the physics tab).
Expand the "Cache" section.
Set the frames where you need to start and end your simulation.
(Optional) uncheck "Use Library Path" and check "External" to save it in a specific or known location on your hard drive.
Click on Bake button and let your computer take its time.

Further work:
What if you don't like to edit your cloth after you baked it? You can simply click on "Free bake" then, you can edit your mesh (cloth) and then rebake using the previous steps.


Subdivision respecting adjacent edges I have this set of meshes that i use to generate my levels with.
Now, I have used a subdivision script in runtime with unity, but that is quite heavy.
I was thinking about doing the subdivision in Blender, but if I do it per mesh, the final mesh will end up looking full of holes.
Is there anyway I can subdivide the meshes here, keeping the corners of the mesh where they are?

You can mark edge creases to control the subdivision's interpolation: select an edge, press SHIFT + E, then drag your mouse and left-click to confirm.

Subdividing will always cause this issue. For a smooth look, you can right-click on the mesh and then select shade smooth. If you want a few areas to be smooth or rounded, you can go to edit mode and select the edge you want to smooth, then use the bevel option, the option below:

pull the yellow line on it, and keep pulling to the extent you want to smooth. Then go to the bottom left, of the viewport. You will see an option that says bevel and a triangle near it. Click on the triangle and set segments and set it to 10, in this section :

Then, you will get a rounded edge. This is better than subdividing it. Subdividing always makes stuff with sharp points look worse and unity would never accept a heavily subdivided model.
Hope my answer helps.


Prevent object from casting shadow in Eevee How do?
One answer says to set Shadow Mode to none in the settings of the material, but this doesn't work in this case for some reason. The light is spot.

FOR EEVEE:

make a material for the object and go to material properties > setting > shadow mode > none

Edit: Use contact shadows for small distances. if you want good shadows make the clips start of the light smaller and shadow resolution higher!
contact shadows are only for very small details that resolution of shadow map can't cover.

Try adding emmesion to the yellow wall behind the object. The shadow won't appear on the wall, but the wall will glow. Just a warning if you don't want that.


Blender Viewport suddenly blank The viewport of my Blender project recently went completely blank except the cursor. I rendered once and only the HDR is seen. I've checked all the visibility options and everything seems okay.

Here is a screenshot:

Here is a link to the project file:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f78fxMpFFBaggM_THZPPZF_1a9s1jjPu

Your issue is that you've moved your viewport really far away from your scene, out of its render distance, so you couldn't even see your objects anymore.

One quick solution is to select any object of your scene (or just press A), and use the "view selected" function available in the View menun or via Numpad .. That's it.

Try going to render then click show/hide render view. That might be what your missing :)