What do different execution contexts mean? The documentation says that I can invoke an operator with a different execution context, either invoking or executing it. What I know is that invoke will most often set the parameters from the context and execute will execute the operator with already set parameter - most of the time.

Yet, there are many more execution contexts I can pass, namely ‘INVOKE_DEFAULT’, ‘INVOKE_REGION_WIN’, ‘INVOKE_REGION_CHANNELS’, ‘INVOKE_REGION_PREVIEW’, ‘INVOKE_AREA’, ‘INVOKE_SCREEN’, ‘EXEC_DEFAULT’, ‘EXEC_REGION_WIN’, ‘EXEC_REGION_CHANNELS’, ‘EXEC_REGION_PREVIEW’, ‘EXEC_AREA’, ‘EXEC_SCREEN’.

I think that the prefix INVOKE/EXEC decides if the the operator will be invoked or executed respectively. But what is the meaning of the second part of the execution context?

I always use DEFAULT in my scripts, but I wondered, what the effect of using the others were?

Probably you know more than me, but i think it is related to the words itself or the concepts behind it.
Area, Screen and Region are pointing to where the oops are meant to be executed/invoked i think. "But dont know whats the diference between exec and invoke." now i do. thanks, (i dont use many scripted oops)
You know, Area, Screen and Region are the names blender gives internally to the the user interface diferent componets. see: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/interface/window_system/screens.html

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/interface/window_system/areas.html

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/interface/window_system/regions.html

hope useful.


How do I get the position of an object from a previous frame? Not the current frame empty's are ignored when rendering in eevee (but not in sound engine)

I made a some drivers with empties to determine the speed and acceleration of the object, but when rendering, the behavior of the objects on the desired object indicates that the dummies are standing still.
https://youtu.be/1HdPOXR1qCs
But sound engine understand that empties is moving and work's right.
on the sides of the machine there is a display of speed (rear) and slip (front)
The colors of the speed display should match the volume of the acceleration sound

Upd
ok, I realized that in rendering mode the dummy does not execute the driver as I want because the position of the dummy is taken every time from a static scene and the formula(EmptyposX*0.5 + targetX)/1.5 does not work as in the viewport where the position of the empty is taken from the past of its position

How to make it so that when rendering the position of the dummy is taken from its past position?

Image Above.  Graph View shows an FCurve and its attributes.  Location {X,Y,Z} components.  Each of {X,Y,Z} has a different F-Curve. The Python Console View shows querying the active object for an fcurve by name.  Your object name will appear differently.  Next the curve is evaluated at different points.  Note that {0:X, 1:Y, 2:Z} shows the [conceptual] map between the array index and the concept of axis in the [find] function.  This number is labelled RNA axis in the image above.  Please Click on image to see a larger version for improved readability.

Thus you can

Find the FCurve by name and axis index
Evaluate the FCurve value at a chosen frame.
Use the notion of current frame as an integer value in Python
Calculate Vector V1 at frame (X) and V2 at frame (X+N). X and N may be integers.
Calculate velocity vector (V2-V1)/N

Some quick snippets to help you search further at BSE.  Sorry I can not find a simple example in my personal documents.

object_bq = bpy.data.objects[name]
test = object_bq.animation_data.action if (None != object_bq.animation_data and (None != object_bq.animation_data.action)) else None;
if (test):
 fc =       object_bq.animation_data.action.fcurves.find("Some Curve Name Visible in the FCurves Editor Panel");
fc.evaluate(framenumber)

The above old pseudo code is not claimed to be Pythonic or immediately usable.  You  will need to improve the code.  The code above is intended to establish that the FCurve exist for the provided textual name.


Change orientation of object with respect to x-y rectilinear plane If an object imported from an stl file is oriented along the the x-y coordinate plane how can I rotate it so that it is vertical?

You can rotate it.

then  apply rotation.

here is a tutorial on the basics of navigation


Model from Sketchup to Blender A collegue of mine has created a model with SketchUp and I want to import it into blender now. He created several formats from the model(*.3ds, *.dae, *.obj) which I can import. However, I always do not seem to get the correct dimensions for the objects after the import. Also, depending on which format I choose to import, the dimensions are different.

So, there are two options now. Either, the dimensions get broken when he does his export. Or Blender fails to import correctly.

How can I rule out the second option? How do I import respecting the dimensions of the object from either *.3ds, *.dae or *.obj?

The current situation when importing from *.ds looks like this:
One of the models should have dimensions of about 2,10m length and 1,10m width. In Blender's object mode:

In edit mode with edge length enabled:

Why are the dimensions so different? Even the ratio of the sides is off in object mode.

edit: When I import from *.dae the dimensions in edit mode are correct but not the ones shown in object mode. What is the difference between the two in the first place?

I just did an experiment:

Created a 2 meter cube in Sketchup Make 2017.

Exported as a.dae file.

Imported to Blender.

After Applying the scale in Object mode the dimensions were correct.

I have no idea why the imported cube was scaled to 0.025 but maybe something similar is happening with your imports.

If the scale is not 1.0 in the X, Y and or Z then try applying Scale.

In Object mode: with object selected, Ctrl + A  to open Apply menu.

If you do some maths on the edge lengths of 78.74 shown in edit mode of the "2x2x2m cube" (before applying Scale) (see second image in previous post) you will notice:

78.74 / 2 = 39.37   (Divide by 2 to find length for 1 meter)

39.37 x 0.025 = 0.98125    ( multiplied by 0.025 because that is the scale showing in Object mode.  See the first image in my previous post. This is very close to 1 meter.

The Scale of 0.025 reminded me of the number you get when converting inches to metric. 1 inch = 0.0254 meters.

I know almost nothing about collada files but do know you can open them in a text editor and have a look inside.

This is what the first few lines of the 2 meter cube exported from Sketchup look like.

And this is the first few lines of the collada.dae file of a 2 meter cube created and exported from Blender as a Collada.dae file:

Perhaps you need to find some setting in the Sketchup exporter setup to correct this?

Or maybe you could try editing the unit line in the Collada file so that it reads the same as the the Collada file exported from Blender.

No I am not a sketchup user, I just had it on my computer because a a while ago i wanted to see how it works.

I noticed that in the Blender Collada Import menu there is an Inport Units option.

.obj files that I've seen, import as centimeters.  So 100 = 1 Blender unit.
You may need to scale by 10 or 100 to bring it into a viewable size.


How to unlink / remove an object from a scene? There is an object shared between Blender scenes. So the same object appears more than one scenes (see below).
Is there a way to unlink the object from a specific scene? In my case I would like to remove the Cube.001 from Scene.001.

There is Make Links - Object To Scene command and we can use it to add objects to another scene (see below). So I search for kind of an opposite action.

While the active scene is Scene.001 select Cube.001 and press X. You can also right-click   on the object in the outliner and choose Delete.

Deleting an object only applies to the current scene, any other "copies" in other scenes will still remain there.

You can link the object back to Scene.001 by selecting it in Scene and pressing ⎈ CtrlL->Objects to Scene->Scene.001

You can also remove the object using python, you can type the following into blender's python console or paste it into blender's text editor and click run script. Changing unlink to link will let you replace the object back into Scene.001.

bpy.data.scenes['Scene.001'].objects.unlink(bpy.data.objects['Cube.001'])

bpy.data.objects.remove(bpy.context.scene.objects[id], do_unlink = True)


Using alt+r in blender 2.8 I am trying to make spokes for a wheel and when I used 2.79 I used alt+r to automatically duplicate and rotate the mesh to make the amount I wanted but this shortcut doesn't work in 2.8. Does anyone know how to do the same thing?

The Spin tool still exists in Blender 2.8, you can find it in the toolbar. It does not have a shortcut in the default keymap. You would have to add it yourself or use the 2.7x keymap.

The hotkey in 2.8 is now Shift + r or use the Edit > Repeat Last menu entry.


Why does rigid body physics not work in objects created by an object instancer? (Animation nodes) Simple setup:

When I've played an animation, an instanced cube has stayed put:

First, you are setting their locations explicitly using the Transforms Output node, so the simulation obviously won't take effect. Second, objects need to be linked to the RigidBodyWorld collection, so you can use the following expression:

[collection.objects.link(obj) for obj in objects if obj.name not in collection.objects]

So, your node tree should be as follows:


How can I make a camera the active one? I have multiple cameras in a scene. What I want to do is to change which one is active. This way I can view the scene from different angles. How would I do this?

There are a few ways to set the active camera.

Key Binding: select it and press Ctrl+ Numpad 0.

From the menu:3D Viewport Header -> View -> Cameras -> Set active object as camera.

Scene property:
Scene tab in the Properties Editor and pick a camera object from the list:

Outliner (V2.90+):

You can click the green camera icon beside the camera's name in the outliner to toggle it as active for the scene.

Animation:
To change the active camera during an animation you can use Markers.

Add a marker where you want to change the active camera (M in the Timeline, or Timeline header > Add marker will add a marker to the current frame):

Select the object which you want to set as the new active camera and the marker which you want to bind it to, then press CtrlB in the Timeline (or Timeline header > View > Bind camera to markers):

Note that markers behave like keyframes, so you will need at least two markers with cameras bound to them to have any camera switching.
To illustrate this, here is an example with Camera.001 bound to the marker on frame 1, and Camera bound to the marker on frame 5:

Note: If setting the active camera is only effecting a single view, you may have Scene-lock disabled. In the 3D View header (Right hand side of layers buttons), there is a lock icon. This should normally be pushed in, unless you explicitly want to set a camera & layers only to a single view.

run the following script:

import bpy
import os

scene = bpy.context.scene

currentcam = bpy.context.scene.camera

setcam = False

for ob in scene.objects:
    if ob.type == 'CAMERA':
        if ob == currentcam:
            setcam = True
        elif setcam:
            bpy.context.scene.camera = ob
            break

if currentcam == bpy.context.scene.camera:
    for ob in scene.objects:
        if ob.type == 'CAMERA':
            bpy.context.scene.camera = ob
            break


Location of object in OSL I'm running Blender 2.78

Using OSL, I am trying to find the location of an object. In the Node editor, I am in Shader Nodes for World. The object I'm trying to find is a UV sphere named 'MySun' and has an emitter material using cycles.

In the OSL script, I'm trying to get the location of MySun like this:

vector Sv;
getattribute("MySun","object:location", Sv);

When I run it, I get an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION error and Blender crashes. I've searched all over for the correct way to do this and have found people saying it couldn't be done, or that you can only get the location of the current object. What's the current object when you're working on "World"?

These were posts from several years ago, so I'm hoping that if there was a bug it's fixed by now, because the documentation certainly seems like getattribute is made to get the attributes of any object you name.

Is there another way I'm supposed to reference an object?

Thanks!

This functionality still not supported. And will not in the near future - see developers answer here https://developer.blender.org/T52154

But you can "Bake" scene objects into OSL script and query object parameters in material nodes later. There is even addon for that:
https://github.com/IPv6/kristallum/blob/master/blender/addons/sceneFeatBaker_v01.py

It creates text block with OSL shader (or replace existing one), that can find object location, dimensions, orientation, etc during render by name and/or name prefix. For direct use in material nodes

Seems it still not possible...
Filled bug report, hope this will be fixed at last

https://developer.blender.org/T52027


What is the technical difference between a diffuse shader and a rough glossy shader? If I understand correctly, the roughness value on the glossy shader controls the amount of random scattering of rays that reflect of the surface of the object, with 0 being no scattering and 1 being totally random scattering.

This would make a glossy shader with a roughness of 1 equivalent to a diffuse shader, which is not the case:

What is different about the glossy shader that causes the darkening?

A glossy shader at "1" roughness is still far more "smooth" at the microscopic level than a true diffuse shader. This intrinsic microscopic hardness or smoothness stops it from having much, if any diffusion reflectance, and it has to rely on it's specular reflectance, which transmits reflections from nearby direct and indirect light sources.

Diffuse materials are usual highly porous or permeable at the microscopic scale, so they trap and scatter any light that hits them at unpredictable angles, and scatter it almost equally in all directions. Likewise, a lot of their "albedo color" comes from underneath the shallow surface. Metal, some liquids and some amorphous solids have no "diffusion" ability due to the hardness and solid nature of their microscopic surfaces, so all the light that hits them immediately bounces off in a predictable, angualar direction.

The technical explanation is that the glossy shader is still reflecting light at (mostly) coherent and predictable angles in comparison to the diffuse, which is spraying light every which way from sunday.

As a rule of thumb, you use "pure" glossy shaders for metals, some liquids and some amorphous solids (like varnish)

Diffuse is for really rough and microscopically porous things like plaster, rock, concrete, etc

The Cycles Glossy shader allows reflection, while the Diffuse does not have reflection. Even when you set the glossy's roughness to a high value, it is still reflecting somewhat. One thing that might help your investigation is if you increased the samples on your image. :)


Change pivot or local origin of an object How can I change the local origin of an object, without changing the object location in the world space.

This is the object located at position (0,0,0) in the world space

This is the same object located at position (0,1,0) in the world space, but with its local origin offset so that the object is in the same place

Is there a way to do this in a single step?

One way to do this is by entering Edit mode and placing the 3D cursor where you want the new origin. (When doing this, you can be very precise by selecting vertices, edges or faces and using them as guides. If you pick several points and snap the cursor to them using Shift+S → Cursor to Selected, Blender will use the average of the selected points to determine the new location of the cursor).

You then go back to Object mode and use Ctrl+Alt+Shift + C → Origin to 3D Cursor to update or change the object origin to the location of the 3D cursor.
For 2.9+ you need to go to Object Menu, and select Set Origin > Origin to 3D Cursor.

In Object Mode, first select the Object you want to change the Origin.
Then click Manipulate Center points (or Alt ,) It is the 3rd button on the right from the Object mode in the 3D header.
Switch to Edit Mode, if your Object is not selected, press A or A twice to select everything.
Move the selected object with the 3D manipulator. It works now relative to the center point.
When you are done, go back to Object Mode and uncheck Manipulate Center points (or Alt ,).


animating a transforming elephant's trunk I have a rather simple 2D model of an elephant. However I want the trunk to behave in very specific way. As it honks, I want the trunk to bend upwards, but then in the second half of the animation kind of transform into a "pipe-structure" as the the very tip evolves into a horn (as seen in the picture I'm attaching). Can this be done by a relative newbie such as myself?

The trunk is a curve (path), shaped as a comical elephant's trunk and held skyward so it's upper end is also pointed forward.

The curve is "bevelled" with a curve-circle to make a cylinder curved upwards and pointing forward.

The resulting cylinder is converted to mesh.  It's side edges only are subdivided 63 times so we have plenty of vertices for it's curvature to be animated smoothly.

The "Cast" modifier is used on this in order to expand and 'trumpet' the end.  This is achieved by placing the "cast object" near the upper end and keyframing it's location so it oscillates. (approaches and leaves the cylinder's end rapidly)

The cast modifier's effect is to expand and retract the end much like a flexible trumpet.

The Empty's oscillitions are just 2 frames apart.  i.e. approach for two 2 frames, recede for 2 and so on for as long as required.

-==================-

Edit - 11/Dec 2018

For 2D trunk shaping -

Instead of using a circle for the bevel object, use instead, a plane (converted to a curve with ALT-C)

This will give us a square trunk.

Once squared, the bevel plane can have it's two lower control points deleted so the trunk ends up as a flat 2D curved object.

We keep the trunk as a curve object so it's control points when moved about with either shapekeys or "hooks", won't lose the biological curvature as it's reshaped.  Bones and rigging can also do this.

That looks very challenging. I think it would be too laborious to rig that trunk. Too difficult too. Think of stretching and curling it round.

If this were my project, I would have tried Inkscape and exported finished file to image sequence which can be imported into Blender.

To work fast with the LEAST possible nodes (different meaning in Inkscape) inside the outlines, I would first ditch the pencil and use instead the bezier or b-spline. My way, I always draw cartoony figures with exclusively a bezier and bspline. Pencil only creates numerous nodes and I don't want that when I re-edit lines in duplicate layers.
That trunk can be easily and quickly drawn with a bezier. If you dublicate layers for each subsequent drawing, you re-edit lines, thus saving you labour by half when you do inbetweening.

Inkscape has one hidden gem that is oftentimes overlooked and forgotten, namely the interpolation tool that all inbetweeners love. With that labour-saving tool, you can create any number of morphed drawings between any two shapes. For best results, clone one key shape of trunk and re-edit lines in the clones and then use the interpolation tool on keys. Remember, clones share originals' identical node IDs inside paths. So, this makes the interpolaton between the originals and re-edited clones so much easier. After that, separate drawings for new layers. After that, export files to png.


Issue with Volume Absorption inside Glass first time posting here and very new to blender, Im following BlenderGuru's latest tutorial and I'm having some issues with volume absorption, this is of course not a job, I don't have a deadline, so I wanna know what is wrong with it and how to fix it not just do it in a different way.

I rendered each picture at 128 samples using denoiser with cycles in blender 2.80, I'm not sure the exact value I applied to the volume as I changed it a lot to check different results and they were all basically the same, with that foggy look, however it should be at around 700 for this one.

One thing I noticed is that the material looks a bit different in the material preview than in the last picture here where it looks opaque on the sides while in the preview it looked glossy

In the first one the water is the same material as the cup, so you see there shouldn't be an issue with the geometry

Edit: Just found a way to add the blend file so is easier for you to check http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52500

I was facing the same issue when doing the Blender guru tutorial. I tried searching in a lot of threads for multiple hours but did not find a solution that worked. Then, I found an alternative method from a blender StackExchange thread that worked quite well for me. It talks about tweaking the IOR values of the faces of the coffee which face the glass.  The link for the thread is given below -
Liquid IOR
Image before tweaking the IOR value-

After tweaking the IOR value of the coffee faces by following the solution in the link and setting it to 0.8-

IOR set to 0.91 based on the formulae used in the link-

You can play around with values further to get the desired look.

I have an answer I noticed just now, (I'm also learning from Blender Guru) I just deleted the glass material (the glass of the cup stayed) and the liquid was grey-blueish color, and I added the transmission and it was un-transparent! (it was black!)


rotation in only a single axis i have a plane and it is rotated in the x axis and i want to rotate the object in y axis 90 while keeping the x axis rotation as previous but when ever i am rotating the plane in the y axis it is also changing the x axis rotation and if i apply the transforms then the animation is not working correctly

so to be clear what are you trying to make?

first when u create a plane

this is x rotate 53 degree

rotate 90 degree

I just changed xyz euler coordinate system with quaternion and used local transforms.


Archimesh is not displayed in the Tool shelf I've enabled Archimesh and just started using it. The problem is I can't find it among the tools in the Tool shelf. How can it be fixed?

In toolshelf -> create -> Archimesh -> Room tools

I had the same problem doing that tutorial. I found that panel under Create -> Archimesh.

Cheers :)


How do I make a surface look like a polished one in Blender? I am making some spheres like these . Hence I need a surface similar to this.

This polished look can be achieved with a black diffuse shader and a white glossy shader (roughness = 0), letting a fresnel node set the mix between them using a mix shader.

Use Cycles nodes, like Glass shader, and give high IOR, like 50, for the reflections


Putting image on model in cycles I wanted to put an image from a company onto my 3D model. How would I do this with blender cycles? I have the image file and I want to put it on the torso of my character (which is about 4 faces put together) I would really appreciate any help!

Add a new material and go to compositing then add image texture into the diffuse bsdf


merge 2 objects in sculpt mode So I've been studying the anatomy for a couple of days and I made de legs separately from the upper body. I now want to merge those 2 but I don't know exactly how I've tried a Boolean tool but it's not really working. Can you guys help me pls.

Thanks in advance !

To merge the legs with the torso, select the two objects (the legs and the torso) in either order, and press CTRL-J key. The object you select first gets merged into the object you select last, so if the first object you select is the legs, and the second is the torso, the surviving object is the torso. If the first object you select is the torso, then the surviving object is the leg object.

But why do you want to merge the legs with the body? In blender, for one element of a character (like a leg or an arm) to articulate relative to another element (like a torso) the elements need to be separate objects. After merging (or "joining") the legs to the body, moving the legs relative to the body (or the body relative to the legs) becomes impossible with ordinary modeling and animation techniques. So, if you're modeling a non-movable statue, go ahead and join the objects. If the character is to be animated, leave them separate. In fact, if the character is to be animated, you probably want to separate the legs into four objects, one object for each of the lower legs and and one for each of the upper. Similarly, when you get there, if the feet and hand are to be able to articulate, each foot and hand will need to consist of multiple objects, depending upon how detailed you want the animation to be.

To preserve the ability to animate the character, you would use a different mechanism in Blender: you'd parent one object, for example an upper leg, to another object, the torso, and in turn, parent the lower leg to the upper. There are several tutorials available on Youtube easily located by using your favorite search engine with the parameters "Blender tutorial parent objects".


Having trouble adding paths I'm creating my first blender project and I'm trying to have the animated character follow a path. When I add the path in, there are no control points to make the path longer or  curved. I've googled it and haven't found any answers. Ideas? Thanks

when in edit mode ( tab ) , press c this gives you a control circle that size you can control with mouse wheel, then press left mouse button on top of a verticle in the end of the path, then press g and ( grap ) and move the mouse to drag the path .

The answer is to press TAB button while the path is selected, in order to enter Edit Mode, when done editing, pressing TAB again will bring the path back to Object Mode.Hope this helps someone else


How to enable CUDA rendering without running as root? I am using Linux Mint 17, and I am very happy that I was finally able to get my GPU to render on it. My problem was that I needed to properly run Blender as root.  However, when rebooting my computer, I need to run Blender in root again to make the GPU rendering work.  This would be fine, except for the fact that everything written to the hard drive by Blender is owned by root, and cannot be edited unless running everything in root.

I've heard that installing nvidia modprobe will allow programs that use CUDA processing without running the program as root.  I have tried to install this in a number of ways, and it doesn't appear to be working.

Does anybody have any suggestions?  (It's possible that I'm not properly installing modprobe, but I've tried both suggestions on this answer: CUDA rendering on Linux Mint or Ubuntu variants)

Unfortunately I don't have nvidia/cuda on my system, but I happened to notice information that most likely will solve your problem.
See this link first about information how to install nvidia drivers and enable cuda just to check that you're setup is fine.
And then have a look this forum post where
Nusaman is using blender with out root (forum post #12).

To recap:

make sure that you have latest drivers installed. (Nusaman used: cuda-5.5.22-1 and nvidia-334.21-2, but he's using archlinux)
Start blender or some other cuda program (like cudaminer) as root.
Then close that program (could be that firts render something with blender+cude as root)
Start blender as normal user

What I gathered from multiple sources is that nvidia cuda drivers need to be loaded and for some reason initialison of cuda needs root, but will work with normal user after that.

Please note that you might need extra dkms and dev packages also, to get this working.

After having this problem for a second time (when installing ubuntu on my new hard drive) I have found the solution, you must install the package nvidia-modprobe which will detect your nvidia CUDA device and make it available for blender.

Source: Enabling GPU rendering for Cycles?

Also, where are you getting the nvidia drivers from if you install the ones from a ppa it won't work (at least for me) if you go to additional drivers, does the driver you're useing say "proprietary tested"?


How do I get object names to appear in the render? In my scene I have multiple objects (30+). In the viewport I have the handy control of selecting (in the Properties Editor) Object> Display> Name and copying to selected.

This is beautiful for diagrams etc. as wherever my view is at whatever distance these labels have been placed instantly, always face me and are always the same size.

How can you get these to display in a rendered view?

Is the ONLY option to manually create a label for each object, get them to track to your camera (Probably have to track to an empty miles behind your camera rotation otherwise they offset if your camera isn't facing exactly front on to an object) and add some sort of scaling property to change depending on how far away you are?

For the labels to be visible in the render they must be created as objects within the scene. The following script will process each object in turn and automatically create a Text object set to the object's name and position the Text in front of the camera so that it is in line with the object (1.0 blender unit infront of the camera) :

# Script to automatically generate labels for all objects in the scene and position them in the camera view
# Generated labels are prefixed with '_generated.' and replaced each time the script is run.
# Note that any objects with name that happens to start with '_generated.' will be automatically deleted!
#
# This script will automatically create a material named '_generated.Label' and assign it to all generated labels.
# The generated material can be modified to affect the appearance of the labels.

import bpy
from bpy_extras.object_utils import world_to_camera_view

scn = bpy.context.scene
cam = scn.camera

# Pickup the label material if it exists
mat = bpy.data.materials.get("_generated.Label")

if mat is None:
    # Material doesn't exist, create it
    mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="_generated.Label")

# Get each object in turn
for obj in scn.objects:
    if obj.name.startswith('_generated.'):
        # Delete the old label
        scn.objects.unlink(obj)
        bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)
    else:
        # Create a new label
        bpy.ops.object.text_add()
        tobj = bpy.context.object

        # Set the name of the label to include the prefix so we can identify them and set the text
        tobj.name = '_generated.'+obj.name
        tobj.data.body = obj.name

        # Position the label between the camera and the object
        diffloc = obj.location - cam.location
        dist = (diffloc[0]**2 + diffloc[1]**2 + diffloc[2]**2)**0.5
        if dist == 0:
            tobj.location = cam.location
        else:
            tobj.location = cam.location + (diffloc / dist * 1.0)  #1.0 blender unit from the camera

        # Set the rotation the same as the camera and scale it appropriate to the distance
        tobj.rotation_euler = cam.rotation_euler
        tobj.scale = (0.03,0.03,0.03)

        # Assign material to object
        if tobj.data.materials:
            # assign to 1st material slot
            tobj.data.materials[0] = mat
        else:
            # no slots
            tobj.data.materials.append(mat)

Open a Text Editor window and click 'New' and name it 'objectnames.py'. Paste the above text into the window and click Run Script to run it.

The script examines each object in turn and calculates a position in line with the object where a label needs to be positioned for it to overlay the object. A new Text object is created at that location, orientated to face the camera, and assigned a material.

Once the script is run, switching to Camera view should show the labels positioned over each object in the scene. Changing the generated material '_generated.Label' will affect the appearance of all labels in the render.

The line :

tobj.location = cam.location + (diffloc / dist * 1.0)

affects the location of the labels - with the '1.0' indicating how far from the camera the labels should be positioned - amend it and re-run the script to position them closer or further from the camera.

Similarly, the line setting 'tobj.scale = (....)' sets the scale of the labels - again, amend that line to change the scale if desired (larger values give larger labels).

Amend the '_generated.Label' material to affect how the labels are rendered. For example, to give them an emission colour without the emission affecting the rest of the scene you may have something like the following :

This can produce the following result :

For animated scenes you will need to run the script for each frame of the animation to reposition the labels. This can be achieved via a "handler" which can be registered to execute each time the frame changes. This can be achieved with the following code :

# Script to automatically generate labels for all objects in the scene and position them in the camera view
# Generated labels are prefixed with '_generated.' and replaced each time the script is run.
# Note that any objects with name that happens to start with '_generated.' will be automatically deleted!
#
# This script will automatically create a material named '_generated.Label' and assign it to all generated labels.
# The generated material can be modified to affect the appearance of the labels.
#
# Scene Custom Property '_generated_label_scale' can be set to a numeric to set the scale of the labels.
# Create an object group named 'Labels' and place any objects within it to only render labels for those specific objects.

import bpy

def handler_object_labels(scn):

    cam = scn.camera

    labelscale = scn["_generated_label_scale"]

    # Pickup the label material if it exists
    mat = bpy.data.materials.get("_generated.Label")

    if mat is None:
        # Material doesn't exist, create it
        mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="_generated.Label")

    # Get each object in turn
    for obj in scn.objects:
        if obj.name.startswith('_generated.'):
            # Delete the old label
            curve = obj.data
            scn.objects.unlink(obj)
            bpy.data.objects.remove(obj)
            bpy.data.curves.remove(curve)
        else:
            # Check if group 'Labels' exists and if object within that group
            if bpy.data.groups.get("Labels") != None:
                if (bpy.data.groups["Labels"].objects.get(obj.name) == None):
                    continue

            # Create a new label
            curve = bpy.data.curves.new(type="FONT",name="_generated."+obj.name)
            tobj = bpy.data.objects.new("_generated."+obj.name,curve)
            bpy.context.scene.objects.link(tobj)

            # Set the name of the label to include the prefix so we can identify them and set the text
            tobj.name = '_generated.'+obj.name
            tobj.data.body = obj.name

            camloc = cam.matrix_world.to_translation()

            # Position the label between the camera and the object
            diffloc = obj.location - camloc
            dist = (diffloc[0]**2 + diffloc[1]**2 + diffloc[2]**2)**0.5
            if dist == 0:
                tobj.location = camloc
            else:
                tobj.location = camloc + (diffloc / dist * 1.0)  #1.0 blender unit from the camera

            # Set the rotation the same as the camera and scale it appropriate to the distance
            tobj.rotation_euler = cam.matrix_world.to_euler()
            tobj.scale = (labelscale, labelscale, labelscale)

            # Assign material to object
            if tobj.data.materials:
                # assign to 1st material slot
                tobj.data.materials[0] = mat
            else:
                # no slots
                tobj.data.materials.append(mat)

    bpy.context.scene.update()

if not '_generated_label_scale' in bpy.context.scene.keys():
    bpy.context.scene["_generated_label_scale"] = 0.06

if handler_object_labels in bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post:
    bpy.app.handlers.remove(handler_object_labels)
bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append(handler_object_labels)

Note that this script uses a Scene Custom Property (_generated_label_scale) to control the scale of the labels (defaults to 0.06). By default, labels will be created for all objects in the scene. However, if a group named 'Labels' is found then only those objects within the group are given labels (so select all the objects you want to have labels, select Object/Group/Create New Group from the menu, then on the Objects propert panel rename the group to 'Labels').

Note that the labels are only refreshed on change of frame - so if you move objects or the camera you'll need to swap frame before the labels re-arrange.

This can produce the following result :

Blend file included

As far as I was able to test the answer is yes Sean.

Look at my screenshots below (Blender v2.77, default scene and cube)

Look at Outliner, red square: It only shows the Cubes mesh symbol underneath the Cube_Object_Name. Nothing "extra" (like the visually render-able labels you want) are being added by turning on/off the (Viewport / Display only) settings in the Object -> Properties -> Display settings.


How to ungroup a group instance I've created a group consisting of a few objects, then created a few instances of that group. I now want to "ungroup" one of the instances, de-linking all of that instance's objects from the parent group, leaving them at their current location, and creating a bunch of objects that can be edited individually.

Is this possible?
How do you do it?

Press ShiftCtrlA to Make duplicates real.

Originally from this comment


Exporting to Collada --> Loss of Transparency I created an object with glass-like appearance upon rendering using raytracing in blender, but when I export to collada, the material's transparency doesn't seem to be transferred. Is there any way I can preserve the transparency of the material when I export?

My material properties are as shown below:

If i am not wrong.. transparency is not imported into any software(May be bug in libraries).
Transparency is exported as expected but cannot be imported back.
You could verify by opening the exported file in web browser, and search for

  transparency

and see the value exported. you could also check by changing alpha value and re exporting..

Let me know if i am wrong..


Texture Painting and Uv: how to control Target image? I am working on 3 objects: eyes, face and chest armor.

I have them on different layers and each one has a separate material and UV map. I have texture painted the eyes/face and when I switch to the UV mapped chest area and try to texture paint, it automatically switches the UV map to the one I used for the face and has the face texture on the chest.

If I switch to the UV map view and try to change the texture image to the blank chest one, it doesn't actually change on the model. I've tried setting up the nodes in cycles to assign the UV / texture I want to paint to, but it still stays at the face texture on the chest.

I'm sure I am missing a step / not setting it up right. What do I need to do?
Thanks.

Here are some images to help explain better:

This is the UV map and texture I want it to use:

And this is the UV map and texture it auto applies:

sharing some pictures and the .blend file could help a lot
(since i don't have enough rep to comment your question i said it here)

anyway i show you the steps hope it helps:

first you have to set up a few different uv maps:

one for the texture and a few more for sides, back, top, etc.

you can use ALT+B to cut the mesh so you only select the vertices that are visible from that angle

like this

then align the uv with pictures you want to copy from

after that go to texture paint mode and create a texture for the face

(explained in the picture)

hope it helps

In the tools settings panel you can change the painting mode to image which is compatible with cycles.


Blender modeling: To sphere tool does not rounded the face of model I am beginner of Blender.I faced some problem as I try to modeling the tongue. I am trying to make the face become rounded but when i use sphere tool there is nothing change neither using loopTools to circle the faces (the faces will deleted)I dont know why this happened.

Can anyone tell me how to solve this?
Thank you in advanced for those who reply.

I found the solution by luck. Actually i forgot to click on the adjust edit cage to modifier.


How to created a model polycrystalline I created a model polycrystalline from a cube, I use Cell Fracture for that, so the problem I always find is that there are intersections of the faces and overhang face, this model then export in STL format, can you help me solve these problems in cell fracture..

Model polycrystalline

If you want to join the faces back together, you can either select both faces, and press F in edit mode, or you can select the vertices around the faces and press F.


UV unwrap "Correct Aspect" stop functioning in Cycle mode Basically, the issue is that I am trying to map a graphics texture to a wall. I have prepared the graphics in a none 2 by 2 Aspect ratio. When I unwrapped the wall model all was fine as I have another texture which obeys the 2 by 2 aspect ratio. In my case it was a 512 X 512 pixel texture.

After which when I brought in the rectangular texture, the UV map appears stretched. I believed the editor saw that the image was longish it decidedly stretch the UV. However now the uv is showing my texture squished as the UV has been stretch in the Y axis.

To illustrate the problem this are the images.

Now, how do I make the uv not displayed as stretched when I change the texture?

add a material with an image texture node

in cycles, the uv unwrap "correct aspect" feature has a hidden requirement

your mesh must have a material assigned
the material must have an "image texture" shader node
select your image texture, with the funny aspect ratio, in the node
now cycles can find your image's aspect ratio
uv unwrap's "correct aspect" works again

it's a bummer that there isn't a notice in place, for the "correct aspect" feature..
something like warning: "unwrap correct aspect" cannot find image texture node

also, i found that adding a "texture image node" helped when i couldn't get texture painting to work — it was ultimately the same kind of problem

I think I found a bug.

Unsatisfied with my online search on many forums regarding the matter. I have done a deep probe to the matter. But all the solutions were confusing and everyone seem to have their opinion to how that UV unwrap should work. It was clear to me the design was very strange if it's intended. It totally made no sense to how it behaved.  What I have done is when ahead and download a much older version that is reputable to work properly with the least amount of issue. Version 2.66a. Afterwhich I appended all the models from 2.78b version which I created into the older clean install. And it worked as expected when I hit "Correct Aspect" during a uv unwrap operation.

And then it suddenly did not work again. I started to wonder why the behavior... and keep importing the different saves into different version of blender and then it works sometimes but other time it doesn't.

Finally, the issue was strange as it dawn on me ... when I turn on "Cycles Render" the UV unwrap operation does not work as expected! But when I switch back to the default "blender render" it worked again!

Clearly, this behavior is not intended as the UV unwrap tool is not working the same way in the 2 different rendering mode. The issue have existed since 2.66a till 2.78b.

We should report this bug.

Latest Update

I have created a bug report here. https://developer.blender.org/T50987 If anyone has the time to do the probe on your system, please confirm so that we know it's a consistent behavior over all machines and operating system so that we can update the bug report as need be. Thanks.

Steps to reproduce this Bug.
(Do these in Default "Blender Render" Mode or "Blender Game" Mode)

First Unwrap a simple box in a standard 2 by 2 default uv editor setup.
Create a new 3 by 2 texture map file.
The uv stretches in the uv editor accordingly with the newly created rectangular uvmap.  (This is not the bug, it behaves as design)
Now reapply Unwrap with "Correct Aspect" turned on, uv is corrected and behave as expected. UV map readjust itself to it now scale to the model's aspect ratio.
Do those same 1-4 steps in "Cycle render" mode.
You will discover that uv unwrap does not react with "correct aspect" turn on or off.
It's as if "correct aspect" stops functioning in "Cycle render" mode.


What's the simplest way to wrap extruded text around a cylinder? What's the simplest way to wrap extruded text around a cylinder that has a specific radius (for example, the label on a can of baked beans)?

I've tried using the Simple Deform modifier, but that (a) doesn't allow you to choose a radius and (b) requires the text to be converted to a curve.

I'm trying to model a cylinder with radius of 30, which has a line of embossed text that runs around the curved side, facing outward.

Thanks!

Try using a Curve modifier.

Add curve circle (ShiftA> Curve Circle) and set the radius as desired in the Redo menu (at the bottom of the Tool Shelf):

Add the text object (ShiftA> Text) and type in your text (Tab> Edit mode):

Add a curve modifier to the text object in Properties > Modifiers, and set the Object to be your curve circle:

Rotate the text object 90 degrees on the X axis (RX90) and then scale by -1 again on the X (SX-1):

Increase the Extrude value in Properties > Text > Geometry to give the text some thickness:

Optionally increase the Depth and Resolution values for Bevel to round the edges a bit.

Result:

I have had to export to curves, also, and use NutsCircle instead of bezierCircle.
Using bezierCircle, the circle radius is arbitrary (it adapts itself to text instead of adapting text to circle radius).
Also, if text is not exported to curves, there is no "extrude" control.


how to i add 3d textures to my model I am trying to make a robot model. im have created the model however I need to make the body look like its a cubulation of wires. this is the texture that I want my model to be similar too

this is the model that I am making. since for me it would be to hard to turn it into wires as a modeling standpoint. since there would be too much stuff and im making this for animation/ gameplay I need a kind of 3d texture in order to make it look real and looks good.

So the eventual answere to your problem is microdisplacements
It is a concept that if you have enough uniform geometry in your mesh , you can displace you mesh in different directions to form some interesting patters or designs , to use it , you can
Add a plane and subdive to get upto 10k faces
Add a displace modifier and select add texture
In the texture tab (bellow materials tab)
open your added texture(in modifier) and change it from image to cloud(for example)
Now your mesh has alot of bumps nd valleys , this is a simple example of micro displacements
Ususally this displacement is controlled by a image texture (in this case the cloud texture is a procedurally produced image texture) where darker areas result in deeper displacement and lighter result in higher
In your case a displacement map of wires can help , wher u can find , that can be solved by u
For more detailed informstion visit https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/modeling/modifiers/deform/displace.html


How do I disable negative scaling? By default blender allows you to scale past 0 - how do I prevent this?

i.e. it's common in other 3D modelling software to resize a set of vertices against an axis to align them - however this isn't possible when negative scaling is enabled.

As far as I know this isn't possible, use the keyboard input instead.

After pressing S for scaling use the keyboard to enter 0 (zero) to perfectly align geometry and optionaly choose an axis of alignment by pressing either X Y or Z.

Select the mesh in OBJECT mode - Object Tab - Apply cntrl A - Rotation & Scale.

The error is coming up because when you're unwrapping it, it doesn't like the rotation and scale.

IDK how I just figured that out myself considering I was looking up the same issue and remembered scale can mean the rotation/scale/orgin of a mesh as well.


Is there a way to read the rotation_quaternion data of an object that is under the control of the physics engine? I'm trying to use blender to test the probabilities associated with different faces of non-cubic dice (some of you may even know why). I've already written a python script that randomly sets the objects position, rotation, initial linear velocity and initial angular velocity, then bakes the physics and jumps to a frame where the shape is likely in a settled position. The problem is that the rotation data at this frame seems to be the same as the frame right before the physics engine took over. It looks like the physics engine doesn't operate directly on object transformations. Is there a way to get this rotation information from python? Right now I can't even seem to find it in the UI.

There's a fairly simple way to get the transformations of an object under a physics simulation without baking (which also applies to other situations such as parent-child relationships, constraints, etc).

To do this you simply need to access the object's world matrix property. Here are some examples you can test through the interactive python console:

# Accessing through the location property will give the initial value before the simulation starts
>>> C.object.location
Vector((0.0, 0.0, 14.47101879119873))

# The world matrix though gives the real, simulated location
>>> C.object.matrix_world.to_translation()
Vector((0.5996798276901245, 1.5040934085845947, 1.7373782396316528))

# Same goes for rotation
>>> [ degrees(a) for a in C.object.rotation_euler ]
[0.0, 0.0, 0.0]

>>> [ degrees(a) for a in C.object.matrix_world.to_euler() ]
[176.1907675277052, -11.192468775907107, -74.38630617504491]

# To access quaternion rotation values, simply use "to_quaternion"
>>> C.object.matrix_world.to_quaternion()
Quaternion((0.17901940643787384, -0.7067779302597046, 0.6757702231407166, -0.10840550810098648))

You can also add an app handler that calculates and prints the simulated location and rotation after every frame change:

import bpy
from math import degrees

def print_simulated_loc_rot( scene ):
    C = bpy.context
    o = C.object

    simulated_loc   = o.matrix_world.to_translation()
    simulated_rot   = o.matrix_world.to_euler()
    sim_rot_degrees = [ degrees(v) for v in simulated_rot ]

    print_friendly_loc = [ round( v, 2 ) for v in simulated_loc   ]
    print_friendly_rot = [ round( v, 2 ) for v in sim_rot_degrees ]

    print( "Location: ", print_friendly_loc )
    print( "Rotation: ", print_friendly_rot )

bpy.app.handlers.frame_change_post.append( print_simulated_loc_rot )

To be able to read out transformation values from rigid body physics simulations, those simulations need to be baked to keyframes. Baking the Physics from the Physics tab is not enough. Find the Bake to Keyframes button here:

From Python you can access the function via this operator:

bpy.ops.rigidbody.bake_to_keyframes()

You will be asked to enter a framerange when using the interactive operator:

Again, in Python you can use these keyword arguments to achieve the same thing:

bpy.ops.rigidbody.bake_to_keyframes(frame_start=1, frame_end=250, step=1)

Before baking, you should set the rotation mode to either Quarternions or Euler, depending on what you need to read out later. After baking, you can see the generated keyframes in the Timeline:

Here are two comparison screenshots after the baking process, the first one is at frame 1, the other one at frame 250:


Light Rendering Problem - Cycles Was modelling a lamp yesterday,rendered it (one on the left), then saved and closed Blender. I then came back to the file today, added some objects to the scene, then rendered it again (right), somehow the lighting has gone wrong. Afaik no settings were changed, can anyone help how to revert to the one on the left?

Those look like artifacts created by the denoiser. Use more samples to render and lower values for denoiser.

Or you might want to try the Intel Open Image Denoiser instead of the built in one.

Related links:

Type of Denoiser built into Blender

How to avoid noisy renders in Cycles?

Try to uncheck Multiple Importance at light source:


Unexpected workspace change? My friend who has only recently downloaded blender has come across a workspace issue. He said he accidentally pressed a button and it has entirely changed his user interface/ Workspace. He can't open, save or do anything with the change.

This is a full window image!

press ShiftSpace or CtrlUp Arrow or CtrlDown Arrowto exit full screen, or go to view->Toggle full screen

It seems he entered Rendered Viewport Shading mode; to close it press Shift + Z, while your mouse is over the 3D View, or go to the 3D View header (on the bottom, above the Timeline) and on the right side to where it says Object Mode, press the button; a list of shading modes will apear, where you can select Solid for the default one.


Cant paste flipped pose properly I cant properly flip the pose in dope sheet. I created the 1st half of the walking sequence, now im trying to flip it using shift+ctrl+c(in gif). The problem is it doesnt even paste everything. I tried duplicating it then mirroring it(in gif), i tried to flip it on the x axis.
[]

You've called your bones Left_Shoulder and Right_Shoulder (prefixes), and so on for the other bones, instead of Shoulder_L and Shoulder_R (suffixes). Actually I was a bit surprised that you were able to copy flip with this kind of terminology. That said, it looks like in the Dopesheet, with CtrlC and ShiftCtrlV you still need to use suffixes. I guess it's something they have forgotten to fix: Either you can use prefixes everywhere or you can't, or I miss something...

I added the project. The bone names and orientation are right in my opinion. I hope you can help me :D


How to make a tape measure for exact measurements? I am making an instruction video for burn victims, so that I can make their made to measure recovery garments in the exact size. I have made my person model, but now I need to show the area where the tape measure should be placed, to take the exact measurement, circumference etc. how can I do this? could I make a tape measure or just a line maybe…does any one please have a suggestion. I am new at this and am just learning…. please help…thank you so much

First, two assumptions. One is that I assume your person model is made in compliance with the usual norms as far as topology and geometry of the model. The other is that the "exact measurements" to which you refer to in the title of your question relates to the exact measurements made and communicated to you, and not necessarily to obtaining exact measurements in the model. That written, here's what I would do.

Make a duplicate of your person model and move it to a different layer.
Figure out where on the model you will need to show the measurements, likely including (but not limited to) the neck, the chest, the upper and lower arms, the waist, the hips, and upper and lower legs.
At each point where you have identified a location where you need a measurement, define a contrasting material to any that might already be present on your real person model, and make two loop cuts around the duplicate person model in that location. Space those two loop cuts you just made to be about an inch apart, or so (relative to the model), and assign the new material to the areas between the two loopcuts.
When all of the areas where you need measurements have been marked, in the material context button of the object properties window, in edit mode, choose "select" to select all of the loop cuts with the material you need, then in the select menu in the 3D viewport header, choose "inverse selection". Now delete everything from the duplicate model that is not a location of a measurement you need.
Switch the pivot point to "median point", and scale each of the locations of the tape up by about 2 percent, constraining the scale directions so as not to change the scale of the tape in the direction perpendicular to the tape. Do not change the locations of any of your measurement lines.
Move the tape lines from the layer you moved them to in step one, back to the layer where the person model is to be found.

If you choose, before doing step 6, you can make a more accurate and detailed representation of the ends of your tape measure

If you just need to draw a line on your model, the grease pencil should do alright.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3lIX10qcPWk
8 minutes in shows how to draw on a surface.

You might need to toggle X-ray on-or-off to achieve your desired result.


Inverse Kinematics leg/arm rig bending the wrong way I have a character who is rigged using 'Rigify'. I've put inverse kinematics on his two forearms and his two shins, and this problem is mainly a problem on his shins. I want his legs to be able to bend only like following:

But it can also bend this way, which I want to make impossible.

So basically - is there a way for an inverse kinematics rig to allow only bending in a certain direction?

I am 4 years too late, but still.
You need to create another bone outside the leg and it should not be parented to any other. Now open the bone constraints(where you created the inverse kinematics) and you will see "Pole Target", select your Armature and below will appear "Bone" and select the bone you created.
After that the bones will only bend in the direction of this pole target bone, so you should put it in front of the model.

You must also create inverse kinematics for your upper leg and upper arms, the chain length for your lower legs and arms should be 2 and the chain length for your upper arm and legs should be one. The follow blog will be very helpful!

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/how-to-create-your-first-character-rig-in-blender-part-1/


Lights/Lamps not illuminating anything Right, so I recorded a video, tracked it, set the ground planes etc. And made a cube. The cube renders, but its solid gray, and lighting effects just dont work. I am extremely novice to blender, so its probably just a stupid mistake. Essentially the cube appears a solid gray, green or whatever color I set it to on all sides when rendering, with no tone differences at all. Also, and this might be the problem, I have a cube on a ground layer set up like this:

This is what it looks like before and after render:

Also for additional Info, here are my settings:

My .blend: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzgDIjhDOu6EY2FOdzNSUVdrTjg/view?usp=sharing
Thanks.

You only have layer one enabled for rendering, and your lamp and plane are on layer 6. To fix this, go to the render layers tab, and select both layers while holding Shift that you want to render together, and you shouldn't have any problems.

well the cube and plane don't have a material also just changing the it from blender render to cycles render makes the shading right this means you have probably ticked some boxes unknowingly can't figure out which ones but just changing it to cycles engine worked.


How to apply the same texture to multiple faces? If I have a mesh with multiple faces like that, with different shapes as follows:

How can I apply a texture to every single face like the one below and hide the fact that is a texture repeated for many times (i.e. between faces there is a method to smooth the transition between two equal texture)?

I'm very sorry if my question may be confusing but I can't explain it better. I hope someone can help me

The trick is not so much on how you apply the texture to the faces, but on the texture it self.

What you need is a "seamless" or "tileable texture", and how to make one is not really a question about blender itself, but more a question of image editing or photo editing.

First you must correctly unwrap your mesh, see here how to. You may want to get rid of that NGon on the top too.

Then either search the internet for "Seamless Rock Texture" or  "Tileable rock texture" or create one yourself using some tutorial like these https://www.google.com/search?tbm=vid&q=gimp%20seamless%20texture

Edit

You can't really do heavy texture editing inside Blender, there are some basic tools like painting or material based effects, but for for heavy work you are always advised to use a image editor.

Anyway, upon closer inspection it does seem like your texture is already seamless and tileable, I had not noticed before, so you don't need to do any editing for now. All you have to do is correctly unwrap your mesh as described in the link above.

Still have in mind that your texture is not very big and will still have noticeable patterns when repeated over an extensive surface. That can only be fixed with a better texture.

How will you be rendering the image, Cycles?
You may also reduce or mitigate the repeating effect with some UV distortion using nodes, but don't expect miracles, You could use some of the procedural textures like Musgrave or Noise, or whichever suits you best to distort the UV coordinates and create a disturbance in the texture. Here is an example of how this could be done.

Edit 2

If you want to export this for another game engine don't bother with Cycles for now. Switch to Blender Internal render using the menu on the header of the window.

First step open your image in the image editor
Then unwrap your mesh over it
Add a new material to your mesh in the properties window
In the texture tab of the properties window add a new texture to your material
Choose image texture type and add your image from the dropdown

Select the ball and press U a Menu will come up and press Smart UV Project, than put the texture as you wish


Follow crop an object in VSE Since i am a noob video shooter, i'm require to edit those video to "highlight" the person that i actually want to record (the person is too small compare to the image) to do that, i should do a cropping right? but the problem is the video it self actually a bit shaky so i cannot crop the whole thing in one go. I am thinking to implement feature tracking to track the person and link it to cropping mechanism so it will be a steady-focused video, is it can be done?
Thank you.

you can stabilize with tracking you're video in blender.  Here is a youtube tutorial for that:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU8zqn091rM


mirror modifier for animations? I'm a bit new so maybe this feature exists but i couldn't find it.

But while i'm trying to animate simple things such as a walk or run cycle i find myself frequently ctrl-c, ctrl(-shift)-v-ing the first frame of the animation towards the end of the animation.

Is it possible, maybe somewhat like the way you use modifiers to mirror meshes to
 use something like modifiers to mirror/copy your keyframes as well, so you don't constantly hace to copy and paste to update the second half of your animation?

You can use F-Curve modifiers in the graph editor. Specifically what you would want is a cycles modifier with the cycle mode set to repeat mirrored.

Here is the documentation

When you're animating a run cycle you can set the end of the whole animation to the end of your run cycle in the timeline. Then press Alt + A in order to start the animation. At the end it will repeat, so you don't have to copy all the keyframes.


How can I stop my logo from stretching / being weird? (Blender 2.91.0) I'm new to blender (3 days) and I've recently tried to make some cosmetic packaging for a toothpaste brand.
I've been able to create the models to a decent extent, but when it comes to applying the logos, I am getting stretching and weird behaviour. I am planning on adding other parts of the packaging later, but before that, I need to understand how to fix this problem.
I'm using a png with no background, and I've tried to UV unwrap and map the textures on. I've attached the file and a screenshot below if that's any help at all.
Thanks for your help!

I have seen your question and your issue, and It is quite common. Luckily, the solution is simple. Go to the UV editing section, before going there, remember to select the cylinder. Then select the face which is supposed to have the logo and carefully align it. For making it much more realistic, let the logo cover on of the faces but along with that, should cover a bit of the faces left and right to it. Hope it helps, if theres an issue with my solution, comment on my answer. I would also recommend going to this website to help you get started on stack exchange.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask
and
https://blender.stackexchange.com/tour
Cheerios,
Aster17


What is a blend file? I am 100% new to Blender and to the Blender Manual.  Could anyone tell me what a blend file is please.  It is discussed at length in the manual except for explaining what a blend file is.

The .blend files are the project files of Blender.

They are binary files with the .blend extension as in fileName.blend. Blender saves its data as .blend files and can only open .blend files.

Other 3D files types are not "opened", but imported.

Blend files contain the models, materials, the scene (camera, lights and animation) and the information for rendering and viewing along with the state of the user interface.
By default they don't contain images used as textures unless you pack them. Read: How to pack images into blend file

Also not contained as part of the file are simulation caches or the add-on used to create the scene.

a blend file is the extension used in saving a blender data which could be written as .blend popular examples of extension names are .mp3 for music, .jpg for images, .png for images, for blender files we use .blend which contain everything your have created within the software such as meshes, light, world, hdr(s), texture, materials etc.


How do you remove frames in Blender? I created an animation... I put too much time between 2 keyframes. How do I remove some of that time from the timeline? I don't want to remove the keyframe... just some of the normal frames between the 2 keyframes?

I don't think you can remove frames. However, you can go into the "Animation" screen and move your keyframes closer together.

Go to the top of the window where it says "Default" and from the drop-down choose "Animation". You'll get a Dope-sheet on your left. You have to find your keyframe, select it and move it. Normal keys for selecting and moving, thus A for toggling selection, right-click for selecting, and G for moving.

To move the frame, go to a dope sheet, select the frame(s) you want to move, press g and move it to where ever you want.


Baking displacement map with Cycles Experimental I want to bake some displacement maps for Unity Engine. I want to use Cycles renderer. I have read that it's only available in Experimental version of Cycles, but when I changed Cycles to Experimental version there isn't baking type for Displacement map, there are UV, Normals, Shadows etc. but there isn't any Displacement/Depth map choice. I have Blender 2.78a (2016-10-24) downloaded yesterday. Where can I find this option or how can I enable it?

Baking Displacement maps is very easy in Blender Internal. Switch to it.Then unwrap low poly object. Switch baking pass to Displacement, set appropriate distance.Enable Selected to Active. Select low poly object, switch to Edit mode.In UV/Image editor create new image (switch 32bit float on when generating), make sure, that UV map of the object is displayed on this new image.Tab out of edit mode, select first high poly object, then low poly object and hit Bake. Like this:

BI has a huge disadventage comparing to cycles baking. It lacks cage baking! So if you're baking a bump map from highpoly model onto lowpoly and the curvature of the highpoly goes continuosly around it's corners (like a 90 deg or so) you'll get strange artifacts on those corners. There are some workarounds by adding certain modifiers to LP model while baking, but it's a kind of fiddling around to get the correct result.


Scaling on X axis changes XY axis angles Change basic cube to a board shape, Z=.1, X=8, Y=.4. Edit mode; grab back left 2 vertices along X axis for a 60 degree angle on the left side of the board. Select all vertices, and do Mesh - Symmetrize - -X to +X. Now the other side looks great, too. Duplicate object. Scale smaller only on the X axis. Results is the 60 degree angle is now less than 60 degrees.

Why? Why didn't it make a shorter board with 60 degree angles on each end? Why did it not scale the back vertices the same distance as the front vertices? Is there a way to make it scale both the back and front vertices at the same time the same distance along the X, (or any), axis?

I tried "Delta Scaling" and got the same results. It seems to apply a percentage of distance, instead of the exact distances I provide it, thus distorting the shape.In other words, (and using different figures ... not the ones above), a 1 meter box with the front left at 1 meter, but the back changed to .8 meters, when scaled from 1 meter to .8 meters will take 20% off the length of the front, and 20% off the length of the back, instead of taking .2 meters off of both, as expected.

These angles don't change when the entire object is scaled, (vs. just one axis), using the Scale command, but it does when entering the exact values into the Transform tab, where one axis at a time has to be entered. Why would it do it differently for a single axis?

EDIT

It was wrong of me to expect someone to build this to see what I mean, so I made some screen shots:

As Mr Zak has said: if you scale a trapezoid board lengthwise, the angle of the skew end is modified. Would it perhaps be possible to use the Boolean modifier to cut the ends exactly?

Tschöbbel had the right idea. Rather than create a "board" with each end "trimmed" at 60Deg, and then duplicating and resizing each "board", I created the first basic "board" with straight ends, and did a "duplicate linked" on that "board". However, the next step is to "join" all of the boards into one object. After that I was able to use 2 cubes turned at 60Deg and -60Deg on each end of the "boards", and did a "BoolTool Difference" to "trim" all the ends of the "boards" at 60Deg, creating a "panel" of "boards". I then duplicated that 5 times, and rotated the "panels" into place for the hexagon "floor" of my "gazebo". It worked very fast.

Thank You, Tschöbbel!

Also, I'd like to thank everyone else for your help. The other suggestions were just as likely to create equal results at less time than I thought I was going to have to spend, but the Tschöbbel answer was really fast. That method is going to make doing the "roof" of the "gazebo", (with overlapping "slats"), very fast and easy, too.


Export blender rendered image as numpy array I want to know the easiest way to export rendered images from blender to be exported as numpy array.
PS: I don't want to save the images first in *.jpg or *.png and then access them. I want to directly export the rendered images as numpy array.

Numpy array isn't a native output option.
Notice up at the top of the screen, when you click Render,
it specifies Render Image

If you want it to directly output to a non-standard container,
you'll have to modify the source code to accomplish that.
http://download.blender.org/source/
...
You can convert standard arrays into a numpy array like this:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/4562455/3342050
So if you don't mind running render, then using a script to export:
# path2numpy = '/home/me/.local/lib/python3/dist-packages/numpy/'   ##  linux
# path2numpy = 'C:\\Users\\me\\AppData\\Local\\Python\\Lib\\site-packages\\numpy\\'   ##  win

import sys
sys.path.append(path2numpy)

import numpy as np
array = []

# render = bpy.ops.render.render(layer="RenderLayer", scene="Scene")
# render = bpy.data.node_groups['Compositing Nodetree'].nodes['Render Layers'].layer

array.append(render)

np_array = np.array(array)

The render output data is most likely going to be found in one of those commented render lines.
You'll have to decide which one suits your needs.
You may have to iterate through the data to get it into the necessary format.
Something along the lines of:
for h in range(height):
  for w in range(width):
    R = render[h][w * bpp]
    G = render[h][w * bpp + 1]
    B = render[h][w * bpp + 2]
    data.append((R,G,B))
  ''.join(data)
  array.append(data)

Then convert regular array to numpy array, as above.
That's all dependent upon how you want that array set up though...


Enumerating vertices with their indices This code...

def objects_starting( s ):
    return[ obj for obj in bpy.data.objects if obj.name.startswith( s ) ]

def export_all( folder ):
    if not os.path.exists( folder ):
        os.makedirs( folder )

    # G E O M E T R Y (2 files)
    for obj in objects_starting( 'geom' ):
        print( obj.name )
        verts_file = create_file( folder, obj.name + "_verts" )
        faces_file = create_file( folder, obj.name + "_faces" )

        export_geom( verts_file, faces_file, obj )

        verts_file.close( )
        faces_file.close( )

def export_geom( verts_file, faces_file, obj ):

    mesh = obj.data

    verts_file.write( "[points]\n" )
    verts_file.write( "%i\n" % len( mesh.vertices ) )

    for v in mesh.vertices:
        v_world = obj.matrix_world * v.co
        verts_file.write( "%i " % (v+1) )   <-- FAILS HERE
        verts_file.write( "%.16e %.16e %.16e\n" % v_world[:] )

fails with:

  TypeError: %i format: a number is required, not MeshVertex

I'm scratching my head because I had something similar working yesterday:

def write(filepath):

    meshes = [ob.data for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects if ob.type == 'MESH']
    total_verts = sum(len(me.vertices) for me in meshes)
    total_faces = sum(len(me.polygons) for me in meshes)

    # verts file
    file = open(filepath + ".vert", 'w', encoding="utf8" )

    file.write("[nodes]\n")
    file.write("%i\n" % total_verts)

    for me in meshes:
        for v in me.vertices:
            file.write("%i " % v)
            file.write("%.16e %.16e %.16e\n" % v.co[:])
    file.close()

What is going on?  It must be that my new technique for getting a list of meshes doesn't return the right data type, or something.  But I can't see it.

What you try is:

verts_file.write("%i " % (v + 1))

But v refers to a MeshVertex instance. What you need is the .index property of the vertex:

verts_file.write("%i " % (v.index + 1))

Or count yourself:

for me in meshes:
    for i, v in enumerate(me.vertices):
        print("%i " % i)
        print("%.16e %.16e %.16e\n" % v.co[:])

You're adding 1 to v in verts_file.write( "%i " % (v+1) ) but the + operator is expecting v to be an integer, not a MeshVertex, which is why it didn't fail the first time (you weren't adding to it).

As CoDEmanX states, you need to operate on v.index to get the vertex's index.

(+ was expecting the integer, not %i as I claimed before)


Antialiasing textures in cycles (Blender 2.77 and higher) I would like to get an answer to a frustrating question.

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.77/Cycles

In this link is "Anti-Aliasing is now enabled for baking. (c359343)"

This the great news, and unfortunately in my case it is not working. I try to bake normal maps. I need to bake in full resolution (4k, 8k), and it is not possible to bake 4k and manually changing texture size to e.g 1024 to get in this way manually 4x AA. Currently, I must go to bake in Xnormal (Because I must use cage...Blender internal cannot by used). Xnormal uses AA in bake. The difference in quality is very high.

My question is: It is possible to bake in Cycles normalmaps with AA or if not, whether in the near future it is planned?

Sorry for my very bad english and best regards! Blender is the best! :)

Today I checked this again . It seems that Blender bakes almost everything except normal maps with AA . In Ambient Oclussion bake based on the settings in the samples overlap. In the case of the Normal Map settings do not the influence. So please someone versed in the subject matter of the transfer this information of the creators of the blender / notification a bug , etc. There may be a slight correction in the code allows you to add AA ? I see many people need this function.

This is not exactly a solution, but I highly recommend a program called 'Substance Painter 2' - it lets you do fantastic mapping and texturing for a relatively low price, You can trial it for 30 days free, and it bakes normal maps, AO etc all with AA much better than Blender does.

I actually gave up trying to bake normals with Blender, as the results always had errors and artifacts. Substance Painter made it really easy, I didn't have to use a cage anymore, and it was worth every dollar.

I got it via steam at 50% off a couple of months ago, so if you can't afford it now and you have steam, put it on your wish list.

Regards, C.


.OBJ doesn't export correctly I am new to blender and 3D modeling completely,  I am trying to export a OBJ I created but when I do, certain faces dont show up unless you look at it from a certain angle.

Ive been looking around for a solution but can't seem to find one,  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Outcome:

In Blender:

I figured out what I did wrong, I had the faces backwards and had to flip them.


Split mesh at a specific point I'm wondering if it'd be possible to make a script for splitting meshes to simple shapes at a certain point. Split it to prevent vertex A and B to exist in the same object.

Nevermind, I did some research and found out 'convex decomposition' is what I want. I ended up using V-HACD Blender addon.


Subdivide only showing in sculpt and render not in layout I'm new to blender so sorry if this is obvious but after creating a material onto a subdivided cube it will render with both and in layout it (mostly) does both as seen here:

This also seems to not apply the image overlay just the base colour and reflections from lights. Now in layout where it would be convenient to add other objects to this it is still a cube as seen here:

It has all of the material yet is not rounded making it hard to tell where other objects will clip through it in a render. I tried searching this on my own but only found how to make subdivided cubes and alike however I have found a case of use here:

This is a screenshot of what I am describing being used (from YouTube) e.g the this is a subdivided cube with its texture and shape being shown in layout. So how would I be able to enable such a view?

in the first image post checkout the modifier multi res, there for the viewport its set to zero.
The idea here is that you can set different levels, ea while you work you can set it to low values, but when you render (or sculpt) you set it to high. so the memory load and speed of your pc is not harmed while working on your scene.


Graph Editor - Can I make proportional editing affect all the curves? When I use the Proportional Editing option in Graph Editor it only affects curves that have nodes, selected by me. Why doesn't it affect all the curves? Is there a way to make it affect all the curves?

Essentially I want to select just one node on one curve and drag it with Proportional Edit on, affecting other nodes on all the curves. Can I achieve that?

Select all with the letter A.  There is the Box Select.


My "Info Header" was replaced when I went into Node Editing Mode. How do I get the default bar back? I am working on an animation, and I had to change it to node editing mode for a while, but the file bar at the top of the screen is replaced with the bar at the bottom of the screen that says View, Select, Add, etc. How do i get my "info header" back so i can change my mode to compositing mode? Or does anyone know a shortcut to get to compositing mode? Thanks

Please help ASAP this is a timed animation project I am working on

Info   is a window like any other and can be selected in any window via the drop down/pop up on the left top or bottom of the window. Blue circular icon Info.
Or hover mouse over that list and press keyboard letter i

Is that what you meant?


How to combine a blurred emit pass with rest of render? I am compositing a candle and I want apply some effect to only the flame. So I activated the  Emit pass so it will only be affected, and I applied some glare effects to it.
My question is how can I combine this Emit pass with the rest of the image? Secondly what is the correct order of the glaring nodes I mean by types fog, ghosts, ect?

I would use add here.
When you set the glare nodes to a mix of 1, then they only output the glare, without the original image.

As for the order of the glare nodes, I would apply them all at once.
By applying them one after the other, the next one includes the effect of the previous one in it's calculation, making the result brighter than it should be (and potentially doing things like putting starbursts on the ghost images..).

Instead apply then all to the same source with a mix of 1, then add them together:

Result:

Simple solution is to use Color -> Mix node, set it to add. Plug in the composite image, plus the filtered image. Output it to the viewer and composite output.


Where can I get the first Blender 2.8 build? I have been testing just about every Blender 2.8 build out there to test the new EEVEE engine. I would like to compare the first build with EEVEE and the latest build in a video but I can't find the first Linux version of EEVEE. Could anyone help me get the very first Blender 2.8 version that had EEVEE in it? It would be highly appreciated!

the first build with EEVEE

is a rather arbitrary point in time, the blender 2.80 evee development started as a branch from the current development of blender, it was identical to the normal blender releases. There have been no tagged releases containing evee, the daily test builds have been the only available versions.

As blender is open source, you can build any variation of it that you want. The blender 2.80 development is being done in it's own branch so you just add git branch blender2.8 after you have a copy of the repo. You can list the history of the branch and checkout any commit from that list that you want and compile it as it was at that point in time.

So you can build any version that you want, but to get daily experimental pre-built binaries you have to get them the day they are available.

Go to official website of Blender

Click on Download

Scroll down and Click Latest Experimental Builds

Scroll down to find These builds are from the Blender 2.8 project. Do not use in the production nor save important file with it

Below you can find which OS or Mac or linux your using and download it.


Why has my solid view shading gone really dark? I just noticed that the shading in my solid view is really dark. I can't find how to change it back.


How to make soft-body sphere stay inside concave object? So, I have a soft body sphere inside a 'maze', (this is just the beginning of it) like this...

The sphere has soft body settings of:

The maze had settings of:

However, as soon as I played the animation, the sphere squished and jumped out the back part of the maze... What I wanted it to do was roll down the ledge.

NOTE: This may be a duplicate, but I've looked up around the place and nobody has had the same problem as me (that I've seen).

The physics solver tries to minimise the work it does by making approximations. You can increase the number of steps the solver will calculate and the number of iterations attempted to improve the detail of collisions.

On the Scene tab under Rigid body settings there is "Steps per second" and "Solver iterations"

But be wary, increasing them too much will slow the simulation time significantly.

Why didn't you make the sphere active rigid body? I would have done it. And below is my way of doing the whole anim.

Add a cube; create the maze; give the maze's sides a different material and make it 100% transparent; put the ball inside; play the animation.


How do I change material render preview? I want to change the render material preview by removing the floor in the preview and replacing all the lighting and environment in it with an hdri image, and setting an image as a background, so that the render preview changes from this:

To this:

I also want the material shown in the preview to look the same in Blender's file browser when I use append, like this:

So how do I do all this?
I do not mind using programming with Python if there is no other than this solution.

Had the same question found your then just worked it out by pick things.
Top right hand corner of the 3D viewport there is a drop down arrow.
In viewport shading you can select scene lights and scene world.
I didn't try to see if this would give you the result your looking for but it has worked for me.
Regards


Animation by scripting I am actually trying to move a car along a path. The path is stored in a file.

Right now I am reading each and every position from the file, moving the car to that position followed by appropriate rotation, then I assign a key.
following is the code I am using:

    ob = bpy.data.objects['car']
    bpy.context.scene.objects.active = ob
    ob.select = True
    frame_num = 0
    pos = [list(a) for a in positions]
    m = [0.0,0.0,0.0]
    for j in range(len(pos)-1):
        for k in range(3):
            m[k] = pos[j+1][k] - pos[j][k]
        DirectionVector = mathutils.Vector(tuple(m))
        bpy.context.scene.frame_set(frame_num)
        ob.location = pos[j]
        ob.rotation_mode = 'QUATERNION'
        ob.rotation_quaternion = DirectionVector.to_track_quat('X','Y')
        bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type="Location")
        bpy.ops.anim.keyframe_insert_menu(type="Rotation")
        frame_num += 30
        j += 1

Even after all this I am not satisfied with my result. In real life when we see an obstacle in front of us we rotate to our left or right. But here the car rotates far before it reaches the position. I know it is because I have defined the keyframes like that.
I tried using two for loops, but even the end result in that is not that good.

My goal is to have the car avoid obstacles by making a tighter turn around them. How do I achieve this?I feel that there should be some easy way to do this. Can someone help me?

This is a part of my environment.

Consider inserting more keyframes so you have more options to change directions.  Perhaps you would need to calculate intermediate turning locations such as locations on a simplified half ellipse to avoid an obstacle.

frame_num += 30 would become

frame_num += 5 and other python changes
Consider a [Follow Path Constraint] whose offset and influence can be animated via keyframe.  Perhaps left and right turn constraints.


How to reduce edges and make a face out of it? Have lots of edges in my starship mesh, as shown in the red box.
How could I reduce them and make one rounded face out of it?

Just as Tainin said it is not possible to make a curved/bent/folded surface without joining two or more vertices with an edge. However you can make a low Poly model and use smooth shading (in tools menu) to give a more curved shade effect. Or perhaps the normal maps might help depending upon the purpose of your 'Ship'.

i don't think it is possible to have a curved face without the extra edges. more vertices and edges add more resolution/detail to the model. you could try selecting the faces, pressing x and selecting dissolve faces.


My tree branches have holes at the tips I'm using the Sampling generator and has you can see, for some reason, the little branches have these holes at the tips, why is that? And how can I get rid of them?

Use the Minimum Radius property under Branch Radius category to control the branch tip diameter while crating a new sapling tree.

You can also tick the option Close Tip as mentioned by Akados in the comments.

If you already created one then enter edit mode and select all branch tips and adjust their size with the Bezier Curve Radius property from the Properties Shelf Alt + S. You may want to turn on Proportional Editing

To easily select all tips you may use the Select Grouped operator with Shift + G and try to select by Radius.

First choose all vertices in Edit Mode and press F to fill holes with faces.


Anvil, extra lines thingies As you can see at the bottom of the anvil are a little bit more shape down there, I am sorry I forget what you call them, but if some one could help me and get rid of them, that would be nice.

(Left)

If you have a bottom face which is a large Ngon with a concave edge, Catmull-Clark subdivision will cut the corner,even if the face has holding loops on its perimeter.

(Right)

You need to give the subdivision convex faces to work with, preferably quads. I seem to remember Andrew's Anvil does it like this.

The problem is the amount of Vertices, I think, but what I am trying to say is that when I UV unwarp an object like this, it needs to have 4 vertices for each face and this is more than four vertices per face.


Having trouble rendering fire+smoke with transparency I'm trying to add fire+smoke to a video by rendering out the simulation as a PNG sequence with transparency. It looks fine in the render window and in the compositor but when I drag in the final PNG and view it, it looks half transparent and grainy. I'm only rendering it on 15 samples with NLM de-noising on so that could be it, but otherwise I'm not sure what's going on! here are some screenshots:

Use denoise node in compositing instead of the one you are using. It is better for viewports only.
To use denoise node,go into the compositing tab and SHIFT+A to add denoise node. Now add color,normal and albedo in their respective channel.
To get better results,enable denoising data from the layer settings.
Disable the denoiser you are using and it will give better results


Spinning existing vertices around a point I wanted to know if it's possible to rotate a part of a mesh around a point? A bit like what the spinning tool is doing but for the selected vertices of an existing mesh.

For example on the image below, how could I spin this selected vertices around the 3D cursor in order to have a nice curve like on the object on the left?

Thanks a lot!

In these illustrations, the track to be deformed is lying in the XY plane, Y up, X across.

You can use the spin tool to generate new geometry: extend your object around an arc of a circle, by selecting the top row of existing vertices, and AltR spinning them. In the Tool region, set the Axis to (0,0,1), the Angle to 90 degrees, and the Center to the center of the circle from which the arc is taken. (The empty in this illustration is just to show roughly where the center is)

But it's hard to adjust the center without constructing guidelines, and destructive. It's probably easier to use Simple Deform > Bend, with these settings, and an empty oriented and placed as shown:

That example uses the 'Limit' setting to restrict the deformation to the halfway point in the track's X, in the empty's space. You may need to slide that up and down, depending on the extent of your track in the empty's X.

Or...

.. you can restrict the deformation to a vertex group. (The angle setting becomes a bit counter-intuitive)

The spin tool affects only the current selection.


How do you create opaque liquid? I am following along with a beginners tutorial on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdWUjEMzDhg) that creates a clear glass mug with coffee in it. I am attempting to make hot chocolate instead of coffee. I have the object selected and am attempting to change the material as per the instructions. Changing the density under absorption volume only makes it darker. It does not change the opacity. What should I change to make it appear more solid and like hot chocolate rather than dirty lake water?

For materials such as milk, latte or hot chocolate, the use of Subsurface Scattering is a good choice. It allows the light to enter the solid material, scatter around, and exit at another point. The material is not transparent but still opaque.
The liquid in the following example has a subsurface scattering of 0.055, base color and subsurface color are the same (hex: 835842), Subsurface Radius is (1.0, 0.75, 0.5), no transmission (glass), unchanged alpha (1.0=no transparency).
The Bump map is from the tutorial video "How to Make Milk in Blender EEVEE" (https://youtu.be/Hzpmz683xsw). It adds a very subtle distortion of the reflections on the surface.

Milk shader setup:

CYCLES select the mesh you want to be transparent.
Go to the Object header and check the Transparency box.
Go to the Material header, add a new material and decrease the Alpha value in the Settings panel.


boolean union having problem when combining cubes with same height I tried to union 2 cubes , this supposed to be very easy task, but fail at some point. (cross object on the left) So i create union of two identical box/cube , i reposition the second cube so it cross each other and it works great. But in the right side, i tried to do the same thing but this time the cubes has different size but still have the same height so their top faces will be overlapped each other.

So i select the bigger cube, add boolean , pick the smaller cube, set to 'union' and set solver to 'bmesh' ( i tried carve and doesn't give a correct result). So they looks correct, but when i applied the boolean and go to edit mode, there're some overlapped interior faces which is not what i want, i can delete the faces but what is wrong ? how to fix this ?

Thanks

edit :
note:  to reproduce the error , the smaller cube has to have same height as the big cube , so both top faces have to overlap each other.

Select the large rectangular add boolean modifier. Select the object (small rectangular). Operation as union.


UV Texture Bleeds Over I've nearly finishing texturing a Pelican in Blender painting on UV maps from photoshop and importing the result on the Pelican, everything is fine except for the beak, where parts of the uv are bleeding over into each other particularly in little corners. (See Image) other than cutting up the mesh of the Pelican again is there any other way to fix this? I have the mirror modifier applied as well.

Try switching your subdivision surface modifier from Catmull-Clark to Simple.


How do I make a crystal glow? I am trying to make the infinity stones and I am struggling to make them glow.

This answers doesn't translate to my issue since the solution involves creating a duplicate of the object scaling down and making it emit light. This ruins the transmission shading of the original object.

In  the films they emit a strong light from their cores. I want to animate them spinning in a circle so the glowing effect must be done in blender. I am currently using an hdr to light them. (using a gtx 960m chip so the less taxing the better).

Make a uv sphere inside the crystal , use emission shader , increase the strength of emission and render using evee.


Rendering seems slow, am I getting the most out of my hardware? So, started my Blender journey yesterday working on a tutorial to create some mountains and animate a fly-through of them. They are made with the A.N.T. mesh tool and microdisplacements. I've worked my way through the tutorial to a point where I'm actually rendering frames, and it's much slower than I anticipated it would be. It's taking 5-7 minutes per frame. I am using Cycles with Auto Tile Size addon, and am using an 8k HDR texture (I think that's how I should refer to it) to light the world.
My PC specs are RTX 3090, Ryzen 3950X and 128GB of RAM. During each frame render, the GPU and CPU are essentially idle until the last little bit when Blender starts actually showing tiles, then my GPU kicks in and renders those out in a matter of seconds. Is that to be expected? Is there any way to get Blender to actually utilize my hardware during the first several minutes of rendering, where it seems like it's just barely using it?
I'm rendering using Cycles in Blender 2.91 and here's a screenshot with what I'm rendering and all of the associated settings.
This is the tutorial that I am following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSafYNQrodk
Thanks for any insight!

I never used it but the e-cycles plugin might help if you had to keep the subdivision :
https://blendermarket.com/products/e-cycles
« What’s more, thanks to a new option called "Persistent Data", for fly-through animations where only the camera moves, E-Cycles only needs to do the pre-processing step once for all frames. In the example above, rendering takes just 3 seconds per frame on a single GPU. In this case, the persistent data option saves 7 seconds of pre-processing per frame. »