Blender 3D

Fast intermediate nodes view in compositing

Nikita

Creating a node tree in the compositing window, sometimes it is necessary to see the intermediate result given by some parts of the node tree. For fast viewing click left mouse button on the desired node with the “ctrl” and “shift” keys pressed. Blender adds a new View node (or uses one of the existing) and connects the output of the selected node to it. The result is displayed on the backdrop (if the corresponding checkbox checked) or in the UV/Image Editor window in “Viewer Node” mode.

If the clicked node has several outputs, each subsequent click on that node switches the view to its next output.

Creating pop-up panels with user UI in Blender add-on

Nikita

In addition to common panels (N/T/Properties) and their sub-panels, to display the user interface elements while developing Blender add-ons you can also use pop-up panels appearing on the screen when a user presses a certain key combination or perform any action. The simplest example of such panels is the panel that appears when the f6 key is pressed immediately after adding an object (shift+a) to the scene.

Blender API provides developers the ability to create such panels for their add-ons. Let’s consider the creating of a pop-up panel as an example of the “Message box” window.

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Modeling with curves: wires and pipes

Nikita

Creating thin long objects like pipes and wires is the often task in the interior, scientific of fantastic scenes. One of the easiest and most convenient ways to create such objects is using curves.

The main curves advantage is the easiest control and editing: any time you can change the shape of the curve, move its points, add new and delete unnecessary ones. You do not have to work with a lot of mesh points, but only with several points of the curve, which is much more convenient. Preprocessing for rendering scene with curves is also performed faster than with meshes.

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Installing Blender on Linux Debian server

Nikita
2 Comments / Blender 3D / /

One of the amazing Blender features is that the graphical user interface GUI is not absolutely necessary for its work. You can install Blender on an operating system without a graphical shell and successfully render your scenes. Such types of a Blender installations are usually required to organize various render farms.

For example, consider Blender installation on the server Linux Debian operating system.

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