Blender 3D: tutorials, articles, tips, notes
Tutorial about normal maps.
Summary:
Interface elements in custom user panels often do not correspond to each other in size. As a result – the overall panel layout does not look beautiful. As an example, let’s create a custom panel and place an operator button and an input text field on it.
Can we make it more accurate?
Continue reading “User interface elements alignment by columns”
Creating an organic shader to emulate an electron microscope look for Blender EEVEE render engine tutorials.
Sometimes, to effectively distribute the hardware load it is necessary to make a render from Blender only on certain video cards of several of them.
To do this we can use a simple script in which specify the numbers of devices to be used for rendering.
Continue reading “Render from console only on the specified GPU devices”
Working with mesh geometry, it may be necessary to assign each vertex some custom properties or data that must be written to the blend-file when saved, and which must be accessed later.
However, an attempt to assign the necessary data to the vertexes through the creation of custom properties fails. Instead of the custom vertex property, only a tuple with reference to the type of the property is created.
Sometimes it is necessary to save data for creating a mesh (its vertices and polygon indices arrays) to text, for example, for further use in a script or addon.
We can export the mesh to one of the open formats, for example, to *.obj, but if we need only its vertexes and polygons data, we can use the following simple script:
The Blender API provides a set of simple property types described in bpy.props (IntProperty, BoolProperty, etc.). But the basic types are not always enough, sometimes we need more complex ones. The Blender API allows to group simple properties to make complex properties.
Let’s consider such complex property creation and make the 3×3 matrix property as an example.
The Blender 2.80 API provides an ability to draw in a viewport (3D Viewport) using the “gpu” module.
As an example let’s draw a simple coordinate system widget in the center of the scene, consisting of three lines with different colors.
Button click in basically connected with the operator calling in Blender user interface. However, some times actions, that need to be performed when a button is pressed, are quite simple and do not require a separate operator for them. And it makes no sense to fill a registered operators stack with a multitude of specific operators designed to perform one highly specialized function. It would be much more convenient to associate a button press with a separate function call but the Blender API allows to associate buttons only with an operator call.
To solve the problem of creating a separate operator for each button we can use the fact that the operator can be called with the input parameters.
Continue reading “Calling functions by pressing buttons in Blender custom UI”
When making your own custom operators, sometimes it is necessary to pass them certain values – execute operator with parameters.
The passed parameter must be defined as an operator property.
By Andrew M.
“Many letters about the simple”
I need a frame. No, two frames: one larger, the other smaller, but made from one profile. I drew a rectangle, set the desired dimensions, duplicated, set other sizes. I drew a separate profile. For a section to both rectangles I applied this profile. … why did I get different frames? And none matches the size of the profile? Ah, I forgot to apply the scale. Applied. The dimensions of the cross-section changed, became different, but again not equal to the profile. How to make them equal – read below!
Solving the problem of the discrepancy between the size of the track section and the profile applied to it
This problem occurs when the path for profiling is constructed in any way but then scaled to the desired size. In this case, it does not matter if its scale is 1 or not. If we apply the profile we need to it, then it will be different in size from the set … Why? We will see now.
Bezier curves are drawing by four points: two main points (p0, p1) and two handle points (p0_hr, p1_hl).
To add an additional point p2 to a curve at a moment t, with t changes from 0 to 1 and represents the ratio of the p2 point location to the total length of the curve, we need to do the following:
By Pavel_Blend
In this article, I will talk about the fluid simulator in Blender 2.80. This simulator was first added to the blender at the end of 2005, in version 2.40. Since then, it has not changed significantly (the changes were mainly in the beginning, after the introduction of the blender). The simulator code was written by a third-party developer Nils Thuerey. He wrote a fluid simulation library and named it El’Beem. The engine is voxel-based on the method of lattice Boltzmann equations. It is best suited for creating water, but it has the ability to create viscous liquids (honey, chocolate …) that are not very well implemented. Soon, a new Mantaflow simulator will be introduced into the blender (by the way, Nils Thuerey is taking part in its development).
There is a convenient opportunity in the Cycles render engine to render an object with shadows on a transparent background using material with the “shadow catcher” option. There is no such material in EEVEE render engine, however, in EEVEE we can make our own “shadow catcher” based only on nodes.
Completed “EEVEE Shadow Catcher” material you can get from the BIS library.
Sofa “Canasta” polygonal modeling tutorial.
By 1D_Inc.
In Blender Cycles using common lamps we can illuminate objects with any texture, not just a single color.
Add an object, for example – sphere, to the scene:
shift+a – Mesh – UVSphere
and set a simple diffuse shader to it.
Polygonal modeling a decor in the form of roses tutorial.
A single procedural element from the BIS library can be easily transformed into a repeating pattern.
Let’s get a single circular elemetn from the library and place it in the center of the plane.
Continue reading “How to make a pattern from the single element of the BIS library”
Except for the “Gradient Texture” node, we can obtain a gradient factor by using some simple equations. Look for the mathematics with a spherical gradient sample.
Can be created based on a downward-facing cone equation.
The simplest way to pixelate texture, procedural or not – get the color from the single pixel and fill the region with required width and height (resolution) with this color.
Here is the gradient texture with red – green – blue colors:
To pixelate it with the first step of resolution we can make some vectors manipulations.
With the Blender popularity growing, the number of add-ons created for it by third-party developers is growing too. A lot of high-quality professional add-ons are written for Blender now. Over time, the number of add-ons is becoming more and more. And on this wave aggregators appeared – programs and services independently searching for add-ons and allowing Blender users to install add-ons quickly, many at once, and bypassing add-on distribution channels selected by their authors. What caused a negative reaction of add-on developers.
Continue reading “How to protect your add-on from downloading through aggregators”
The easiest way to hide and show rendering objects is to assign animation keys to them. To do this, move the cursor over the eye icon (visibility in the viewport) or camera (visibility when rendering) in the Outliner window, press the “i” key and then manage the created condition in the Graph Editor like the ordinary animation keys.
But this method is not always available. For example, we cannot assign visibility animation keys for collections, Blender will generate errors like:
“hide_viewport” property cannot be animated
or
“hide_render” property can not be animated
However, using the Blender Python API, we can control the visibility of such objects.
Continue reading “Changing objects visibility in the viewport and while rendering”
When developing add-ons it is often necessary to give an ability to set a number of parameters that affect the whole add-on work to the user. For example, the user can specify a directory for saving/loading files, set some default variables or switch between add-on modes. Of course, the interface for setting such parameters can be placed in the add-on panel, but it is better to place it in a separate add-on preferences panel, which is located in the “Preferences” window under the add-on installation panel.
The main advantage of the add-on preferences is that they don’t reset when Blender restarts. The user does not need to configure the add-on preferences each time, it’s enough to set the necessary parameters once, personalizing the add-on for convenient work.
Let’s create an add-on and define a parameter, placing it in the add-on preferences panel.
Making beautiful water splashes and drops and setting up a procedural water shader.
By Vitaly Sokol
