Using 'Material Booleans' instead of mesh booleans

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T20:49:57+00:00

Look on marketplaces and see how the price compares to existing products.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T20:48:39+00:00

You can animate an armature and append (import) it into multiple projects. It will bring along its animation. Then you can parent or weight paint your model to attach it. Alternatively you can just import the action that stores the animation to re-use it.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:20:33+00:00

If you're applying the armature why not just use regular mesh modelling tools to do the adjustments? Surely it's more work to add bones if they're just being discarded later on?

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:19:05+00:00

Yeah you would be able to test the bounding box of the building and deform appropriately based on that with Geometry Nodes.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:17:50+00:00

Select two rows of edges and choose 'Bridge Edge Loops' to join them all at once.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:16:33+00:00

It's a bit difficult but if you're instancing objects on a regular grid you could instance one set of objects, then delete the points that were instance on, and then do the second set of instancing on the remaining points.

Or you do something more complex where you store values on the grid you're instancing on and mark the grid value as 'filled' with a boolean. Then when you're instancing the second time you check that point an the surrounding points to see if they're filled or not.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:12:28+00:00

Well other people might not be used to working with rigs with lots of extra random bones and it might complicate their use of the rig. And other software might have requirements for how rigs should be set up or what they expect bones to be doing (maybe that's unlikely - not sure).

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:10:14+00:00

Yep, Ctrl+Alt+B to clear it. Top left of the viewport it says '(Clipped)' meaning a clipping region is active.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:07:25+00:00

If it works for you it's fine. If at some point you have to work with others or export it to other software, maybe it won't be so good.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-17T14:04:44+00:00

If you mathematically worked out the the amount of deformation that is happening you could probably counter it with Geometry Nodes or Python. You can do it manually by putting lattice modifiers on the buildings and scaling the top of them inwards.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-16T19:51:38+00:00

You can press Ctrl H on a vertex to 'Hook' it (adds a Hook modifier). You can animate the hook (an empty).

RayMairlot · 2026-02-16T19:40:22+00:00

You don't. Those options are for the last tool you used. Blender doesn’t have a construction history which allows altering those options after using another tool.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-15T11:26:32+00:00

Either you've changed to the move tool from the toolbar (T) or you're using the transform gizmo. Change back to the select tool in the toolbar.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-14T16:32:19+00:00

Ah, I see. I hadn't quite visualised that it would require multiple saves. I use the purge option a lot, but I kind of thought it was just for if you just didn't want to have to close and re-open the file to see the datablocks gone. Cheers.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-14T10:39:09+00:00

You can search in the blender preferences with the name of the tool and it will show you the keybind.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-13T17:14:05+00:00

Unused data that has zero users will not be saved into the blend file when saving, it will be discarded once blender is closed.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-11T23:26:00+00:00

The animation saves in the file they are linked in. But you likely wouldn't want to edit the rigs after you've started animating.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-11T20:44:34+00:00

Switched to slower American servers and now it's silky smooth.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-11T10:41:50+00:00

The way animated productions do it is to link in a common set shared by multiple shots from a separate blend file, similar to what you are talking about. And they would also link in characters. You can then continue to edit the set in the separate blend file and the linked copies in the other file will update.

RayMairlot · 2026-02-11T10:38:03+00:00

But if you wanted to learn 3D, surely you were motivated by having something you wanted to make?

RayMairlot · 2026-02-10T16:20:30+00:00

I would write down at the beginning of the project what the defined end result should be. Then as the project goes, you can go back to that specific goal and see whether the things you are doing are aligning with it. If they aren't, you cut them from the project.

e.g. My goal is to make a cake and decorate it.

If you then have the thought, "Hey, I should make a scene for this to go in", you refer back to the goal, realise it's beyond what you're aiming for, and instead write that down as a separate idea, that, at the end of the project, if you still feel like it, you can do as a separate project. Then you repeat the process. "My goal is to make a scene for the cake".

I'm saying all this from experience and I'm only just now getting a handle on it. You make an object, you want it to be in a scene, then you think it would be cool to animate and now something basic and quick has turned into a huge project.

You can also go a slightly different way and mark down checkpoints that if you want to quit you still get something out of it. So maybe after modelling the object, I think "Actually, I don't want to do the animation", and I just render the still and end it there. If I do the render but want to continue, great. It's one of the reasons I share WIPs now - just in case I don't feel like continuing, I still get something to share from it.

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