I have a strange problem for which I couldn’t find any solution on Google or this forum.
The colors of my vertices are wrong. With the standard settings in Blender I should be seeing the following colors:
Orange => Normal selected vertex
White => Last selected vertex
However, most of the time those vertices are black in my interface. This seems to happen when I manually select vertices by clicking on them, or by using shortcut key B and then select a bunch of them.
But when I use the shortcut key A to select them all, they become orange.
You can imagine that it can be quite confusing when you are modelling if you don’t know which vertices are actually selected and which are not.
I tried the following:
Uninstalling Blender, including configuration files. Setup did not actually delete everything, so I also manually deleted all Blender related files in Users/Documents and Settings folders and Program Files folder.
After re-install, the problem was still there. So just to be sure it wasn’t a theme setting, I went to User Preferences => Themes => 3D View and changed ALL colors to blue. Everything in the 3D view turned blue, except all selected vertices.
Tried all Preset themes (Back to Black, Blender 24X, Elsyiun, Hexagon and Ubuntu Ambiance). Also didn’t work.
Download ZIP files of older Blender versions. 2.5x, 2.6x, 2.7x all had the same problem.
I only have this problem on this laptop. Since I never had this problem on other computers, I created a Blender file on my desktop PC and there it was working as it should be. Then I used that Blender file on this laptop and the selected vertices where black again.
I made screen shots, see attached. Before creating those I did the following:
Open Blender => Go to Edit mode => Deselect the front-left vertex and then select it again.
Vertex OK.jpg => As it should be (one white vertex, the rest orange)
Vertex Not OK.jpg => Wrong. Three vertices are black.
Vertex.blend => Blender file used for screen shots.
Note that I used the exact same Blender file on both computers and did not click anything between opening it and making the screen shots.
Sorry for the long explanation, but I wanted to be thorough. Does anyone know how to solve this?
Now that’s a proper amount of background information and correct support files
Checked the file and it’s normal white for me too. Since it’s only your laptop and you’ve tried everything else, that suggests that there is something wrong with the graphics card, its drivers, or graphics settings.
Blender user interface is drawn with OpenGL. You could try to confirm a problem with graphics by running Blender in softwaregl mode. Since you’re on Windows, Blender package for it doesn’t come with that option but it should be relatively easy by placing one dll in the Blender directory. This comes from a Blender developer (Mont29 comment here https://developer.blender.org/T40670) and you can download it from ftp://ftp.blender.org/sergey/softwaregl/
I’m not on Windows so can’t try the dll myself.
If it shows up correctly with softwaregl which doesn’t use hardware acceleration for the display, then it most definitely is a problem with graphics. Could then try to update drivers, see that the drivers are not set to override application preference in any of the opengl acceleration settings, or could try different window draw methods in Blender user preferences -> system.
Thank you so much! I tried the DLL file. The vertices show up normal when using it, but as stated by Mont29 in the link you provided, Blender is slow as hell. But now at least I know where to look. I will post the results later when I’m done trying out some things.
Driver update. But it was already the latest driver. And since the last version is from 2010, I don’t count on any update in the future.
Replaced driver with an older driver and installed the software “ATI Catalyst Control Center” that came along with it. Vertex problem behaves somewhat differently, but still present.
Tried all settings in ATI Catalyst Control Center.
Updated driver again. Vertex problem now the same as when I started.
Updated ATI Catalyst Control Center to a newer version and tried all settings again.
Tried changing all GL related settings in Blender, including all the different window draw methods (restarted Blender each time too, although I don’t think it would actually have been necessary).
Seems like there is no solution for this graphics card. I used an alternative solution. It’s not perfect, but it will have to do. I changed the color for non-selected vertices (User Preferences => Themes => 3D View => Vertex).
Standard color is black. Changed it to purple for now. So now my unselected vertices are purple and my selected vertices are orange, white and black. That way I can at least see whether a vertex is selected or not. I still can’t see what the latest selected vertex was most of the time, but you can’t always have everything.
At least you got the problem pinpointed and confirmed.
I’ve had hardware problems with Blender twice. Once when my cpu was too old to fill the minimum requirement (SSE2) in new version, and another when I had to use old integrated intel graphics card with Blender. Worked for the most part but lamps didn’t have dotted circles around them.
Old hardware is old, there’s no way around that. But sometimes there are problems with hardware that should work and with the drivers that they ship. In those cases it’s extra frustrating if there is a opengl/webgl/opencl problem for example, because those are made by organization which consist of companies such as AMD, nVidia, Intel, ARM and other as small names. https://www.khronos.org/members/promoters
Or in other words, with the member lists there, I would expect everything to run effortlessly and fast. Heck, with those kind of resources behind them, it should work if I just held a graphics card near a kitchen blender and put a finger in my mouth instead of plugging something in the wall.
Exactly! Too old I can live with. But when the driver or card just isn’t working properly with the software, it’s frustrating. A few years ago I bought a brand new PC with very good specs at the time. But the onboard graphics couldn’t handle certain elements of a then three year old game. Turns out that the game didn’t work properly with certain chipsets of a certain brand. Luckily I was planning to buy a better graphics card anyway. That solved the problem.
Or in other words, with the member lists there, I would expect everything to run effortlessly and fast. Heck, with those kind of resources behind them, it should work if I just held a graphics card near a kitchen blender and put a finger in my mouth instead of plugging something in the wall.
I tried that with a light bulb once. It did not lit. :eek:
Have you tried going to “Preferences” and “themes” to see if you just have the wrong colors selected? This happened to me once as well, and I just customized my vertices colors in the themes panel to fix it. I now use Light and dark blue as my selected and un-selected vertices colors.
Does anyone know how to solve this?
