I’ve encountered so many bugs and glitches using Blender 2.74 that I suspect my installation might be corrupt or something. Is this likely? And if so, can it be fixed?
I only started using it last month. And it seems that half the functions I try to use either don’t work as advertised, or don’t work at all. What blows my mind is I don’t see others complaining about such sweeping flaws. I therefore begin to suspect that my installation is corrupt.
It would help, of course, if you told us what those “bugs and glitches” actually are…
Here are some examples:
Sculpt mode, some sculpt “brushes” do not work. On one of these sculpt bushes, the “add” and “subtract” buttons set the brush to do exactly opposite of their label - “add” actually subtracts, and “subtract” actually adds. This sculpt mode calamity only effects one of my projects, however, making it file specific.
Mirror flip function applied to one of my objects (Ctrl-M,X) produces an X-mirrored translation of my object, as it should, but it also rotates the object about 85 degrees, which it should NOT do. If it rotated my object exactly 90 degrees (or some interval of 90) I’d be happier because I could compensate for this error by counter-rotating it exactly -90. My best guess as to why this function adds the rotation is that my object is a modified primitive that I rotated about 85 degrees prior to doing the X-mirror function. My objection here is that none of the tutorials on the Mirroring function mention anything about this scenario, let alone what to do about it. I still don’t know what to do about it. The Mirroring function should mirror-translate the object as is, not as it once was.
Anyway, I compensated for this problem by copying the rotation angles from a non-mirrored version of the object, and negating the relevant angle values.
My next problem with that same mirrored object is that it cannot be boolean unioned with another object. When the boolean union modifier is applied to that object, the other object simply disappears. In fact, it does not matter which of the two objects I apply the modifier to. The other object always disappears. Any two other objects can be boolean unioned. But not my problem object.
I had an X-symmetrical humaniod object that had somehow gotten translated off the global origin, slightly in the -X direction. I wanted to translate it back to center it on the global origin. My attempt to do this produced laughable results. I put the 3D Cursor on the global origin (Shift-C) and put the humanoid object origin to the 3D Cursor (Shift-Ctrl-Alt-C, Origin to 3d Cursor), then I put the humaniod geometry centered around its object (Shift-Ctrl-Alt-C, Geometry to Origin). The result: humaniod object is grossly distorted – arms stretched out toward the sky 3 or 4 times their normal length, abdomen and legs looking like they’ve been in some horrible car accident.
Maybe this problem comes from the fact that the humanoid object is an import from MakeHuman, and therefore has the Y and Z axes labeling convention swapped with respect to the Blender global axes labeling. I don’t know. How am I supposed to know what the problem is, or what to do about it?
Anyway, it is this constant wall of problems that make me wonder whether my installation of Blender is working right.
Is my 2.74 installation corrupt?
Most likely not.
- Sculpt mode, some sculpt “brushes” do not work. On one of these sculpt bushes, the “add” and “subtract” buttons set the brush to do exactly opposite of their label - “add” actually subtracts, and “subtract” actually adds. This sculpt mode calamity only effects one of my projects, however, making it file specific.
If one specific object then it is a problem with the object, most likely face normals inverted, this would show this effect. If you also get odd sculpting then apply any scale the object may have
- My next problem with that same mirrored object is that it cannot be boolean unioned with another object. When the boolean union modifier is applied to that object, the other object simply disappears. In fact, it does not matter which of the two objects I apply the modifier to. The other object always disappears. Any two other objects can be boolean unioned. But not my problem object.
Check objects for errors such as non manifold faces, double vertices etc. The same as my reply to your previous support question, supply example blend file for review so we can actually understand what you are talking about
3 again normals, or just blender being blender, try the other boolean functions, one of them will do the job if correcting the normals doesn’t help.
4. sound like you need to apply your scale. object scale should always be one. again ctrl A to apply scale. not sure why just moving the object to the center would cause an issue, unless you have some origin based modifiers on the model, whatever ctrl A should fix it.
there are tons of issues like this that crop up through inexperience rather than problems with the program they just take time to figure out. i would practice some projects to get your self familiar with the software before attempting your own projects. and keep asking questions, everyone hits snags now and again
Thanks so much for your help, folks. Applying the rotation and scale does fix the Mirror-x problem.
But the problem object still cannot boolean union with any other object.
One thing I noticed about this problem object is this: when I apply a mod to it, such as scale or rotation or boolean operation, it gets darker - goes from the light grey color that all the other objects have, to a darker grey. I have no idea what this means. Googling the phenomenon gives no clue. But I suspect it means there’s something very special about this object that makes it behave very differently than any of the others. Recalculating the normals has no influence on it either.
a change in colour indicate that the normals have flipped, just press recalculate normals on the uv/shading tab or ctrlN in edit mode
Well, recalculating the normals STILL has no effect. The problem object STILL cannot be boolean unioned with any other object.
No biggie. I found a work-around that gets me what I want.
There are certain mesh flaws that can prevent a consistent recalculation of the normals. Since you did not supply an example .blend file or at least a meaningful screenshot it is unfortunately well-nigh impossible to help you finding the problem…