What is Ambient Occlusion and what are some of it's uses? I see it is used in creating what might be called "shadow catchers" in the following node tree setup:

What is the logic to having an axis labeled Z and also having Z refer to distance from the camera? It seems like an easy way to confuse people. Is this due to the conjunction of two different lexicons, one from geometry where they have a Z axis and one from photography?

For example, sometimes I accidentally switch to Material view for objects instead of Textured and since my computer is very slow, it takes WAY too long until I can do anything again. So, I'd like to be able to hit a key and have Blender stop trying to display Material view.

I've been working with bge and specifically the KX_Camera class to check if points are within the viewing frustum, but even when points are clearly in the camera frustum, it returns false. I'm aware of the issue where the projection matrix of the KX_Camera object are not updated on the first logi...

I'd like to have a node like the Frame node but one that can have lots of text, not just a header. I've looked and it looks like there isn't any such capability so far, so I was wondering how easy it would be for someone to create a custom Comment node as an add-on or script (I don't know the dif...

I've found some neat combinations of nodes to create certain effects, so I'd like to make them a group and then have that node available on my list of available nodes, even when I reload the startup file. How would I do that?

I've seen scripts I'd like to use, but I'm unfamiliar with making system files like the .blend file visible in OS X and then editing them. So, is there an easy way to install them manually? Even more ideally, is it easy for anyone else to make an addon for installing scripts? It seems like some...

Background Had Blender 2.66 (with cycles) installed in /opt/blender. Removed the installation. Installed using apt-get install blender. Problem The widgets are missing: I tried using other Blender builds. They all are missing the widgets. Environment Running Xubuntu Linux 12.04. $ uname ...

I have created a cape and pinned the vertices I wanted to stay stationery however when I go to animate it they unpin and repel themselves from the armor they are supposed to be near. I turned down the repel and collision distance down as far as possible and it still occurs. Any ideas?

I was trying to texture a car, but then I realized that some faces dont have their UV map applied. I cant really explain what's happening. It looks like that there are two kinds of groups; when I select the entire model and apply a UV Map to it only one of the groups of faces actually uses it. Th...

In blender you can use shift when moving something, this will reduce the amount it is moved giving you finer control. Is there a way to make the shift drag slower than it already is?