Robert Gützkow

@Gorgious Sorry for the double rollback. I've read the original edit and mistook that for the last one. I've restored your version.

Happy holidays!

@AllenSimpson Thank you for participating in the election!

The election ends in 25 mins. Good luck to all candidates!

The moderator election has started. Don't forget to cast your vote for your favorite candidates: blender.stackexchange.com/election

Tagging you @RobinBetts @AllenSimpson since you mentioned being interested in partaking.

Just a quick reminder that you can nominate yourself for the moderator election. The nomination phase ends on Monday. If you're interested, submit your nomination this weekend: blender.stackexchange.com/election

@RobinBetts @quellenform @AllenSimpson

The moderator election is now in the nomination phase. If you would like to partake as a candidate you can nominate yourself on the following page: blender.stackexchange.com/election

@GordonBrinkmann We're looking into it. Sorry for the late reply, I was at work.

Hey everybody, the nominations for moderator election are coming up and we need your questions for the candidates. If you have a question you would like the candidates to answer, you can add it to this post on Blender's meta: blender.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2979/…

@RobinBetts That's great to hear! We are currently coordinating with the community managers. I will let you know when a date is set.

@RobinBetts Do you already know if you will join as a candidate?

@RobinBetts You're more than welcome to join as a candidate for the moderator election!

Essentially, moderators make sure that everything runs smoothly, that there is positive engagement within the community and that the Stack Exchange provides useful answers to people's questions.

Additionally, they also step in if conflict resolution between users is needed, especially if someone violates the code of conduct. This may also include checking that users do not use sock puppet accounts, serial downvote another user, or post inflammatory comments, rants or spam.

@RobinBetts Knowledge about Blender's source code is definitely not required. In many parts moderators do what regular power users do as well, which includes reviewing questions and answer. However, instead of just flagging them or voting on a decision, they get to make the final call.

Our moderators are allowed to be kind :)

@RobinBetts Would be great to have you onboard!

Please do not post a question as an answer. If you need someone's help to articulate your question, please do so in your own post and perhaps let them edit it. This is a Q&A website, not a forum. Unfortunately, I will have to delete this post. Please take a look at the tour page. It shows how this website works.

@quellenform That is an entirely fair point. I can understand why you want that option, even if I do not agree. At best we can make modifications to the style guide, but us moderators cannot extend the formatting options of Stack Exchange. Hence, it won't be possible to get a custom option for highlighting (geometry) nodes. If a large part of the community is in favor of using code blocks for nodes, then that is something we will have to consider.

@AtLeastVision At no point did I make that argument, because that is obviously not true. My point was that the meaning is conveyed by the text, and formatting should enhance the readability. Formatting should not be the sole source of information on how you differentiate between, e.g. nodes and input values.

I'm not categorically against the possibility of changed formatting guidelines, there may be cases where this is absolutely necessary, it is just that the arguments and examples provided are not really convincing to me. Modifying the text slightly to make it clear what each name refers to (avoiding ambiguity), adhering to the existing guidelines, avoiding unnecessary capitalization of words, and not using formatting excessively, seems to already go a long way to avoid the listed issues.

@quellenform "[...] the emphasis or meaning is the same as everything else that is also italicized" Exactly, my point #1. If you run into this issue you perhaps should not italicize an entire paragraph if your actual goal is to emphasize the name of the nodes within. I'm currently not teaching Blender classes at high school anymore, so I can't do that. Asking for empirical data in this context is a bit pointless, because neither of us can provide it, otherwise you/I could prove your/my point conclusively.

Perhaps I should word my opinion differently: The answer should ideally be understandable and unambiguous in plaintext without additional formatting. The formatting is just there to help with readability and highlight certain aspects.

Regarding #2: I'm not sure why you assume that there has to be a 1:1 mapping between a formatting option for emphasizing text and its meaning. Sure, the formatting should be consistent within the answer, so that e.g. the same node is not written in bold, italics and code block in different parts of the text. However, you can use italics to emphasize e.g. nodes, checkboxes, menu entries in the same answer.

I'm not sure why the focus on geometry nodes is particularly relevant here, as this applies to shader nodes and pretty much every answer in general. Additionally, you are kind of dodging my criticism there. To answer your question regarding the string, I would explicitily explain that one is the assigned value and the other is the node. That alone is sufficient to unambigously answer the question. For formatting I would probably use quotes for the string value and italics for the node name.

Reading the provided examples, I have to say they are rather unconvincing to me. The issues seem to stem from 1) using italic or bold font excessively to the point where they cannot be used for emphasizing relevant parts anymore, 2) not explicitly explaining whether the term refers to an input or node name and instead relying on the implicit assumption that certain formatting conveys that association and 3) not making use of other options such as quotation marks (e.g. to differentiate between a value and the UI element).

@quellenform you could do many things in theory, but formatting shortcuts like this has been long established on Stack Exchange and it is a tag for keyboard inputs in HTML: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/kbd

@DuarteFarrajotaRamos has been a moderator a lot longer than me, apologies for the confusion.

@quellenform I wasn't aware of that meta post, iKlsR is one of our former moderators. It accurately describes the style that is used here. While the post does not explicitly mention nodes, I do agree that code block / backticks should be used sparingly. Looking at your geo nodes answers, I'd say italics would be sufficient to highlight them. Based on your post and your comment I'm not sure I understand why you believe that it wouldn't be an option. You can always preface whether your are referring to a node, an input/output socket or parameter in case they could be confused with each other.

As far as I know there is no official style guide for formatting that states when you should / shouldn't use code blocks or italics. Personally, I'd think that italics would be enough for emphasis. I would also refer to the specific names to avoid confusion.

@Chris Editing questions or answers to improve them is fairly standard. This should obviously not make drastic changes to the content, it's mostly about formatting and grammar for answers. Questions can be more heavily edited to remove parts that are not really relevant to the issue. We are not here to punish people, even if their comments or answers are incorrect!

@Chris Moderation takes time and effort, which is why the notice on questions being closed have a short and terse text that explains why a question was closed. People simply cannot write an essay every time that happens, due to the number of questions being asked. The moderation concept is not something that the moderators of Blender's Stack Exchange came up with. It works this way on all Stack Exchange sites.

Moderators will decide things like this on a case-by-case basis.

However, this does not mean that moderators don't have humor or dislike people having fun. The occasional intentionally silly question is not categorically forbidden. They can be of value, especially since users come up with interesting approaches that can also be useful in other contexts.

The rules for Stack Exchange that apply to all its sites, including Blender's Stack Exchange, try to create a Q&A knowledge base rather than a fun forum. Thus, it is more stringent in moderation. Combined with the permissions tied to reputation points, this can be quite a hurdle for new users and be less inviting. We do have plenty of places in the Blender community that are more suitable for beginner-friendly, light-hearted and entertaining content.

@AhmedAli Sorry didn't see your message sooner. So all you need is to get the directory then as shown in the code snippet above. Is there anything else that's unclear?

@AhmedAli If you let me know what approach you're looking for, then I can write a proper answer to your question.

So the best solution really depends on what your goal is.

Note that there will be separate modifiers for the different particle systems like spray, foam and bubbles, if you choose to use the former approach.

bpy.context.object.modifiers["Fluid"].domain_settings.cache_directory

If the goal is just to copy everything the mantaflow stores, then you should just copy the entire cache directory.

There should be a separate modifier in the modifier tab for the particles though, so you should still be able to use: bpy.context.object.modifiers["Liquid Particle System"].particle_system.point_cache

When OpenVDB is used.

Particle and volume are unified in OpenVDB

The cache format options have been simplified in 2.90 and cache format options for noise and particles have been deprecated.

According to wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.90/Physics