In Blender, the normal is the direction a face is pointing. But you may also have heard the term "true normal". The true normal represents the actual direction of the normal, and when referring to just the normal, it can have an altered or changed value. The effect the normals have is the shading of […]

Baking is a fundamental technique in the world of 3D animation, allowing you to convert dynamic simulations or animations into keyframes. By learning this process, you get the ability to easier transfer animations to other software. To bake a rigid body animation, select the animated object(s) and go to the Object dropdown at the top […]

Subdivide is probably one of the most common actions in 3D modeling, and it is certainly one of the most common ways to generate geometry procedurally in a non-destructive workflow. The quickest way to subdivide your mesh in Blender using a modifier is to select your object and press Ctrl+1, 2 or 3. The number […]

The primary function for the numpad in Blender is to navigate the 3D viewport. There are several other ways to navigate as well. Cheat sheet To emulate the numpad follow these steps: You can now navigate with the number row. Navigating in Blender using the gizmo. In the top right corner of the 3D viewport, […]

If you're familiar with Blender you've likely used the Boolean modifier. We have access to a similar tool in geometry nodes through the mesh boolean node. To use a mesh boolean in geometry nodes follow these steps: In this article, we cover the mesh boolean node, make sure that we don't confuse it with the […]

We can divide the factors that matter to our render speed in four categories. Hardware, render settings , scene and external software factors. Higher end hardware is invariably going to speed up our renders. But there are a lot of ways we can improve performance, both in our scene and by tweaking render settings. What […]

When learning anything, it is a good idea to use multiple sources methods and types of learning material. With Blender, you might want to mix between using books, blogs, manual, video and course material together with your own projects. Let's here inspect what books are currently available to learn Blender from. Let's start with some […]

If you've ever used the particle system before you've likely aligned the particles to the normal of an object at some point. We can do this in geometry nodes and with a much nicer setup. We won't need to mess with object rotation beforehand and we have more options for distribution and rotation. The only […]

Align Euler to vector is a node that takes in a rotation value and then offsets it to line up with a direction or position. This can allow us to do quite a few things we would otherwise need to do with constraints, modifiers, and particle systems. In the rest of this article, we'll go […]

Having a solid understanding of how to work with vertices is key to being able to model fast and fix issues and problems that arise during the modeling process. In this article we will take a look at common operations that will help you build better geometry faster. Primarily in box modeling and polygon modeling […]

If you're interested in 3D animation and want to bring your characters to life, armatures are an essential tool to master. Armatures consist of interconnected bones that form a hierarchy, allowing you to control the movement and deformation of your character models. In this article, we will dive into the world of armatures, exploring how […]

Blender is an excellent tool to use for architectural visualisations of both interiors and exteriors. There is a a large number of helpful third-party tools that help speed up or perfect the workflow for creating such visualisations, and the best of these are so useful that sooner or later you won't be able to live […]

One of the features that make Blender a more versatile software than other 3D software in the market, is the Video Sequencer Editor (VSE). Like many video editors, one of the features that the Blender VSE offers is the possibility of adding text to your video. For adding text to a video, when you are […]

AI artwork generators have become quite a powerful and useful tool for artists. Recently the Dream textures add-on has been developed for Blender and with this add-on, we can generate textures using AI by just typing in the texture we want. So how do we use it? To generate a texture with dream texture: To […]

Quite a few 3D models and renders include leather materials, especially furniture models and interiors. With that in mind at some point we'll likely want to create a leather material. To Create a Leather Material in Blender: In the rest of this article, we'll go over more detail on setting up our leather material using […]

Speeding up your workflow is essential when working on large projects, and Blender's many tools and settings truly help you to do so. One of these settings is backface culling, so let's see what it is and how it works! Backface culling automatically hides faces when they are viewed from their back side. To enable […]

Fresnel, pronounced frenel, with a silent s is the effect where a reflective object's edge is highlighted as well as the angle of the view changing how reflective an object appears. Every surface has some amount of fresnel but rough materials tend to have a very diffuse reflection to them. Similar to actual Fresnel, Fresnel […]

Metals are fairly common materials to find in a Blender scene or in real life. Aluminum is quite a handy material both in real life and in Blender. With how many objects can be made out of aluminum we'll likely need to have it for a model at some point. So how can create an […]

Blender's shader editor is incredibly versatile as it provides a ton of nodes to create just about any material you can imagine using the combination of procedural and image textures. One essential aspect of this is transforming these textures in order to get the desired look for your material: and this can be done with […]

Noticeable only by the tiny magnet icon in the top of your viewport, the snapping tool is a commonly overlooked tool in Blender that could easily be saving you lots of time. The most versatile of these is the vertex snapping option, which allows you to snap any vertex, edge, face, or object in general […]