Rendering is at the heart of what we do in Blender. When you are starting out it is good to understand how it works so that you can actually get some output to show and use. To render in Blender Press F12 for rendering a still image or Ctrl+F12 to render animation. You can also […]
For beginners or when using a tablet, the graphical gizmos or widgets can be a major help for making basic transformations in Blender. By default, the gizmo is hidden. You can activate it in the Gizmo menu found in the top right corner of the 3D viewport. Enable the checkboxes for move, rotate and scale […]
When it comes to rendering large and intensive scenes in Blender, memory optimization becomes critical. I have lost count of how many times Blender crashed for me thanks to using too much memory during rendering. Many times, the statement less is more, is something to really keep in mind. These are the primary ways in […]
A straightforward way to create a simple animation from your scene in Blender is to move the camera through it. This way we need only worry about animating a single object, the camera. To animate the camera in Blender, follow these steps: Set the play head in your timeline to the first frame Select your […]
As time passes many older 32-bit computers are being phased out. But there are some still out there and the most important question is of course if they can run Blender. The latest release of Blender does not run on a 32-bit computer. The latest release that had official support for 32-bit was version 2.80 […]
It is important that our objects get the right shading depending on the kind of surface and our artistic goals with the piece. By default, all mesh objects in Blender have flat shading. However, when we deal with round or organic shapes, we want the surface to be smooth, so that we don't get a […]
When talking about backgrounds in Blender, we may mean different things. But the most common is that we want to change the background for our finished render. To change the background in Blender we need to adjust the world material. This is a special material that is only applied to the world background. Let's continue […]
Blender is a software that heavily rely on shortcut keys. In this article we discuss what we need to know to work with them effectively. You can manage Blender's shortcut keys by going to Edit->Preferences and find the Keymap section. Here we can search, filter, change and reset shortcuts. There are also multiple keymaps already […]
We have several types of assets to manage in Blender. Everything from textures to 3D models, hdri images and reference material just to name the most common. In this article I will show you how you can manage all this on a local or shared hard drive without add-ons in Blender. We can do asset […]
For the longest time I did not use the knife tool as part of my Blender modeling workflow. But it has become a more frequent tool since I have started to discover how versatile and easy it is to use. To use the knife tool in Blender press tab to go into edit mode, then […]
Render passes are a remarkably interesting thing that we can use in many ways. For any larger project they can save a huge amount of time and we have access to a lot of them in Blender with Cycles. Render passes are different channels that each can hold a separate kind of data that is […]
There are many potential problems when it comes to rendering. Here, we cover a few of the common ones that I have come across many times and I am sure you will too. Blender crashing before, during or after rendering The finished render is a black screen Objects are missing in the final render We […]
For quite some time I have encountered forum threads and twitter accounts asking about motion blur in Eevee. With the 2.90 release this is now finally possible. Motion blur can be turned on for Eevee by going to the render settings and check the box on the motion blur section. Motion blur in Eevee is […]
If you have worked with Blender and Cycles for some time, you probably have a good understanding of a few render settings. But I would bet that there are at least a handful of settings you don't know much about. The goal for this article is to explain and explore most of the Cycles render […]
Ambient occlusion comes in many shapes and sizes and it can be hard to understand what it really is all about. Let's see how what and where ambient occlusion or AO as it is shortened is present in Blender and what we can do with it. Ambient occlusion is an effect that can be used […]
In this article we will focus on the viewport overlays in Blender. The goal is to display the data we need as we work on our scenes while not getting the viewport cluttered with too much information. We can access viewport overlays and gizmos in the top right corner of the 3D viewport. Overlays are […]
I recently started to take deeper note about what options are available for the 3D viewport in Blender. I was accustomed to some features but I didn't know really how much choice I had and how an informative and good-looking viewport could help me make better art. To change the viewport shading mode, find the […]
Mirroring in Blender may have multiple meanings. We may want to mirror geometry, or a brush stroke or perhaps we are talking about creating a mirror as a shader. Let's take a deep dive into mirroring in Blender and see what each of those can mean. The most common way to mirror in Blender is […]
In this article we will take a deep dive into the text object, what options and features we have as well as some common 3D effects that we may want to use our text for in Blender. To create 3D text, go to the add menu in the 3D viewport and choose text. Press tab, […]
When I first came across a situation when I needed a transparent image in Blender, I didn’t have any idea how to make that happen. But when I learned about shaders and the node editor, I found the answer. To use an image textures alpha channel in Blender we need to set up a material […]