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. In the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A render engine such as Blenders Eevee renderer has a huge amount of settings and it can sometimes be hard to know what settings are significant for any given project. In this article we will therefore take a look at most Eevee render settings and learn in what scenario we may need what setting. Blender […]
Proportional editing is one of the basic tools in Blender to start creating simple organic shapes. I find that many beginners struggle with how it works, so I thought that I would try to help out with this article. We can toggle proportional editing with the hotkey "O". Once toggled on, start a transformation such […]
We can't use Bloom the same way we do in Eevee since Cycles does not have a bloom feature built into the render engine. Instead, we add the bloom effect in post-production. This is how we can do it. After your render has finished, go to the compositing workspace and check "use nodes". Between the […]
There are many ways to import images into Blender. The best way depends on what we want to do with the image once we imported it. The most basic way to import an image into Blender is to drag-and-drop it. If you drop it in the 3D viewport it will become a background image object. […]
There are so many sources for materials and textures available for Blender artists that it is starting to become ridiculous. The problem is no longer to find materials, but to find the best ones. Here I list the top 10 sites that gladly provide you with materials. Most of them even for free. Cc0Textures.com BlenderKit.com […]
If you are anything like me you jumped straight in when you started learning about Blender. Not too long into the learning experience you might have realized that you need some help with basics, centering objects, origins and pivot points is probably one of them if you came across this page. So how do we […]
There are many scenarios where the boolean modifier is an excellent solution to modeling problems. In this article we will cover a few of them and how we can make the most out of it in Blender. To use the boolean modifier, select an object and go to the modifier stack in the properties panel. […]
I have used Baketools for such a long time that I don't even think about it as an add-on anymore. It has become part of how I use Blender. Baketools has enjoyed continuous development for a few years and has become better and more stable with every release. However, there are still bugs present and […]