When we learn about materials and texturing in Blender it is easy to get stuck on tasks that for senior artists have become obvious and even hard to cover. Scaling textures is one such task that often is done without thinking. But for beginner artists it can be a challenge to find the right place […]
For many beginner Blender artists, normals can be hard to understand. What effect do they have on our 3D models? How do we control them and what kinds of normals are there that we need to worry about? A normal is a perpendicular vector of an object. In Blender, the object is usually a vertex […]
In Blender you can mark edges, which can be used for several reasons, allowing you to give special treatment to these edges in various ways. These are the edge markings available in Blender: Seams Crease Bevel weight Sharp Freestyle To mark an edge, enter edit mode, select an edge. Then click Ctrl+E to open the […]
When I first started out using Blender, empties were a completely foreign topic to me. I had no idea why they would be useful. Today, I can't remember when I last did a project that didn't involve empties. An empty object is often just called an empty in Blender or empties for multiple empty objects. […]
Vertex groups are a useful tool when we want to mask things in Blender. Many modifiers have an input slot for vertex group, allowing us to only affect portions of the object. Likewise, we can use vertex groups with particle systems, simulations, and with a little trick convert them so that we can even use […]
UV unwrapping can be a daunting task when you first get into it. There are many things that can go wrong, and you need to know what you're going to use your UV map for. Here is a list of 10 tips that I have composed to help you on your journey to become a […]
Sometimes during our digital 3D art project we may find ourselves when we have stretching textures. A texture gets stretched to its limits when the corresponding UV map has no area. This may happen if we create new geometry on an already UV unwrapped and textured object. To solve it, UV unwrap the new geometry. […]
The baking system in Blender takes a lot of critiques for being unintuitive, hard to understand and error prone. In this article, I aim to untangle the confusion about baking in Blender with Cycles. To bake from a material to an image texture in Blender, follow these steps: In this article I will start by […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. Ambientcg.com BlenderKit.com […]
There are many ways to create grass in Blender. That is probably because there are over 12.000 different species in the Poaceae family according to Wikipedia. Poaceae being just another fancy word for grass. Apart from that grass looks complex and is everywhere. We just need a good way to recreate it for many of our […]
In this article we will take a look at what displacement is and how to use it in Blender. Since Blender 2.8 we have two methods of adding displacement, and we will cover them here. How to use displacement in Blender? Select your object, add a displacement modifier. Press new and go to the texture […]
In version 2.82 Blender got UDIM support. This is exciting because UDIM has become a standard for dealing with texture sets where a single texture is not enough to cover the texturing needs. How UDIM works in Blender? To enable UDIM, go to the UV Editor and create a new image. Make sure to select […]
In this article we cover adding textures in Blender. Let's do the quick way first and then we will go into more depth. Quick Start Guide: Adding Textures in Blender For the quickest way to add a texture to an object in Blender, follow these steps: Or watch the video for the same explanation. Essential […]
If you are like me, you are lazy. Making a UV Map for every object takes time and even if I am still sitting in my chair while doing it, it can involve an internal meltdown. Box mapping to the rescue! Box mapping is a way to project a texture onto a 3D object without […]
UV Mapping is by many considered being the most boring part of the entire 3D art pipeline. A mini game tucked right in the middle like a massive roadblock that does not fit along with all the creativity surrounding it. After having read this article however, I hope that you are one of those people […]