Innehållsförteckning för January 2021 från 3D World

Because it’s built with an opensource community, Blender’s always evolving. You don’t have to wait for a grand release to see advancement. You don’t even have to wait for the next incremental iteration, you could do it yourself. There’s a Python workspace built right into Blender which allows you to automate tedious operations with your own mini program. And if what you’ve made helps others, you can share it as an add-on, for free or for profit. And if you’re not coding-inclined, go and sample the near infinite library of add-ons already available. The most widely relevant are activated when you download Blender, or can be enabled with a click. On places like Blender Market, GitHub and Gumroad, you’ll find stashes of the latest add-ons, allowing you to customise Blender…

In 2005 the Blender Foundation began work, alongside the Netherlands Media Art Institute, on Elephants Dream, a surreal and visually ambitious short film that stretched the limits of Blender’s opensource 3D software. Ever since then Blender Studio has been producing iconic Open Movies that advance the software’s capabilities and are released for free alongside production files, assets, artwork, and never-seen-before content for the benefit of Blender’s devoted community. Blender Studio recently announced their 13th Open Movie, and perhaps their most ambitious yet, Sprite Fright. Directed by former Pixar story supervisor Matthew Luhn, Sprite Fright is an 80s-inspired horror-comedy, set in Britain. The story follows a group of rowdy teenagers on a trek into an isolated forest where they discover peaceful mushroom creatures that turn out to be an unexpected force of nature.…

I love the look of grungy, worn sci-fi props, and having recently spent some time brushing up on my hard-surface modelling skills, I wanted to share how easy it is to set up a really good-looking shader in Blender, one that you can actually paint in real time to get the exact look you want. We’re going to create a basic dirty paint shader and paint on the model directly to reveal the metal underneath. Then we’ll work with the shader nodes so that the painted map can also create an undercoat of a different colour and a bump map. After that, you can just have fun painting all that damage in real time! Finally, we’ll take a look at how easy it is to add painted decals. Keep in…

Maya Jermy replies Digital sculpting, just like traditional sculpting methods, has its rules. Although digital sculptors have a lot more freedom and the option to go back and undo any changes, there are still a few principles to follow in order to make this process smooth and successful. I often recommend that beginner artists try their hand at traditional clay sculpting before they even open any 3D application. It is a good practice and excellent exercise that tests your manual skills and provides valuable experience. Considering that, it is a much harsher environment and a messy encounter limited by the clay drying out quickly, which forces the artist to work faster. It means you need to have a plan of action prepared and a well-organised workflow. That in itself is…

Every open source project establishes a relationship with its users and contributors – often called ‘the community.’ Community building is approached differently depending on the nature of the project. For example, a community of mostly end-users (Mozilla) and a community of software developers (Apache) require separate approaches. For Blender the definition of ‘community’ is very wide. The most basic version can be found at blender.org where you’ll see a community of contributors. These comprise a mix of developers, authors, artists, and donors (both individual and corporate). However, Blender has a larger definition of community too: anyone who uses Blender is considered part of Blender. This is because of Blender’s special nature as a magical 3D toolbox. Everything revolves around the excitement of making what you love, whether that’s art, design,…

Follow the link to download your free files http://bit.ly/3Dworld-blender MODELS + TEXTURES FREE ASSET DOWNLOADS Download a set of fantastic textures from build your own asset library with these incredible toy-themed models from in our monthly model and texture giveaway. VIDEO & HIGH-RES SCREEN GRABS RIG CHARACTERS WITH RIGIFY Diana David shares her techniques for rigging characters in Blender using the Rigify add-on. VIDEO & HIGH-RES SCREEN GRABS Q&A Our expert panel is back to answer your CG woes. Get the high-res screens and video here. ISSUE 269 NEXT MONTH Next issue we focus on helping you explore and create environments ON SALE 29TH DECEMBER Subscribe today: www.bit.ly/3dworld-subs MODELS AND TEXTURES EVERY MONTH Download these models and textures to use in your own projects…

“BOXCUTTER IS A PLUGIN I’VE FOUND VERY HELPFUL FOR GETTING INTERESTING BLOCKOUTS QUICKLY” THE GATE ARTIST Kevin Harger SOFTWARE Blender, Photoshop This dynamic scene took Kevin Harger, Lex & Otis Animation visual development artist, 12 hours to complete. Harger began learning 3D in Maya several years ago, before taking a break and getting back into the swing of things with Modo. Now, after another long hiatus, he’s having a blast getting to grips with Blender. Harger’s creative process began with several thumbnails, which helped him nail down the concept of a mythical giant breaching the walls of Troy, as well as the composition of the image itself. “I mostly use 3D in a fairly simplified way,” he tells 3D World, “it helps a lot with blocking out an architectural space…

Occasionally, Blender’s global community steer it beyond the official 3D pipeline. An example of this is Grease Pencil, which blurs the lines between 2D and 3D. Picture a spectrum. On one end, Grease Pencil helps you create classic hand-drawn animation, using the digital version of traditional tools like onion-skinning, tweening and key frames. In the middle of this same spectrum is the ability to treat Grease Pencil pen strokes like 3D objects (that’s because they are, in fact, 3D objects). Which means you can modify each line with sculpting brushes until you get it exactly right. You can even use Blender’s material system to create NPR materials for your animations. On the further end of the spectrum, Grease Pencil allows you to draw in multi-dimensional space. So you can solve…

Blender’s node-based shader editor has the potential for a very powerful and customisable workflow when you know your way around it. It allows you to use multiple different techniques to layer and blend materials and set up dynamic relations between parameters and properties. Some of these techniques are straightforward and directly exposed in the interface, but for others you have to know just the right buttons to press. This set of tips is a collection of tricks and good practices touching on different parts of the shading pipeline to enable a more flexible and procedural workflow. 01 NODE WRANGLER If you are using Blender’s shader editor, you should activate the Node Wrangler addon. It makes your workflow much more efficient with things like a preview node and a Lazy Connect…

Pietro Chiovaro replies Many elements can help us to achieve engaging lighting effects in a scene, and if our aim is to achieve realism in our image, the lighting is the first thing to improve. There isn’t a formula to do it since the light placement and values depend on the scene and atmosphere we want to give to the project, but for sure the main thing is to learn all the tools and techniques that can help us to reach a better result. There are four types of lights: point light, spotlight, sun light, and area light. The point light is a light that emanates the same quantity of light in all directions. The spotlight emanates light in a cone with more light in the centre, gradually tapering off…

Blender started making short films in 2006. These Open Movies are a testing ground for open source software and a showcase for what’s possible with those tools. Since 2007, the Blender headquarters in Amsterdam have employed developers in tandem with a thriving animation studio. As a Blender veteran, Andy Goralczyk has contributed to numerous film projects at the studio. He made furry rodents for Big Buck Bunny and rendered robots in Tears Of Steel. In Cosmos Laundromat he was responsible for simulating a colourful tornado, and recently he directed the short film Spring, inspired by his childhood in the mountains of Germany. Can you tell us about your background in 3D? My journey in 3D is tightly knit with the history of Blender. I started learning 3D as a hobby…

Imagine that you’ve invested many thousands of euros and decades of your life developing software that creates worlds. Modelling, rigging, 3D animation, 2D animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, and video editing. In short, everything an artist needs. How much would you charge for this software? Think about it. Maybe you’d like a villa in Palo Alto? Or an office by Norman Foster? Or even a McLaren F1? Maybe you want to drive your McLaren F1 from your villa in Palo Alto to your office by Norman Foster? No judgement: billions of people want some variation of this life. Besides, you’ve made sacrifices. You help creative people make beautiful things. You deserve it. But, practically, villas aren’t cheap. You’ll need money and lots of it. How about charging people for…

Mike Griggs replies While Cinema 4D is one of the most straightforward 3D creation applications to learn, as there are so many options for creating compelling animations, it can be daunting to decide which path to take. The good thing is that usually the most convenient method in Cinema 4D can get great results. These animate quickly, and with the speed improvements in Cinema 4D’s viewport, can be rapidly iterated. To animate a ball moving through a bulging pipe, the standard Cinema 4D deformers are the toolset best suited to solving this problem. In this example, we will use the Displacer Deformer to create a bulge in the pipe that is driven by the animation of a ball ‘squeezing’ through it. While deformers have been a vital part of Cinema…

NAME Francesco Siddi JOB TITLE Studio manager and producer STUDIO Blender Studio LOCATION Amsterdam, Netherlands ABOUT Francesco Siddi runs day-to-day operations at Blender Studio, enabling world-class artistic and technical talent tell unforgettable stories. WEB https://blender.studio After studying industrial design in Italy and freelancing as a 3D and technical artist, Francesco Siddi joined the Tears Of Steel Open Movie project in 2012 as a VFX artist. Since then, he’s been involved in several other roles at Blender. While leading development of the Blender Cloud – Blender Studio’s funding and content sharing platform – he has produced several Blender Open Movies, such as the Caminandes series, Spring, Coffee Run and, currently, Sprite Fright. Siddi also helped foster Blender’s relationship with several industry players, contributing to the growth of the Blender Development Fund.…

Community is at the heart of everything Blender does and any avid member of that community will know Pablo Vazquez. He’s been using Blender to create CG masterpieces for 18 years, and for the last 12 of those years he’s been working at the Blender headquarters in Amsterdam. Among multiple other duties at the Institute, he hosts Blender Today, a weekly live show covering community-driven news from across the world of Blender. In March 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic put most of the world on lockdown, affecting people’s daily lives and forcing most to stay in the safety of their homes. In order to turn this into something positive for their vast community, Blender announced the Open Up initiative, a promise to deliver daily free content for anyone to access. Vazquez…

PRICE $1,899 | COMPANY AMD | WEBSITE www.amd.com The race for supremacy in the graphics card market is one that never ends and can often be as much about feelings or brand loyalty as it is about spec lists and benchmarking. I often review tech items using benchmarking, but I think that can fall short of helping potential users understand what a piece of gear is like to live with. As I look at AMD’s Radeon Pro VII I’m taking a more holistic overview. Let’s start with the physicality of the card, which is understated in a simple, blue, double width housing. It’s weighty, lending confidence in the build quality. It outputs via six DisplayPort 1.4 sockets and supports PCIe 4.0. I find the lack of HDMI port only a…