Tag: 3D

TIPS: My personal Top 10 Blender Tips and Shortcuts!

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I love Blender…

And, I’ll be honest I really love a Top 10. Top 10 facts, Top 10 songs, Top 10 Movie quotes. They are right up my street. Love ‘em!

However, I have been avoiding doing a Top 10 of anything as I don’t want people who watch this to think I’ve “sold out” to youTube.

However, I did realise that sometimes I rush through what I’m doing and don’t properly explain how I’m building X or animating Y and so today I wanted to make a video of my favourite tools.

It just so happened I got to 10.

So here are my favourite tips, shortcuts and tools that make my modeling experience in Blender so much more fun.

Here is a simple tutorial to explain the use of it, without making it part of a much bigger thing. Nice and simple. Hope you like it.

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

ONE BY ONE: The vertexWeightProximity Modifier! Unsurprisingly, it’s good. Really good!

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I love Blender…

And I love it’s Modifiers. Yes, it’s another One By One.

Being able to deform the shape of something its quite important when it comes to animation. The most simple rig uses deformers to simulate bending, twisting and volume changes and these are all accomplished with deformers. Some of the best facial rigging comes from a conjunction between bones, shape keys and deformers.

But using them can be a little daunting. Addressing them on a “One by One” basis makes it easier to get to grips with them.

VertexWeightProximity is a prime example of one of these modifiers.

You can create a vertex group which performs a shape change and then drive it’s power with an empty. Close to the skin, deformation, further away no deformation.

Here is a simple tutorial to explain the use of it, without making it part of a much bigger thing. Nice and simple. Hope you like it.

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

Speedthru: Hovercar

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I mentioned in the last video post that I love modeling. I do. So I thought I would set myself a speed challenge to build a 3D car in 3 hours. And I did it. Pretty Much. I did make it a bit easier for myself by removing the need for wheels, going down the hover car route, but that in and of itself brought up a couple of challenges.

Anyway, I sped up the recordings and, apart from a small section where I built the wing mirrors which was lost due to unforeseen recording naming issues, it’s all down here, from Default Cube to fully shaded.

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

One by One…ish – Follow Path

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I think, deep down inside, I am at my most happy when I am modelling. No, not me in a swimsuit and a pink boa walking up and down a catwalk to a line of adoring photographers. Although, that could be fun. Anyway…

No, I’m referring to modelling something in Maya or Blender. Sitting down at the computer, pulling around vertices, adjust the flow of a surface; getting a mesh ready for animation. The front part of this tutorial I zipped through thanks to the power of retiming in Resolve, I really wanted to go to town on. I was all about to turn on Multi-resolution, Sculpt in fins and stencil in scales, but that would be a whole other tutorial.

This, though, is about an animation step that requires a model that will need bending, and that is Follow Path. It’s a constraint, rather than a modifier, but by now, if you’ve been following along, you should be able to make a simple organism (fish here, not molecule) and then make it swim around using one command and a few options.

It also teaches you a little about shape keys in Blender too. Again, something that we will come back to and do more on in the future.

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

It’s a very simple fish on a curve swimmin’ in a circle. Dinky!

Take care and stay safe.

One by One…ish – Edgesplit

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The modifier toolset in Blender is by no means the most exhaustive set of tools, but it’s not slacker either. It tops out at 53. Which is more than enough, really for most non destructive stuff jobs be they animation or modelling.

And in that pool of tools is Edgesplit. It, well, it splits the edges of polygon models so they no longer join together. Edge split splits edges; it unjoins them, if you will. Which is really, err, useful as a single, err, modif…no no I can’t do this. It’s useless on it’s own.

But coupled with a few more of its pals, it’s a veritable wonder of a tool. You can edge-split, decimate, displace and solidify an object to create some really considered graphical elements. It’s ace actually. But on it’s own, well, it’s a bit of a fixer-upper.

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

Tips and Tricks – Texture Painting

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There are always things you can learn about in Blender, it’s really diverse for a free package. And even though it’s not the best at painting textures in, it gives it a pretty good go.

In this tutorial I talk about how to paint in the workspace as well as how to use multiple UVmaps with texture paint to allow you to do clever things on what might be messy UVs, without going in and having to change what already works!

It’s not a long one, but it’s there to get you started.

Take a look at the video below. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

One By One – the Build Modifier

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The Build modifier in Blender is another of those, “well this is good, but whatever can I do with it?” modifiers. It’s just not great on it’s own. Add in an edge split, displace and some other guff then woohoo, you’ve got MGFX heaven.

But once you understand how it works, you can see the possibilities of what you can achieve with it without needing another modifier at all.

Take a look at the video below. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

One By Ones

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Hi there, Gary Here

Just wanted to let you know that there is a new tutorial out for January, ever though it was released at the very end of 2020 – the Bevel Modifier One by One.

Here it is:

It’s a really interesting modifier, as you can control the bevel on an edge by edge weight basis as well as create custom contours for your bevel.

Far better than a standard bevel in any other software I know…cough Maya cough.

Goodbye 2020! Roll on the madhouse that 2021 is looking like!

Take care and stay safe.

One By One – the Array Modifier

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There’s lots to get your head around in Blender, but when addressed one at a time, you can see the potential in all of them.

So I decided I would start a special stream of tutorials whih concentrate on each of the modifiers.

There are tutorials on the web that go through all of the modifiers in one big rush, and they’re pretty damned cool, but I wanted to do each one as fully as possible in a single video.

So here is the first one – the Array Modifier. It’s a bit epic, truth be told. It’s a lot more powerful than a simple instance and, coupled with another modifier, it produces things that would take ages to do by hand.

Anyway, please watch the video, leave a comment, and if you can think of something you wanted to know how to do in Blender drop me a line and I’ll make a tutorial for it if I can!

Take care and stay safe.

How To Make a Planet shader in Blender – Part 2!

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Well, you know, when you want a job done right, you had better make a bit more effort.

If you followed the first Planet shader Tutorial, [Link here] then this is a must see as it adds all the things that the planet shader was really missing. Yep, clouds, atmosphere and city lights on the dark side.

In it we use multiple voronois to create a random-ish city block lighting system as well as a method for the clouds that is very similar to the landscape fractals. And then we add that atmosphere!

Please watch the video, leave a comment, and if you can think of something you wanted to know how to do in Blender drop me a line and I’ll make a tutorial for it if I can!

You can get the final scene here too.

GUMROAD LINK

You don’t have to give me any money, just set it to £0 and you’ll get it too, but if you liked this, please subscribe, follow me in Instagram at @gen_vfx and keep coming back here for more tutorial goodness.

Take care and stay safe.