Tag: texturing

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.

ONE BY ONE: Shading using the Geometry Input Node Random Per Island in Blender!

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I love Blender…

But I didn’t use it for ages.

I used Maya then Modo and Maya, then Maya on it’s own then Blender!

For a while there were things in Modo and Maya that were not in Blender. They’re all good for certain things, but there was an option in Modo that I loved which used a gradient to add a level of difference between each separate island of geometry that had it.

It used the object’s individual ID of each object to pull a value from the gradient, making each item with the same shader slightly different. A few releases back Random Per Island was added to the Geometry Input Node that allows us to do exactly that.

Please watch the vid and you can see some of its wonderful uses.

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.

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.

Are there any Procedural Texture Tricks in Blender?

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You know, I’m glad you asked that!

There are a few things that you can do with some of the procedural texture that people don’t necessarily know about. They are there, but without wiggling stuff about, you’d never see them. So here is just one of the thing you can do with Noise, whiteNoise, Musgrave and Voronoi textures that people don’t often let you know about.

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.