Session-2: Getting Started with Blender
Blender is a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, and computer games.
📢 Blender's features include:
3D modelling
UV unwrapping
Texturing
Raster graphics editing
Rigging and Skinning
Fluid and Smoke simulation
Particle simulation
Soft Body simulation
Sculpting
Animating
Match moving
Rendering
Motion graphics
Video Editing
Compositing
VFX
Game Engine
and well, the list goes on but yeah these are the often used features of Blender.
🤔 Why Blender?
Blender is a fully integrated 3D content creation suite, offering a broad range of essential tools, including Modelling, Rendering, Animation & Rigging, Video Editing, VFX, Compositing, Texturing, and many types of Simulations.
Supports cross platform, with the OpenGL GUI that is uniform on all major platforms (and customizable with Python scripts).
Provides you with high-quality 3D architecture, enabling fast and efficient creation workflow.
Endless active community support, checkout The Blender Community for an extensive list of sites.
Open Source Software, which means few bugs, new updates and more.
⚙️ Applications of blender
Could you imagine a cluster of scenarios where the use of 3D models might seem important? For people looking to use Blender for video editing, it does just about a little of everything, which means there’s something for video editors, too. Besides rendering amazing effects for your projects, Blender also has a built-in video sequence editor that lets you perform basic editing functions like cuts and splicing—in addition to masking and color grading.
From watching our favourite fluffy boy Baymax of big hero 6 to pointing and clicking heads in tactical FPS shooters, we need 3D models to immerse ourselves, can you imagine a world where animations were restricted to just 2 Dimensions. That's just living in flatland.
Blender doesn't like to leave any artist alone, so it even supports 2D animation. There are indeed more applications of blender but we would like you to explore them, trust me it's not that hard but once you start you can make your dreams come true.
⬇️ Downloading blender
Head over to blender.org and select the download link based on your operating system and CPU architecture, while writing this documentation the latest version of blender is 3.0.
Below is an example of a simple 3D model that is built by beginners to exercise the basics of the 3D space and geometry offered by Blender. During the course of this event we will be building 3D models, and by the end of this episode you'll be able to bring your own ideas to life too.
📖 Basics of Blender
The baby steps of Blender or even 3D modelling are:
Translation - Blender allows us to freely move the subject (The selected object) along the X,Y, and Z axes
Rotation - Just as the name suggests, we can rotate subjects in blender. There's trackballing and also restricted rotation along the axes
Scaling - We often come across situations where we don't always the standard size of the objects, well scaling helps us fit the objects to our desired size
3D cursor - The 3D cursor is exactly what it sounds like, it's a cursor in the 3D view. By default, it starts in the origin, but you can move it by left clicking. If you add an object, such as a cube or sphere, it will appear where the 3D cursor is.
While the above might seem insignificant to build extraordinary models, it is always important to remember the basic interactions in 3D modelling software. Let us dive a little deeper and learn more about the Blender terminology.
Object mode - Object Mode, This lets you select objects and move them around as you please.
Edit Mode - Allows you to select individual vertices, lines, and planes. you can modify the mesh in this mode.
Adding a mesh - A mesh is a collection of vertices, edges, and faces that describe the shape of a 3D object
Merging - In edit mode you can select two or more vertexes, and merge them together. To do this, go into edit mode, select the vertexes you want to merge, press "W", then, merge.
Extruding - In edit mode, you can select a line, vertex, or plane, and extrude, or, extend it. To do this, select the thing you want to extrude, then press "E"
Checkout the resources section to get started with Blender👍.
📈 Stages of production in Blender:
Scenes and Objects: Scenes are a way to organize your work. Each blend-file can contain multiple scenes, that shares other data such as objects and materials. You can select and create scenes with the Scene data-block menu in the Top bar.
Modelling: The creation of a 3D scene needs at least three key components: Models, materials and lights. In this part, the first of these is covered, that being modelling. Modelling is simply the art and science of creating a surface that either mimics the shape of a real-world object or expresses your imagination of abstract objects.
Composting: To process your image, you use nodes to import the image into Blender, change it, optionally merge it with other images, and finally, save it.
Rendering: If you have come this far, congratulations!. The final step to flex your 3D models, it involves converting the 3D models to 2D images. Blender includes three render engines with different strengths:
Eevee is a physically based real time renderer.
Cycles / Cycles X is a physically based path tracer.
Workbench is designed for layout, modelling and previews.
Renderer determines the final output defined by cameras, lights and materials. These are shared between Eevee and Cycles, however some features are only supported in one or the other. Renders can be split up into layers and passes, which can then be composited together for creative control, or to combine with real footage. Freestyle can be used to add non-photorealistic line rendering.
Well, that is all we've got for now. Just know that whether it is to make a viral animation or make millions by selling your 3D models as NFTs, it's all about thinking big and having fun!
📋 Resources
There are several videos and tutorials out there for everyone and we have noted down a few popular and useful ones for you!
👉 For Beginners:
👉 For Veterans:
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