Using Blender

Using Blender: 

Using Blender

Overview: 

Overview Interface Initial Settings Primitives Lighting Materials and Textures World Settings Animation

General Information: 

General Information Blender is freely available at http://www.blender3d.org Several versions latest is 2.34 (includes raytracing) older versions may be useful! Blender is amazingly compact for what it can do! Several tutorials on web (interface may be different)

Things to Have: 

Things to Have Three button mouse (with middle scroll) Keyboard with a number pad Fast CPU for rendering final movie Good graphics card when building models None of these are required, but life is better with them

Basic Interface: 

Basic Interface Menus Window Type Camera Light A Cube Layers Settings

Before Anything Else...: 

Before Anything Else... Saving/Opening Files is not intuitive Make sure you save often! backups blender meltdowns Make sure you press ‘Enter’! Blender files can be large

Interacting with Buttons(buttons that contain values): 

Interacting with Buttons (buttons that contain values) Three ways to interact: click in middle User can type in the desired value click on left/right Increment or decrement value by one mouse drag on button acts as ‘slider’, but hard to control good for rough estimate of value

Initial Settings: 

Initial Settings This is the directory your rendered animation will be stored in Type in name of file to generate Leave the rest alone

Initial Settings: 

Initial Settings Render the image Full-scene Anti-aliasing Enable Shadows Enable Raytracing Enable Radiosity Percent of full render (good for quick previews) Motion blur (powerful, but very expensive)

Initial Settings: 

Initial Settings Start rendering the animation Play the animation (once it’s rendered) Used for plugins Starting and Ending frame numbers

Initial Settings: 

Initial Settings Pixels wide/high Aspect ratio File format (you’ll want this to be AVI raw!) Frames per second (SVideo = 30, Movies = 24) Note: Once done, you may want to save these as the default by using CTRL-U

Different Views: 

Different Views Can view from the: Front – NumPad1 Side – NumPad3 Top – NumPad7 Camera – NumPad 0 Can be in orthographic or perspective mode! NumPad 5 toggles Recommendation: stay in orthographic! Can also use the ‘view’ menu

Different Views: 

Different Views Ability to zoom in/out: Use middle mouse scroller NumPad +/- works as well Ability to ‘look around’ drag with middle mouse button takes you out of x/y/z axis may want to reset view when done Shift-middle-drag translates screen Different Shading modes Wireframe/Shaded (use ‘z’ key) Apply lighting model (use SHIFT-z)

Splitting the Screen: 

Splitting the Screen Often, it’s a good idea to split the screen Allows multiple views of the same object Right-click on a window divider to: split screen join screens back together Caution: the screen that’s split depends on where the mouse came from!

Rendering your Work: 

Rendering your Work Press F12 or render button Press F11 to return to scene editor Remember, rendering size depends on your initial settings

Adding Objects to the Scene: 

Adding Objects to the Scene Everything starts with the space bar! From this menu, you can: Add meshes (spheres, cubes, cones, etc) Add lights Transform objects (rotate/scale/translate) Edit objects (change vertex coordinates) Several other common options

Modes of an Object: 

Modes of an Object Can be selected or non- selected right-click on object to select it If selected, changes affect this object! Copy object with CTRL-D or ALT-D

Editing an Object: 

Editing an Object A selected object can be in edit mode or non-edit mode TAB toggles between these modes Can still use the menus Vertices can be selected or not selected (yellow are selected) Object can be deleted by selecting it, the pressing ‘x’ key

Adding NURBS to the Scene: 

Adding NURBS to the Scene Similar to adding other primitive shapes Interaction much different

NURBs: 

NURBs NURBs have handles Start out with only a few handles, so you can subdivide them select all handles press ‘w’ for subdivide usually, do this twice Good combination with bump mapping

Basic Transformations: 

Basic Transformations Standard Operations: rotate – ‘r’ key scale – ‘s’ key grab (translate) – ‘g’ key skew – press ‘s’ key, then middle mouse drag Click mouse when finished Easy to remember, huh?

Lighting Overview: 

Lighting Overview Light types Lamp Spot Sun Volumetric lighting Light Texturing Radiosity

Basic Lighting: 

Basic Lighting All scenes must have at least one light source Add a light using spacebar Basic Light Types Lamp Spot Sun

Changing the Properties of Lights: 

Changing the Properties of Lights Select the light Select the Shading button Select the Light Button Shading Light Light Type Distance of Light Intensity Color

Volumetric Lighting: 

Volumetric Lighting Added realism Don’t add too much! Only works for spots Setting are a little tricky Make sure Halo is on Turn on buffered shadows Make sure Halo step > 0 Harshness of shadow Turn up buffer for better approximation Amount of ‘smoke’

Other Lighting Tricks: 

Other Lighting Tricks Can put textures on lights! Have to talk about textures first...

World Settings: 

World Settings Make sure Shading button is pressed Then select World button Can adjust Background Color Fog (based off of background color) Stars

World Settings: 

World Settings Fog and stars settings are based off of the distance between particles Less distance = more fog Quadratic Mist

Basic Materials: 

Basic Materials Once an object has been added, properties can be assigned: Default is gray To get started, select the object, click the Shading button, then click the Materials button Then, add a new material

Setting Colors: 

Setting Colors Good idea to change the preview Can name and reuse the material Set the color Set the alpha channel Can also turn on/off lights to see specular highlights Set specular reflection color To remove the material (unlink it) click the X

Setting Specular andTransparency: 

Setting Specular and Transparency For transparency, make sure you turn on ZTransp Set the amount of ‘ambient’ reflection Specular and Hardness settings

Halos: 

Halos Makes a halo per vertex Turn on Halo Can add rings and lines, as well as change their color

Raytracing: 

Raytracing Does excellent reflections! First, remember to turn on “Ray” under your initial settings Then, turn on “Ray Mirror”

Texture Mapping: 

Texture Mapping Once a material has been created, you can apply a texture map to the object There are several procedural textures in Blender: wood clouds marble environment map Can load image as well

Using Procedural Textures: 

Using Procedural Textures Select the Shader, then Texture button Add a new Texture (similar to material) Choose your texture type Go back to materials to change color

Example: Marble: 

Example: Marble Under Texture: Under Materials: Have to change the color to white

Loading Images: 

Loading Images If you can find the texture, you can load it into Blender Under Texture Type, select Image, then browse to it Under the material, change basic shape (for how to map) Note: textures from http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps2.htm

Bump Mapping: 

Bump Mapping Use the texture to perturb the normals Yields a more realistic image

Bump Mapping: 

Bump Mapping Create a new texture for the object preferable with high contrast Go back to the material settings Under the Map To settings: deselect Col (color) select Nor (normals) This maps the texture to effect the normals

Animation: 

Animation Animation is based off of keyframes Basic idea: Lock model into place in one frame Increase the frame number Lock model again Let Blender interpolate movement Use the ‘i’ key to do this Usually, you have to tweak by editing the splines by hand

Simple Example: 

Simple Example We can rotate the moon by locking the ‘rot’ in frame one (rotation) Then go to, for example, frame 41 Then, rotate the model, and lock its rotation again. Go back to frame 1. Press ALT-a to see animation

Slide43: 

Note: The window type is the IPO curve editor. Here, you can edit the curve to whatever you want.

Editing the Curves: 

Editing the Curves Select the curve by right-clicking on it. Press TAB to get into edit mode Break it up by pressing ‘v’ Grab an end (using the ‘g’ key) and edit the curve. For good animation, you must know this... Also, there are options under the ‘curve’ menu that allow for repetition/extrapolation

Slide45: 

Extrapolating two points makes an infinite line. In our example, this will cause the moon to rotate ‘forever’.

Particle Systems: 

Particle Systems Particle System is good for: smoke fire explosions Basic idea: make particles come from vertices in a random fashion

A Simple Particle System: 

A Simple Particle System Start by creating a circle of 16 or 32 vertices Under the object settings, click the effects tab, then NEW EFFECT Clicking the ‘Build’ button, you can see particles Change rand to 0.110 and the Z under Force to be 0.05 Apply a texture (such as a halo) as the material

Particles Running: 

Particles Running Change rand and Z-force to be non-zero. Also, look into start, end, and life of the particle

Importing Models: 

Importing Models It is possible to import DXF models, as well as some VRML models For version 1.18, there is a script that imports 3DS Max files Several free models/textures can be found here at http://www.3dcafe.com/asp/freestuff.asp

Words of Advice: 

Words of Advice Making simple movies isn’t hard, but it takes a long time Start early, or you won’t finish!