Tag: Blender

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Blender in 2021

The Blender Foundation have just announced their “Big Projects” list for Blender in 2021. It is hard to argue that 2020 wasn’t a banner year for Blender development, with three major releases as well as the first ever LTS release. Through 2020 we saw improvements to the Blender UI/UX, sculpting tools, modeling, EEVEE, Cycles and so much more. We also saw a record number of massive companies coming on board the Blender development fund. With the release today of the projects list, we get insight into the Blender priorities in 2021, including priorities such as:

  • launch of a new open movie called Sprite Fight
  • the everything nodes project, where everything in Blender will be able to be driven procedurally using nodes (see Geometry Nodes in action here)
  • all new Asset Browsers editor window for better content management
  • massive improvements to the VSE or Video Sequence Editor
  • EEVEE real-time rendering improvements including Vulkan support, motion blur, depth of field and possibly raytracing
  • VR improvements including the ability to use VR controllers and author content in virtual reality
  • Cycles rendering improvements especially related to perfromance
  • Animation 22 (previously Animation 2020), an effort to improve animation tools in Blender, sponsored by AWS
  • improved pipeline and USD support, Pixar’s open interchange format

You can learn more about the Blender’s accomplishments in 2020, as well as the new projects in 2021 in the video below.

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Blender Network Being Shutdown

Blender have announced that Blender Network is being shutdown. The Blender Network shutdown is occurring in just a few months according to the post on the Blender press site:

On March 31st 2021, Blender Network will terminate its operations. All ongoing memberships will be cancelled and have their last payment refunded. The Blender Foundation Certified Trainer program (BFCT), which was already on hold, will also stop. The blendernetwork.org domain (and all URLs) will redirect to blender.org. No data will be preserved on the blendernetwork.org server, which will be discontinued.

Originally presented by Ton Roosendaal as a whitepaper in 2010, Blender Network’s mission was to facilitate the provisioning of services and support, connect users and promote professional Blender businesses. This mission has been carried out by the blendernetwork.org platform, providing visibility and business opportunities to several hundred individuals and organizations.

However, the incredible growth of the Blender community and the rise of social media have greatly reduced the need for a Blender-backed platform to provide legitimacy and visibility to professionals. For this reason, after almost a decade of operation, it is time to retire the platform.

Fortunately, out of the ashes rise a new phoenix, with Pablo Vazquez making the following announcement on Twitter.

Followed by the follow Tweet with more details:

Unfortunately there is no successor planned for the Blender Certification Program, that was already put on hold due to a lack of focus. You can learn more about the Blender Network sun-setting in the video below.

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Easy Anime Character Creation with VRoid Studio and Blender

Creating anime characters for game development has never been easier with tools like VRoid Studio and Blender. In this tutorial we showcase using VRoid Studio, a free tool for creating textured and animated anime avatars. If VRoid Studio sounds familiar, we featured this tool as recently as 2019.

In the video below we walk through the following processes:

  • Using VRoid Studio
  • Exporting VRM files
  • Importing VRM into Blender
  • Creating a simple animation
  • Exporting from Blender in GLB/GLTF format
  • Importing GLB formats into the Godot game engine
  • Exporting VRoid characters to Mixamo for animting

In addition to VRoid Studio you need the VRM importer for Blender. If you are using the Unity game engine, there is a Unity importer for VRM files available as well, although we wont be covering it in the video below.

One area of importance with any tool, especially free tools, are what the license terms are. You can see the list of appropriate uses here, which specifically includes “Selling video games and other products featuring characters created with VRoid Studio”. Once you have all the appropriate tools, check out the video below for step by step instruction son how to create an animated anime character for use in Godot using VRoid Studio and Blender.

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Amazon AWS Join Blender As Corporate Sponsor

Following quickly on the heels of last months Facebook Sponsorship of Blender, today it was announced Blender has a new corporate sponsor, Amazon AWS. This sponsorship is a bit different, in that it is aimed at improving a very specific aspect of Blender, character animation. The sponsorship will enable Blender to hire multiple developers to work over a period of 3 years on improving character animation tools in Blender.

Details of the announcement from the Blender news:

Today Blender Foundation announced that AWS has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member to support continued core development and innovation for Blender. AWS committed to a period of three years, specifically to support character animation tools development.

“We’re excited to continue to expand our support for open source solutions for our customers in the digital content creation space.” said Kyle Roche, GM of Creative Tools. “The Blender Foundation has been an industry leader in providing production-grade open source software solutions, and we look forward to helping our mutual customers work more efficiently than ever before through continued improvements in Blender.”

Two years ago, Blender Foundation started a project to redesign and upgrade Blender’s character animation system for the coming decade. Nicknamed “Animation 2020” it has a number of specs that were reviewed by character animator and industry veteran Jason Schleifer, now Creative Director at AWS.

“It has always been my preference to work closely with industry talents on improving Blender,” said Blender chairman Ton Roosendaal. “Thanks to AWS’ support we can recruit additional top developers to help us bring character animation in Blender to new heights.”

Blender Foundation will start recruiting in the course of Q1 2021, pending the current travel and meeting restrictions being lifted or relaxed.

Amazon AWS, or Amazon Web Services is the massive cloud services portion of Amazon, which provides a great deal of the backbone of the modern internet. They also have gaming divisions including owning Twitch, as well as the recently updated Lumberyard game engine. Blender is an open source cross platform 3D application that supports modelling, animation, texturing, rendering, sculpting and more. Improvements to the character animation tools will be a welcome addition. Blender development is supported by the Blender Development Fund.

You can learn more about the Amazon AWS sponsorship in the video below.

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Blender 2.92 Geometry Nodes

Hot on the heels of the Blender 2.91 release, Blender 2.92 is currently in Alpha and one of the most exciting new features is Geometry Nodes. Part of the everything as nodes strategy for future Blender development, the addition of geometry nodes will add procedural capabilities to Blender without requiring programming or scripting. Before the 2.92 alpha, Geometry Nodes were a separate branch with the project page available here.

When using Geometry Nodes, you are can create or modify geometry in your Blender scene using the new Geometry Node Editor. The process is very similar to the current way Shaders and Cycles materials are constructed. The selection of nodes are documented in the manual, however most descriptions are pretty sparse at this point. If you want to get started with nodes you need to run Blender 2.92 or later. Until it is formally released, the best place to get alpha and beta Blender releases is here.

There are two example projects to get you started. The best one currently is this one which shows how to use nodes to scatter rocks across your scene. There is another project that will showcase how to procedurally create a tree, however this project is currently just a place holder.

You can learn more about Blender 2.92 and Geometry Nodes in the video below.

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Blender Tips Everyone Should Know

Today we are taking a look at 3 Blender 2.9 tips that every Blender user should know but probably don’t including enabling experimental mode, undo/redo stack and preventing UI from loading. There is a step by step video embedded below if you get lost on a step in the written version.

Tip 1: Enabling Undo/Redo Stack

If you’re are a error prone as I am, or are the type that likes to experiment, you probably find yourself using undo and redo all the time. If you want to jump forward multiple steps or flip forward and back in the undo history, this feature is for you.

To turn Undo History on, select Edit->Preferences…

Now select Keymap on the left, then locate Screen->Screen(Global) scroll down and locate Add New.

Setting up Undo History in Blender 2.9 settings

Now in the Add New window, expand the arrow, click the Select a Key button and enter Z. Also toggle Ctrl and Alt on, then in the text box area replace “none” with “ed.undo_history” then hit enter, like so:

Configuring Undo History from Ctrl Alt Z

Now if you hit Ctrl + Alt + Z in Blender, you will get an on screen menu to jump forward and back in the undo/redo history stack.

Blender Undo/Redo menu

You can now move forward and back in undo by selecting the state from the window.

Tip 2: Enabling Developer Extras/Experimental Options

With each new release of Blender, especially alpha and beta releases, there are several experimental features. You do however need to enable them. Once again select Edit->Preferences…, then select the Interface tab. Toggle the option next to Developer Extras and the Experimental tab will now be displayed.

Enabling Developer Mode/Experimental Features in Blender 2.9

Clicking the Experimental Tab, you can now turn off and on experimental features by clicking the check box next to each feature. Most features will also have an info link to learn more, which will open the development page in a web browser.

Enabling Experimental features in Blender 2.92

Keep in mind these features are marked as experimental for a reason, do not use them in production.

Tip 3: Preventing UI from Loading When Opening A Blend File

This tip is probably the most obvious, but also the most life changing if you didn’t already know it. When you open a .blend file you download from online you will notice you also get the UI settings of the author of that Blend file. If you’d rather have it load with your own UI settings there are two ways to do it.

First is on a case by case basis. When you open a Blend file using File->Open, in the open dialog, click the gear icon, and unselect Load UI.

Preventing Blender Blend File opening from loading UI

Now if you would prefer to have this setting disabled by default, you can also do it via Edit->Preferences… select the Save & Load tab then disable Load UI.

Disabling Load UI on Blend files in Blender

Also remember, if you want to keep these settings each time you load Blender, you need to save your changes. Simply click the Hamburger icon in the Preferences window and select Save Preferences, you shouldn’t have to perform this step if you have Auto-Save Preferences turned on.

You can see all three to these tips in action in the video below.

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Unreal Engine 4.26 Released

Epic Games have just release UE 4.26. In this release we see features such as hair and anisotrophy reach production ready status. Additionally there is a new water simulation system (previewed here) and better integration of the new Chaos Physics System (tutorial here) and a brand new system for creating better skies, lighting and environmental clouds. Additionally there were several advancements on the film making side of the equation along side hundreds of other small improvements and bug fixes. With each new Unreal Engine release more and more functionality traditionally done in your DCC tool of choice such as modelling, rigging, animating and sculpting are being added to Unreal.

A summary of new features from the Unreal Engine 4.26 release notes:

The production-ready Hair, Fur, and Feathers system enables you to design the most believable humans and animals. You can use the Volumetric Cloud component along with the Sky Atmosphere and Sky Light to author and render realistic or stylized skies, clouds, and other atmospheric effects with full artistic freedom. The new Water System makes it possible to create believable bodies of water within your landscape terrains that react with your characters, vehicles, and weapons. With an improved and expanded feature set, Chaos physics now lets you simulate Vehicles, Cloth, and Ragdolls in addition to Rigid Bodies so every aspect of the environment comes to life.

Sequencer now works in conjunction with Control Rig and the new full-body IK solution to create new animations inside of Sequencer, reducing the need to use external tools. Movie Render Queue (formerly known as High Quality Media Export) has been enhanced to support render passes enabling further enhancements to be made to the final image in a downstream compositing application. nDisplay multi-display rendering is easier to set up and configure in addition to enabling more pixels to be rendered at a higher frame rate, thus increasing performance and supporting larger LED volumes with existing hardware. The Collaborative Viewer Template has been significantly improved to enhance the collaborative design review experience, and enable more users to join a session. The Remote Control API has been improved to seamlessly connect properties and functionality in Unreal Editor to UI widgets giving users the ability to quickly change properties from an external device, such as an artist on stage changing the sky rotation or the sun position from an iPad.

In the video below we take a quick look at the new water system as well as a quick tutorial on creating Hair alembic files using Blender for export to Unreal Engine, then quickly showcase the new Groom hair functionality.

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Blender 2.91 Released

Blender 2.91 was released today another step forward in the rapidly improving open source 3D application. As with other recent releases this one includes several sculpting improvements, especially on the cloth brushes including the ability to collide with other objects in your scene. Other sculpting improvements include several new gesture tools, support for sculpting on the base mesh of a multi-res mesh and the addition of boundary brushes to control the edges of sculpted meshes.

Sculpting Cloth In Blender
Blender 2.91 Cloth Sculpting

Another major feature includes improved Boolean support including a new exact solver as well as the ability to perform boolean operations on collections of objects. The new exact solver is much more accurate but at the cost of running slower. This improvement is a welcome one, as the boolean functionality in Blender 2.8x was one of the few areas where it was worse than the previous releases.

In addition to the improving volumetric support in the form of openVDB support, Blender 2.91 also has the ability to generate volumes from meshes, as well as apply displacements to those volumes. There are a number of other improvements in Blender 2.91 from EEVEE to Grease Pencil. Learn more about the release in the release notes.

You can learn more about the Blender release, including several new features demonstrated in the video below. The 2.91 splash screen is the work of Robin Tran, a concept artist at UbiSoft Massive, you can see more shots here. Blender is available on all major platforms as a free download here, assuming of course their servers are currently on fire due to demand! If you are interested at looking even further into the future of Blender, Blender 2.92 is currently available here in alpha( soon to be beta) form.

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City Generator Hands-On

City Generator is a free and open-source procedural generation tool for creating American-style grid based cities. The source code is available on GitHub under the GPL 3 license, composed almost entirely of TypeScript code.

Features of City Generator include:

  • .png download
  • .png heightmap download
  • .svg download
  • .stl download
  • Several colour themes including Google Maps, Apple Maps, and hand-drawn styles
  • Pseudo-3D buildings
  • Open source

City Generator can export STL files that can then be imported into a 3D tool of choice for creating 3D levels. We should this process in Blender as well as the process of generating a city in City Generator in the video below.

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Facebook Joins Blender as Corporate Sponsor

Today Blender announced that Facebook would be joining the Blender Development Fund as a Corporate Sponsor. A corporate sponsor is the highest tier of sponsorship and means at least 120K euro per year in financial support, which generally gets translated as two full time developers on the project. Facebook will be joining the likes of Unity, Epic Games, AMD and NVIDIA in the corporate supporter tier.

Details from the Blender announcement:

To support these artists and the countless other animators, researchers, engineers, designers and content creators who depend on open source tools, Facebook wishes to contribute to the development of Blender. Which is why we’re proud to announce that Facebook will join the Blender Foundation’s Development Fund as a Corporate Patron as of Q4, 2020.  

We at Blender see this as another important signal of the industry’s willingness to migrate to open source, and contribute to open source’s continual improvement.

Ton Roosendaal,
Chairman Blender Foundation

Facebook currently use Blender in their AR product Spark AR Studio in addition to their ownership of Oculus. If you are worried about the corporate influence on Blender, don’t worry about it, for reasons described in this video. If you want to learn more about Facebooks support for Blender be sure to check out the video below.