Hidden Tools

There are a lot of built-in add-ons in Blender that you can explore to make your project a lot easier. Add-ons need to be activated. There are also free add-ons that you can download that are made by developers in the community.

Blender has a lot to offer its users. There are a lot of tools to learn that you will enjoy. You will discover a lot of things that you will find helpful, such as shaders. Creating outstanding materials or shaders in Blender can’t be discussed in one go. There are a lot of things involved, but learning the style and techniques can help you make something like Pixar shades.

Launches Quickly

Personally, speed is what brings me to Blender. A lot of software takes time to launch, especially if another application is running. But with Blender, this isn’t a problem. It only takes seconds to launch and start your project.

Customizable Interface

The ability to customize the Blender interface based on your preferences is one of the features that attracts many of its users.

Significant Upgrades

If you read the Blender version milestones, you will notice how the team upgrades Blender. In every version, there are major upgrades, fixes, and new developments by its developers. That makes you always look forward to the new version.

Workflow Speed

At first, as with other software, you are slow in making your project; but after you learn all the shortcut keys in Blender, you will notice how quickly you are making your project. The fact that everything in Blender has a shortcut key makes sense. You don’t need to memorize it all. Most of the artists in the Blender community use a cheat sheet for the Blender hotkeys. I provide it in this book.

Blender Cycles Built-in Renderer

Blender offers an unbiased, physically based, pathtracing engine that simulates the way a camera works in the real world. It is optimized for GPU animation and rendering.

The Community

There’s a large community that supports Blender. A lot of volunteers, both developers and artists, are there to assist Blender users around the globe. You not only gain support as a user, you also gain connections and friends, which are more important.

Open Source Software

Aside from being “free,” open source software gives you the right to modify your copy and make a version that suits your needs. This is important, mostly for large companies, because not everything you want can be available in one software program. Usually, you need two or three software licenses to create an outstanding CGI film, but sometimes, that’s hard. If your company has an IT department, and you know that they can build add-ons that provide features similar to what you want in licensed software, then you need open source software to freely insert these features. Since open source software can be freely modified, you will not have a problem configuring its code.

Blender’s Future Is Bright

Blender’s future is bright because of the upgrade the team did for Blender 2.80, or what they call Eevee. They added a new built-in renderer, and changed the layout of its interface, which makes it user-friendly and easy for both beginners and advanced users of Blender.

Blender 2.80 is a version to look forward to, and that’s the topic that I discuss next.

User Interface

Blender 2.80 has a revamped user interface. Tools, gizmos, and consistent layouts make it easier to discover and use Blender’s many features.

Workspaces let you quickly get started with tasks like sculpting, texture painting, or motion tracking. They can be customized to create your own work environment.

Figure 1-1 shows the Blender 2.80 user interface.

In Figure 1-1, you see the menus for layout, modeling, sculpting, UV editing, texture painting, shading, animation, rendering, compositing, and scripting. These menus let you quickly switch to the workspace you want for your project. Each workspace can be customized according to your own preferences.

Eevee

Eevee is a new physically based real-time renderer. It works as a renderer for final frames and as the engine driving Blender’s real-time viewport for creating assets.

It has advanced features, such as volumetrics, screen-space reflections and refractions, subsurface scattering, soft, and contact shadows, depth of field, and camera motion blur and bloom.

Viewport

There is a new, modern 3D viewport. The workbench engine can visualize your scene in flexible ways. Eevee powers the viewport for interactive modeling and painting with PBR materials.

If you’re wondering about the viewport, it allows you to see your objects and manipulate them. This area is called the viewport.

The minimum graphics card requirement for Blender has increased to OpenGL 3.3.

2D Animation

Blender’s 2D drawing capabilities have greatly improved in 2.80. The new Grease Pencil focus creates a friendlier interface for the 2D artist, while keeping the advantages of a full 3D suite.

Grease Pencil is no longer just a stroke; it’s now a real Blender object with huge improvements to brushes and tools.

Cycles

Cycles is a renderer that has been built into Blender since version 2.61. It is very efficient at rendering photorealistic images.

There are new principled volume shaders, hair shaders, and bevel and ambient occlusion shaders. The industry-standard Cryptomatte is now fully supported, combining your CPU and GPU for rendering, random-walk subsurface scattering and many other improvements.

Figure 1-2 is an example of a scene made in 2.80 and rendered in Cycles.

System Requirements

If you are using Blender to create 3D models and assets only, the minimum requirements will do. But if you will use Blender for bigger projects, you need to invest in hardware.

Figure 1-3 shows Blender’s system requirements.

Installation Process

There are two ways to install Blender: using the .exe file or using the .zip file.

Figure 1-4 shows you where to download.

At www.blender.org, click the Download Blender 2.80 button to automatically download the .exe file of Blender’s current release.

If you go to www.blender.org/download, you see all the links to install current and past versions.

Figure 1-5 shows you one of the keynotes when installing, not only Blender, but in general.

Blender gives you an option to use either the .exe file or the .zip file. You can download and use WinRAR to extract the .zip file or to use the default zip extractor on Windows.

Figures 1-6, 1-7, and 1-8 show the process of extracting Blender using the .zip file.

In Figure 1-6, you can choose Extract Here, Extract files..., or Extract to <folder name>. When you choose Extract here, whatever files are inside it are extracted in the place where it is. For example, in Figure 1-7, all the Blender files are extracted to the desktop. It is extracted the way it was compressed as a zip. What this mean is that if the files were not in a folder, they are extracted unorganized in the place you extracted them to. Extract Files gives you the option to choose where you will extract the files, and there are other options in Settings that might help. Extract to <folder name> makes the program create a folder before it extracts the files inside. This tip is applicable, not only in Blender but also in other software. I always choose Extract to <folder name> since it is organized and fast.

In Figure 1-7, while WinRAR is extracting the file, it is creating a folder on my desktop.

When it comes to .zip files, the way to know that this was done is after the window that processes the extraction is closed, you see that your folder already has all of its contents.

Let’s run Blender 2.80 and take a look at its user interface.

Customization

Another great thing about Blender is that it allows you to customize everything—including the themes and the shortcut keys for your own convenience.

To customize your themes or shortcut keys, go to Edit ➤ Preferences.

Figure 1-10 shows the Blender Preferences window.

Blender opens a new window in which you can edit your preferences. You have the option to minimize the window.

You can change the resolution scale if you want everything to be larger than the usual; set this in Interface ➤ Resolution Scale. You can change the colors of each workspace in the Themes menu, as shown in Figure 1-11.

You can add or explore more add-ons in the Add-ons menu, as shown in Figure 1-12.

Blender is known for making project workflows faster through its shortcuts. You can change shortcuts in the Keymap menu, as shown in Figure 1-13.

If you are using a laptop or a PC with a two-button mouse, you can go to the Input menu and check the Emulate Numpad option in the Keyboard panel to enable the shortcut keys to involve the numpad keys. Check the Emulate 3 Button Mouse option in the Mouse panel to enable the shortcut that substitutes your mouse key, as shown in Figure 1-14.

When you activate Emulate 3 Button Mouse, you can use Alt+Left mouse button and drag to rotate the view. Use Shift+Alt+left mouse button and drag to pan the view. You can change the Selection button in the mouse from left mouse to right mouse in Keymap section, under Preferences ➤ Select with.

If you’re using a Mac with a single-button mouse, Option+mouse button is the equivalent of a middle button mouse. To rotate the view, press Option+mouse button and drag. To pan the view, press Shift+Option+mouse button and drag. To select an object, press the Command button+mouse button. You can create loop cuts without a scroll wheel by using the PageUp/PageDown or Up/Down keys, or by entering a numeric key after pressing Ctrl+R.

Workspaces

Figure 1-15 shows the default workspaces in Blender.

Blender has ten workspaces to play around in. Workspaces are essentially predefined window layouts. You can create your own customized workspaces by clicking the plus icon beside the Scripting tab.

Figure 1-16 shows the layout workspace, which by default is the first thing that you see after the Blender flash screen.

Areas

Figure 1-17 shows a part of an area.

The application window is divided into a number of areas that reserve screen space for editors, such as 3D view, outliner, timeline, properties, and more. The boundaries of an area are indicated by rounded corners, as shown in Figure 1-17.

By dragging a rounded corner, which is highlighted in yellow, you can duplicate the existing editor. For example, if you drag the rounded corner of a 3D view editor, it opens another 3D view editor.

You can resize areas by dragging with the left mouse button. Move your mouse cursor over the border between two areas, so that the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow, and then click and drag.

Splitting an area creates a new area. Joining two areas closes one area. To do this, place the mouse cursor in an area corner; the cursor will change to a cross or plus sign. Press the left mouse button to activate a splitting or a joining command. Dragging the area inward makes the areas split, whereas dragging the area outward makes two areas in a similar size and the editors join.

Toggle Maximize Window/Fullscreen

To maximize the area, go to View ➤ Area ➤ Toggle Maximize Area or press Ctrl+spacebar. To return to normal size, you can use the Ctrl+spacebar shortcut or click the Back to Previous button on the Topbar.

Figure 1-18 shows the maximized screen.

To use the fullscreen mode, go to View ➤ Area ➤ Toggle Fullscreen Area or press Ctrl+Alt+spacebar. To return to normal size, use the keyboard shortcut.

Fullscreen mode is shown in Figure 1-19.

Editors

Figure 1-20 shows the list of editors.

Blender provides editors for displaying and modifying different aspects of data. The Editor Type selector (the first button on the left side of a header) allows you to change the editor in that area. This helps you to create an ideal workspace for your project. Every area may contain any type of editor; it is also possible to open the same type multiple times.

I’ll discuss the tools that are used for modeling in the next chapter. Let’s end this first chapter with a sample render from Cheryl Chen, as shown in Figure 1-21.