Intro to Blender

What we'll learn

  • How to find your way around in Blender
    (or The Hitchhiker's Guide To Blender, if I may)
  • A little bit of modelling
  • A little bit of shading
  • A little bit of geometry nodes
  • A little bit of animation
  • And finally, rendering out our final image :))

What we won't learn

  • A lot of stuff. Like seriously, I'm just initiating you to the rabbit hole that is Blender. Iske baad :
    Ja Alice Ja, jee le apni jindagi. 

DON'T PANIC

The Hitchhiker's Guide To Blender

The Blender Window

The first set of Hotkeys

Shift + A  -  Add   |   X  -  Delete

G - Move
R - Rotate
S - Scale

+ X/Y/Z to restrict the transformations to a specific axis

Modelling

Modelling is where you'll be making all the shapes from simple primitives. Here you'll work on edges, vertices and faces (Adding, deleting, and doing a lot of stuff with them)

Hotkeys for Edit Mode

E - Extrude (Face bahar kheechna ya push krna)

Ctrl + B - Bevel (Edges Smooth krne)

I - Inset (Face ke andar aur ek face inset krne)

K - Knife (Random cuts introduce krne)

Ctrl + R - Loop Cut (Introducing cuts that go around the object)

 

Modifiers

Modifers are predefined effects available in Blender that you can use to change the geometry of your objects in a non-destructive manner. The changes are applied to the geometry only when you apply the modifier and make the changes permanent.

Subdivision Surface

There are lots of modifiers, but this one is used a lot, like a lot. It basically adds more detail (read : vertices and edges) to your objects. Using the catmull-clark mode will make it smooth while the simple mode will just add more geometry without actually affecting the shape.

Shade Smooth

Doesn't change geometry, just interpolates normals and creates the illusion of smooth surfaces.

Shading

Blender provides us with a procedural node based shader editor - which is very fun for both developers and designers. It is here where you'll add color to the rather colorless lives of your Blender creations

Disco Cube (Shader.blend)

Red Cloud(Shader.blend)

Geometry Nodes

The newest and most exciting addition to Blender (Yes, this lecture is ekdum up to date - Samaj ke kya rakha hai XD). Geometry nodes allow us to play with geometry in a procedural node based manner to create a lot of cool stuff.

(much_fun_geometry_nodes.blend)

Sinusoidal Music Visualizer

Animation

You can create simple animations pretty quickly in Blender. It ain't as scary as it seems.

I - Insert Keyframe

and then select ki konse konse properties keyframe mei dalni hai

Hotkeys for Animation

Rendering

Render -> Render Image/Render Animation

EZ CLAP

Eevee

  • Realtime Rendering, fast.

  • Stuff like volumetrics support is very limited.

  • Stylistic effects like Bloom are available

Cycles

  • Slow, but speeding up as development goes on (Read up on CyclesX)

  • Raytracing.

  • Renders look realistic with comparatively less efforts.

An Eevee Render

A Cycles Render

What's Next?

We have just scratched the surface here. Blender has a lot of stuff for you to explore. I haven't even touched Sculpting, Scripting, Physics, Particles and many other things. There are a lot of things in Blender waiting to be discovered by you. So, go ahead. Start making cool stuff with Blender!

Intro to Blender

By Angad Kambli

Intro to Blender

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