Using Blender

1
Using Blender
2
Overview

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

3
General Information

• Blender is freely available at http//www.blender3
  d.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)

4
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

5
Basic Interface
Menus
A Cube
Camera
Light
Window Type
Settings
Layers
6
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

7
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

8
Initial Settings

• This is the directoryyour rendered
  animationwill be stored in
• Type in name of fileto generate
• Leave the rest alone

9
Initial Settings
Enable Shadows
Render the image
Enable Raytracing
Enable Radiosity
Full-sceneAnti-aliasing
Percent of full render (good for quick previews)
Motion blur (powerful, but very expensive)
10
Initial Settings
Start rendering theanimation
Used for plugins
Play the animation(once its rendered)
Starting and Ending frame numbers
11
Initial Settings
Pixels wide/high
Aspect ratio
File format (youll 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
12
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

13
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 translatesscreen
• Different Shading modes
• Wireframe/Shaded (use z key)
• Apply lighting model (use SHIFT-z)

14
Splitting the Screen

• Often, its 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 thats split depends on where
  the mouse came from!

15
(No Transcript)
16
Rendering your Work

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

17
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

18
Modes of an Object

• Can be selected or non-selected
• right-click on objectto select it
• If selected, changes affectthis object!
• Copy object with CTRL-Dor ALT-D

19
Editing an Object

• A selected object can be inedit mode or non-edit
  mode
• TAB toggles between thesemodes
• Can still use the menus
• Vertices can be selected ornot selected (yellow
  are selected)
• Object can be deleted byselecting it, the
  pressing x key

20
Adding NURBS to the Scene

• Similar to adding other primitive shapes
• Interaction much different

21
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

22
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?

23
Lighting Overview

• Light types
• Lamp
• Spot
• Sun
• Volumetric lighting
• Light Texturing
• Radiosity

24
Basic Lighting

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

25
Changing the Properties of Lights

• Select the light
• Select the Shadingbutton
• Select the Light Button

Shading
Light
Distance ofLight
Light Type
Intensity
Color
26
Volumetric Lighting

• Added realism
• Dont add too much!
• Only works for spots
• Setting are a little tricky

Amount of smoke
Turn on bufferedshadows
Turn up buffer for betterapproximation
Make sure Halo is on
Make sure Halo step gt 0
Harshness of shadow
27
Other Lighting Tricks

• Can put textures on lights!
• Have to talk abouttextures first...

28
World Settings

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

29
World Settings

• Fog and stars settingsare based off of
  thedistance between particles
• Less distance more fog

Quadratic Mist
30
Basic Materials

• Once an object has beenadded, properties can be
  assigned
• Default is gray
• To get started, select theobject, click the
  Shading button, then clickthe Materials button
• Then, add a new material

31
Setting Colors
Good idea tochange thepreview
Can name and reuse the material
To remove thematerial (unlink it)click the X
Set the color
Set the alphachannel
Can also turn on/off lightsto see specular
highlights
Set specular reflection color
32
Setting Specular andTransparency
Set the amount of ambient reflection
Specular andHardnesssettings
For transparency, make sure you turn on ZTransp
33
Halos

• Makes a halo per vertex

Turn on Halo
Can add rings and lines, as well aschange their
color
34
Raytracing

• Does excellent reflections!
• First, remember to turn onRay under your
  initial settings
• Then, turn on Ray Mirror

35
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

36
Using Procedural Textures

• Select the Shader, thenTexture button
• Add a new Texture (similar to material)
• Choose your texture type
• Go back to materials to change color

37
Example Marble

• Under Texture
• Under Materials

Have to change the color to white
38
Loading Images

• If you can find the texture,you can load it
  intoBlender
• Under Texture Type,select Image, thenbrowse to
  it
• Under the material,change basic shape(for how
  to map)

Note textures from http//www.oera.net/How2/Text
ureMaps2.htm
39
Bump Mapping

• Use the texture to perturb the normals
• Yields a more realistic image

40
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 textureto effect the normals

41
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

42
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

43
Note The window type is the IPO curve editor.
Here, you can edit thecurve to whatever you want.
44
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

45
Extrapolating two points makes an infinite line.
In our example, this will cause the moon to
rotate forever.
46
Particle Systems

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

47
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

48
Particles Running
Change rand and Z-force to be non-zero. Also,
look into start, end, and life of the particle
49
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

50
Words of Advice

• Making simple movies isnt hard, but it takes a
  long time
• Start early, or you wont finish!