Taking Blender to the Next Level

By : Ruan Lotter

Taking Blender to the Next Level

By: Ruan Lotter

Overview of this book

If you're ready to start exploring the more advanced workflows and processes in Blender to create intricate 3D models, then Taking Blender to the Next Level is for you. This book focuses on a few different VFX-related workflows such as geometry nodes, organic modeling, 3D camera tracking, photogrammetry, sculpting, compositing, and physics simulations. You’ll learn how to use geometry nodes to create dynamic motion graphic scenes as well as perform 3D scanning of real-world objects using photogrammetry. You’ll also find out how to model, rig, and animate your own 3D characters from scratch. Next, you’ll progress to using simulations to break objects apart and then use cloth and hair simulations to add realism to your 3D creations. Finally, you’ll go over the final render settings and export your 3D animation masterpiece as a video. By the end of this Blender book, you’ll be able to model your own 3D characters, objects, and landscapes; rig, animate, and texture your characters; 3D track live-action footage; and composite your 3D characters into live-action scenes.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Conventions used

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Part 1: Modeling, Materials, and Animation Workflows

Free Chapter

Chapter 1: Using Geometry Nodes to Create Dynamic Scenes

Introduction to Geometry Nodes in Blender

Creating and manipulating geometry using nodes

Using textures to control attributes

Animating with Math nodes

Summary

Chapter 2: Creating a Motion Graphics Scene Using Geometry Nodes

Creating our base mesh and instance object

Using an empty object to calculate proximity data

Using the proximity data to modify the attributes

Animating our scene

Adding color using materials

Summary

Chapter 3: Organic Modeling P1: Creating a Mushroom

Creating our base mesh for the mushroom

UV unwrapping our model

The multiresolution modifier

Sculpting finer details

Using a lattice to shape your overall model

Creating a low-poly and high-poly mesh

Baking the normal map

Summary

Chapter 4: Organic Modeling P2: Creating the Landscape around the Mushroom

Creating the landscape

Adding grass using Geometry Nodes

Summary

Chapter 5: PBR Materials: Texturing our Mushroom Scene

Adding materials to the mushroom

Adding materials to the landscape

Creating a procedural grass material

Using an HDRI, Sky Texture, and Sun to light our scene

Summary

Chapter 6: 3D Scanning and Photogrammetry: Creating Your Own 3D Scans

Taking photos for 3D scanning/photogrammetry

Using Meshroom to convert photos into a 3D model

Cleaning up a model using Blender

Optimizing the topology of a model using Instant Meshes

UV unwrapping and texture baking

Summary

Chapter 7: Modeling an Alien Cartoon Character

Creating reference images of your character

Setting up the reference images in Blender

Modeling an alien cartoon character

Summary

Chapter 8: Rigging and Animating Your 3D Cartoon Character

Installing the Rigify add-on

Importing our character and getting it ready for the rigging process

Rigging the character using Rigify

IK versus FK and rig layers

Animating the walk cycle

Summary

Part 2: Let's Do Some Physics

Chapter 9: Rigid Body Simulation: Destroying a Statue Using Physics

Installing the required add-ons

Setting up the scene

Using Cell Fracture to break our model into smaller pieces

Fracturing the impact point using the Annotation Pencil

Rigid Body physics

Linking fractured pieces together using Rigid Body Constraints

Animating a Rigid Body impact object

Baking the final physics simulation

Summary

Chapter 10: Dynamic Cloth Simulations

Importing our character and walk cycle

Adding a rest pose

Creating clothing for our character

The cloth simulation

Using forces to enhance the simulation

Baking the cloth simulation

Adding final modifiers

Summary

Chapter 11: Creating Dynamic Hair Using Particles

Reusing our alien character and walk cycle animation

Creating a Vertex Group

Creating hair particles that interact with physics

Grooming and styling

Baking the hair simulation to cache

Setting up a hair shader for rendering

Summary

Part 3: Match Moving and Compositing

Chapter 12: Matching Blender's Camera Movement to Live Action Footage

Creating an image sequence from a video

Importing the image sequence into Blender

Camera tracking or match moving

Solving and refining the track and orienting the scene

Testing the camera track with test objects

Summary

Chapter 13: Compositing the Alien Cartoon Character onto the Live Action Footage

Importing our alien character and tracked camera into a new Blender project

Matching the lighting to our live-action scene

Configuring View Layers

Compositing using nodes

Summary

Chapter 14: The Final Render

Understanding the render settings

Rendering an animation as an image sequence

Converting the image sequence into an MP4 video

Summary

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Chapter 1: Using Geometry Nodes to Create Dynamic Scenes

Geometry Nodes is one of the latest additions to the ever-evolving world of Blender and is one extremely powerful tool. It allows you to create and change an object's geometry in more complex ways than regular modifiers, and it allows you to create complex scenes quickly and in non-destructive ways, meaning you can always go back and tweak some of the parameters, making it extremely dynamic and versatile. Welcome to the exciting world of Geometry Nodes!

One thing to note is that Geometry Nodes is still being developed extensively by the developers of Blender, which means that new nodes will be added, and more workflow options will be available to you, making it one of the most exciting new features to come to the Blender toolset.

In this chapter, you will learn how to use some of the most popular nodes, and you will get a feel of what you can do using Geometry Nodes. You will learn how to distribute objects on points, using Math nodes to calculate attributes such as the distance between objects, as well as how to modify certain attributes such as scale, position, and rotation. Additionally, you will learn how to randomize certain attributes, which is important when creating dynamic motion graphics scenes.

This chapter will give you a good, but basic, understanding of Geometry Nodes, and later in this book, we will make use of other methods that will build on this chapter.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

Introduction to Geometry Nodes in Blender
Creating and manipulating geometry using nodes
Using textures to control attributes
Animating with Math nodes
Technical Requirements
All the projects in this book have been created and built on Blender 2.93.x. The projects should work perfectly fine with Blender 3.x versions too. There may obviously be slight changes going forward as they develop Blender 3, but most of the changes they usually do are minor and should not break any workflows. However, the Geometry nodes chapters will work strictly on versions 2.93.x, since these nodes are updated with every version change. Version 2.93 has Long Term Support (LTS) till 2023 and you can download it from here. https://www.blender.org/download/lts/2-93/
All the projects of this book have been uploaded on Github here: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Taking-Blender-to-the-Next-Level

Taking Blender to the Next Level

By : Ruan Lotter

Taking Blender to the Next Level

By: Ruan Lotter

Overview of this book

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Chapter 1: Using Geometry Nodes to Create Dynamic Scenes