Helpful Blender Tips

Helpful Blender Tips

If You have a tip, leave a comment below,

 

Videos with great blender tips.

 

He has a lot of great lighting tips and some rendering settings that he uses.

 

 

There are some good wisdom in these type of tips. General ideas about learning blender, most important is to apply the youtube tutorials as you watch them. Try to recreate the tutorial in blender.  Especially node setups. Save materials in the material library. (they need to fix the Material Library it’s confusing, hopfully the Blender 3 asset manager is better)

 

 

Watch these videos after you watchsome  beginner videos. Such as interface, modeling, etc.

CgBoost has great tips that are easy to understand and very helpful.

 

Daniell Kraft explains This video a lot of great tips for speeding up your workflow in blender.  I like how he explains quickly how to do things in blender.

 

Even more tips by the Daniel Krafft  Great ideas and tips in blender.

Some More tips.  Very useful stuff.

 

More tips by Daniel He talks about 200 tips quickly.

Some great tips that speed up modeling  Shift and numpad to align with a normal is awesome, so helpful for objects that are rotated not with world space.

 

The above video has some nice tips, like cavity in the viewport (makes the viewport render nicer), Saving the startup File, Making Pipes (See the cable section in how to also), Bevel Fix, (using arc instead of sharp Miter), Noodles (change how they look), Using alt for orthographic view. (While rotating, alt snaps to orthographic), Orbit shot (using an empty), Hiding using shift H (hides everything but the object, although you can use the the Forward slash key \ which I think is better.)  Render Visibility (the camera icon in collections checkbox, hides the collection from rendering),  Deleting Materials in collections area, How to add decals.  (I like Kit ops decals because they easily snap to your surface.  (subdivide your square for corners or round objects, and use the shrinkwrap modifier.),  Trees as an image plane, for better speed,(2 polys with an image of A tree)  Render Sampling set to 0 to see how many samples you need, Better compositing by splitting the view, and setting the rendered Result as the view so when your composites update and you can see the result easily, How to use a mist pass.  (Finally an easy to understand way to do mist, with little render overhead.)  Very good tips.  Thanks.

Some good tips here also. I like the project texture through a light at 4min.

Helpful Tips

Repeat last is shift R key.   Very useful for repetative tasks.

If your rendering files, use exr format with the dwaa lossy setting for really small files that still look great. (from polyfjord)

Turn off overwrite under the area where you tell blender to save your images.  If you crash, blender skip the images you already rendered.

When using dof, parent the empty you make to the camera or camera rig.  Then when you move the rig around your stuff won't go out of focus when you don't want it to,

When sharing files make sure the File/external data/Automatically Pack into .blend is selected.  So all your textures are in one file.

Assign the Center 3d view to the side mouse button

goto pref, and then goto search and type view, look for 3dview, find the Frame selected, (num .) and then assign that the extra button on the mouse

Press / key in object mode to show only the active object, Great for tweaking a part of a bigger object.

Undo History is now in the edit menu.  Great for multiple undo

For slow computers:  Click on the wireframe on the main large scenes.  Click the  / key, Change viewport to rendered or material preview to work on a single object.   When done, change back to wireframe and click the / key, This is a tip for slow computers.

Use the . period key on the numpad to center an object  Or shift c to show the whole scene.  Use in perspective mode. Map to your mouse button. (one of the sides ones, if you don't have a mouse with side buttons, get one)  Goto Preferences, keymap/3d view/Frame selected (or type in frame selected) Save Preferences. Also Map the other side button on your mouse to . for the outliner.  Lets say you have an object selected in a collection, but can't see it.  Press . with the mouse over the outliner or map that to your side mouse button.

The Material Library is weird.  If you apply to several objects.  But what if you want to make one object slightly different, like a color.  You have to select your object,  On the right top click the document icon thing, (hover and it says new material)  And it will add a .001 to your object. Now you can edit the material individually.  The work flow should be, apply material, then click a new material icon.  If you don't modify the material, it's saved to the library automatically.

If you are using two monitors, You can use new window, (next to render) to better see your 3d viewport and say graph editor.

2 monitors is much better than one for 3d.

Level Of Detail  - This is very important, this allows you to do more complicated scenes on your computer faster for bigger scenes don't skip this tip.
Update, with the use of geometry nodes and instances, this doesn't matter as much.

Several tips about render size, denoising, Critics, Name your objects, Upgrading your hardware (Simple says don't if you don't need to),  Manage your Project files (Make a folder with your objects, textures, and whatever else in one folder.), Stick with it. (Don't give up)

 

How to fix sci fi modeling mistakes -Intermediate

Nodes

Add a second uv map which is very useful for decals. add uv node connect to image texture open image

 

General Tips

He has so many tips that a beginner needs to know.  He goes over how to make a lit up sign and adds a mask and grunge to make it look more realistic. Every tip he has is something that will indeed make your renders better.

This person has the idea that you can add depth to your glows.  The video is not in blender but you can replicate the process in blender using a gradient and color ramp nodes.

Another tut using geometry nodes, he does something fantastic with the bacon.
He uses an image map, transparency map, and solidify modifier to give that thickness. So he has a piece of bacon from an image you don't have to model. Brilliant.
 
Blender doesn't have an autofocus, but with a few nodes, geometry nodes (as a hack to non destructively join separate objects.) and the shrinkwrap modifier CgBoost made an autofocus.
 

 

How to set up Auto Exposure in Eevee.   Unreal has this built in.  Hmm, in cycles, could this work also?  I think I saw an auto exposure add on somewhere.

 

Misc helpful links

blender hotkey sheet - Google Drive

Get great sounds for your animations.  (paid)