It is perfect for rubble, ceramics or splitting any object in two.

Who owns a ceramic picture frame anyway?

I am a man of my word. This video will literally take less than two minutes to watch:

Did you catch all that? Hope it wasn’t too fast!

During the 27-minute video you will learn:

• The Old System Vs New – What’s changed?
• How the Smoke Simulator works
• How to bake and render realistic smoke
• A behind the scenes look at creating a smoking city

Ready? Lets begin…

Watch it in HD!

I originally gave this presentation at the 2009 Blender Conference. The presentation included creations from other users, a short demonstration of smoke in action and a slideshow. Since that time there have been massive developements in smoke simulation so consider my video a revised edition.

Do you have any tips or tricks for using the smoke simulator? Share your experiences in the comments below!

When used correctly in your artwork, it can draw the attention to the subject and make the scene more aesthetically pleasing. When used wrong, it can seem like another overused tiresome effect. Learn the difference and how to use it effectively.

To play along at home, download this light bulb scene.

The final .blend will be provided at the end of the tutorial.

Let’s get cracking!

Step 1

Open the file and select the camera and press the ‘Show Limits’ button in the edit panel. You will notice that a yellow cross hair appears at the base of your camera.

This is the point that blender will focus on. You can change the position of the cross hair two ways: by changing the DoF Distance value. Or by typing in the name of an object for the camera to focus on. The latter is very useful for animations where you want to change what the camera focuses on in the middle of the animation. I used this technique extensively in my film ‘The Ballad of the M4 Carbine‘, where I made the camera focus on a moving empty that changed moved mid animation.

However because this is only a still we can use the first method.

Step 2

So by clicking the next arrow, make the yellow cross hair sit in line with the exploding light bulb.

With the camera now setup to render, we can move onto the compositor.

Step 3

Switch to the Node Editor by selecting it from the Window Type popup list.

Step 4

Select the compositor icon and the Use Nodes button.

Step 5

Go ahead and disconnect the ‘Render Layer’ from the Composition node.

Step 6

Hit the space bar and add a Defocus Node (Add>Filter>Defocus) and connect to the render layer and composite layer as shown in red here.

Step 7

We want the node to use the data from the cameras Z-depth, so connect the Z input to the render layers Z Output.

Step 8

Go ahead and turn off the No zbuffer and Preview buttons. They are rarely used and seem to exist only so we can turn them off.

Now onto the important part: the fStop value.

Without getting too technical, the fStop value defines how much on either side of the yellow cross hair to make in focus. The smaller you make the fStop value the less of your scene will be in focus. Many artists get carried away by how cool DoF looks, and make this value unnecessarily small. This in turn makes everything appear miniature.

Like this guy.

For an example of how DoF can affect your perception of size, watch this video. It was created using a clever photographers effect called ’tilt shift’ which fakes shallow depth of field.

Step 9

With your understanding of fStop, you should know that light bulbs are fairly small and as a result will need a smaller fStop value. So go ahead and set it to 3.5.

Step 10

Another interesting aspect of DoF that you have control over is bokeh, which defines the shape of the out of focus lights in your scene. Typically old cameras suffered from jagged bokeh but as technology improved the bokeh took on a more circular shape.

So smooth.

However I have found that using a polygonal shape like a hexagon can give a more unique effect. So go ahead and change the bokeh type to Hexagonal and Rotate to 90

The 90 degree rotation simply turns the hexagon on it’s side to make it more obvious.

Step 11

Press Do Composite in the render panel (F10), and hit render!

If you’re a beginner you can stop here as you probably won’t need the next step for your scene, but feel free to read on if you want to get into the tricky stuff.

Using DoF with Multiple Render Layers

You may notice that in the final product, the light filaments of the light bulbs are glowing. To achieve this effect I had to move the filaments to the second layer and make it into a separate render layer.

Glowing node setup

However, when you do this a problem arises: the Z-Depth for the DoF was calculated on the first layer, not the second. Sure, it’d be great if we could just jam two outputs from different render layers into the one hole, but sadly this is not the case.

It's photoshopped. Please don't try this at home.

The ugly truth is: each render layer needs a separate defocus node. Always. However rather than adding it the traditional way and having to adjust the settings on each node to match the other, I have a far more painless way.

Select the original defocus node and hit Ctrl-G.

This will make the single node into a group. Calling it a group is confusing, but if you duplicate it (Shift-D) you will notice that a number appears next to it’s name.

This is the number of users associated with it. Meaning you can make several copies of it and everything in it will mirror the settings of the groups.

Duplicate the group for each render layer in your scene, and compile the layers as you normally would.

Complete node setup

Voila!

Thanks for reading! I hope you now have a better understanding of this often overlooked feature in Blender. If there’s something I’ve missed or anything you’d like me to go into more detail, please let me know in the comment section below!

Enter: The handheld video age. One of the newest methods for getting seen at the moment is, believe it or not, via the cell phone. The following is an excerpt from a discussion on getting a job at Crytek.

“Someone I met recently had his [demo] reel on his cell phone. It was really awesome to start up a conversation with someone and start talking about 3d and be able to see a reel mid conversation, really great idea I thought… you never know who might be sitting next to you at the bar having a drink.”

Touche. If you want to get noticed, you need get seen. Obviously iPods aren’t cell phones but I’m sure you get the idea. Speaking to someone face-to-face is far more personal than sending a link over the internet, and you are far more likely to get a call back.

In this tutorial, I’ll be covering the steps to render an animation to your iPod. To demonstrate, I’ll be rendering this simple fluid sim animation, but feel free to use whatever you like.

Render settings

Before rendering your animation it’s important to keep in mind that the maximum resolution an iPod is capable of playing is 640 x 480. The actual resolution of the screen is only 320 x 240, but it helps to upload the maximum incase you connect it to your TV.

So go ahead and set the dimensions of your animation to 640 x 480 and your output format to PNG.

This will export each frame as a separate PNG and place it in your output folder which by default is /tmp but you can change that by clicking the folder icon in the output panel.

When you are ready hit the big ANIM button (or press Ctrl + F12). When your animation has finished you should see each frame saved as a separate file in your specified folder.

Now to put all those loose frames into a single mov file…

Compiling the movie

To compile all our frames into a single video file we are going to make use of the Video Sequence editor. So with our blend file still open, change the 3d viewer window to Video Sequence Editor

In the new window, click Add>Images

Navigate to where you saved your frames and select every frame but holding down your right mouse button as you drag over them. Files will turn purple once they are selected. Once you’ve done that, hit ‘Select Images’.

You will now be taken back to the editor screen where you will see a purple box with a number underneath it. This is your timeline which contains all your frames. The number underneath is the frame that you will start the timeline at. Move the bar to frame 1.

In your render settings panel, change the output format from PNG to Quicktime. We also need to change the codec settings, so click Set Format.

In the window that opens next, you will need to set the compression type to MPEG-4, because it appears to be the only codec type that the iPod actually recognizes. H.264 does not work.

Go ahead and change the settings as follows:

Finally we need to click the Do Sequence button in your Scene panel (f10).

This will tell blender to follow the instructions in the sequence editor instead of rendering our scene.

Now all you need to do is hit the big ANIM button again. This will open the render window which will quickly compile all our frames into a neatly packed .mov file

Importing into iTunes

Open iTunes and click the Movies tab

Import the file by going to File>Add File to Library…

Navigate to where you saved your .mov file and click Open.

Connect your iPod and bobs your uncle!

So there you have it! A powerful promoting tool that tucks nicely in your pocket but can be whipped out at a moments notice. This will no doubt give you an advantage at the next Siggraph conference!

If you have an animation you have previously rendered, but would like to put on your iPod, I would highly recommend you use the open source program MediaCoder which will convert it to the correct format.

Do you know of any other unique ways to promote your work? Write it in the comments below!

To start, you will need to save the following image to your hard drive:

(click for big)

In the bottom left hand corner of your 3d view, click View>Background Image.

This will open a dialogue box. Click the single button that says Use Background Image. Then click the Load button that appears.

Navigate through the folders and select the image that you saved earlier to your hard drive.

Finally drag the Blend slider to 0.00 and hit the Premul button. This will enable the alpha channel in the PNG we loaded.

Close the Background Image box and you’re done!

If we flick to our camera view (Numpad 0) we can see that the 3×3 red grid is now overlaying our viewport. How easy is that?

The lines will blur slightly depending on how far zoomed out you are, but the basic outlines are there. The best part is, if you change the resolution, the overlay will shrink and stretch to fit, meaning you will always have optimal composition no matter what size ratio you choose!

Remember: If you want blender to load these settings upon start, press Ctrl + U.

I hope you get some benefit this quick blender tip! You might also like to try overlaying the Golden Mean, (an alternative to the rule of thirds). Many believe that the Golden Mean is the perfect dimension ratio to add energy and motion to your picture. More on that here.

Today we’re going to learn how to create this cool neon sign:

The tutorial will take approximately 30 minutes to complete, and you will learn the following:

• Modelling with curves
• Make a curve emit light
• Isolate a render layer
• Using glow and glare effects

Ready? Let’s begin…

Creating the Neon Tube

Add a Bezier Circle and move it to last layer. This will be the radius of our tube.

Add a Bezier Curve to the first layer, and make the Bev Object “Curve Circle”

As you can see the result is circle is far too big for our curve, so enter the edit mode and press Alt+S to scale it down to a more realistic size.

Forming the letters

This step is by far the most time consuming task. Using your path forming skills, form the shape by adding and arranging handles to suit.

If you are new to curves, you might like to check out the BlenderWiki curve guide.

But if you want to wing it, these are the important keys to remember:

Ctrl+Click – Add handle

R – Rotate handle

G – Move handle

Ctrl (whilst rotating) – Rotate in increments of 5 degrees.

Repeat this for the rest of the letters. To save time, try duplicating the first letter and moving the handles around as needed.

Half an hour later...

Adding the neon material

Select your first letter and add a new material as follows:

Rather than selecting each letter one by one and applying the material we are going to use the ‘Make Links’ function to save time. Hold down Shift and select the rest of the word, making sure you select the first letter last. Then hit Ctrl+L and click Materials from the popup menu.

Because the word ‘guru’ in our sign is a different color, we are going to be assigning a different material to the blue one. Select the first letter and add the blue neon material we just created. Click the number next to the material name to make it a single user and rename it to PinkNeon. Then change the color as follows:

Just like we did above, hold down shift and select the rest of the letters in ‘guru’ and press Ctrl+L and select Materials. Each letter should now have a material and be looking something like this:

Creating the highlights

To give the neon tube a more three dimensional appearance, add two spotlights and position one above the words and one below the words as follows:

Set the energy for the top spotlight to 0.9 and 0.4 for the bottom spotlight and select ‘Layer’ for both. This will make the spotlights only affect the neons, instead of the entire scene.

Making the Neons emit light

Add a lamp and parent it to the first letter by first selecting the lamp then the letter and hitting Ctrl+P. Select the letter and go to the Editing Panel (F9) and select ‘CurvePath‘

Clear the origin of the lamp by pressing Alt+O. The lamp should have snapped into place at the start of the curve.

With the lamp still selected go to the Object Panel (F7) and select DupliFrames and set DupOff to 1

This will create duplicates of the lamp along the curve. The DupOff value decreases the number of those duplicates by half so there aren’t so many.

Go to the Shader settings (F5) and change the color and energy settings as follows:

Make sure you click 'Layer'

Now if we render the neon against a plane we should see a faint glow.

Perfect!

Repeat this step for all other letters. Then select all the lamps you just created (making sure the lamp you created first, is selected last) hit Ctrl+L and select ‘Lamp Data‘. That will make every lamp have the same data, so if we want to change the lamp settings in the future it is a lot easier.

Finally move all the spherical lamps to the second layer. The first layer should only contain the words and the spotlights we created earlier.

Your scene should now look like this:

Creating the scene

The scene you want to create is entirely up to you, but mine was essentially two planes, one for the floor and one the wall. For added realism, I also made a metal frame and added some cables as well as black neon backing tubes, but this is optional. Once you have your scene setup the way you want, move everything to the second layer so that the first layer only contains the neons and highlighting lamps.

If you want the exact textures I used for the wall and floor you can download them here: Floor texture – Wall texture

Your scene should now look like this:

Creating the final composition

Click the Render Layers tab in the Scene Panel (F10) and change the name of the scene to ‘Neon’.

Add a new scene by selecting ‘ADD NEW’ from the drop down menu. Change the name of this layer to ‘Scene’. In the second row of layer boxes, deselect the first layer and select the second layer instead.

We are now going to switch over to the node compositor, so change the 3d view to the ‘Node Editor‘.

Click the button with a picture of a face on it. This will switch from Material Nodes to Composite Nodes

Delete the connection between the layer and composition by dragging your mouse over the connection. Then add two blur nodes (Add>Filter>Blur) with the following settings:

Merge the two blur node effects by connecting them to an AlphaOver node (Add>Color>AlphaOver) and set the Fac value to 0.60

Add a Glare node (Add>Filter>Glare) and connect it to the renderlayer with the following settings:

Now we are going to connect the Glare node with the output from the two blur nodes, so add another AlphaOver node and set the Fac value to 0.50. This will make the blur glow effect not as strong:

Now add a Mix node (Add>Color>Mix) and from the drop down menu select Screen. Then connec it with the output from the AlphaOver node, and the output from the render layer.

Now add an RGB curve (Add>Color>RGB Curves) and create a slight ‘S’ shape with the curve. This will increase both the brightness and contrast, giving it a more vivid glow.

We are now going to adding the render layer which contains the Wall and Floor. So go to Add>Input>Render Layers, and change the active layer to scene.

Now add an RGB curve (Add>Color>RGB Curves) after this layer and bend the curve down slightly in the middle which will make the scene slightly darker.

We are now going to connect the two scenes together, so add another Mix node (Add>Color>Mix) and again, change it to Screen from the drop down menu. Connect the output from the two RGB curves like so:

For an added touch of step we are going to add a lens distortion node (Add>Distort>Lens Distortion). This will mimic a reversed fisheye lens and add some slight chromatic abbreation. Connect the output from the last AlphaOver node to the lens distortion node and apply these settings:

Connect the output from the Lens Distortion to the Composite node and your composite is complete!

The finished setup (click for big)

Now go to the Scene panel (F10) and hit ‘Do Composite’ then render! If you can see a blue background at all, then you will need to change that to black in the World settings panel (F5).

If you enjoyed this tutorial, please leave me a comment. If you got stuck at any steps along the way let me know and I’ll be happy to help.