Blender is one of the most well-known open-source tools for 3D animation. It is used for creating animated films, 3D-printed models, visual effects art, motion graphics, etc. In the last few years, the application has evolved a lot. Some evolution was about its features, some were about its new updates. Here are some exciting Blender facts that you probably won’t know. Some of which even surprised us.
- Video Editing: Blender not only allows users to create and build CG, but it also works as a non-linear video editor. All the necessary tools are present, even though it doesn’t look exactly like a typical Premiere or Final Cut Pro setup, and you can change the layout to appear like one of the well-known NLEs. Blender has all the normal video editing tools, such as the ability to add clips or images to a timeline, edit them, and then add transitions, keyframe fades, and other features. In the graph editor, you can alter timings or audio levels and save your work in various formats once you’re done.
- Realtime Rendering: Did you know that Blender has a Cycles GPU-accelerated impartial render engine? If your graphics hardware complies with CUDA, the main display will render quickly. Because of Cycles’ global illumination, this not only allows Blender artists to work more quickly and effectively but also greatly increases the photorealism of the images. The newest version of Cycles features volumetrics as well as an updated sky model, blackbody emissive materials, hair rendering, and tone mapping.
- Composition: Blender has a built-in node-based compositing technique that helps in composition. Using the OpenCL-accelerated compositor, you can combine the several Blender render layers while keeping control over each individual component. You can include flares, glows, motion blur, depth-of-field, delicate color grading, and more. It can be useful if all you need to do is merge your CG elements and add some refinement.
- Game Building: The OpenGL-based engine features, the Bullet physics engine for real-time collisions and interactions helps design game behaviors without writing additional code. In order to make the game engine more helpful for things like interactive demos, architectural visualization walkthroughs, and scientific sims, it will be more extensively incorporated. The game engine is a separate project at the moment. You can definitely keep making game prototypes for that starter project.
- Motion tracking: The camera tracker in Blender can be used for motion tracking. Blender tracks naturally-occurring features and markers in your video clip, and reverse-engineer the camera’s position. Your CG may be perfectly composited into the video after Blender’s camera receives this data. The fact that it enables object and planar tracking makes it the best option for most users, regardless of the fact that it may lack some of the high-end capability provided by the major competitors.
- Fluid Simulation: Blender has a fluid simulation feature that you can use to simulate anything from liquids splashing to warm chocolate or leaking toothpaste by using the Lattice Boltzmann method. Fluids are part of the Blender physics system, and when they simulate, they generate a cached surface mesh. Despite being quite simple, it is easy to set up and offers certain niceties, such as Fluid Control to mold the substance. It is quite similar to the watery pseudopod from The Abyss. Although it’s not the fastest or most advanced fluid simulation, it can manage simple jobs and oddball visuals. And also Blender’s physics can also generate smoke by using a voxel method.
Final Thoughts: The above list is surprising. But as the program develops, expect the introduction of new features on the above list in the future. If you want to learn more about Blender, we recommend you learn from youtube. Why? Because youtube is free and it has all the knowledge you need. The only issue with YouTube is that it is not organized as an online course. Yes, it helps when each video is arranged like chapters in a book. You can use Career Ninja‘s Learn Tube to do just that. The platform arranges Youtube videos into a course-like format. If you want to learn “Blender tutorial” search that term on LearnTube and it will show you a bunch of videos like an online course. As a beginner, you’ll click through the videos from the first to the last, as if you were taking an online course tailored specifically for you.
