Why Blender?

Blender 3.5 combines a complete 3D & VFX Production Suite as open source software. With the fact that Blender is for free, a Blender pipeline can be easily and inexpensively expanded and adapted to any studio size as needed.

Blender has demonstrated the power of the software and its ability as an animation tool for many years through its Open Movies projects: www.blender.org

The functionality is immense and covers much of the 3D and VFX pipeline. These include simulations, camera- & object tracking, node-based compositing and a 2D animation environment. In addition, Blender is compatible with other DCC tools through USD, ALEMBIC, FBX, VDB and OpenEXR. But also many tools for the Conception phase, as well as PreViz and even compositing are offered. With the integrated real-time renderer “Eevee” photorealistic stills, npr and animations can be directly generated. Since the same shaders as of the photorealistic un-biased renderer Cycles can be used, they can then become high-end production renderings after they have been approved.
The Geometry-Nodes environment is giving the artist a powerful and full procedural approach for generating and manipulating meshes and making animations.
In addition to the basic featureset, the Blender infrastructure offers a large community where free and also some inexpensive add-ons for various special tasks such as Architecture can be downloaded.

Helge Maus | pixeltrain

!!! TIP >> Helge’s new publication – “Blender Fundamentals >> Fast Forward” – is out now !!!

Training – Introduction to Blender (remote online or on-site)

Our courses are for everyone who wants to immerse themselves in the fascinating world of 3D, Animation and VFX. They enable you to learn „Blender for Production“, as Freelancer, as a small Indie Studio or even as a big studio.

Blender, the free open source software for 3D, is enjoying increasing popularity.
And with the new version 3.5, the application has taken another big step towards becoming one of the most powerful professional DigitalContentCreation tools.

Some of the topics you learn in this course:

• Getting to know the Blender 3.5 Infrastructure
• Installation, AddOns and Preferences
• User-Interface and Navigation
• Scene-Organisation, Outlines, Collections
• Polygone-Modeling Techniques
• Working with Curves & Surfaces
• Modifiers
• SubDivision Surfaces
• UV Editor & UV Unwrapping
• Lighting & Types of Lights
• Camera & Physical Settings
• Materials & Shader
• Using Textures
• Photorealism & PBR Setups
• Working with Eevee (Realtime)
• Using node based-Shaders
• Rendersettings with Eevee and Cycles
• Final Rendering
• Simple Compositing in the Compositing Workspace
• Introduction to Sculpting Workspace
• First Keyframes and Animationen
• Rendering of Animations

After this basic course in Blender you will be able to tackle your own 3D projects from 3D models to rendering.

If you are interested in this training course and you have questions, please write me on this address: info (at) pixeltrain.net.

Training – Photorealistic & NPR Rendering in Blender (remote online or on-site)

Our courses are for everyone who wants to immerse themselves in the fascinating world of 3D, Animation and VFX. They enable you to learn „Blender for Production“, as Freelancer, as a small Indie Studio or even as a big studio.

Blender, the free open source software for 3D, is enjoying increasing popularity.
And with the new version 3.5, the application has taken another big step towards becoming one of the most powerful professional DigitalContentCreation tools.

Two days of intensive advanced training for everyone who wants to use Blender to create sophisticated node-based materials and visualizations for architecture, product design, games & film.
In addition to photorealistic rendering, you will also learn techniques for non-photorealistic rendering for animation, motion design, manga, comics and architecture / product sketching.

Some of the topics you learn in this course:

• CyclesX Render-Engine for Photorealism
• Physical Lighting and physical settings in Cameras
• Eevee for Realtime Rendering
• Using the powerful Asset Manager for Objects, Materials, Light- & World setups
• Deep dive into the Shader Editor
• Building complex Shaders
• PBR Workflows
• Creating photorealistic Materials
• Architecture- & Design Materials
• Photorealistic Lighting through HDRIs, World Settings and Light Sources
• Advanced Cycles features like Micropolygon Displacement, AOVs, LightGroups, Caustics
• Introduction to Sculpting & Color Attributes for detailing Objects
• Detail-Sculpting & Baking of Normals and Displacement
• Introduction to Texture Painting in Blender
• Introduktion to Grease Pencil
• Image-Finishing with the internal Compositor
• Exchange with Photoshop, Affinity Photo, After Effects, Fusion & NUKE
• Internal Freestyle Renderer for Sketch & Toon
• Creating Freestyle Materials
• Creating Comic Shader
• Refining Comic & Manga styles in the Compositor

If you are interested in this training course and you have questions, please write me on this address: info (at) pixeltrain.net.

Training – Rigging & Animation in Blender (remote online or on-site)

Our courses are for everyone who wants to immerse themselves in the fascinating world of 3D, Animation and VFX. They enable you to learn „Blender for Production“, as Freelancer, as a small Indie Studio or even as a big studio.

Blender, the free open source software for 3D, is enjoying increasing popularity.
And with the new version 3.5, the application has taken another big step towards becoming one of the most powerful professional DigitalContentCreation tools.

You know the basic functions of Blender and would like to create your first animations with Blender Cycles & Eevee in the area of product or architecture visualization?
Or you want to finally implement your first MotionGraphics projects? Prepare and professionally animate components, machines and devices in the field of technical visualization using rigs? Or are you even attracted by characters and you want to learn how to create a rig (“skeleton” / armature) and bring a figure to life?

Then this training is the ideal start for you!

You learn how to work with the powerful Animation Tools of Blender. You get to know helpful add-ons for MotionGraphics and Rigging and you build your first technical and organic animation rigs. We bring camera animations to life and also learn how to export these animations for game engines like Unity, Unreal or Godot. You will get to know Timeline, Dopesheet, Graph Editor, Asset Browser, NLA, Shapes and Drivers.

• Important Blender Concepts for Animators & Riggers
• Project Settings for Animation
• Blender Timeline
• Keying, Keying Sets & Autokeys
• Channels & Keyframes in the Dopesheet
• Making of Playblasts
• Motion Path Tool
• Graph Editor & F-Curves
• Interpolation & Handles
• Curves Modifiers
• Channel Groups
• Basics of Rigging
• Armatures 
• Building Rigs for mechanical / organic Objects
• Bone Layers, Bone Groups & Bendy Bones
• Binding Meshes & Weight-Painting
• IK Setups
• Poses
• Shape Keys
• Working with Constraints
• Drivers & Expressions
• Action Editor & Blender’s Action System
• Pose Libaries
• Asset Manager
• NLA System
• Working with Audio
• Basics of Grease Pencil

If you are interested in this training course and you have questions, please write me on this address: info (at) pixeltrain.net.

Training – Introduction to Blender’s Geometry Nodes (remote online or on-site)

Our courses are for everyone who wants to immerse themselves in the fascinating world of 3D, Animation and VFX. They enable you to learn „Blender for Production“, as Freelancer, as a small Indie Studio or even as a big studio.

Blender, the free open source software for 3D, is enjoying increasing popularity.
And with the new version 3.5, the application has taken another big step towards becoming one of the most powerful professional DigitalContentCreation tools.

With the help of the growing Geometry Nodes context inside of Blender you will be able to increase your productivity in different areas of your production:

• Building of procedural Assets for Games and VFX
• Animated Motion Graphics
• Environment creation with intelligent scattering techniques
• Working with procedural Hair / Fur and Grooming

Some of the topics you learn in this course:

• Introduction to the Geometry Nodes concept
• Building your first node groups
• Managing node groups in the asset browser
• Mesh & Curve Manipulation
• Instancing
• Fields Concept
• Selections
• Working with Attributes
• Working with Geometry Nodes driven Particles Effects
• Working with Volumes
• Procedural Modeling techniques

If you are interested in this training course and you have questions, please write me on this address: info (at) pixeltrain.net .

Training – Blender for Games asset workflow (remote online or on-site)

Our courses are for everyone who wants to immerse themselves in the fascinating world of 3D, Animation and VFX. They enable you to learn „Blender for Production“, as Freelancer, as a small Indie Studio or even as a big studio.

Blender, the free open source software for 3D, is enjoying increasing popularity.
And with the new version 3.5, the application has taken another big step towards becoming one of the most powerful professional DigitalContentCreation tools.

This training focuses onto the Game Asset Creation workflow inside of Blender.
You will learn, how the Blender Modeling Tools and Workflows for to build your Game Assets.
Also this training covers the most important workflows you need to work with your Game Engine. Also we will take a look into the mostly used (industry standard) Add-ons inside of Blender. 

Some of the topics you learn in this course:

• Polygon Modeling Tools
• Important Modifiers
• Build-In Add-ons to help the modeling workflow
• Hard Surface Modeling Techniques
• Effective UV Workflow
• Procedural Node-based Materials & Shaders
• Texture Painting
• Re-topo Workflow for HighPoly to LowPoly Conversion
• Baking of Shader Networks and Normals
• Rigging of Characters & Assets for Game Engines
• Exporting for UNITY & Unreal

Additionally industry standard Add-ons will be used and teached in this training:
HardOps, BoxCutter, Fluent, Fluent Materializer, ZenUV, MachinTools, KitOPS, …

If you are interested in this training course and you have questions, please write me on this address: info (at) pixeltrain.net .

Overview of other topics for pixeltrain’s Blender Training Courses (remote online or on-site)

Our courses are for everyone who wants to immerse themselves in the fascinating world of 3D, Animation and VFX. They enable you to learn „Blender for Production“, as Freelancer, as a small Indie Studio or even as a big studio.

Blender, the free open source software for 3D, is enjoying increasing popularity.
And with the new version 3.5, the application has taken another big step towards becoming one of the most powerful professional DigitalContentCreation tools.

• Blender 3.5 – Full Introduction / Basic-Training
• Blender 3.5 – Hardsurface & Polygon Modeling, HardOps & BoxCutter
• Blender 3.5 – CyclesX for Production
• Blender 3.5 – VFX Workflow
  • 3D-Camera-Tracking & Object Tracking
  • Particles
  • Geometry Nodes
  • Hair & Fur with Physics
  • Fire & Smoke
  • Explosions
  • Compositing
  • 3D-Integration into real footage
• Blender 3.5 – MoGraph & FUI
• Blender 3.5 – EEVEE Previz & MotionDesign incl. Animation Nodes
• Blender 3.5 – Rigging & Animation incl. Rigify

Training Requests

All training contents will be adapted to your individual needs. A free analysis is the basis of a successful learning. Therefore take the chance and feel free to contact us. After a first talk on the phone, we create an individualized plan according to the goals you wish to achieve.

If you are interested in a training by pixeltrain / Helge Maus, you can reach us by email info(at)pixeltrain.net. We will contact you as soon as possible for an informal talk.

Besides the training, we also provide detailed advice on the purchase of the software, consulting and project support during a production.

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Free Tutorial “Start in Blender Today!” by Helge Maus

This tutorial series „Start in Blender today“ is aiming to help you to get up to production speed in Blender 3.0. Learning a new 3D application means understanding the paradigms, getting a working knowledge of tools and workflows and, most importantly – building up muscle memory for standard tasks.

Here is the Link to Helge’s Blender-Playlist on YouTube: Start in Blender today >>

Blender 3.0 for Production – 2D & 3D Tracking Workflow – 01 Preparing Footage in the VSE

In this tutorial series, we will talk about Blender as a solution for 3D Camera and Object Tracking. Step by Step you will learn how to use Blender for preparing your footage in the Video Sequence Editor (VSE) and getting used to the Movie Clip Editor. Then we will cover the important fundamentals of 2D-Tracking in Blender and also some use-cases for directly using these data. Then we build upon these 2D-Tracks and start solving a 3D-Camera and talk about good and bad tracks, nodal shots, tricks like offset-tracking, joining of tracks, and analyzing solve problems. In the final tutorials, we will finish with Object-tracking for props replacement. After this tutorial series, you have a solid understanding of Blender’s Camera and Object Tracking and how to use the solved data inside of Blender or in other applications like Maya, Cinema, or Houdini.

More Tutorials in the series “Blender 3.0 for Production – 2D & 3D Tracking Workflow”:

02 Overview of the Movie Clip Editor

03 Fundamentals of 2D-Tracking in Blender

04 2D-Stabilization & Compositing Workflow

04b Q&A – Matchmoving NUKE Rotos in Blender

05 Advanced Tracking Settings

06 Plane-Tracking, Corner Pin & Compositing

07 Join, Refine, Offset & Average Trackers

08 Fundamentals of 3D Camera Tracking

09 Advanced Camera Tracking Workflow

10 3D-Integration, Shadowcatcher & Masking

Blender for Production – Blender to NUKE Workflow – 01 Set up a Blender to NUKE Pipeline

In this tutorial, we will start by looking into the Blender Rendering system and how to render still multipart EXRs and also animations as EXR sequences. Then we will define our Light & Data passes for NUKE and talk about the concept of View Layers / Render Layers. After importing a first EXR to NUKE we discuss several problems we will have now with that. So, back in Blender, we start setting up a reliable Rendersetup with predefined Layer names and splittings. Also, we talk about making presets for this workflow in Blender and NUKE and save Libraries for often used setups. In the end, we will learn how to manipulate single channels before exporting to EXRs for NUKE.

More Tutorials in the series “Blender 3.0 for Production – Blender to NUKE Workflow”:

Blender for Production – Blender to NUKE Workflow – 02 Working with Blender LightPasses in NUKE

Blender for Production – Blender to NUKE Workflow – 03 World Position Passes for NUKE & Customs AVOs

Blender for Production – Blender 3.0 to NUKE Workflow – 04 Cryptomatte & Build Export Nodes Addon

Blender 2.91 New Features –  01 User Interface, Outliner & Collections

In this tutorial, we will talk about the new features and improvements to the User Interface of Blender 2.91 . Many of these gems are helping you in your daily work, so they are worth it to explore. We will look into the outliner, learn about scene organization and helpers for that, also the new additions for working faster with Modifiers, Constraints and Grease Pencil effects. Then we talk about Property Search and the new fuzzy search approach for commands and nodes.

More Tutorials in this series:

Blender 2.91 New Features – 02 Polygon Modeling, Booleans, Volumes & Modifiers

Blender 2.91 New Features – 03 Custom Bevels, Caps & Curve Modeling in Blender

Blender 2.9 for Production – The Compositor

This tutorial series „Blender 2.9 for Production“ focuses on Blender 2.9 as a full Production Suite for (Indie) 3D- & VFX Productions. In these tutorials, I will explain how to work with the different Modules of Blender 2.9 and how they are connected to each other. I will give you an introduction to the specific functionalities, but also the production context and workflows, which can help you to use Blender in your productions.

In this tutorial, we will talk about the workflow connections of the Blender 2.9 Compositor with Rendering and external files. We also take a look into the node-based compositing workflow, add useful Keyboard shortcuts and Quick Favorites to make your comping work more effective and faster. This introduction is also meant for artists coming from other compositing solutions like Nuke and Fusion to get a fast understanding of the environment.

More Tutorials in this series:

Blender 2.9 for Production – 02 Basic Compositing Tasks in Blender 2.9 Compositor

Blender 2.9 for Production – 03 RenderLayers, Collections & Ray Visibility

Blender 2.9 for Production – 04 Render Layers, Light Passes & Data Passes

Blender 2.9 for Production – 05 Working with Light- & Data Passes, Alphas and much more

Blender 2.9 – New Features & Improvements – 01 User Interface, Statistics & Modifiers Stack

This tutorial series „Blender 2.9 – New Features“ is meant for beginners in Blender. You learn how Blender works, thinks, where you find the new features and most important, how they work in practice. If you have the feeling, that you hear about new features, but they don’t find their way into your daily work, here is your chance. Let’s explore them.

More Tutorials in this series:

Blender 2.9 – New Features & Improvements – 02 Extrude Manifold, Bevel Custom Profiles & Curves

Blender 2.9 – New Features & Improvements – 03 UV Tools Improvements

Blender 2.9 – New Features & Improvements – 04 Rendering Improvements in Cycles & Eevee

Blender for C4D Artists – 01_01 Working with Cameras in Blender 2.8x

This tutorial series „Blender for Cinema 4D Artists“ is aiming to help you to get up to production speed in Blender 2.8x. Learning a new 3D application means understanding the paradigms, getting a working knowledge of tools and workflows and, most importantly – building up muscle memory for standard tasks.

More Tutorials in this series:

Blender for C4D Artists – 01_02 How to Animate Cameras on Splines & Target

Blender for C4D Artists – 01_03 Text Objects & Fonts

Blender for C4D Artists – 01_04 Working with Add-ons in Blender 2.8x

Blender for C4D Artists – 01_05 Working with Curves in Blender 2.8x

Sprite Fright – Blender Open Movie

Realtime Rendering in Eevee

TIGER – BLENDER 2.80 DEMO BY DANIEL BYSTEDT

GOODNIGHT CLAIRE – BLENDER 2.80 DEMO BY DANIEL BYSTEDT

BREAKDOWN

HERO – BLENDER GREASE PENCIL SHOWCASE