In Blender 2.8 the camera got viewport widgets as well. One to change the focal length which is always on and one to change the focal plane which needs to be activated first. Gottfried Hofmann gives a quick overview.

Hurray, the long-awaited update for The Cycles Encyclopedia is finally out. As promised it is free for every user who has already purchased the book. All updates refer to the official Blender 2.79b release. Here is what we added:

When your mesh gets heavily distorted by deform modifiers, like the armature modifier, the corrective smooth modifier can help you sand off those edges. What we didn't mention in the video is: in addition to combination with other modifiersyou can also relax and blend shape keys with the corrective smooth, using the bind choords option.

In Blender 2.8 light objects in the viewport have widgets that allow for a point-and-shoot lighting workflow, easy resizing and more. Gottfried Hofmann guides you through all of them.

Subsurface scattering (SSS) is an essential tool to make organic materials look real. They are probably most commonly used in human skin, but they pretty much apply for any living object, as well as some inanimate ones. Our skin consists of several layers, which all have different colors. Contrary to plastic they are also very heterogenous, meaning they consist of cells, blood, collagen and more. As a result light that penetrates the surface gets scattered.

Have you ever run into the situation that you cannot scale anything anymore in Blender? You might have accidentially turned on "manipulate centers only". While this feature is a regular annoyance for beginners, it is actually very powerful. Frederik Steinmetz shows how to use it by example.

I'm just going to claim: "If you work with cycles on a fairly regular basis, you need The Cycles Encyclopedia." And here is why:

Blender 2.8 is in it's final stages of development. A lot has happend over the past year. Those used to the interface of Blender 2.7x might not even recognize their favorite 3D application anymore. Follow us on a journey through the development of the Blender 2.8 user interface.

Cycles is a great production renderer, but it currently struggles with one thing: caustics! Thankfully there are other open source render engines available. One is of particular interest for this case: appleseed. This quick tutorial shows how to render caustics in Blender with Blenderseed, the appleseed plugin for Blender.