blender animation nodes installation guide
Featured

Installation and Introduction to the Animation Nodes (Update)

A lot has changed since we first published the introduction to the animation nodes. So once again Frederik Steinmetz will explain the installation and basic usage of Jacques Lucke's Animation Nodes Addon for Blender. A tutorial for version 2.8 of Blender can be found here!

Typewriter Text Effect Blender Tutorial
Featured

Tutorial: Typewriter Text Effect

Using the Animation Nodes addon, a typewriter effect in Blender has become a matter of minutes. Frederik Steinmetz shows you how to do it.

blender animation nodes installation
Featured

Tutorial: Installing the Animation Nodes

Animation Nodes is one of the hottest addons available for Blender 2.8x right now. Learn where to get it from, how to install it and how to create a most basic node setup.

blender camera animation path
Featured

Tutorial: Camera Animation Along a Path

David Mcsween shows how to achieve a classic map travel effect using a path object in Blender and letting a camera follow the path. This is a real world production example.

Blender Cycles Normals Baking
Featured

Tutorial: Normal Baking with Cycles

This article is about baking normals with the Cycles Render Engine. But it also contains excerpts from our book The Cycles Encyclopedia. This is where you can get extensive information about how normals work internally and what they are used for.

blender snowflake

Tutorial: Snowflake in Blender and Cycles

This second BlenderDiplom winter special will focus on a stylized snowflake inside a snowstorm rendered in Cycles. The first part is about easy snowflake modeling and is presented to you by Christoph Pöhler while in the second part Gottfried Hofmann will show you how to render it in Cycles.

normal baking tutorial blender internal

Tutorial: Normal Baking Blender Internal

By baking normal maps, you can add lots of details to models without increasing the polycount. Baked normal maps are used a lot in games, but are also useful for animations and still renderings. This tutorial shows you how to bake normals using the Blender Internal renderer.

Blender Cycles Volume Scatter
Featured

Tutorial: Cycles Volume Scatter Explained

Volume scattering is used to create effects like smoke, dust, clouds, sun beams (a.k.a. god rays) and similar things. This tutorial will help you understand everything about volume scatter in Cycles and how to get the effects you expect from it.

blender sun beams node light rays

Tutorial: Light Rays using Sun Beams Node

Blender 2.72 introduced the sun beams node in the compositor. It comes in really handy when creating light rays. Since it is a pure post-pro effect, it can even be applied to images.

Blender Sniper Addon Tutorial

Tutorial: Sniper Addon Detailed Explanation

Want to create awesome motion graphics with little effort? Sniper is a cool new addon for Blender that helps automate kinetic typography and more. Control your camera by where it should point to.

blender modern hologram cycles

Tutorial: Modern Hologram Shader in Cycles

Jonathan Lampel shows you how to set up a Cycles shader that turns your Blender models into modern day holograms.

blender cycles volumetrics

Tutorial: Volumetric Logo Reveal in Cycles

Blender 2.7x got a great new feature - volumetrics in Cycles! Learn the basics of the volume scatter effect in this tutorial.

blender laplacian deform modifier

Tutorial: Laplacian Deform Modifier

The Laplacian Deform Modifier in Blender is super-useful for simple posing of objects, but the usage can be somewhat obscure. That's why Frederik Steinmetz is helping you out!

blender wireframe modifier

Tutorial: Wireframe Modifier

One of the cool new things in Blender 2.70 is the wireframe modifier. Frederik Steinmetz shows you how to use it and explains all options.

Tip: Quickly Link Noise Reduction Nodes with Python

b°wide has provided the community with a great pack of predefined node groups you can use in many situations. They are a must-have for any more sophisticated project. You can get them here. To enable the setup, you first have to select all the channels and then connect all in- and outputs. That can be very tedious, here is a one-click-solution.

blender dna arewo tutorial

Tutorial: Create a Double-Strand of DNA using ARewO and Metaballs

In this tutorial you will learn how use the ARewO Addon and Metaballs to create a double-strand of a DNA molecule.

Blender ARewO Tutorial

Tutorial: ARewO Blender Addon

In this tutorial Frederik Steinmetz demonstrates the functions of the Animation Replicator with Offset. This video gives you a detailed explanation on what you can use this Addon for.

Blender lens flares

Tutorial: Lens Flares using the Compositor

Jonathan Lampel shows you how to create custom lens flares in Blender using only the compositor. The result can even be used as a group node.

blender fire background stencil cycles

Tutorial: Background Stencils with Cycles and Compositing

A stencil for an animated background is a nice element for motion graphics. Unfortunately, the compositor is not always well-suited here. But Cycles comes for the rescue!

blender fur cycles hair particles

Tutorial: Fur with Cycles and Particle Hair

Learn how to add great looking particle fur for any animal!

blender ghost

Tutorial: Cute Ghost with Cloth Sim and Cycles

In this guest tutorial by Christoph Pöhler you will learn how to create a cute ghost animation using the cloth simulation and some advanced Cycles shaders.

Blender Slow Motion Fire

Tutorial: Cool Slow Motion Fire in Blender

This tutorial explains how to create a really cool looking, stylized fire in slow motion directly in Blender. The result can be used for backgrounds of all kinds in motion graphics and stills. This tutorial will also show you a lot of tips and tricks how to render fire faster.

The Animation Replicator with Offset - Part 2

Finally, I managed to complete the second part of the ARewO tutorial. It can now distribute objects along a path and include armatures.

blender old film look

Old Film Projector Look with Blender Particles and Compositing

You can use Blender to make footage look like it was shot in 1920, by using particle systems and the compositor. Here is how:

Aufraeumen

A Little Script for Cleaning up the Image Stack in Your Blendfiles

Recently I had to clean up a lot of my blendfiles. Especially when you append objects that share textures with your existing objects, you wind up with a lot of duplicates.

arewo

Tutorial: ARewO - The Animation Replicator with Offset

Python scripts let you automate processes that would take forever if you had to do them by hand.
sincitylook

Tutorial: Sin City Look in Blender

If you want to apply the Sin City or Spot Color look to your footage, Blender now has all the required tools at hand. This tutorial shows you how to do it using the compositor for selective desaturation and the tracking- and masking-tools.
recover

Recover Blender Projects like a Pro

Blender crashed? You quit accidentally? Saved over an important step? Blender offers ways to recover all of these!
cycles absorption

Tutorial: Absorption in Cycles

The new ray length node in Blender 2.64 allows to fake absorption even without a volumetric shader. This tutorial shows you how to create your own absorption shader and make it re-usable.
blender vignette

Tutorial: Vignette in Blender 2.64

Thanks to the new ellipse mask node in the Blender compositor, creating a vignette has become more simple and versatile than ever. This quick tip for Blender 2.64 shows you how it's done!
blender cycles particle trail

Tutorial: Cycles Particle Trail in Blender 2.64

This tutorial for Blender 2.64 or later shows you how to create an advanced particle trail in Cycles using new features like the particle info node.
blender dynamic paint ball intro

Tutorial: Dynamic Paint Ball-Intro

The Dynamic Paint system in Blender is a great tool to create motion graphics. This tutorial shows you how to use it to create an eye-popping intro effect.
skin modifier blender

Tutorial: Skin Modifier in Blender 2.64

The skin modifier, which is new in Blender 2.64, has been added to the modifier compendium. The skin modifier can be used to easily create base-meshes for sculpting or to create abstract or cartoonish figures.
modifiersabstract

Tutorial: Abstract Object using Modifiers

The first guest-tutorial on BlenderDiplom.com! Dimitris Christou aka gr8! was so kind to provide us with a tutorial for his great (pun intended) abstract submission to the Modifiers Competition.
blender modifiers

Compendium: Blender Modifiers Explained

This series covers all of Blender's generate and deform modifiers. Each modifier is explained in a short video.

Tutorial: Animated Pintoy

Learn how to create an animated pin toy in Blender using maps, dupliverts and the displace modifier and render it in Cycles!
We use cookies

We use cookies on our website. Some of them are essential for the operation of the site, while others help us to improve this site and the user experience (tracking cookies). You can decide for yourself whether you want to allow cookies or not. Please note that if you reject them, you may not be able to use all the functionalities of the site.