Let’s take a look at some concepts that will help you gain a better understanding of layout control in Blender 2.8. In this video, we’ll cover:
Every single window type in detail
Creating and deleting custom tabs
Creating custom themes and loading from the theme preset library
Saving your custom workspace as the new default
Splitting and joining windows
Changing window types
This is one of several upcoming Blender tutorial videos, so stay tuned for more! If you’re not already, consider subscribing to be notified when new videos are posted. If you’re just getting started in Blender, check out my introduction video. Should you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below, or ask using my contact card at the bottom of the home page.
The transition from Blender 2.79 to 2.8 has completely changed the way that users are able to take control of their layouts. To be honest, the default tabs for layouts have worked for my purposes about 95 percent of the time. Every so often I find I need to pull up a new window to create a timeline that didn’t exist before, but that’s about the extent of my layout modifications. Good luck, have fun, and keep creating!
This is a high-level overview of Blender 2.8. In this video, we take a look at:
Information provided on the Splash Screen
Navigating the 3D view
What the 3D cursor is and how to use it
Creating, editing, and manipulating objects
The Collections system and how you can use it to organize your scene
Restrict object visibility using Collections
Perspective vs orthographic views, what they are and how to switch between them
Hotkeys for changing your view quickly
How to add materials to objects
Detailed exploration of each of the panels in the ‘layout’ view
If you haven’t already, you can download the latest copy of Blender from blender.org. Please note: At the time of the this recording, Blender was in the alpha testing stages of version 2.80. However, by this time, most of the visual and back-end changes in the transition from version 2.79 had already been made. Versions 2.81 and later may have slightly different icons or menu placements, but if you’re watching this video and are brand new to Blender, those changes shouldn’t effect you that much.
If you have any problems, or would like to see and updated video, feel free to drop a comment below! All feedback is much appreciated.
In this video, we’ll cover the entire process of compiling custom versions of Blender from scratch. Why bother? Compiling custom builds can unlock special abilities and performance that’s just not possible with a standard installation of Blender.
To download pre-compiled bleeding-edge versions of Blender, check out builder.blender.org.
Blender also provides detailed documentation on how to compile Blender on all major operating systems. You can check out those instructions on the official Blender builder wiki.
To compile on Linux, you’ll first want to clone the repository in a directory of your choice. You can do this anywhere on your machine, but I’ve started compiling all my software in $ ~/Programs. This folder didn’t exist by default on my machine, so I created it just for compiling new software and packages. To clone the blender repository, you’ll need an application called git. On Ubuntu, you can install it by running:
$ sudo apt-get install git
Next, you’ll need a special collection of packages in order to build software from source code. To install these packages, just run:
The computer will prompt you for your password. Just type in your password, hit enter, and your package manager will download and install all the required packages to be able to compile Blender.
If you have any questions, please drop a comment below! To be notified of new posts in the future, sign up for the email list at the top of the page. Keep creating!
Hey guys! If you’re hear, you probably already know what RAM is and you’re excited to learn how to add swap in Manjaro. If not, this is sort of a follow-up post to how to download more RAM. Anyway, let’s get started!
Using a Swap File
There’s a ton of different ways to add swap to your system, some more advantageous than others. In my experience, it’s always been easier to add swap to an existing install by using a swap file. First, just confirm that you don’t already have swap enabled. To do this, just run sudo swapon. If that command does not return any output, then you don’t have swap enabled. Also, if you have and/or use htop, it will actually display your swap status right below your RAM usage bar. if it reads empty and 0/0kb, then you don’t have swap enabled. Great! Now we can add a swap file.
Creating and initializing a new swap file
To create an initialize a new swap file, we’ll be using the fallocate command. To initialize a 16GB swap file just run the following in a terminal:
sudo fallocate -l 16G /swapfile
then run: sudo mkswap /swapfile
Setting permissions for your new swap file
Manjaro will likely give you a warning about changing the permissions of your swap file. You can change permissions using the chmod command. The swap file should only be readable and writable by the root.
sudo chmod 0600 /swapfile
Enabling your new swap file
Enable your new swap file by running the following:
sudo swapon /swapfile
Make your changes permanent
Make sure Manjaro knows to use your swap file every single time it boots up. Do this by running:
And that’s it! The only thing left to do is reboot and just double check to see if your swap is up and running. Again, you can just run those commands from the beginning of the tutorial swapon or htop and you should be good to go! Happy blending!
In this video, we take a look at how to install Blender on Mac OSX. It is a fairly straightforward process. Blender installs just like any other piece of software for Mac OSX. Simply download the .dmg from the official releases page. Once the package finishes downloading, you can double click it to begin the install. There’s a solid chance that OSX will block the install by default. OSX complains about non-native software. Go figure. To allow the install to continue, you’ll need to open your system preferences. There is a warning under the security and privacy tab saying that the Blender installer tried to run. Simply click ‘allow anyway’ and try launching the installer again.
Next, you’ll get one last warning, and just click ‘run anyway’. The installer will appear to you. Run through all the options, accept the agreement, and you’ll be a all set.
Depending on the installer, on Mac OSX, you may not get an installer wizard. Sometimes the installer mounts itself like a disc, and pops open a window, prompting you to drag the application icon into the applications folder. If that’s the case, then just do that. In a lot of ways, that’s just easier. After you drag and drop, you should have Blender successfully installed on your machine! Hurray!
Please drop in your email up top to find out more on the basics of how to use Blender and tips and tricks to get you started. Keep creating!
In this video, we learn the steps to install blender on Windows 10. There are several ways (some more advanced than others) to do this, but in this video, we’re just sticking with the basics.
Update: Blender has been released since the recording of this video. Also, Mantaflow has been merged into the master branch of blender.
Installation steps are still the same.
As mentioned in the video, you can check out builder.blender.org for the latest, bleeding edge versions of Blender, but if you’re not up for experimentation, or a beginner just wanting to stick to the basics for now, you can check out the latest, official stable releases from blender.org/download
Note: graphicall.org has since become part of Blender.community, which is a great place to chat and learn new tips and tricks and dive deep into all things Blender.
That pretty much covers it, I know that was probably too much information, but the simple way is to just download the .msi on Windows, the .dmg on Mac, or the tar.gz on Linux. Extract and run the .msi or .dmg on Windows or Mac, go through the installer like any other program and you’re good to go. On Linux, there is no installer. You literally just extract and launch the executable. Linux is dope like that.
I use Adobe CC on a Windows machine for my video production pipeline at work. I do video side work on the weekends, and have used Windows and Adobe for those projects as well, but I’ve always felt trapped. Like I’m a slave to Adobe or something. I’ve spent most of my professional career learning and using software like Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop.
Making the Switch
I’ve used Ubuntu a TON, as it’s a super popular distro, and it was my introduction to Linux. A few months back, I was checking out https://opendata.blender.org/ and noticed that a good chunk of data was coming from a distro called Manjaro, but I’d never heard of it. Shortly after seeing all that performance data, I decided to give Manjaro a shot. After some basic research, I discovered Manjaro is actually based on Arch (unlike Ubuntu, based on Debian).
I gotta say, installing Manjaro was a breeze (cursor theme). I will admit however, I have never known the pain of installing Arch. Like actual Arch. But I’m aware of the memes. So I’m sure it’s pretty involved. While I can’t exactly go around trolling like, “btw I use arch”, I was seriously surprised at the installation and how much was up and running right out of the box! Ubuntu is pretty straightforward, but depending on the hardware, you may need to find a few hacks or packages to get everything full up and running. For example, I couldn’t get the wifi working when I put Ubuntu on my 10 year old Macbook until I installed a special package that didn’t come with the default install.
Everything Works.
Immediately… Very first boot up. Everything works. Hardline network connection works. Wifi card works. GRAPHICS look great. Manjaro automatically grabs graphics drivers for you upon install! And I was actually impressed with the pre-installed software collection. Most of the time, in Ubuntu, I have to delete a bunch of crap software I’ll never use. But Manjaro… Like, I use Steam all the time. It’s pre-installed. Libre Office pre-installed. Tweaks pre-installed. Gparted pre-installed (this might be normal). But I was really surprised how little I actually had to do post-installation.
Smooth UI Experience
It’s a bunch of little things that add up to a massive amount of time saved. One of my pet peeves in Windows is switching apps on the task bar. If your app has multiple windows (like Blender, and a render window), you have to click once to reveal thumbnails, then click the thumbnail of the window you want. If they’re small or detailed windows like terminals, good luck. I love the single hot corner in the upper left to give you an expose-like look of all your running apps. I love the best-of-both worlds option to launch a full-screen app tray from the bottom left, or tap the drop-down xcfe-like ‘start menu’ from the upper left. It’s pretty awesome. Just gotta get used to typing pacman -S instead of apt-get
Haven’t logged a ton of hours on Manjaro just yet, still very much in the “moving in” phase. Feeling great so far. Looking forward to diving into my brand new postproduction workflow in Manjaro using Blender, Resolve, Gimp, Inkscape, and Ardour. More on that in the coming weeks! Peace
Well… I guess it’s time. I’ve been working on this animation for longer than I care to admit, but I’m definitely ready to release this thing into the wild, take my lessons and move on. And when I say ‘lessons’… I mean LOTS of lessons. And I’m so glad I tackled this project the way that I did. I had some triumphs and some failures, and best of all I learned more about 3D animation during this project that I have in a very long time. Lots of familiar concepts like cell fractures, rigid body physics and particle sims, as well as TONS of new stuff like character animation, rigging, and interactive cloth simulation, clothing stitching, procedural shaders and loads more. So here it is in all its glory, the intro animation for “Never Forgotten”:
I’ve got a procedural texture that I’m happy with. It’s been fine for still renders. But when I animate the object, the texture slides around. I figured the obvious solution would be to bake down the procedural texture into a regular UV image map(s) like diffuse, specular, AO, roughness, etc. But when I baked, I got a black map. I wanted a shadeless, color-only diffuse map. Just that. No lighting information. But I got nothing.
A call for help to my #b3d twitter fam!
A Workaround So Clean, It Might As Well Be The Solution
So, still confused about the resulting black map bake, I start considering other solutions. And then it hit me:
