PHILTECH INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY INC.

SUBJECT: 2D ANIMATION WITH GAME ART

WEEK 5 | 1ST SEM

LESSON 5: BLENDER ESSENTIALS

TOPICS: INTRODUCTION TO BLENDER
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this session, you will be able to:
 Understand the use of Blender software application in the development of 3D
design
 Install Blender software application to the computer
 Identify different parts of Blender’s user interface and their functions
 Navigate in Blender’s user interface

LET’S START:

WHAT IS BLENDER

Blender is a free, open-source 3D creation suite. If you’re just getting started creating animated films,
visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, or
computer games.

Blender is primarily used as a 3d modeling suite that allows you to create 3d scenes and models for
several different industries including animation and game design. Below is an extended list of what
Blender could be used for…

 3D Assets And Environments For Video Games

 3D And 2D Animations
 Sculpting For Visualization And High Quality Renders
 Architectural Design
 Built In Video Editor
 VFX
 Motion Capture
 Logo Design
 Motion Graphics
 Realistic Scene Creation

THE PRIMARY USE

The primary use of Blender is to create three-dimensional objects and scenes using the 3D viewport
and a suite of modeling tools that allow the user to create any object and any scenario that they want
to create in 3D space. Basic objects and environments can be created using mesh objects constructed
from three types of geometry. These are vertices, edges, and faces. By manipulating the geometry we
can control the form of any 3D object we create. There are different methods to creating objects in
Blender and different toolsets to accommodate those methods.
For example, when creating character models of high detail the artist can use Blenders suite of
sculpting tools by switching to sculpt mode. Creating models in Blender opens the door to several
industries. low poly models and environments can be created in Blender to be exported into video
game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine.
Note that all projects in Blender use the .blend file extension. While you can use this file type in unity
by saving it directly to your unity asset folder, the standard method would be to export the object as
an .FBX or .OBJ file when moving over to a game engine.

Most users of Blender will at first probably fall into this category and will need to learn the skills for
creating objects that can be optimized and used for those game engines. While there are many skills
to develop in Blender there is often little need to learn all of them. If you are a designer for
environmental assets then you probably won’t need to learn how to sculpt highly detailed characters.

OTHER USES

Blender is also used for creating animations of various lengths. There is a wide array of settings for
controlling how you want to render those animations such as the frame rate and file output options.
Where for video games Blender is a part of the process for creating the assets of a video game, an
animator could create an animation using Blender 3D exclusively. It is possible to create near Pixar
quality using Blender though this can be dependent on the hardware to an extent as well as your own
skillset.

Architecture
In addition to the above, the software can also be used for architectural visualization. You can design
floor and building plans to precise measurements for home improvements or construction projects
and demonstrate your designs to clients with a render of your plan. You could even now go one step
further here as Blender can be integrated into a virtual reality headset allowing clients to view your
layout as if they were actually there.

2D Animations
Not only are you able to create fully 3D scenes for animations, but you can also create 2D animations
as well. To do this Blender uses a tool known as the grease pencil. Think of it as a brush used to draw
in both 2D and 3D space. The lines created by the grease pencil can be both edited and animated as
required.

Sculpting
The sculpting toolkit is used to add significant amounts of detail to 3D objects in far less time than
what would be needed for standard modeling tools. Sculpts can be created for video game characters,
although additional steps may need to be taken for a sculpted character to be usable in a game.

This process is called baking and it involves mapping the details of a high poly model onto a low poly
one. That said modern game engines are much more efficient at handling large amounts of geometry
and this process is becoming less and less important.

Logo Design
Blender is a fantastic tool for creating logos, either in two dimensions with the grease pencil or 3D
logos in the standard viewport. They’re also basic text tools that allow to create 2D and 3D text. This
allows you the freedom of not only creating traditional static logos but also animated intros for
YouTube and course videos. More and more YouTubers are now beginning to turn to Blender to create
their own unique intro videos.

Video Editing
If there is a single word that you could use to describe Blender 3D, that word would be versatile. Not
only does Blender allow you to create animations, but you can also make edits to those animations
with the built in video sequence editor.

In fact, the video that you want to edit does not even need to be a rendered animation, but any
standard video format like an mp4 can be added and edited. Now Blender will not compare to more
established video editing software like Davinci Resolve, but it still has all the basic tools needed to get
the job done.

HOW TO INSTALL BLENDER

1. Go to http://blender.org

2. Go to ‘Download’.
3. Depending on what type of computer you have (Windows, Mac, Linux), select the right installer
for you. I use Windows and just downloaded the direct .msi installer.
4. Follow the installation instructions and you should have Blender installed on your machine.

WHAT ARE THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS?

Here are the requirements for Blender.
Hardware (Minimum):
 64-bit dual core 2Ghz CPU with SSE2 support
 4 GB RAM
 1280×768 display
 Mouse, trackpad, or pen+tablet
 Graphics card with 1 GB RAM, OpenGL 3.3
Hardware (Recommended):
 64-bit quad core CPU
 16 GB RAM
 Full HD display
 Three button mouse or pen+tablet
 Graphics card with 4 GB RAM
Hardware (Optimal):
 64-bit eight core CPU
 32 GB RAM
 Full HD displays
 Three button mouse and pen+tablet
 Graphics card with +12 GB RAM

Chrome open in one window and Microsoft Word open in another. Maybe you’ll have Media Player
running in another window. Blender functions in a similar way! You might have the 3D view open in
one window, a video editor open in another and an image editor open in another. In Blender, these so-
called ‘apps’ are called Editors. You can create as much windows as you want in Blender and change
the Editor within each window.
Here are all the available editors in Blender

THE USER INTERFACE

Green Box – This is the 3D viewport. Here is where you will make your 3D animated movie. You
create 3D models here, you animate them here, you see them come to life here. This is one of the
most important editors in Blender. It would be pretty difficult (and dead silly) to animate or model
something without the 3D viewport open. See the buttons you see on the right? This is the toolbar and
contains a lot of the functionality that you would previously had to remember some shortcut key for.

Blue Box – This the Outliner. Every 3D object you have in your 3D viewport (including objects, lights
and cameras) will be visible as a list here. This is useful if you have so many 3D objects in your scene
and want to find the exact object by just searching. Say you’re working on a massive epic scene
involving thousands of soldiers for example. You might struggle to find the soldier named “Bob” in the
3D viewport alone. In the Outliner, you can search by typing “Bob” and the list will filter to show that
soldier. On a side note, I cannot picture a soldier with a name of Bob. It just doesn’t sound powerful for
some reason.

Maroon Box – The Properties editor. This editor pretty much sets up the properties for most of
Blender. If you want to render, you will need to come here. If you need to add materials to your
models, you need to come here. If you want to add hair, fluids or other physics, you would come here
as well. If you want to add some advanced camera effects like depth-of-field or motion blur, you will
need to come here. If you want to make changes to your 3D world such as dimensions, you will still
need to come here. It’s one of the most important editors in Blender just like the 3D viewport. In some
cases it’s more important than the 3D viewport. Take video editing for example, you don’t even need
the 3D viewport open at all but you still need Properties when you do your final render!

Yellow Box – The Timeline. You can playback your animation here, set start and end times of your
animations and other timeline related stuff like adding markers. Not much else to say, it’s pretty
straightforward.

Red Box – This is Info editor. You have a File menu where you can do stuff like Save, Open, New,
Preferences, etc. Then there’s the Render menu which contains options to render images or
animations. The Window menu allows you to select whether you want to work full screen or create a
screenshot of your scene. The Help menu gives you options for help. Next, you have the screen-layout
dropdown menu thing (A bit of detail on this below). Next to this, you’ll find the Scene selection
dropdown. This allows you to create several scenes in Blender file. For example, you could animate 2
friends having a phone conversation. One friend could be at home and the other friend could be in a
different country or just hopping off the train or something. You could create 2 different Scenes in
Blender and then join them together in the video editor. Next to the Scene selection dropdown, is your
current Blender version and information about your scene such as the total amount of vertices/faces,
how much memory your scene is consuming and your currently selected object.

SCREEN LAYOUTS

In this dropdown, you see a bunch of different options such as Animation, Compositing and Game
Logic. Clicking them will take you to a different looking layout of Blender. This doesn’t mean Blender
has switched to some different state. It’s still the same Blender but with different windows containing
different Editors. For example, clicking Animation will take you to a layout containing the most optimal
editors you would need for animation. Clicking Video Editing will get rid of the 3D viewport (that’s not
necessary as you only work with already made video, images and music). Instead, it shows editors
that are related to video editing.

If you don’t like the layouts shown here or want more different layouts, you can create your own
layout! You have the ability to create your own Blender interface! You just have to press the plus ‘+’
button next that you see there. This will duplicate the current layout.

Another thing! You can change the size of your windows by dragging any edge of a window up or
down (shown in black arrows). You can create more windows by dragging the 3 diagonal line thingies
(shown in red) away. This makes the Blender interface oh-so customizable!
Reference(s):
https://pdfcoffee.com/3d-modeling-for-beginners-pdf-free.html
https://www.blenderbasecamp.com/what-is-blender-used-for-a-list-of-reasons-to-use-blender/
https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/blender-software-guide/#what