Cutting Holes in Meshes Cutting holes and custom shapes in blender meshes allows for more complex and interesting models. There are two main techniques for cutting holes and shapes: Using the Boolean modifier Using the Knife Project tool Each technique has advantages and disadvantages that make them suitable for different applications. When to Use Booleans…
Creating Perfect Circles Using the Circle Tool The circle tool in Blender allows the user to insert a new circle primitive into the scene. This circle can then be used for cutting holes in other geometry. To create a precise circle with the circle tool, the user must understand the available settings and how to…
Locating Render Passes in the Node Editor The node editor is an essential tool for inspecting and troubleshooting issues with render passes when exporting multi-layer EXR files. Here are some techniques to locate missing or problematic render passes using the node editor: Inspect the Render Layers Node The render layers node organizes separate render passes…
Understanding Render Passes Render passes are separate outputs from Blender’s rendering engine that each contain specific elements of a scene. For example, common passes include diffuse color, reflections, shadows, emission, specular highlights, ambient occlusion, depth, normals, object id’s, and more. Using multiple render passes provides flexibility in compositing by allowing you to adjust, combine, and…
Understanding Blender’s Render Engines Blender Internal is Blender’s original scanline rendering engine that uses a fixed pipeline approach to determine shading and lighting. It relies primarily on preset shader settings rather than node networks. Cycles is Blender’s physically-based path tracing engine introduced in 2011. It utilizes node-based materials and more accurately simulates real-world physics and…
Understanding Texture Coordinates Texture coordinates are an essential concept for mapping 2D images onto 3D models in Blender. They define the mapping between the UV space of a texture and the 3D coordinates of a model’s surface. UV Maps: Define mapping between 3D model and 2D image A UV map is a layout that unwfolds…
What is UV Unwrapping and Texture Mapping? UV unwrapping is the process of taking a 3D model and cutting, flattening, and projecting its geometry onto a 2D texture map image. The flattened geometry is referred to as UVs because the 2D texture space uses U and V coordinates. Texture mapping then involves painting color and…
Flipped Faces Darken Your Day When modeling detailed objects in Blender, you may sometimes encounter strange dark or unlit areas on your mesh surface. Upon closer inspection, these lighting irregularities are often caused by backwards or “flipped” face orientations on parts of your model. Faces in Blender and other 3D modeling packages have an assigned…
What Causes Dark Spots on Imported OBJ Files When importing .OBJ 3D model files into Blender, dark spots may appear on the surface of the mesh, giving it an irregular shading. This is often caused by custom split normals on the model. Custom split normals are used in some modeling programs to sharpen edges and…
What are Custom Split Normals and Why Do They Cause Weird Shading? Custom split normals refer to a Blender feature where vertex normals can be customized on a per-face level instead of being averaged across an entire mesh. This allows for finer control over shading and can help avoid smoothing artifacts. However, incorrectly configured custom…