Welcome to the wonderful world of Blender! In our first lesson, I’m going to start by introducing myself and giving you a brief overview of the class. From there, I will introduce you to the Blender interface, show you some basic 3D modeling principles and tools, and demonstrate how to use those tools as we work on our first project of modeling a storefront.

Bonus Video - Blender Installation:

In the lesson 1 assignment zip file, there is a bonus MP4 video where I will show you how to install Blender and any add-ons you may need, and go over the custom scripts we are going to be using in this course.

Building on the tools we previously learned in Lesson 1, this week we are going to start modeling a Piaggio Ape Food Cart. We are going to start by looking at references and begin blocking in overall shapes. From there, I'm going to introduce you to some new tools and show you how you can use them to refine your shapes and model different props.

In Lesson 3, we are going to continue our work from Lesson 2 as we begin to refine the truck cabin. Furthermore, I'll introduce you to the concept of subdivision modeling and modifiers before jumping into a demonstration about how you can model something as complex as a tire tread, very easily.

Our focus in this lesson will be on UVs and Materials, which are critical components to achieving a realistic look in your work. I'm going to show you different unwrapping techniques to get your 3D object onto a 2D surface for texturing, and introduce you to materials and the materials editor. I will then show you how to create different materials and textures and apply them to my food cart.

This lesson is all about lighting, animation and rendering. We are going to talk about the two different render engines that are native to Blender: Eevee and Cycles. I'm going to demonstrate how you can light your food cart and set up a turntable animation. I'm also going to introduce the concepts of parenting and constraints to help set up your animations.

Gnome matter if you're a beginner or a pro at using Blender, this lesson is going to be fun! I'm going to kick off the lesson by introducing you to sculpting and metaballs in Blender. Next, I'm going to show you the sculpting workspace and the different brushes you can use. And finally, I will demonstrate how you can sculpt a garden gnome.

In Lesson 7, I'm going to introduce you to texture and vertex painting. We are going to use vertex painting to hand paint our gnome from last week, and from there, we are going to use the Blender hair system to create grass and we are going to use particles to create rain. I will also demonstrate how you can create a stylized material for your grass.

This week, we are going to put everything we've learned so far into practice and focus on planning ahead and being efficient as we start building the exterior of a space station! Creating a space station is the perfect culmination to the class because they are made out of simple and complex hard surface materials as well as organic materials. I will walk you through my project planning process and introduce the concept of working modularly. I'm also going to show you new tools and add-ons that can be incredibly helpful in the modeling of a space station.

In our final lesson of this course, I'm going to share some last tips and tricks with you in regards to texturing, lighting and animation. I'll then demonstrate how you can use procedural texturing and tri-planar mapping to quickly texture your space station. And finally, I'm going to show you how you can create a custom HDR from your very own scene and create a looping animation.