So you have seen animated movies and you are wondering what it takes to create such scenes. With the introduction of Blender 3.0 you don’t have to look further. Before we jump into the node-licious depths of Blender.
What is Blender?
Blender was introduced as an Open-Source Graphical Rendering Engine back in 1994. Blender has come a long way since then thanks to its creator and an ever-growing community behind it. Most of the features that you currently use or will use are contributions by different community members.
Scratching the Surface of Blender 3.0
Jumping into Blender 3.0 we can see a ton of new features and they are presented in a simpler manner. One of the biggest if not the biggest is the introduction of Cycles X.
This update has revamped Blender’s every avenue from Noise Reduction, Image Sharpening, Shadow Control, to Advanced Asset Library, Motion Animation Library, Better kinematics, and everything is customizable.
From a user’s, perspective Blender is a key skill one should process if they are at all interested in the digital arts and media industry. Blender has left its mark in the entire industry from 2D to 3D, from commercials to short films.
But why is Blender such a big deal right now? To elaborate on this we have to look at what blender offers and at what price. Firstly Blender is completely free so you have to pay nothing, ever to use it, there are no hidden charges, they don’t even ask for your email when you download the software.
Following this Blender has been working closely with hardware suppliers and improving the performance. With the advent of RTX cards, users can enjoy not only fast render times but at the same time real-time ray tracing.
AMD has also provided an open-source engine that runs within Blender to provide much more promising results. With hardware industries pushing the limit every day, Blender is there to bring those technologies to the general user.
Let’s talk about the palate of features that Blender currently offers in its 3.0 update.
Cycles X
Cycles the native render Engine for blender got a completely new overhaul with Cycles X. Compared to the older Cycles engine it is now up to 5x faster. Not only that one of the biggest drawbacks of Cycles which was real-time viewport render is now instantaneous.
Cycles X has proven revolutionary as it has reduced render times in half. Cycles the proprietary light and spatial engine got a massive bump in performance, along with the support of Optix and RTX. Before Cycles X, Cycles would render chunks of the entire frame and sample it out over the given range. Cycles X generates each frame instead of sampling out portions of the frame.
Asset Browser
We already know how handy blender add-ons can be but the asset browser is in a different league of its own.
You can place your own generated materials as well as downloaded materials on one page and you can directly import them into any object that you have created inside of Blender.
Not only this saves time but also provides the liberty to reuse and apply different materials that you might not have thought about.
Advanced Geometry Nodes
The node-like approach has been improved for Geometry nodes now supporting more than 100 new nodes. You can design anything and everything with the presets. as well as fully customizable options available inside the geometry node toolset.
Pose Library
For newbie animators blender has a new thing. The Pose Library is already filled with 100’s of pre-composed poses from just faces to full body animation arcs. The best thing is that you can use them with just one click.
There’s More…
There are a lot more new and improved things inside of blender 3.0. From grease pencil modifiers to added support for VR, from working with different render engines to working on the same project over different software. Blender 3.0 is packed.
You are only limited by your imagination when it comes to Blender so why wait, go and get your hands on Blender.
