Mountainscape in Blender, imported with the free GIS add-on. Your plane might be multiple kilometres long. And there it is, a real-world terrain in Blender! Beware, that this add-on uses real-world scale. Let it load for a few seconds and a displacement map will be added to the plane. For this purpose go back into the GIS Menu and this time choose Get Elevation. This is already pretty neat but the terrain data is still missing. When you are happy with the selected area, press E to project it onto a plane. Then use the Middle Mouse Button and Mouse Wheel to move around adjust the zoom. Increasing the zoom level to a value around 12 seems to be right most of the time. The shortcut G brings up a search menu and brings you anywhere you desire. A map of the world should be loaded into the viewport. Choose Basemap under Web/Geodata and proceed with the default settings.
You can download it for free from GitHub.Īfter installing the add-on you should find a GIS menu in the top of the 3d viewport. It allows us to import real-world terrains from Google Earth into Blender. Comparing two node trees in the compositor with the split viewer node. I use it all the time when post processing my renders. To see them you need to enable the backdrop in the top right corner of the compositor. This node replaces the default viewer and has two input sockets that are displayed next to each other. Fortunately there is a solution: The split viewer. This makes comparing two different outputs in the node tree practically impossible. I am a big fan of the node based compositor in Blender, but I always get annoyed by how slow it is. This is very simple but extremely effective! The wireframe is easy to distinguish from the purple blueprint.
Another option, that I actually prefer, is to open the blueprint in an image editing software and change the colours of the lines. Change the colour of the wireframe to random and it will be easier to differentiate the edges from the blueprints. An easy solution for this can be found in the viewport shading menu. This makes modeling very hard and unpleasing. When you do a lot of modeling from blueprints you probably know this issue: In orthographic view, the lines from the reference image become indistinguishable from the wireframe.
I had lots of fun during the last few weeks scanning various objects and using them to create realistic scenes in Blender. Meshroom is 100% free and very intuitive to use. Photogrammetry is a really cool technique to create 3D scans by taking photos from all around an object. I recently came across Meshroom, an open-source photogrammetry software. To toggle the gravity simply use the Tab key. Now you can control the camera as if you were in a first person shooter and use the arrows or W, A, S and D keys to look around. Go to View > Navigation > Walk Navigation to enable it. This is why I prefer to use the walk navigation. In my opinion moving the camera with the grab tool isn’t very intuitive and can be quite laborious. The right camera placement is essential for a great render. Another cool advantage of using Blender with Steam is the possibility to track the amount of hours you spend using Blender.
But did you know, that this process can be automated? Install Blender from Steam or via the Microsoft Store and you’ll always get the newest version without having to manually reinstall. As awesome as this is, it also means that you always have to download new versions to stay up to date. There’s a new version coming out four times a year with exciting new features and improvements. Auto UpdatesĪ really cool thing about Blender is, that it is constantly being updated. Here is a collection with 10 of my favourites.
I’ve been collecting that kind of tips for the last two years and posting them on my Instagram account Blender Daily. No matter how long you’ve been using it, from time to time you’ll always find a new tool, shortcut or little trick that you didn’t know existed. Like all 3d software, Blender is pretty complex and has thousands of features.