Blender 2.8 Bootcamp - Learn 3D, EEVEE, Collections & More

In this video you will learn to download and install Blender 2.8

In this video I will briefly outline the various different areas of the interface in Blender 2.8. This is useful information that will help you to understand which part of Blender I am refering to in later videos.

In this video I will briefly go over the contents of the 5 drop down menus in Blender 2.8. It useful to be aware of the various options in these 5 menus and you should start taking a note of any useful tools or options you see here along with their shortcut keys. Some of these menus and option will be explained in more detail, and in context, thoughout this Blender 2.8 course.

In this video I will show you how to change workspaces, create and remove custom worspaces adn re-order workspaces so that you can store and switch between several different layouts easily. This feature of Blender 2.8 is essential to learn to improve your workflow and work more efficiently.

In this live tutorial video I will customise a new Blender 2.8 workspace tab. I will adjust the viewport shading, delete some of the default objects and make several adjustments in Blender Preferences. I will then save a new Startup File that will automatically be loaded whenever Blender is opened.

In this video I will briefly explain the scene and view layer system. In Blender 2.8, any Blend file can have multiple scene layer where objects, texture, lights, camera and other data can be copied or linked between scene, or even completely seperate scenes can be created with no shared data. View Layers in Blender 2.8 replace Render Layers in Blender 2.7x.

In this video I will show you how to change any Editor window to another type of Editor window in Blender 2.8. I will also show you how to split or combine individual editors in order to customise your current workspace. This process is slightly different to the process used in Belnder 2.7x.

In this video I will briedfly discuss some of the option in Blender 2.8's Window Menu. These can be extremely useful for users with multiple monitors or user with small screens.

In this video I will breifly show you each of the sub-sections in Blender Preferences. This window is where you can adjust various settings and behavious in Blender 2.8 in order to improve your workflow, ensure you are taking advantage of your hardware and settign up your auto saves and default asset folders.

In this section we will look at various different editor windows in detail. The 3D view is the main editor you will be using in Blender 2.8 and I'll cover this in detail. First we will look at viewport navigation, then move onto looking at the different interaction modes, the menus, toolbars and display settings. After that we'll take a breif look at the Outliner and the Properties panel, plus a brief overview of a few other editors.

In this video I will introduce you to viewport navigation. A scene has been provided which can be downloaded and used to practice navigation using the mouse and keyboard shortcuts. I will also go over a few additional shortcut keys that are really fundamental when working in simple or complex scene to quickly isolate the object you are working on or to control your virtual camera in Blender 2.8

In this video I will show you how to perform basic transforms on primitive and other objects or sub-objects.

In this video I will introduce you to adding and deleting primitives. I will challenge you to create a simple model using just primitives. This will let you practice some of the basics before moving on to more complex modelling, tools and scene creation.

In Blender 2.8 you have the ability to interact with your models and scenes in several different ways, each interaction mode opens up different creative tools such as modelling, sculpting, texture painting and rigging. In this video I'll give you a broef overview of each interaction mode and what they are used for.

In this video I will discuss some of the menus in the 3D View Editor. These can change depending on which interaction mode you are using in Blender 2.8. Throughout the course, I'll return and highlight different options in these menus when required, however, here I cover the most common menus and their more useful options.

In this video I will discuss the different Display Setting options and tools in Blender 2.8. These all relate to the 3D view and changing options in these menus, drop down box and toggle buttons can gvie your 3D View a totally different look and feel. These settings can be changed in each workspace so that the display setting suit the task are woking on in Blender 2.8.

In this video you will learn about the tool bars within the 3D view. This is where you will find the most basic and useful tools for moving, scaling & rotating your objects and sub-objects, as well as some of the most powerful modelling tools, sculpting and painting brushes.

In this video you will learn about Properties Panels, these are availible in many different editors windows and contain some settings specific to indiviual editors and the current interaction mode.

In this video you will learn about The Outliner Editor Window. This is the editor where you will manage your scenes, view layers, collections and the overall heirarchy of your objects, materials and other data blocks.

In this video I will give you an overview of the first set of tabs in the Properties Editor Window. These tabs are all concerned with rendering in some way, controlling the render engine and its settings, the output for your renders and animations, mananging render passes and defining some scene and world settings.

In this video we'll explore the tabs of the Properties Editor window that are concerned with data. These include modifiers, object data, constraints and physics.

In this video I will introduce you to the scene management system within Blender. Here you can set up various different scene within a single file, allowing you to quickly and easily create different versions of simple or complex scenes.

In this video I will introduce you to collections. These collections replace layer or folder within the Outiner Editor. These allow you to manage your scenes very easily, set up layers for rendering and render layers or passes or quickly hide or make object unselectable.

In this video I will introduce you to view layers, these are extremely useful when rendering large complex scenes as you can break them down into layers and render with different settings. These are particulaly useful in animation, VFX and compositing workflows.

In this video I will introduce you to appending and linking objects from one Blender file to another. This allows you to re-use models, textures and other assets in other scenes, you can even create a library of assets for a large project spread over multple files and control each asset from its own parent file, with changes being applied to every instances of the asset across every file and scene, perfect for tweaking character models in animation, without having to redo previously completed scenes.

In this video we will start looking at other ways to interact with Blender, access tools and speed up your workflow. Contextual menus are customisable menus that pop-up using the right-mouse button and even changed based on the editor or work mode you are currently using.

Another very fast and completely customisable menu are the quick favourites, similar to the contextual menus, these let you quickly save and access your favourite or frequently used tools and options.

In this video we will look at the first several options on the tool bar within the 3D View Editor window. These tools are a more visual and sometimes easier way to select and transform your objects and sub-objects. Some of these obejcts also appear in other editors such as the UV, Image and Node editors.

The Pie menus let you use hotkeys to quickly open an array of options that can be quickly selected with by flicking your mouse. These can really speed up your workflow when you get used to them.

The foremost way to speed up your workflow. Using shortcut or hotkeys let you change your tool, work mode or transform tools in a single click. It's vital to learn as many of the shortcut keys for all the basic tools in order to quickly work in Blender.

In the first part of this beginner's modelling series I explain the model that will be created and then move on to downloading and setting up some image planes to model against.

In this video I will show you some of Blender's most fundamental modelling concepts, these include adding Loop Cuts to plan out the various sections of the base model and then selecting these section and using extrude, move and scale tools to resize them.

In this video I will create one section of a repeating area of geometry, separate it from the rest of the object and clone it several times using the array modifier. I then join it back to the original object and makes sure all the split are merged back to getting using the remove doubles tool.

In this video I will continue using some of the more fundamental modelling tools in Blender to finish creating the base geometry of the saber. I will also show you a way to remove extra edges that you don't need. This technique is essential to optimise your models. Finally I will show you the bevel edges tool which is extremely useful for create chamfers & bevel that pick up realistic highlights and even 90 degree steps on inner angles to add detail.

In this video I will create a fairly simple piece of the geometry, but in order to adjust several parts at the same time I use a different setting for how Blender defines pivot points in it's transforms. By changing the pivot settings you can access some very useful techniques that will open up a whole range of modelling shortcuts.

In this video I will duplicate and separate an area of the base mesh to create a new object. I will then save some time by using the mirror modifier allowing me to only model half of the object. I will add thickness to this new piece using the solidify modifier and finish it off with more bevelled edges.

In this video I will re-scale the scene up in order that new primitives are at a more manageable size compared to the base geometry. **Please note I made a huge mistake in this part, but luckily I was able to use it to teach you what NOT to do!!**

I will also show you how to use the Boolean modifier to create a series of holes in the object.

Part of using the Boolean tool is to speed up the process of modelling certain features. However its not a perfect solution and usually requires some cleaning up of the topology to prevent shading errors caused by non-planar and faces with many more than 4 edges. Here I will show you how to fix these issues using the Path Connect and Merge Vertices tools.

In this video I will show you how to enable the Bool Tool Add-on which will allow you to very quickly perform a Boolean operation just by selecting our Boolean object and our original object and hitting a single hotkey. Again I will also do some cleaning up after the Boolean.

In this video I will create the most challenging piece of geometry in this model. I use a technique of thinking about how the actual object would be created in real life, and try to replicate the process using Blender's tools. In this case this requires a fair amount of clean up to get a good result.

There aren't many new techniques to show off at this point but combining basic techniques with simple modifiers like mirror and solidify allows you to create new geometry efficiently.

This is the part of many modelling projects where you are just going over the project and adding several simple pieces of geometry that add detail to the final model.

In this video I will use a type of object called a Bezier Curve. This is a curve defined by multiple points in 3D space and controlled by a pair of handles. I can subdivide the curve to add new points for more control over the shape and then I can convert to the a mesh object.

In this video I will prepare my geometry for some new Booleans and using the snapping tools to line up my Boolean object this this geometry. This allows me to cut down on the amount of time required to clean up these new cuts in the mesh.

In this video I will create some simple Hex Bolts to add a final detail to the model and wrap up by challenging you to create your own lightsaber from scratch based on the tools and techniques I've shown you here.

I will be returning to this model later in the course to demonstrate unwrapping, texturing and much more.

In this video I will start discussing UV Unwrapping, a vital skill to learn in order to texture and render your models like image based or procedural textures.

In this video I fix a couple of issues with the shaders and get ready to move on to adding some finishing touches to make our renders look much better.