Blender VFX Liquid Smoke & Fire

A short introduction to the course explaining what we will be learning and what we should be able to achieve at the end.

With this being the first lesson of the course I feel there is no better way to start than to introduce my newer students to Blender. How do we navigate and actually do things with this complicated software. Find all this out and more in this lesson.

In this lesson, we focus on getting the silhouette of the cauldron base to be the size and shape that we would like it. We look at how with a range of simple Blender tools we can achieve this.

Nothing in the world is perfectly flat or smooth and this is the lesson where you will learn how to create smoothness and how to control textures as we learn all about seams and sharps.

Our Cauldron really starts to take shape in this lesson as we start to refine what style we are going for. Whether this will be realism or stylized the choice will be down to you once you learn the skill in this lesson.

The rope has always been a tough proposition to model. Do we actually model the rope or go super low poly. In this lesson, I show you the fastest way I have found. How to make great-looking low poly rope with a few clicks.

Lets not create things twice and instead learn all about the mirror modifier which is built into Blender. Perhaps the most useful modifier but alas only if you know how to use it correctly.

If you think you know all about using curves think again as I show you in this lesson the power of Blender curves. We create the cauldron stand, and at first glance, it looks pretty complicated until you learn the easy way of doing things that is.

In this lesson we will be putting all that we learned about seams into practice. I will show you how and why to place seams on your models. You will also learn some tricks along the way of how to hide them.

Lesson 9 will cover the shading panel within Blender. How do we get our really cool textures actually into the program? You will learn this and how to create the materials we will be using for our scenes.

In lesson 10 we will be completing the texturing of the cauldron. By this point, you will have a good level of understanding about materials and textures within Blender. We also prepare a mesh ready for our water shader.

In this lesson, we take a deep dive into the node system of Blender. We will be creating a simple shader that will be the base for our scene that being the bubbling water.

Lesson 12 will be pretty much all about how to set up the cycle render engine within Blender to get great results straight out of the box. Just down to ticking the right boxes really.

In this lesson, I will introduce displacement maps and just how powerful they can be. You will learn that with a few simple techniques you don’t always need a state-of-the-art simulation program.

We tackle our first real simulation in this lesson. Simulations are complex things to create and in this lesson, we will be going through the basics like domains and flows and how to create many types of simulations within Blender.

With all great programs, there also comes a fair few hiccups and problem-solving. Here we investigate the problems we may have with our smoke simulation.

Well, they do say there is no smoke without fire but there is also no fire without some kind of fuel. This lesson will involve us creating the logs to give our fire some realism. We also take a look at the emission node and its uses.

We need a lot of rocks and fast but how? Lesson 17 will be looking at creating rocks the easy way with the inbuilt Blender add-on the rock generator.

I do love water but you know, I love fire simulations more. We will be creating a complete fire simulation in this intense lesson. You will learn all about baking and problems solving issues like explosions within our domain.

With fire being perhaps one of the most complex simulations it has its fair share of problems. Here we solve the issues to do with not only the simulation but also the look of fire Ready for rendering.

So with our animations and simulations done. Light, camera, action, and let's get this bad boy rendered out. This is the exciting point of taking your creation and seeing it come to life all be it at the moment just in slides.

Welcome to Blenders video editing software as I show you the other side of Blender. In my opinion, the Blender editor is completely underrated and is actually a very powerful piece of software in its own right. So let us take a look at what it can do.

Did you know you can actually edit your renders with Blender itself? Now I’m not saying it's anything like after-effects or anything like that. But none the less we can look at lighting, hues, and glows which is really nice for our first Blender animation.

Well, this is it. We came all this way for this. The short animation for our cauldron boiling away. Complete with green hues of smoke and a roaring fire. You can admire how far you have come in a few lessons. Now let's get onto the next Blender simulation adventure.

Like we did with the cauldron I will be introducing the basics of Blender for anyone that jumped straight to the pumpkin part of the course.

Lesson 25 covers a lot of new Blender tools. These are extremely useful to have in your arsenal when creating models. We cover things like the Boolean modifier and the bisect tool to name a few.

Lesson 26 can be skipped if you already did the cauldron part of the course. Just in case you didn’t this is a complete guide on textures, Materials, seams, and sharps. It’s a lot to take in so be sure to come prepared.

In lesson 27 we will take a deep dive into how and why to use the bisect tool. By this point, you should have a decent grasp of building simple and complex meshes. You should also have a good knowledge of the tools available to you within Blender.

In this lesson, we complete the stairs part of the pumpkin scene. We have now added materials and textures and you should take a step back and make sure you are happy with it before moving on. Always do this for the focal points of your scene.

In this lesson, we learn how to import references to Blender. This is very important for future models you may want to create. You will see just how easy it is to take very simple ideas and turn them into great-looking models with these techniques.

So how exactly do we create the pumpkin faces? Well with a knife of course. In this lesson, you will be introduced to the knife project as well as the knife tool. These Blender tools should be a staple of any budding 3D modeler.

In lesson 31 we quite simply carve out our pumpkin faces ready for the next stage of adding lights. Have some fun here and test the waters to see what works with experimentation.

By lesson 32 you should have a good understanding of the pumpkin workflow. You will also see just how useful this workflow is for future builds. In this lesson, we finish our pumpkin models.

In this lesson we set up our steps and pumpkins ready for the smoke simulation. We are looking to get a good looking animation from our fog and the best way to achieve this is through a decent scene setup.

Lesson 34 will be focused on the lights emitting from our pumpkins. Just how do we bring some realism to them. Animating lights should take so much time but not with the techniques I will be showing you.

In this lesson, we will be creating the box where the fog or smoke is emitted from. We actually have to have a hole within the mesh to assign a collision between the mesh and fog. This process is handy to learn to avoid problems with your simulations.

Along the road of our 3D Modelling journey, we will all come across the problems of normals. In this lesson, you will find out what they are, how to see them, and more importantly how to actually do something about them.

This is the final lesson of the course in which we will be modeling. It's been a fairly long journey but you should have learned many skills along the way and now have a decent understanding of the Blender tools and UI.

In lesson 38 we will be creating things like domains and inflows. You will learn how you can manipulate the Blender simulation settings for an infinite number of uses. I mean ok it is not quite Houdini but oh my Blender is powerful.

In this lesson 39, we will be looking at the difference between playing a simulation and actually baking it out. What are the benefits as we look at ways also to reduce our simulation times? This will be extremely useful especially if you are using a lower-end computer or laptop.