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--- blender [2015/05/26 10:47]
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 ====== Blender ======
 Blender is a powerful application that can be used for 3d modeling, graphics, motion graphics, compositing, special effects, game design, and quite a lot more. It is very actively developed, with new features arriving often. Blender is not just in use by movie studios, tv stations, and independent artists around the world, but by the Blender Foundation itself, which produces short films on a regular basis, adding features to the application based directly upon artist needs. Blender is by no means an academic exercise; it is a serious tool for serious production.
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 ===== Strengths [Weaknesses] =====
@@ Line 161: / Line 155: @@
 At least four additional free 3d render engines are available along with Blender plugins to integrate them as seamlessly as Blender Render and Cycles, straight from [[http://slackbuilds.org]]:
-  * luxrender
+  * [[luxrender]]
-  * yafaray (the Blender plugin is located in the yafaray-blender package)
+  * [[yafaray]]
-  * povray (Blender already includes an exporter plugin for POVray, but it requires activation in the **User Preferences > Addons** panel.
+  * [[http://www.povray.org/|povray]] (Blender already includes an exporter plugin for POVray, but it requires activation in the **User Preferences > Addons** panel.
-  * mitsuba (the Blender plugin is located in the mitubsa-blender package)
+  * [[mitsuba]] (the Blender plugin is located in the mitubsa-blender package)
 In each case, whether you had to install the Blender plugin separately or whether it was bundled, you must go to **User Preferences > Addons** and activate the renderer just as you would any other plugin.
+[{{ blender_engine.png | Add additional render engines. }}]
 Once installed and activated, change which render engine you are using from the **Render Engine** menu located in the Info panel.
-{{ blender_engine.png }}
+{{anchor:crashcourseblender}}
+===== Blender Crash Course =====
+d graphics is a complex subject, and the applications that generate them can be intimidating. A full course on Blender is out of scope for this article, but sometimes the hardest part of getting started with a new application are the first few steps. This "crash course" demonstrates how to generate some CGI objects, texture them, and then render the shot (a still image or animation) to disk.
+<WRAP important>
+Learning 3d applications is more than just learning the application; it's also learning the way that 3d on a 2d surface is implemented. In order to complete this quickstart, you should have some basic 3d experience. If you are completely new to the genre, start with something even more basic than this. The initial episodes of [[Blender for Motion Graphic Artists|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FBoegkgIho]] are particularly recommended.
+</WRAP>
+When you launch Blender, you get one gray cube for free. It brings along with it some default texturing and material presets, so delete it for now just so you can start completely fresh.
+To delete an object, **right-click** the object and press the **x** key on your keyboard.
+<WRAP alert>
+In Blender, the location of your mouse cursor affects what happens when a key is pressed. If your mouse cursor is hovering over the cube object and you press **x**, then the cube is deleted, but if your mouse is hovering over a random menu or panel and you press **x**, probably nothing at all will happen. Always be aware of where your cursor is.
+</WRAP>
+Add a new cube. To add an object, place your mouse cursor in the 3d workspace of Blender (the main window, where the first cube was located before you deleted it) and press the **spacebar** and type "Add Cube", or use the menu **Add > Mesh > Cube**
+[{{ blender_addCube.png | Add a basic cube. }}]
+Also add a plane for this exercise. To add a plane, press the **spacebar** and type "Add Plane", or use the menu **Add > Plane**
+[{{ blender_addPlane.png | Add a plane. }}]
+Scale (resize) the plane and move the cube so that the cube sits on the plane with enough of a "ground" for reflections and fancy effects like that. To scale an object, hover your mouse cursor over the object and press the **s** key on your keyboard. To grab onto things and move them, press the **g** key on your keyboard.
+To release an object in Blender, left-click.
+It often helps to move objects either by number or by axis:
+* To move by axis, press **g** and then **x** (or **y** or **z**, depending on which axis you want to move along). Defining an axis immediately after a transform key (such as **g** for grab, **s** for scale, or **r** for rotate) constrains all motion along that axis).
+* To move objects by numbers, press **n** to birng up the properties panel. Use the **X**, **Y**, and **Z** fields to manipulate the location and size of the cube.
+[{{ blender_scale.png | Scaling an object. }}]
+{{anchor:edit}}
 ===== Blender as a Video Editor =====
-Blender as a 3d modeling application and as an animation tool is, unsurprisingly, commonplace, but there are those who use Blender primarily as a video editing tool. This use case appears to be more popular among Linux users, and so it does not get the same amount of attention in either the user manual or online in general, so it warrants some special attention here.
+<WRAP info>
+**TL;DR** \\
+Blender is not [yet] the pro video editor you're looking for.
+</WRAP>
+Blender as a 3d modeling application and as an animation tool is, unsurprisingly, commonplace, but there are those who use Blender primarily as a video editing tool. This use case appears to be more popular among Linux users, so it warrants some special attention here.
+[{{ blender_vse.png?700 | Blender is perfect. It's just not a perfect video editor yet. }}]
 There are several reasons to turn to Blender for non-linear video editing:
@@ Line 184: / Line 226: @@
-Allowing for the fact that one editor's advantage is another editor's disadvantage, Blender does have some //significant// drawbacks as an NLE, as well:
+Allowing for the fact that one editor's advantage is another editor's disadvantage, Blender does have some <wrap em>significant</wrap> drawbacks as an NLE, as well:
-  *Blender does not mix frame rates. If you have some clips at 25 fps and some clips at 50 fps, you must convert them on your own, outside of Blender.
+  * Blender cannot mix frame rates. If you have some clips at 25 fps and some clips at 50 fps, you must convert them on your own, outside of Blender.
-  *Blender lacks conveniences, such as copying attributes of filters applied to video clips, that makes colour grading so easy on other video editors.
+  * Blender lacks conveniences, such as copying attributes of filters applied to video clips, that makes colour grading so easy on other video editors.
   *Blender has no concept of track-types, and no way of muting or hiding entire tracks.
   *Blender's video export options are limited and can be unreliable (for example, losing frame rate settings, incorrect video-to-video compositing when filters are involved) in extremely long-form edits. If you are editing more than 20 minutes of footage, you should break your project into multiple smaller Blender files and then concatenate the edits together outside of Blender.
-  *There is no multi-threaded rendering of video exports, so exporting video can take far longer than exporting from ''Kdenlive'' or similar, by //orders of magnitude//.
+  *There is no multi-threaded rendering of //video exports// (other types of exports have it, but not when the source is video), so exporting video can take far longer than exporting from ''Kdenlive'' or similar, by //orders of magnitude// (an hour of heavily edited and graded footace can take days).
 Those are technical concerns, but additionally there are pragmatic concerns that an experienced video editor may have:
-  *Since Blender started life as a 3d modeling application, it is not as finely tuned toward video editing as a longtime video editor might desire. Blender devs are adding native features and users are creating plugins to help create a more NLE-centric environment within Blender, so the situation is only improving.
+  * Since Blender started life as a 3d modeling application, it is not as finely tuned toward video editing as a longtime video editor might desire. Blender devs are adding native features and users are creating plugins to help create a more NLE-centric environment within Blender, so the situation is only improving.
-  *It's not a carbon copy of any editing environment and probably never will be. It's never a good idea to expect or even, arguably, request for an open source clone of a closed source application that you just so happen to be very good at, but it's common for people moving to open source to desire just that: familiarity. Blender is probably never going to be a traditional video editor, so adapting to it and the way it does edit video is a must, if you intend to edit video on it.
+  * It's not a carbon copy of any editing environment and probably never will be. It's never a good idea to expect or even, arguably, request for an open source clone of a closed source application that you just so happen to be very good at, but it's common for people moving to open source to desire just that: familiarity. Blender is probably never going to be a traditional video editor, so adapting to it and the way it does edit video is a must, if you intend to edit video on it.
-  *The workflow tends to be very marvelously efficient when an action has a direct analogy to a 3d process (moving clips, deleting clips), but when there are totally unique functions introduced by a plugin, they are frequently menu- or button- oriented, with no keyboard shortcuts. Compared to the rest of Blender, this feels out of place and can bring your editing pace to an almost grinding halt.
+  * The workflow tends to be marvelously efficient when an action has a direct analogy to a 3d process (moving clips, deleting clips), but when there are totally unique functions introduced by a plugin, they are frequently menu- or button- oriented, with no keyboard shortcuts. Compared to the rest of Blender, this feels out of place and can bring your editing pace to an almost grinding halt.
 The good news is that Blender itself, and most of its features and plugins, are all open source, so you can add functionality yourself, or wait for someone else to add it; as more people start to use Blender for everyday video editing, the more fluid it will become.
@@ Line 202: / Line 244: @@
 Some pertinent video editing addons are these:
-  *[[http://easy-logging.net|Easy Logging]] creates a workspace that uses the File Browser window as a video bin, and adds buttons to allow editing of clips prior to importing them into the video sequence editor. This plugin, more or less, provides three-point editing.
+  * [[http://easy-logging.net|Easy Logging]] creates a workspace that uses the File Browser window as a video bin, and adds buttons to allow editing of clips prior to importing them into the video sequence editor. This plugin, more or less, provides three-point editing.
   *Audition adds the ability to preview a clip from the File Browser before importing it into your project. It is intended as an extension of Easy Logging.
-  *[[http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/addon-jump-to-cut.html|Jump to Cut]] enables the playhead to jump from a strip's in- or out- points, and also adds in some convenience trimming functions. This plugin provides, more or less, the most common and basic timeline features of an NLE.
+  * [[http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/addon-jump-to-cut.html|Jump to Cut]] enables the playhead to jump from a strip's in- or out- points, and also adds in some convenience trimming functions. This plugin provides, more or less, the most common and basic timeline features of an NLE.
-  *[[http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/addon-vse-quick-functions.html|VSE Quick Functions]] provides all the little convenience functions for timeline editing that any NLE would normally have (snapping, muting, locking, parenting or grouping, quick fades, quick titles) plus a few that others do not have (sorting by position in timeline or clip title or clip length).
+  * [[http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/addon-vse-quick-functions.html|VSE Quick Functions]] provides all the little convenience functions for timeline editing that any NLE would normally have (snapping, muting, locking, parenting or grouping, quick fades, quick titles) plus a few that others do not have (sorting by position in timeline or clip title or clip length).
-  *[[http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Sequencer/Extra_Sequencer_Actions|Extra_Sequencer_Actions]] adds advanced trimming functions to the VSE, including ripple deletes, ripple cuts, insert edits, slides, and more.
+  * [[http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Sequencer/Extra_Sequencer_Actions|Extra_Sequencer_Actions]] adds advanced trimming functions to the VSE, including ripple deletes, ripple cuts, insert edits, slides, and more.
-  *[[http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/addon-vse-transform-tool_28.html|VSE Transform Tools]] adds basic motion graphic capabilities to the VSE. Using this tool set, you are able to grab onto the video display itself and resize and re-position it within the frame. With it, you can achieve common effects such as picture-in-picture, split screen, and basic tween-based animation.
+  * [[http://blenderaddonlist.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/addon-vse-transform-tool_28.html|VSE Transform Tools]] adds basic motion graphic capabilities to the VSE. Using this tool set, you are able to grab onto the video display itself and resize and re-position it within the frame. With it, you can achieve common effects such as picture-in-picture, split screen, and basic tween-based animation.
-{{ blender_vse.png?700 }}
 Install these plugins, and any other that appeals to your needs, and you will have a fairly robust and flexible, albeit somewhat un-even in backend and convenience features, video editing environment for short form video.
@@ Line 216: / Line 256: @@
 To be clear: Blender is not yet suited as a general-purpose, production editor. Its situation has improved over the past 6 years but it has serious limitations. If you are seeking a dedicated and professional video editor with all the features you expect from a professional video editing suite, [[kdenlive|Kdenlive]] or [[lightworks|Lightworks]] are the answers.
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 **See Also** \\
 MakeHuman \\
-K3d \\
+[[kdenlive|Kdenlive]] \\
-Kdenlive \\
+[[lightworks|Lightworks]] \\
-Lightworks \\
+[[notran|Natron]] \\
-Natron \\
+[[synfig|Synfig Studio]] \\
-Synfig Studio \\
+[[Mitsuba|misuba]] \\
-Mitsuba \\
+[[Luxrender|luxrender]] \\
-Luxrender \\
+[[yafaray|Yafaray]]
-Yafaray \\
-povray
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+For more information, read the section on [[render|Render Farming]].
+<WRAP centeralign>
+<wrap fa>[[filters|R]]</wrap> <wrap fa>[[start|S]]</wrap> <wrap fa>[[bombono|Q]]</wrap>
+</WRAP>