Ever wondered how to make those sleek holographic effects seen in sci-fi films? Blender 3.6, paired with a new tutorial, now offers an answer through Gaussian splats—a method that blends computational efficiency with visual style. A tutorial by Blue Nile 3D (Video Below, and here are the *.ply files) breaks down the steps to creating 3D holograms with this technique.

What Are Gaussian Splats?

Gaussian splats refer to point-based rendering, where points (or “splats”) are projected into 3D space, each assigned a Gaussian (a bell-shaped mathematical curve) for rendering. This method skips the need for traditional polygons, prioritizing efficiency and enabling detailed results in real-time applications. Think fewer headaches when rendering, though the math nerds still get their fun.

The Tutorial Breakdown

The tutorial introduces a project workflow using Blender 3.6, starting with Gaussian splats and converting them into convincing holographic visuals. Core steps include:

1. Setting Up Gaussian Splats: The method requires importing point data into Blender, which then defines Gaussian splats for rendering. The tutorial emphasizes clean input data, suggesting tweaks to avoid cluttered or incomplete visuals.
2. Custom Shaders for Holograms: Holographic visuals come alive with a custom shader, built within Blender’s Shader Editor. The tutorial demonstrates how to replicate sci-fi-style glows and pulsating colors for added realism.
3. Real-Time Rendering: Blender’s real-time viewport simplifies iterating over designs, making it ideal for rapid prototyping of holographic effects. Gaussian splats excel here, keeping render times low without compromising quality.
4. Exporting for Integration: Whether you’re working on a VFX-heavy film or a video game, the tutorial explains exporting workflows for seamless integration into other production pipelines.

What Does This Mean for VFX Professionals?

Blender’s implementation of Gaussian splats underscores the platform’s adaptability for real-time graphics and modern rendering techniques. For VFX artists and game developers, the workflow offers a balance between creative flexibility and computational efficiency, particularly in previsualization or holographic prototyping.

The tutorial makes it clear: whether you’re creating futuristic displays for a film or integrating stylized visuals into your game engine, Gaussian splats can provide a fresh, efficient approach to 3D hologram creation.

https://twitter.com/blue_nile_3d/status/1865014879486382281

The post Blender Holograms: Gaussian Splats Meet Real-Time Magic first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In nuce: An institution of digital production news is back: Tutorial Tuesday! Exclusively this week we present you, as we used to do every week, a great tutorial that helps you to create stylised trees – with the help of Unreal Engine 5.1 and Blender. The video tutorial, published on the YouTube channel All The Works, has a total length of almost 20 minutes; the video can be found at the end of this message.

Trees in the style of Studio Ghibli films: films such as “Chihiro’s Journey to Magic Land”, “The Walking Castle” or “Ponyo – The Great Adventure in the Sea” have won a place in your fan heart – and you would like to emulate the original art style? On 4 September 2020 , Digital Production reported on a video tutorial for Blender creatives, and on 1 October 2020 , we referred to over 400 available images from Studio Ghibli – some of which feature the iconic camphor tree look.

Click further: In the past, Digital Production has repeatedly referred to the free training programme offered by All the Works. For an overview, see the list below.

• 4.02.2022: Procedural flower generator with Blender 3.0:
  Your life needs more flower power? Cultivate sunflowers, pansies and other flower wonders procedurally now!
• 31.05.2022: Geometry Nodes with Blender: How do you create a realistic flowing waterfall in Blender?
• 24.06.2022: Recreate this beach with Geometry Nodes!
  With this video tutorial you can set up a coastal beach – populated with rocks, bushes and palm trees. The highlight: The assets continue endlessly.
• 28.06.2022: Build this picturesque medieval village in Blender! Another awesome tutorial from “All the Works”, this time with a low-poly dream castle.
• 8.08.2022: Create trees in Blender with this video tutorial! Why is Mtree possibly the best Blender add-on to generate trees?
• 29.08.2022: Zombie hordes tunnel through London! Want to get your own zombie army on track?

Stylised Trees with Blender and Unreal Engine 5

The post Stylised trees | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Since Digital Production last reported on a Blender tutorial from the YouTube channel All the Works – at that time we presented two new video tutorials, one on low-poly environments and one on portal scenes (see Digital Production from 28 October 2022) – another high-quality tutorial video has been released. It’s called “Third Person Game Project”.

In toto: The video (see end of this news item) shows how to create a game project from the third-person perspective (popularly known as the Tomb Raider perspective) using the Unity engine. Incidentally, the creative mind behind All the Works created the 3D character and the associated props using Blender and Mixamo, as stated in the video description (see Digital Production from 2 June 2015). The video tutorial is linked below.

Click further: In the past, Digital Production has repeatedly referred to the free training programme offered by All the Works. For an overview, see the list below.

• 4.2.2022: Procedural flower generator with Blender 3.0:
  Your life needs more flower power? Cultivate sunflowers, pansies and other flower wonders procedurally now!
• 31.5.2022: Geometry Nodes with Blender:
  “The back of the waterfall”: How do you create a realistic flowing waterfall in Blender?
• 24.6.2022: Recreate this beach with Geometry Nodes!
  With this video tutorial you can set up a coastal beach – populated with rocks, bushes and palm trees. The highlight: the assets continue endlessly.
• 28.6.2022: Build this picturesque medieval village in Blender! Another awesome tutorial from “All the Works”, this time with a low-poly dream castle.
• 8.8.2022: Create trees in Blender with this video tutorial! Why Mtree is probably the best Blender add-on for creating trees.
• 29.6.2022: Zombie hordes tunnel through London! Want to get your own zombie army on track?

Third Person Game Project | UNITY & BLENDER

The post How does a third-person game work with Blender? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Since Digital Production last reported on a Blender tutorial on the YouTube channel All the Works – at that time it was about the add-on Mtree, which can be used to generate trees (see Digital Production from 8 August this year) – two further, high-quality tutorial videos have been published. The first is called “Easy Geometry Nodes – Lowpoly Environment Blender 3.3”. It shows how to create a low-poly environment in Blender 3.3. The second video is called “Let’s Make a Portal Scene in Blender”, and demonstrates how to create a portal in Blender (similar to the ones gamers know from Valve’s puzzle video games Portal 1 & 2). Both video tutorials are linked below.

Click further: Below are more recommended video tutorials on Blender from All the Works, which Digital Production has presented in the past.

• 31.05.2022: Geometry Nodes with Blender. How do you create a realistic flowing waterfall in Blender – and: Why do you need miserable geometry nodes for this?
• 24.06.2022: Recreate this beach with Geometry Nodes! For users of Blender 3.1: With this video tutorial you can create a coastal beach.
• 28.06.2022 : Build this picturesque medieval village in Blender! Another awesome tutorial from “All the Works”, this time with a low-poly dream castle.

Easy Geometry Nodes – Lowpoly Environment BLENDER 3.3

Let’s Make a Portal Scene in BLENDER

The post Two new Blender tutorials published on YouTube! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Almost half a year ago, a video tutorial for Blender was published on the YouTube channel SCR – 3D & VFX, which has lost none of its usefulness to this day. The video, which has an approximate running time of five minutes, shows interested users how to use geometry nodes professionally using an abstract animation. This abstract animation consists of a geometric shape whose components wiggle back and forth. The tutorial is aimed at beginners and is linked below in full length.

More tutorials on the topic of “Geometry Nodes in Blender”: Over the past few months, Digital Production has repeatedly presented video tutorials dedicated to the question of how to approach geometry nodes in Blender professionally.

• 14.01.2022: Pimp geometry node skills in Blender 3.0?
  One of your New Year’s resolutions is to “rock Blender 3.0”? Then click this tutorial!
• 19.04.2022 : Procedural textures & geometry nodes. In this tutorial series, procedural textures heat up the hamburger fry. Delicious learnings with Blender!
• 31.05.2022: Geometry Nodes with Blender. How do you create a realistic flowing waterfall in Blender – and: Why do you need miserable geometry nodes for this?
• 24.06.2022: Recreate this beach with Geometry Nodes! For users of Blender 3.1: With this video tutorial you can create a coastal beach.

Click further: On 8 August this year , Digital Production also reported on a video tutorial that was published on All the Works . At that time, inquisitive minds were shown how to create trees using the Blender add-on Mtree. Beyond that, there are regularly exciting Blender tutorials to discover on the All the Works YouTube channel – for example the one called “Zombie Horde in Blender – Animations & Geometry Nodes”, which we presented to our readers yesterday, 29 August . In the video, the presenter demonstrates how to set up a simple geometry node to generate a horde of zombies.

Blender 3d geometry node abstract motion animation tutorial for beginner

The post How do the Geometry Nodes work in Blender? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Corazon Bryant, 3D artist and lecturer, has published an online course dedicated to facial animation. Course participants will also learn how to create photorealistic portraits. The course is aimed at Blender users.

What can interested parties expect in the course? Course participants will learn how the anatomy of a human face is structured and how to create a skull, fat and muscles professionally to create a realistic overall impression. Based on what they have learnt about anatomy, participants then set about creating a portrait of a person, which should also be as close to reality as possible. Finally, participants are shown what it takes to create a film shot, including the character that has now been created as the protagonist.

Who is Corazon Bryant? Corazon has been working as a lecturer for ten years now. In her educational programmes, she focuses on DCC software such as 3ds Max, Mudbox, Unity and After Effects. Corazon’s didactic content is primarily aimed at character artists – especially in the areas of sculpting and texturing. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Media Arts & Animation from The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale.

Click further: All further information on the “Human Anatomy for Artists” course at victory3d.com.

Facial Anatomy & Character Portrait for Blender Artists (Promo)

The post 3D Artist publishes Blender course first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Blender expert Jan van den Hemel shares a short video tutorial via Twitter and YouTube – the content: How to create cables in Blender using the laws of physics. Jan’s approach is based on material simulation and skin modifiers. You can find the complete video linked below. You can find Jan van den Hemel’s entire training programme on his homepage.

Click further: We last reported on Jan van den Hemel on 01.02.2022 . Back then, we talked about an unconventional way to approach retopology in Blender. Jan used the BSurfaces add-on to sketch retopology guidelines using the annotate tool, which were then converted into actual geometries.

Daily Blender Secrets – Cables with collision

The post Create collision queries with this Blender tutorial! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: In this almost 25-minute tutorial, published on the YouTube channel “All the Works”, you will learn how to use geometry nodes in Blender 3.1 using a cute model aeroplane example.

What do you get from the tutorial? Specifically, you will learn how to set up a professional setup and how to equip a 3D environment (coastal beach) with assets – which continue endlessly while a toy aeroplane flies along the coast. It sounds cute, but it’s also brutally droll. We’ve linked the full-length video tutorial right here below.

What do you need for the video tutorial? A time budget of around half an hour and a bit of creative stamina are all you need to follow and copy the tutorial. Why not give it a try!

Another video tutorial on “All the Works”: If you like the didactic style on “All the Works”, you will also appreciate the following hands-on videos:

• 31.05.2022: Geometry Nodes with Blender: How to create a realistic flowing waterfall in Blender – and: Why do you need bloody geometry nodes for this?

Click further: Link to the YouTube channel All the Works, filled with click-worthy Blender video tutorials.

Stylised Environment with Geometry Nodes in Blender

The post Rebuild this beach with Geometry Nodes! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Every week, we present you with the best tutorials that will help you polish your workflows with the hottest digital content creation tools in the world! For this week’s tutorial, we’re introducing you to a YouTube channel worth clicking on, which will teach you all you need to know about Blender.

What tutorial awaits you this week? This week we don’t have a single tutorial for you, but a whole series of tutorials. Behind it all is 3D artist Sanctus, whose YouTube channel “Sanctus – Blender Tutorials” is packed with all kinds of knowledge about Blender, whether it’s about modelling, geometry nodes, procedural work or environment design.

What will you learn in the tutorial? As an example, we present a three-part tutorial from the YouTube channel, which shows you how to fry a – culinary – hamburger in Blender. The three-part tutorial focusses primarily on how to achieve professional, procedural texturing.

What else does“Sanctus – Blender Tutorials“have to offer? If hamburgers are not your cup of tea, it may still be worth taking a look at Sanctus’ YouTube offerings . For example, there are some tutorials that deal with the new geometry nodes from Blender. We have also linked the same videos below. you can find 3D artist Sanctus on Artstation, Twitter or Instagram.

Farewell! Check back next week when it’s Tutorial Tuesday again!

How to make a Hamburger with procedural textures – Part 1 – Blender Tutorial

How to make a Hamburger with procedural textures – Part 2 – Blender Tutorial

How to make a Hamburger with procedural textures – Part 3 – Blender Tutorial

Lego Terrain Generator in Geometry Nodes – Blender Tutorial

Animated Rubik with Geometry Nodes – Blender Tutorial

Geometry Nodes Power Lines – Blender Tutorial

The post Procedural Textures & Geometry Nodes | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Every week we present you with the best tutorials that will help you polish your workflows with the hottest digital content creation tools in the world!

What can you expect this week? Today we’re treating ourselves to a whole host of beautifully presented Blender tutorials, published via the Twitter account of 3D artist, indie game developer and asset developer Quaternius. All those of you who are interested in topics such as inverse kinematics, environment design, rigging or grooming should take a look at the tutorials.

Where can you find the tutorials? You can either visit Quaternius on Twitter or simply scroll down a few pixels – we have linked the four most interesting tutorials below.

What else does Quaternius have to offer didactically? If you want to find out what other tutorials Quaternius has up his sleeve, click on his homepage – all his Blender tutorials are neatly listed there! We also recommend following the busy Quaternius on Twitter .

Farewell! Check back next week when it’s Tutorial Tuesday again!

The post Blende(r)nde’s educational programme | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Every week we present you with the best tutorials that will help you polish your workflows with the hottest digital content creation tools in the world! For this week’s tutorial you will need Blender 3.0.

What tutorial awaits you this week? Today we are treating ourselves to the first part of a tutorial series that all fans of the series adaptation “Arcane” will be delighted with. incidentally, “Arcane” is based on the globally popular multiplayer game “League of Legends”.

What will you learn in this tutorial? In this almost half-hour tutorial by “Lightning Boy Studio”, you will be shown how to use Blender 3.0 and the Eevee renderer to create the kind of hair styling that viewers will recognise from the animated series “Arcane”. More specifically, you will learn how to style the hair using Blender’s particle system so that it looks like the styling of the protagonist Jinx.

Second part of the tutorial: According to the announcement, a second tutorial part will follow in which you will learn how to not only make Jinx’s hair look nice, but also how to create the rest of the character – using camera mapping, among other things.

What else does “Lightning Boy Studio” have to offer? If you want to find out how the three-person studio from Canada managed to win numerous film awards with their animated short film “Le Gouffre” (engl.: “The Abyss”), then click over to legouffre.com .

Adieu! Check back next week when it’s Tutorial Tuesday again!

Arcane Style Tutorial Part 1: Hair (Blender 3.0 / EEVEE)

The post League of Legends: Arcane | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: In this detailed workshop report, published by our friendly colleagues from 80 Level, 3D artist Andrey Gorovtsov talks about his open knight project called “Goreliy” with Blender and Substance 3D Painter.

Who is Andrey Gorovtsov? Andrey is a 3D artist from Belarus who has, as he describes it, “exactly five years of professional experience” in the field of Computer Generated Imagery. Contrary to what one might think, Andrey’s professional education prepared him for the profession of a welder, but one day he decided to turn to illustration, which he succeeded in doing thanks to perseverance, willingness to learn and autodidactics. During his first three years in the industry, Andrey worked as a designer and 2D illustrator, gradually moving on to 3D projects. Today he works mainly in 3D. Andrey has spent most of his career to date as a freelancer, but has been responsible for visuals in the mobile games sector for the last three years.

What is Andrey Gorovtsov’s workshop report about? While searching for a suitable project, Andrey came across Lei Liao‘s Artstation profile. After viewing Lei’s creative work, two points crystallised for Andrey: stylised metal and working with alpha transparencies would become the main components of his own creative project. In the end, Andrey researched the Finnish game artist Marko Laine, who inspired Andrey with a hand-drawn furnace knight. This is how the Blender and Substance 3D Painter project started from Andrey’s digital drawing pen.

What can you expect in the workshop report? Zurab’s workshop report is divided into the following steps: “Modelling”, “Texturing”, and the final “Final Touches”.

Click further: You can read the complete workshop report at 80 Levels. You can visit Andrey Gorovtsov at Artstation. We think: Heat up your own joy of designing with his cute oven knight, use the hot-tempered toddler as a starting point to get started with your own creative project!

The post Ofenritter | Workshop Report Wednesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Every week, we present you with the best tutorials that will help you polish your workflows with the hottest digital content creation tools in the world! And because we sympathise with the discreet charm of the evil side of the Force today, we’re treating ourselves to a two-part video tutorial that super villain Doc Ock from Spider-Man 2 would enjoy, as you learn how to make your character grow robotic tentacles out of his back in Blender. The tutorial was published by the Norwegian animation studio Polyfjord.

What will you learn in this tutorial? This tutorial holds what the robot arms of a Dr Otto Octavius can clutch: Robot gripper arms that you staple to your 3D character’s back. In the second video, you will also learn how to set up the meshes of the joints correctly, add procedural noise, multiply the robot arms and take care of the rendering and lighting in Eevee. As you can see, if you want to carve a nice bunch of robot arms out of your shoulder blades, you have a lot to learn (with Blender).

Click further: If you want to follow the work of the animation studio Polyfjord from Norway, click after the girls and boys on Gumroad . For all other matters of a social-media nature, click on Instagram or Twitter to send them a robot arm (to their inbox). But always stay friendly! We want to keep reporting on Polyfjord’s groovy tutorials.

Farewell! Check back next week when it’s Tutorial Tuesday again!

Tutorial: How to Create Robotic Arms in Blender (Part 1)

Tutorial: Animating Robotic Arms in Blender (Part 2)

The post Robot gripper arms | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Every week we present you with the best tutorials that will help you polish your workflows with the hottest digital content creation tools in the world! This tutorial is aimed at all Blender 3.0 users.

Getting started with retopology: This time we show you a tutorial by Grant Abbitt, freelance 3D artist and YouTuber, showing you how to approach the retopology of a 3D face. The video is intended as a generalist guide. Grant uses a stylised female face for demonstration purposes. The video is only seven and a half minutes long, making it perfect for your midday tea break.

What does Grant Abbitt have to offer didactically? The video below is just one of seven so far, in the course of which Grant Abbitt familiarises you with various design areas of Blender 3.0. These include hair, textures and the lighting of your 3D character. One of the tutorials even sets out to recreate the popular comic book character Wolverine. We ask: Can learning with someone be more fun than with scissor-handed snipper and whisker fetishist Wolverine?

Face to face: If you want to flex your 3D character’s face but prefer to leave Blender to the professionals, we’ve dug a similar tutorial out of the mothballs on 19 April 2017 – provided you’re working with 3DCoat: You work with 3DCoat.

Click further: Click through to YouTube for Grant’s complete tutorial series. If you like Grant Abbitt as a lecturer, it may also be worth checking out his (paid) educational programmes on gamedev.tv . Grant is also looking forward to your visit to his homepage, where 3D modelling and graphic design (in Blender) go hand in hand.

Farewell! Check back next week when it’s Tutorial Tuesday again!

Retopoligise a Face – Retopology Guide – Blender 3

The post Retopology Guide | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: Every week we present you with the best tutorials that will help you polish your workflows with the hottest digital content creation tools in the world!

Retopology Reloaded: This time we show you a tutorial by Jan van den Hemel, who shows you his unconventional approach to retopologising objects in Blender. Hemel uses the BSurfaces add-on, which is already included in Blender. And this is how it works: Hemel sketches retopology guides using the annotate tool, which are then converted into actual geometry.

What can the tutorial do? According to Hemel, his approach is an important building block for anyone looking to expand their retopology toolset. In the course of the tutorial, Hemel also shows you how to set up Blender so that his method works optimally. He also demonstrates how to adjust the settings or add additional processing loops to your workflow.

Blender Secrets e-book: For anyone who wants to delve deeper into the design possibilities of Blender, Hemel’s e-book, which you can buy for 35 euros on Gumroad, could be suitable. Just as exciting as a novel by Ian Fleming? For Blender fanboys, yes!

Click on: Visit Jan van den Hemel on his YouTube channel, where he regularly publishes useful video tutorials on Blender.

Goodbye! Click in next week when it’s Tutorial Tuesday again!

Blender Secrets – Retopology with BSurfaces and Annotation

The post BSurface Add-on | Tutorial Tuesday first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

As we reported last week, Pixar recently released Renderman 24, which was accompanied by another release: Renderman for Blender 24.

According to Pixar, Renderman for Blender will contain all the functions that the regular release of Renderman 24 brings with it. Pixar lists the following seven main functions: Interactive Rendering, XPU, MaterialX LaMa, Stylised Looks, OpenColorIO, Live Statistics and OSL Patterns.

With Interactive Rendering you can see the changes you make to geometry, shading or lighting in real time. And then XPU. But what in the name of three devils is XPU? Well, XPU is Pixar’s rendering technology in which the CPU and GPU (we are very familiar with these two abbreviations!) work together. For now, XPU will only be relevant for shading artists who can use it to speed up their look development. Next up is MaterialX LaMa, which is described as a layer-based approach to building materials. With Stylised Looks you move stylistically beyond physics-based shading and lighting, creating your own unique look instead. OpenColorIO offers support for the ACES colour management system, while Live Statistics shows you in real time which resources are currently being tapped for your rendering. Finally, OSL Patterns allows you to share code between RIS and XPU.

XPU, Stylized Looks are only available together with the commercial licence of Renderman. Renderman for Blender 24 supports Blender 2.83, 2.92, but not 2.93. Read about the new features of Renderman for Blender here.

The post Renderman 24 | Release first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In this almost two-hour video tutorial, Simon Fuchs shows you how to create a three-layer blendshader in Blender (for Cycles and Eevee).

Simon says about his video: “Using vertex colours and heightmaps, you’ll learn how to blend different materials together – right in Blender’s viewport.” Simon also says that his tutorial is worthwhile for anyone who wants to show off their projects directly in Blender without having to calculate the material in a game engine first. Simon continues: “The tutorial is also great for anyone who wants to learn more about Blender’s shader editor in general.”

You can find Simon’s tutorial on Gumroad – or in the video below.

Blender 3 Layer Material Blending Tutorial

The post Material Blending | Tutorial first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

Amphibian app

A cross between a mobile and desktop app: the Byplay tool. In the first step, you use the mobile app, record a video and let the app do the augmented reality tracking. In the second step, you upload the video & tracking material to the cloud – where your material is processed and saved.

The third and final step is done with the desktop app; it loads the processed video from the cloud and makes it available to you for further VFX-like processing. The result of your work can – but doesn’t have to – be cold weather fronts over small devices.

Further information

For a production presentation of Byblay, click on the video below. For everything else, take a look around Byplay (online).

Byplay Camera Houdini demo

The post Augmented Reality-App | Houdini & Blender first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.