Can you use Blender for 3D & VFX production?
Does the free community tool really manage to defy the challenges of everyday professional production?
Helge Maus, Senior 3D & VFX Trainer from pixeltrain, says without any doubt: “Yes!”
Like any other production tool, Blender has its strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, the question arises which task areas this tool can cover and how it interacts as a team player with other areas.
Its strengths are currently in the following areas:
- Direct Modeling / Polygon Modeling
- Procedural Modeling, Effects & Hair through Geometry Nodes
- Rigging & Animation
- Sculpting
- Realtime Rendering by EEVEE
- 2D Animation
- Storyboarding & PreViz
With the new Geometry Nodes with the Fields System (from Blender 3.0), Blender is now also advancing into procedural modeling and set dressing.
The functions mentioned are clear strengths of Blender. This already existing range of functions is supplemented by highly optimized add-ons (mostly free of charge or very cheap), which are kept up to date constantly: HardOps / Boxcutter, Graswald, Botaniq, … And don’t forget the connection to existing render pipelines through, for example, Pixars RenderMan, OctaneRender and Maxon Redshift.
Blender can be a valuable production tool, especially for indie productions, but also in commercial productions. With his on-site and remote trainings, publications and tutorials, Helge tries to provide a broad knowledge base and to support you in getting the best out of Blender.
As a child, I scripted the first 3D animations on my C64. I was fascinated by the first special effects in films like „The Neverending Story“, „Flash Gordon“ and of course „Star Trek“ and „Star Wars“. After that I watched pretty much every SciFi and Fantasy film and tried to learn creating these worlds on the computer. The enthusiasm for the animated, computer-generated moving image has never let go of me and I certainly will never let go of it. Today I am happy that I can not only explain this world to other enthusiasts, but also bring it closer to them. I want to achieve it over and over again that 3D & vfx-Artists learn to understand their tools with joy and depth, with the goal that their ideas and visions learn to fly!
Helge Maus | pixeltrain
As a Senior 3D & VFX Trainer, Helge Maus teaches 3D- & VFX Applications for over 20 years.
He delivers with his company pixeltrain | 3D | VFX | animation in-house & remote training, workshops and coaching for the 3D & VFX industry.
His focus lies on Generalist workflows for VFX and Games. He works with studios, agencies and freelancers from different visualization areas and from the games industry.
Meanwhile he focuses on Blender & Godot for his daily work and training. He loves working with Indies and companies adapting FOSS software like Blender and Godot into their pipeline. His strong industry background in teaching Houdini FX, Unity, Cinema 4D, Nuke, and Maya over many years helps him to train artists from the industry within a wide production context.
Helge has worked with clients such as Ubisoft, Tangent Animation, Mackevision, Jura, Vitra, Hugo Boss, eder GmbH, Jung-von-Matt, Pirates ´n Paradise, redseven Entertainment, ProSiebenSat.1, SKY Deutschland, NDR, rbb, Sony DADC, Intel and many more international companies. He has worked a couple of years as a freelancer for Adobe Systems, was a Maxon Lead Instructor for Cinema 4D and also beta tester for Maya, Cinema 4D, AfterEffects and Arnold.
pixeltrain helps you to implement your digital visions for your customers through the coordinated use of individual training for your team, quick help in the case of a problem, and outsourcing or taking over project parts.
Helge Maus | pixeltrain
