Latest update: June 28, 2025
Hello, Blender Campers! My name is Mike Bailey. I teach computer graphics at Oregon State University and I get to also teach this Blender Camp. We are going to have so much fun this week! You are going to be surprised by how much you can do and how good it looks. Your friends will be so jealous of you!
We also have two teaching assistants this week: Emma Ball and Nolan Felker. They are both OSU students and have a lot of Blender experience. We are lucky to have them!
Dr. Cathy Law, the Director of STEM Academy, runs this entire program. You will meet her too.
Welcome to the 2025 in-person Blender Camp! We're excited to have you here.
The Camp is Monday July 7 - Friday July 11 from 9:00 AM - noon PDT.
We start on time!
Location:
OSU's Computer Graphics Education Lab (CGEL),
located in Batcheller Hall, room 244.
(Room 244 is right next to the second floor stair landing.)
Warning! That room is under-air-conditioned! Dress comfortably.
Drop-off and Pick-up: STEM Academy is coordinating a drop-off and pick-up point on Monroe Avanue in front of Rogers Hall. An adult will walk campers to and from the CGEL.
Important to Know: We strongly recommend that you have a memory stick to save your work on. There is no guarantee that any files you save on our CGEL machines will be there the next day. Emailing these files to yourself, or accessing your Google Drive, also works well.
Virtual (Online) Blender Camp is Monday July 7 - Friday July 11, 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM PDT. We start on time!
Our Zoom link will be: https://oregonstate.zoom.us/j/8340727662?pwd=b01tZ0hJUzdHNUtrdTRqSkdwbG4zdz09
Important to Know: You need to have Blender downloaded and tested on your own machine before camp starts. The current version of Blender is 4.4. This is the version of Blender that our notes have been written against. If you are installing Blender on your own system, please install 4.4 so that your version matches our notes.
To download Blender on your system, go to: https://www.blender.org/download/
You don't have to actually do anything with Blender yet, just make sure you can get it running.
We won't be taking time at the start of class to get your Blender up and running - we will dive right into using it.
If you try this ahead of time and can't get it to install or run, email me at:
mjb@cs.oregonstate.edu
If you don't have one already, I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend that you get a 3-button mouse for use with Blender at home.
(The middle button is both a push-button and a scroll wheel.)
Blender makes liberal use of all 3 buttons and the scroll wheel.
You can get by with a 2-button mouse, but your life will be considerably easier and more productive with a 3-button mouse.
The 3-button mice are really inexpensive anymore.
Here's one for under $10.
We will be following the notes below for both the CGEL and the Zoom versions of the camp. Go ahead and take a peek if you want a head start.
Also, there are some .blend and .obj files below that might be handy for you to pre-load on your own system.
Blender is a lot of things. We won't have time to cover them all. If there are parts of Blender that you are especially interested in learning, let me know at: mjb@cs.oregonstate.edu so that I can attempt to cover them.
Any questions or concerns about the camp? Send me an email at mjb@cs.oregonstate.edu
These notes are based on Blender version 4.4. Thus, if you are installing Blender on your system, please install version 4.4 so that what you see will match what is shown in our notes.
These are the notes:
Latest update of these 4.4 notes: June 28, 2025
These are Blender example files from the notes.
Blender Campers: please pre-load these on your home system or memory stick!
Right-click on the file name and select Save Link As..., or something to that effect depending on what browser you are using.
| anim1.blend | One-character animation |
| anim2.blend | Two-character animation |
| balltubes.blend | Physics: ball rolls down tubes |
| blowing.blend | Blowing particles (see particles.blend below) |
| cloth.blend | Cloth animation |
| cloth.pinned.blend | Pinned-cloth animation |
| cornhole.blend | Using physics to get a cube to bounce into a hole |
| cycles.blend | Cycles-rendering scene |
| cycles_stereo.blend | Spherical Stereo for a VR Headset |
| cycles_stereo_spherical.jpg | Spherical Stereo image for a VR Headset |
| dominos.blend | Rigid body dominos animation |
| fluidmonkeycone.blend | Monkey-fluid falling over a cone |
| fluttering.blend | A flag fluttering in the breeze |
| freestyle.blend | Freestyle rendering |
| golf.blend | Physics: ball rolls into a hole |
| hinge.blend | Rigid body joint |
| lattice.blend | Modeling with lattices |
| meshes.blend | The Blender set of mesh objects |
| mist.blend | Shows use of the mist option |
| model.blend | Human-ish model |
| modelmoved.blend | Human-ish model posed |
| parent-child.blend | Parent-child relationship |
| particles.blend | Non-blowing particle system (see blowing.blend above) |
| reflrefr.blend | A scene with reflection and refraction |
| reflrefr6.blend | A scene with lots of reflection and refraction |
| rigid.blend | Rigid body motion |
| scene.blend | A scene we will use to talk about rendering |
| stereo.blend | Stereographics |
| textures.blend | Both procedural and image textures |
| wireframe.blend | Using the wireframe modifier |
| worldtex.bmp | A texture file of the world |
And, if you want textures for other planets, visit one of NASA's sites at: https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/images
Also check out: https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/
and: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4720
These are pre-created files that can be imported into Blender. Right-click on the file name and select Save Link As..., or something to that effect depending on what browser you are using.
| cat.obj | Cat |
| bunny010n.obj | The Stanford Bunny |
| cow.obj | Cow |
| dino.obj | Triceratops |
| dog.obj | Dog |
| skeleton.obj | Human skeleton |
| shapeship.obj | Spaceship |
| teapot.obj | Teapot |
| anim2,mp4 | Two-character animation |
| cloth,mp4 | Cloth animation |
| dominos,mp4 | Falling-dominos physical simulation |
| fluttering.mkv | A flag fluttering in the breeze. |
| lattice,mp4 | Lattice sculpting |
| particles,mp4 | Particle simulation |
| reflrefr6,avi | An animation with lots of reflection and refraction |
A Whirlwind Introduction to Computer Graphics
