Mike Bailey's Blender Page

http://cs.oregonstate.edu/~mjb/blender

Latest update: June 29, 2024

2024 Blender Campers:

Virtual (Online) Blender Camp

• Virtual (Online) Blender Camp is Monday July 8 - Friday July 12, 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 a recent version of Blender downloaded and tested on your own machine before camp starts. The current version of Blender is 4.1, but if you have 3.5 or higher, that should be fine.

• To download Blender on your system, go to: https://www.blender.org/download/

• You don't have to 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 recommend that you get a 3-button mouse for use with Blender at home. (The middle button being both a push-button and a scroll wheel.) Blender makes liberal use of all 3/4 buttons. You can get by without one, but your life will be considerably easier with one.

• We have two teaching assistants for the Blender Camp! They are Nuha Faaizah and Emma Bell. They are both super Computer Science students here at Oregon State University. We are lucky to have them!

• We will be following the notes below. Go ahead and take a peek if you want a head start.

• There are some 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

See you on July 8! I am excited to meet you.

The Notes:

Our notes are based on Blender version 4.1, but any version that you have that is 3.5 or greater should be fine.

These are the notes:

• One slide per page
• Two slides per page
• Four slides per page
• Six slides per page

Latest update of these notes: June 29, 2024

Here's Something Fun -- You Can Place 3D Blender Scenes on a Web Page!

Blender Files:

These are Blender example files from the notes.
Blender Campers: please pre-load these on your memory stick!

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

Obj Files:

Pre-created files that can be imported into Blender:

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

Blender Videos:

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

Good Blender Web References:

• Main Blender Site (includes the Download link) http://www.blender.org/

• Andrew Price's Blender Guru site http://www.blenderguru.com/

• Blender Tutorials https://www.blender.org/support/tutorials/

• 3D Models (some free, some not) http://turbosquid.com/

• 3D Models (some free, some not) http://tf3dm.com/

• Swapping Blender Assets (one membership level is free, one costs money) http://www.blendswap.com/

Good Printed Blender References:

• John Blain, The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics: Computer Modeling and Animation, Seventh Edition, CRC Press, 2022.

Did you like these notes? Want to try some other fun K-12 stuff from Oregon State University?

• Scratch notes -- drag and drop programmiung with animation and sound, and even some game development

• SketchUp notes -- who would have ever guessed it was so easy to draw in 3D?

• TinkerCAD notes -- this is really good if you want to make models that can be 3D-printed

• Processing notes -- serious graphics programming

• A Whirlwind Introduction to Computer Graphics

Related college courses at Oregon State University:

• Intro to Computer Graphics

• Computer Graphics Shaders

• ParaView -- Interactive 3D Visualization

• Vulkan

• Parallel Programming (includes GPU programming)

• Computer Science Skills for Simulation and Game Programming

Comments? Suggestions? Questions? Contact: