Transcripts
1. Intro: Hey everyone, My name
is k1 and this is my fourth series of my
blender masterclass. In this series, I will go
through ten methods or techniques that will accelerate
your blender workflow. This is pretty much everything
I wish I had known sooner. It would have saved
me a lot of time. And as you know, time is the most
valuable currency. Well, that being said,
let's get into it.
2. Append: The first technique
I want to talk about is something called append. Now I use a pen more
than any other tool. Say you've finished
some projects and moved on to the next one. Now, you realize that you need one of those
elements that you used in the earlier project or you created in the
earlier project. What do you do? I used to
make things very hard on myself by recreating that
element from scratch. Obviously, I didn't
know any better. However, using append is a much better and simpler
approach to accomplish this, you can append almost anything, not just objects but materials, collections, and so on. For example, here,
let me just go to render view-port
and as you can see, just add some light here. As you can see, my material
has nothing on it yet, but I want to use a
material that I used in the past or let's
say a previous project. To do that, all I have
to do is just go to File append and go to where
your blender file is. So now here I have
my blender file. All you have to do is
just double-click. And here you have all
the different things that you can pretty much append. If you want to append HDRI, you can do that, object
pallets, whatever. But in my case, I'm
gonna go to material. And here I have this material
that I want to append. Obviously, it's much
better to rename your materials so you can
differentiate between them. But this is me being lazy. Now all you need to do
is just click on it. And here you have a pen and you have imported
that material. If you're gonna go to
your plane, Create New, and then look for material here. And you should be able to have that surface
material pre-health. Alright, otherwise,
I would have had to recreate all these nods
in the shader tab, but simply that's something
you can avoid doing.
3. Viewport: This is more like
a technique I use when things get a
little bit out of hand. Blender is one of
those software that at some point it makes
you feel like your computer is
about to explode. In other words, the more
stuff you add to your scenes, the heavier and slower it gets. So to avoid that from happening, this little icon can
be very helpful here. It's basically called disable globally disabled in viewports. It's like it has this kind of TV looking icon and
is very helpful. So in our case here, we have a very heavy Scene. As you can see, it's not as
smooth when you move around. Let's go to the viewport here. And obviously because we
have so many particle Ras, and if I want to let say, add a Cuban, play around
with it, model a bit. It's gonna be very, very slow and this
will just slow down your whole blender
workflow process. Now, what I would
advise you if you play with this same plug-in
which is called botanic, I would advise you
just click on it. And it could be any other
objects by the way, and just hide it, you
know where it is. You are happy with the result. Just hide it and turn
off this play modifier, global, whatever you call it, and just do the same
thing for all of them. And you will see the
difference in a bit. Alright? Alright. Now, we can
already see the difference. Alright? Now they still exist. You can still bring them
back anytime you want, but now you can just
do other things. Let's say you want to model this a bit smoother right? Now let's say you're
done with your modeling. This is a very silly example. I don't even know what is this, but you can bring back
your grass easy as this. And then you can render.
So this will just make your life a little
bit easier when you have so much going
on, on your scene. And yeah, take advantage
of this little TV icon.
4. Mix Shader: This was one of those
technique that I was very happy when
I found about it. Now, there are times you
might want to mix two shader. For example, you want to
mix two different surfaces. The main reason for
doing that is to add more realism and imperfections
to your surface, as well as the unique loci
you might get out of it. So let's say for example, you want to create
a sand surface that is a combination of
two different surface. For this example, I'm going to use Bridge Quicksilver here and here we have a few different
types of sand surfaces, but I'm gonna be using Thai seaweed on sand
as well as lists. Say, let's just go with
Thai, Thai beach sand. Now, if you go to our
plane, by the way, if you don't have a plane,
just add a plane here. Here you can simply go ahead and click knee on the shading tab, but I would just rather to
go to the shading tab here. I just much bigger. So let's just click on the camera viewport to
see what we're doing. So basically here we should
have both sand surfaces. And first they'll before, before I do anything, I'm just going to rename
this main surface as ground. Alright, now, to mix both
shaders, first of all, I'm going to delete
the principal via Z if this is
the default one, and then just go to tie
beach sand, Thai beach sand. And then here you have a terrible looking shader because apparently
bridge quicksort, they have some issues with connecting the nodes
and they haven't been, they haven't fixed
it for a long time. So I learned this the hard way. So if you're using rich quick, so if you have the same problem, make sure you just look
at the image here. This is called roughness, so it has to be connected
with roughness. And this normal should
be connected with map. The normal, as you
can see that you have this very ugly glossy look. And to get rid of that, you just have to add
more clear cut roughness and maybe just bring
down a little bit of specular around here. Now after you're done with that, all you have to do is
just copy and paste all the nodes except
the material output. So Control C, you
copy and then you go back to ground and then
you just paste it. Now we're gonna do
the same thing for the second sand surface we have, again, we have to
kind of fix this. Alright, so here we have
something like this. Alright? Again, we need to just
go and copy all of it except the material
Output Control C, and then go back to
ground control V, kind of separate them, bring them material
output here and now to mix both of them,
shift a search. We have mix shader,
as it sounds. I mean, shouldn't be a surprise. So you connect the second and the first shader and then
you connect to the surface. It's easy as this. Now you have both
like, as you can see, you have both surface connected and they are
like blended together. You can obviously play
with the FAQ here, which one you want to show more, but I want to keep
it in the middle, but which you can play with. You can add a, if you go here, shift a color ramp. This is a very interesting
tool that you can play with. So if you connect the
color to the FAQ here, you can slightly adjust them depending on what kind of
look you want to go for. And you also have fact here. You can still play with the fact which one you want, show more. Now you see this adds a very slight imperfection that sometimes you
like in your scene. And I really like that. Now obviously you can go crazy. You can bring two more surfaces. You can go as, as
far as you want. You just have to add
another mix shader. So to mix shader
and connect all of them and just then connect
both of them to the surface. But the point of this to show
you that you can actually mix two surfaces,
which is great. Now let's go ahead and add
an HDRI from Blender kit. Alright, so as you can see, this is pretty
much how it looks. It might not be
the best example, but now you can show
your creativity and kind of like mix as many
shaders if you want.
5. Bookmark: Another way to expedite your blender workflow
is by bookmarking your folders before I waste so much time just going
all over the place, looking for different things
in different folders. As you work with Blender, It's pretty common
to have a lot of folders and asset to play with. But when I learned that
I could just simply bookmark those folders,
I use the most. I was just a happier person. So as you can see here, I saved some of those
folders on the site, and those are the folders I
use the most, for example, VDB as your eyes, cars, my main folders. And let's say you
don't know how to add these all you need to
just go to the folder. Let's say, Okay,
let's just say this. Then. You press this Plus icon. If you want to delete
that bookmark folder, you just press Minus. And you can also adjust them
where you want to be ranked. So yeah, it's pretty simple and it's going to save so much
time in the long term. So I highly recommend
you to bookmark Dos folders that
you use the most.
6. Adding Images: Adding photos to my scenes
is another method that I use to accelerate
my blend or workflow. This is especially
helpful if you want to reduce the amount of
space in your scene, as well as to add more
realism and details to it. A great example of adding photos tyrosine is by adding backdrops. I usually use backdrops
that are further away from my main
objects and elements. And in our case,
it is the house. So let's go File Import
and here image S plane. Now if you don't
have this enabled, go to edit preference
and go to Add-ons and just search image and make sure you check on
import, export. It's a long name but
important images as plane. Now go back to
import and here you should have this option,
images as plane. Then here I have Blender
guru, Pro lighting, Skype. I use these backdrops a lot and they have some pretty
seasonal backdrops. Pretty much fits for anything. But our scene is more like wintery with the
fog and everything. So I'm just going to choose
one of these winter looking. Yeah, this one, I
think it will fit. So just now you have
imported that image. All I have to do is
just scale it up. Bear in mind that the photo
has to be PNG and that way you have it ready and just
lists say I'm just gonna, alright, now this might not
be a really great example, but you can see the difference. Now. It's much more realistic. It's more believable. It's a realistic scene. And you can use the same method in other scenes and
just play around. Very, very helpful as it doesn't take much
space in your scene. And it does a really
great job to add that extra touch
of realism before, after slight adjustment,
but big difference. So you can definitely be
more creative with it.
7. Cavity: Cavity is an option that you can check here near the
Viewport Shading. And if you go down here, by default, the cavity
shouldn't be on. So I'm going to keep
it turned off for now. I just want to create a quick modeling cube to
just showcase what I mean. And if you go here, press, I quickly create something
like this. Alright? Now, as you can see, we have a model cube. And when you go around, you can see that the
corner kind of disappears when you go to a certain
points of the viewport. It's not always clear
where are the corners. So cavity definitely
helps if you go here and turn on
cavity and you can see the corners clearly no matter where your
3D view port is. So it's definitely helpful and it just doesn't
take any space. And I highly recommended
that you also turn it on. It's just a simple step. And especially if
you're into modeling, and this is definitely
something you need to do.
8. Quick favorite: Quick favor is something
I recently discovered and I personally use it when
it comes to shading tab, you can obviously use it on
your 3D view port as well. But I find it very helpful
here if we go to Shading tab. Now, I use some nodes
on a daily basis. And what I used to do every time I would need
a note, for example, color ramp, I would just go
search colorRamp, right? It could be time-consuming, especially if you're
creating lots of nodes. So basically here what I did, I went to add. And here you have all
your nods and you can basically choose any of them
and just right-click on it. And here you have add
to quick favorites. And if you press Q, basically I've
already added some of those nods that
I usually use. For example, color ramp, mix, shader emissions, noise texture. These are the nodes I
use on a daily basis. By the way, am I pronouncing
nods the right way? I don't know knots, but
you get the point, right. So every time I need something, like, let's say a mission, I just press Q and
I just get it very, very fast, very quick. All right, so
that's for shading. You can also get back to Layout. You can pretty much add anything
to your quick favorite. Let's say for example,
Shift a and you want to add creating a cube
to your quick favor. So all you have to
do is just add, let's say press Q and
then you have cube there. It's just a fast way. These are for basically
the things you use the most and it is
very, very useful. Now, what I did here, I added three of them, Shade smooth object
parents and Q object parents is something
that I really like. For example, I'm just
going to add another cube. And here I'm going to
select grid and cube. You can either
right-click parent, object parents, or you can just press Q and object parents. Now they are connected together. You see, so that's
pretty much it. But one thing to remember
is to save preference. Otherwise you would lose
all your quick favorites. So go to Edit preference. And here you have this three
lines and make sure to click on Save preference and whatever
adjustments you make, whatever you add to your
quick favors or delete, make sure to come back to
preference, safe preference. That's it.
9. 3D Cursor: Hey, 3D view port can
be really annoying sometimes when it comes to going around
over your objects, I usually like to lock my
viewport to the cursor. So here if you go
to your view tab, you have log to 3D cursor. Yes. And now your
viewport will be locked to the cursor,
as you can see here. And you can basically
change the position or the place of your cursor to wherever you want to focus. So for example, if you're
modeling something here, it's best to put the cursor
here and just go around. So you see like whatever you do, it's just going to be
focused on that area. It goes zoom out, zoom
in. It's going to be log. On the other hand, if
you don't have this on, it's just going to be
all over the place and sometimes you lose yourself. You just go two
different directions. And I'm pretty sure it
happened to many of us. So this is something you can do, check on this if you'd like to keep the focus on one area.
10. Startup Default: I have mentioned how helpful this can be in the
previous series. For those who still haven't
heard of this technique, startup default is basically
a default setting. You said, every time you
start using Blender or you, every time you run your
blend or software, this will save you hours in the long-term since
you don't have to redo your adjustment every
time you run this software. As you can see here, I have like three section tab open first, this one is like just
the shading tap, the shader editor where I
basically use a lot and I don't have to go to Shading tab every time I wanna do something
with the shading. So I just zoom in to
do whatever is needed. Here I have my render
viewport where I can see what's happening
in the rendered viewport. And here I just play
around with whatever I need to obviously
have a big monitor, so that really helps. I'm not sure if when
it's come to laptop, tabs will be ideal, but I have all my
adjustments saved as well. So every time I go back
to a blank project, I have everything
set the same way. So all my adjustments are
set the way I want to, so I don't have to touch them. Even the cameras
there with the ratio, I want everything is set, so it definitely save a lot of time to simply make
your default startup. You just have to do
adjustment, do your settings, whatever you need to do, whether you like it this way, you can just get
inspiration from this. For example, if you
want to close this, just right-click, close it. And if you want to
add another one, you can choose different tabs, different IPO, whatever
you feel like, just gonna go back to shader. And here you just
have to go to file. You have default and
then Save Startup File. Once you do that,
you click on it, you go ahead and create a new blank project and you have the same look and setting.
11. Organizing: Organizing my objects
is something I recently really care about mainly because when the scene get to details, when there's a lot of objects, I do want to know
where I can find these objects for
any kind of reason. And a simple way to rename all your objects is just
to select on the object. Obviously, you can go ahead
and look for the object, but it will take a lot of time. For example, which cube is the one you want
to rename, right? So a much better way and simpler
way to do is just select any object and just press F2 on your keyboard and
then you can rename this. For example, I don't know, sun, and now you have it
renames so you can do the same thing for the
rest of the objects, two, and you can rename them. I think this is a great way
to organize your object without going through
all your objects here, which can be very
time-consuming.
12. Outro: Thank you so much for
making it till the end. It really means a lot to me. These were ten tips
or you can say techniques that
have helped me on a daily basis to truly expedite my blender workflow and I wanted to share
them with you guys. However, I know I could
have added more techniques, more tips, more tricks, but I thought I would just
make it short and just put the things that I truly
use on a daily basis. And these are the
accumulation of debt. So hopefully it's helpful if you want me to make
another version of this, let me know if you
have any questions. Don't hesitate to ask. And I'll see you guys
in the next one.
Kaiwan Shaban, Visual Artist
