From the course: Blender: Tips, Tricks and Techniques
Camera tracking like a pro - Blender Tutorial
From the course: Blender: Tips, Tricks and Techniques
Camera tracking like a pro
- [Instructor] Camera tracking in Blender is actually incredibly easy. It just takes a little bit of patience. And this week's Blender's Tips, Tricks and Techniques, we're going to show you how to take some footage shot on an iPhone and add a monkey to it. Let's get started. Now, the first thing you want to do is make sure you have motion tracking on as your layout. Add in your video, and again, you can shoot this on a smartphone, right here. And then make sure that whatever video you do end up shooting has a lot of high-contrast corners. In this case, like this brick pattern. You only need eight points to track throughout the whole video footage, or Blender won't work. Okay, so let's get started. Now, one of the first things I like to do is to raise my search size, and I'm going to describe that here in a second. Let me open my track, and let's just zoom in and find a really high-contrast area and control click. Now, if I lower my search size, you can see what that does. It makes a smaller box that goes around my tracking point. That's not good, because if the footage is moving really quickly, it'll move outside of the search size and we'll lose the track. So let's delete it, and use a higher search size, like, say, 100. Now go ahead and add a couple of tracks, and be mindful of tracking corners with lots of high contrasts. Why don't you take a few minutes and add as many as you can. Okay, cool. Now we've added a whole bunch of tracking markers, but we're not ready to start solving this jut yet. The next thing you need to do is to go down to your camera and set what kind of camera you shot this on. Now, since I used an iPhone, I'm going to pick iPhone 5. That's going to change the sensor size, but if you don't find your own camera in here, you can just type in your own sensor size. Okay, now let's scroll down a little bit on the tracking side and make sure I click on Normalize. That's going to account for any slight shifts in illumination, lighting, maybe exposure changes on the phone, you never know. Turning on Normalize will solve many of those problems. The next thing you want to do is to make sure that you have your little search marker display up. You could also turn on some other things if you really want to see everything, but I'm just going to leave it on those. And finally, go to the first frame and hit this Play button to start tracking. Now, if you're watching this track happen, you'll note all of these little red dots. They indicate where the tracking point came from. You also might've saw a few dots fly across the screen. Don't worry, we can quickly clean those up. Also, did you notice how your footage played back a little choppy? Well, one thing you could try to do is click on Clip and go to Pre-Fetch Frames. If for some reason it doesn't fill up the entire bar with this nice little purple, that means it's running out of RAM. So go up to File, User Preferences, go to your System tab, and raise up your memory cache limit. I put mine up to eight gigs, because my machine has 16. Okay, click on Save User Settings, and let's get back to it. Now, as I said earlier, some of the tracks are actually pretty good. Some of these are awful, like this one right here. Look what's going on. I'm just going to quickly delete it. See if you can eyeball any other weird tracks that are happening and just get rid of it really quick. Here's one right here that instantly just pops out of nowhere, so let's just get rid of that too. Now let's go to the Solve tab and click Solve Camera Motion. Blender's going to give you a score. In my case, it's 10.852. The higher the number, the worse the track. It's all rather relative, though, and don't worry, there's ways to clean it up. But I encourage you to try to get it below 10. Now, to clean up your tracks, you're going to want to open up this little cleanup area, and I'm going to say that anything that lasts about 10 frames that's over, say, 20, we'll start with a high number, should be deleted. So with these two settings on, click on Clean Tracks. And Blender selected three tracks that are not so good, so let's delete them. And then solve for camera motion again. Because everything is relative, deleting the higher numbers will actually make all of the others much better. Now, it's still a little high, right off the bat I can see that this track has a score of almost 14, so let's just delete it really quick. And let's scroll down. Do we see any other higher numbers? There's another 14, let's get rid of that one. 24 is way too high, let's kill that. And everything else looks actually pretty good. So let's click Solve Camera Motion one more time. Whoa, my score is 3.5, that's really, really good. So let's go with that. Okay, now we need a solve for the floor. So I like to start at the end here, we're going to scroll down a little bit and find a couple of tracks that survived the entire film footage here. So I need three points that make a 90 degree angle on the ground. So I'm going to select this guy, this one right here, and this one over here. So let's see, are they pretty good? Yeah, they look pretty good. And you can see how they make a nice little 90 degree triangle. So with these three points selected, I'm going to click on Floor, I'm going to select this middle one and say Set Origin. This top one will be Set Y Axis, and this one over here will be Set X Axis. Okay, now with all of this set up, click on Set Up Tracking Scene. Now once in a while you'll get a weird error here and there. Blender is still a little wonky when it comes to tracking scenes. Now let's go back to my default view, delete this cube, and see what I get. Not bad. It is a little jittery, but a little bit of cleanup in the motion tracking could actually help us out. But for the most part, it works pretty good. You can see here there are some tracks that are pretty far out there, though, so we'll definitely have to consider cleaning it up. The next thing you want to do is add a plane, so let's do that really fast. And make this plane a shadow catcher. So let's go down to Blender Render, switch it to cycles. Go to Cycle Settings way at the bottom of the properties, and click on Shadow Catcher. Now let's go into my camera view, hit N, scroll down, go to my background images, and switch this to front. Now let's just play and see what we get. Okay, cool. As you can see, it looks like my empties are tracking to my footage pretty well, and minus a few oddballs that decide to fly around, it's working pretty well. So why don't we add a monkey? Let's go ahead and hit Shift A, go to Mesh, Monkey, scale Suzanne in a little bit, raise him up, go back to my camera view, and let's put it right about here and then go to Rendered Mode and make sure that this is on back with my render settings of transparent turned on. And for good measure, let's go to Suzanne, and give him a nice material. And I can even kick up this lamp a little bit and make it a little stronger. There we go. Now if I scrub through my timeline, my monkey will stick to the floor and act as if I've actually had it there the whole time. Pretty cool. Camera tracking in Blender is actually really easy. The hard part is refining it and making sure it doesn't slip and getting that score as close to zero as you can. Why don't you go ahead and play a little bit more with the motion tracking settings and see how close you can get this monkey sticking to the ground. Good luck.
Contents
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Handy Blender settings and add-ons3m
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PBR workflow for Blender3m 51s
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Light it on fire!5m 23s
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Filmic and HDR in Blender3m 33s
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Quick animation tips and tricks6m 48s
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Camera tracking like a pro8m 20s
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Materials and Multiscatter GGX3m 13s
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Destroy everything with dynamics4m 21s
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Kill fireflies with good render settings8m 39s
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Rig a character with Rigify10m 44s
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Let's make clouds!4m 59s
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Quick compositing tricks5m 18s
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Rig a mouth using Shape Keys7m 32s
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Ignite a fiery tornado4m 11s
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An in-depth eye rig8m 12s
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DupliFaces3m 5s
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Particle armies6m 9s
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Let's make grass13m 4s
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Make it rain5m 49s
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Cloth simulation: Flag4m 46s
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A quick ocean8m 20s
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Dynamic painting7m 24s
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UV like a pro10m 37s
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Camera tricks8m 53s
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Shrink wrap your life6m 10s
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Alembics and offsets7m 51s
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Work with modeling tools5m 33s
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Orphan data7m 6s
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Use the Mesh Edit Tools add-on4m 35s
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Sculpting in Blender6m 29s
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Lattices4m 43s
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3D printing13m 31s
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New add-ons for Dynamic Sky5m 48s
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Magic UV4m 4s
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Import Images as Planes3m 49s
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Projections in camera6m 50s
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How to data transfer5m 57s
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UV without UVs6m 55s
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Work with the Grease Pencil8m 10s
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Random color nodes5m 48s
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Tile textures6m 48s
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Wood floor textures10m 47s
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Light path nodes for rendering8m 48s
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Emission volumes for quick rendering4m 36s
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Pointiness in cycles5m 27s
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Box mapping in cycles6m 4s
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Save memory in Blender with Remap5m 35s
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Quick mesh cleanup with Dissolve7m 50s
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Undo History4m 12s
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Quick mesh cleanup with Decimate5m 37s
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Forming fog and mist7m 31s
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Create glare streaks8m 31s
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Create rays of light5m 1s
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Useful geometry with Archimesh6m 56s
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Unique selection tools7m 20s
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Bridge edge loops5m 54s
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Take measurements inside of Blender4m 5s
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Extra hidden objects in Blender6m 56s
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Hide geometry with masks7m 2s
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Create cutouts6m 55s
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A better way to fill in a mesh5m
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Create a 3D text object5m 2s
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Clean up renders with denoising8m 47s
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Quick render tests with overrides6m 23s
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Quick Fluid6m 11s
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Simplify AO7m 54s
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Add-ons: Dynamic Context Menu4m 6s
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Python: Quick renaming6m 14s
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Python: Set origin on multiple objects6m 1s
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Animating cameras: Turnaround4m 3s
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Animating cameras: Following objects5m 15s
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Using multiple constraints on one object7m 42s
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Fun with constraints: Elevator and Pivot4m 53s
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Face rigging with Rigify6m 51s
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Quick tree making6m 58s
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Quick strokes in freestyle and line boil6m 11s
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Advanced freestyle lines7m 13s
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Cartoon shading in cycles5m 1s
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Quick animation with functions7m 48s
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Python: Set viewport color6m 6s
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Modeling hair using Curves8m 42s
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Making quick fur8m 22s
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Using the Hair BSDF node5m 35s
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Making fire out of nodes10m 58s
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Combining multiple UV maps7m 59s
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Workflows: Why you should link10m 2s
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Workflows: Rigging with a mesh cage6m 38s
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Workflows: Using NLA Editor8m 29s
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Workflows: Sharing animation7m 25s
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Dealing with a dense scenes, part 1: Groups and layers7m 12s
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Dealing with a dense scenes, part 2: Scene background6m 32s
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Dealing with a dense scenes, part 3: ID mask8m 35s
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Dealing with a dense scenes, part 4: Cryptomattes7m 46s
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Modeling: Quick Bend, Solidify, and Fatten5m 18s
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Rigging: Molding and fixing your rigged character8m 52s
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Dynamically paint different cycle materials7m 29s
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Create and clean a mess with physics7m 38s
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Create and clean a mess with particles8m 43s
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Creating particles along a curve7m 14s
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Modeling: Remeshing with Blender9m 49s
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Modeling: Remeshing with instant meshes7m 13s
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Groups are now collections4m 34s
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Driving animation with the new Drivers tools3m 11s
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Bone Relative for faster rigging6m 12s
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The big jump: Welcome to Blender 2.83m 43s
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The new Weighted Normal modifier2m 41s
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Smoothing it out with custom normals4m 27s
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Mesh analysis for 3D printers4m 3s
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Subdividing beautifully4m 12s
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Modeling: Photogrammetry with Meshroom6m 43s
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View layers and masking your objects3m 52s
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One simple trick to rendering faster2m 20s
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Quick viewport renders in Blender 2.85m 13s
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EEVEE for beginners: Materials3m 54s
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EEVEE for beginners: Light and shadow5m 4s
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EEVEE for beginners: Depth of field5m 32s
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EEVEE for beginners: Volumes4m 44s
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EEVEE for beginners: Motion blur2m 35s
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EEVEE for beginners: Toon shading with Shader to RGB5m 5s
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EEVEE for Beginners: Indirection lighting probes4m 12s
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EEVEE for Beginners: Reflections5m 31s
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EEVEE for Beginners: Hair4m 2s
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Blender 2.8 animation: Keying sets4m 14s
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Blender 2.8 animation: Delta transforms5m
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Blender physics 101: Hair dynamics8m 7s
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Blender physics 101: Hair children8m 15s
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Blender physics 101: Hairs and particle instances7m 12s
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Blender physics 101: Soft body dynamics6m 51s
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Blender physics 101: Combining hair and soft body7m 33s
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Blender physics 101: Hi-res smoke5m 45s
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Blender physics 101: Fireballs6m 49s
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Blender physics 101: Smoke and forces6m 53s
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Blender physics 101: Rendering volumes faster7m 29s
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Blender physics 101: Particle smoke6m 49s
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Blender physics 101: Smoke magic9m 26s
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Quick tip: Clipping plane4m 36s
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Intel Open Image Denoise to make images pretty and faster6m 30s
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UI improvements in Blender 2.81 and 2.824m 7s
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Library Overrides6m 43s
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Let’s make balloons: Cloth simulation with air pressure6m 3s
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Mantaflow: New physically based fluid simulation6m 9s
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Smoke and fire simulations with Mantaflow5m 51s
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Mantaflow guides4m 5s
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Advanced Cycles nodes updates6m 40s
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Blender and UDIM5m 59s
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New sculpting tools in Blender5m 25s
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Remeshing sculpts in Blender5m 41s
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Create levels of detail objects with Multires5m 3s
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Actual sun positions in Blender4m 57s
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Fix self-overlapping transparency5m 47s
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New helpful Blender preferences6m 57s
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Blender 2.83 and virtual reality5m 7s
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Adaptive sampling in Blender 2.835m 29s
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Wave and noise texture updates in Blender 2.835m 6s
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Volume rendering speed-up trick5m 5s
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Attach objects with updated Child Of constraint5m 19s
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New sculpting brush: The Cloth brush4m 59s
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Quickly organize sculpture with Face Sets3m 15s
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Simplify Graph Editor keys with Decimate4m 23s
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Projected textures with lights5m 25s
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New Unreal Engine tools for Blender7m 55s
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How OpenVDB improves Blender volumes6m 34s
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Expand UVs automatically with Blender 2.904m 25s
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New Transform Fill for Grease Pencil3m 1s
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Grease Pencil Vertex Paint tricks4m 22s
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Easy way to manage collections4m 41s
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An incredible update to Sky in Blender 2.903m 51s
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Unsubdivide High Polygon meshes in Blender 2.905m 26s
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Modeling updates to Blender 2.905m 18s
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Preview scenes with Viewport Denoising in Blender4m 35s
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Library overrides updates in Blender 2.904m 39s
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Use BlenderKit to quickly build out scenes3m 12s
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Updated Physics tab for fluids6m 45s
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The latest in quality-of-life improvements5m 9s
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How to use wetmaps and particles to make snow12m 50s
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Command the high seas with Blender's updated ocean4m 29s
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Using heat to make explosions hot8m 37s
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Importing SVGs to make beautiful logo renders7m 36s
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Quickly create a dog or cat rig in Blender6m 48s
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Animating animals in Blender7m 28s
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How to use the NLA editor in Blender6m 14s
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Grease pencil to 3D mesh4m 17s
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Create augmented reality files with Blender3m 43s
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Cloth, collisions, and Alembic caches5m 33s
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Data transfer for porting character rigs7m 46s
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How Geometry Nodes Changes Everything4m 38s
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Point Clouds8m 56s
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Block Out a Scene in Blender in Two Clicks!3m 24s
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Getting Sticky with Viscosity6m 48s
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Camera Tracking in Blender 2.92 Improvements6m 36s
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Image Trace Your Drawings in Grease Pencil!4m 9s
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Making 2D Animation Easier with Interpolating4m 1s
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Quick Cryptomattes with EEVEE6m 51s
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Move Along a Curve8m 20s
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Sculpt like a Pro with MultiRes and Sculpt Mode4m 9s
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What data-blocks are and how to use them5m 38s
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Helpful animation tips and tricks6m
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