Hey Reader,

Zach here,

With a new dose of inspiration and resources from the 3D world.

This time I have a Minecraft Movie scene recreated in Blender, a BoolTool add-on update with new features and a useful CC0 game animation library you can use in your projects.

Let’s dive in.

​Minecraft Movie VFX remade in Blender​

Though the Minecraft Movie divided fans around the world, I must admit it has some pretty impressive CG imagery (that touched my Cubic World’s soul 😉) Alphie Vaughan has created an animated VFX scene inspired by the movie and explains his workflow in this fun video.

Alphie shows how to easily create a full voxel-based 3D environment using a few simple tricks. He also goes over a little bit of texturing, animation, and rigging - all of which can be easily done inside Blender.

For his VFX and post-production, he uses Nuke (industry-standard paid software) but you can do similar stuff in Blender too (to learn more about it, check out our Master Compositing in Blender course).

​BoolTool Add-on’s new Carving Features​

The BoolTool add-on is one of Blender’s free tools that I constantly use in my daily work. I’ve just learned from Blender Secret’s new video that it has been updated with some new carving features that make cutting holes in objects easy and intuitive.

To use these new features, install the add-on from the Extensions tab in Blender's Preferences (or update it to the latest version - works in Blender 4.4+).

There are 3 main new carving tools: Box, Circle, and Polyline which are great for most common cutout shapes.

What makes them so exciting and powerful is that you can set them up as non-destructive (just set the mode to Modifier) and you can also make arrays of holes using the arrow keys. More fine-tuning is available through the Sidebar’s settings.

​100% Free Public-Domain Animation Library​

If you’ve ever used Mixamo animations, you’ll love this one! Quaternius created a whole new human animation library and released it for free.

It is not just free, but CC0 licensed, which allows you to use the animations in your personal or commercial projects, with no strings attached. You can buy a Pro version for $10 with additional animations if needed.

What is great about this library is that it contains the most common motions for games or short film animations. You can easily retarget and blend these animations in your Blender projects. Jim Morren shows how to do this in this video.

Last hours to grab "Master Cinematic Storytelling in Blender" 20% off

Just a final, friendly reminder that the Early Bird Sale for Martin Klekner’s Master Cinematic Storytelling in Blender course ends today at midnight!

Don’t miss the chance to get it with a 20% discount.

That’s all from me today, have a great weekend, and till next time.

~Zach