Hey Reader,

Zach here,

Today we have a new compositing tutorial by our course author Daniel Nees, an animation re-timing tutorial from P2Design, a Half-Life-inspired short film and a useful add-on to boost your shaders in Blender.

Let’s dive in.

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​Light Groups Tutorial for Blender​

Our Master Compositing in Blender instructor Daniel Nees released a new tutorial on our YouTube channel explaining the use of Light Groups in Blender (Cycles).

This compositing technique allows you to alter and even animate the effect of your lights separately after the rendering (so you don’t need to re-render for each little change you want to make). Daniel guides you through the entire workflow step-by-step.

If you like Daniel’s tips and want more golden nuggets from Blender’s Compositor treasure chest, check out our new Master Compositing in Blender course.

Currently, you can get it with 20% discount, use the code EARLYBIRD20 at checkout.

​Animation Secret from P2Design (re-timing)​

What is the best way to make great-looking animations? You might think the answer is to copy the motions from video references.

While it is a useful technique, there is a secret ingredient that can make your animations look even better than the real thing. It’s called exaggeration - and a perfect tool for that is re-timing.

Pierrick Picaut explains the technique and how to use it in Blender in this tutorial.

If you want Pierrick to teach you how to make your animation feel alive (pun intended), you can join his animation course "Alive" here. (affiliate link)

​"Patient Zero" - Half Life Animated Short​

Richard Makk (aka TheParryGod) made an amazing short film based on the "Half Life" game world using Blender (among other tools). Great cinematic shots and dynamic action (especially in the fight scene at the end) make it thrilling to watch.

Content Warning: The video contains some gore as well as some violent scenes and sci-fi horror, some viewers might find disturbing.

If you like this kind of stuff - there are more Half-Life shorts to watch on TheParryGod YouTube channel.

​"Node-IT" powerful Add-on for making Shaders in Blender​

Are complex node trees in the shader editor giving you nightmares? Here’s a cool add-on from Pierre Lazarevic (creator of Pattern Designer) that can give you some peace of mind.

It’s a collection of useful shader node presets, enabling sophisticated effects using one node instead of spending hours on combining multiple ones.

There are 16 special nodes in the package (and 5 more coming soon) offering useful features like adding heat, scratches, or edge wear to your 3D objects in Blender.

​Get Node-IT here (affiliate link)

You can see all of Node-IT’s capabilities in this demo video.

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

~Zach

P.S. If you haven't seen it yet, yesterday we published two new chapters for our Robotic Planet course, learn more about this update in this fun trailer.