Hey Reader,

Zach here,

With new inspirations, tutorials, and resources from the 3D world.

I’ll start with Project Gold, a painterly Open Movie project by Blender Studio. I also have a great Blender Conference talk with Cycles tips, a new Grease Pencil 3 tutorial from our Magic Storybook instructor Kevin, and a cool add-on for animating wrinkles on clothing without cloth simulations.

Let’s dive in.
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​"Project Gold" beautiful breakdown of an unfinished Blender Open Movie​

​Project Gold is the latest Open Movie project​ by Blender Studio (Blender’s official animation studio, that makes these movies as a testing ground for new Blender features).

I had the pleasure of seeing this video premiered at the Blender Conference, and I was amazed by the beautiful painterly look of the animation as much as excited about the cool features coming to Blender.

The upcoming 4.3 release introduces a new version of Grease Pencil that can interact with Geometry Nodes (this was already tested on this production).

This video is not a finished movie, but a showcase or breakdown of the techniques used and the look development. However, it’s not just a raw tech demo, it feels more like a visually striking short film (still too bad we won't get the full movie).

Simon Thommes (who made the Geometry Nodes setups for the painterly brush strokes on "Project Gold") shares the new free Brushstroke Tools extension for Blender with a short demo video of a cozy wooden hut scene.

There is also a whole workshop on how to use these new tools and the blend file with the hut for download for Blender Studio subscribers (just €11/month for the subscription - and you support Blender).

​Cycles is better than you think​

Turpal Alex Saytiev from Futhark Studio gave a great talk at Blender Conference 2024 about using Cycles in their professional high-end visuals.

It’s fun to watch the eye-candy animations he shows, but what’s even better are the tips and tricks Turpal shares on rendering with Cycles and using its features to your advantage.

If you think Cycles is bad for rendering good-looking glass or that noise-free renders must take forever, you need to see this.

​Mixing 2D and 3D with Grease Pencil 3.0​

Kevin (CG Boost instructor for the Magic Storybook course) has released a cool video about the newest Grease Pencil 3.0 update coming to Blender 4.3 with Geometry Nodes support.

While this might sound like some tech mumbo jumbo, it is a new powerful tool opening up more creative possibilities for artists who want to mix 2D elements with 3D in Blender.

It allows for turning Grease Pencil objects into meshes and vice versa, and using the same nodes both for meshes and Grease Pencil objects, which makes the integration much more seamless.

Kevin does a quick overview of his cute animated illustration project and then goes into a short tutorial on how to set up animated tapered 3D curve strokes drawn with Grease Pencil. He also provides the file for you to download and experiment with.

​Animated clothing folds without simulations​

If you ever tried animating a character with clothing on, you know that this can lead to frustrating hours of tweaking Blender’s cloth simulations.

This handy add-on called "Folds Modifier" by MultLabs allows for adding animated and easily tweaked folds and wrinkles without even touching cloth simulations.

The Folds Modifier uses a Geometry Nodes setup to generate tension maps that drive the displacement as the mesh deforms.

The folds’ shapes are guided by a texture that you can create by painting it on your model (that gives great artistic control, and can be easily tweaked on the fly without waiting for simulation bakes).

​Get the Folds Modifier here (affiliate link)

And here’s a demo video of what the Folds Modifier can do.

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

~Zach