Hey Reader,

Zach here,

With new inspiration and resources from the 3D world.

Starting with a new NPR-style video from Martin Klekner followed by a documentary about "Huxley" worldbuilding, and lastly, I’ll share a free studio lights texture pack.

Let’s dive in.

​Why Martin Klekner switched to NPR rendering​

​Martin Klekner, our Master Cinematic Storytelling in Blender instructor, famous for his amazingly realistic 3D environments as well as the Heroes of Bronze short film about ancient Greek warriors, has recently made a great stylistic shift.

He started developing a new non-photorealistic-rendering (NPR) style during his latest course production and loved the process so much that he also decided to apply a new style to his personal art projects.

Martin shares the joy of his discoveries, impressive new scenes, and how it reignited his creative spark in this video.

​"Huxley" - Sci-Fi Worldbuilding Documentary​

We already shared the amazing Huxley Oracle animation in one of the previous newsletters.

"Huxley" is the name of one of the main characters in a story and a whole sci-fi universe created by Ben Mauro - an American concept artist who worked on such big game titles as "Halo" or "Call of Duty", as well as movies like "The Hobbit", "Elysium" and "Valerian".

​This 40+ minutes long documentary shows how the "Huxley" project was born and evolved from a graphic novel to animated short films and an entire sci-fi universe that keeps expanding.

It’s also an inspiring story of an artist taking the risk of pursuing his creative dream and succeeding.

​Free Studio Lights Texture Pack​

3D artist Berk Gedik shared a free Studio Lamps Texture Pack (you only need a free Patreon account to download it).

This pack can add a lot of subtle realism to lighting and reflections in your renders. The most obvious use case is product pack shot renders, but every lighting setup that reproduces the use of real studio lights can benefit from this.

These textures can be easily applied to an Area Light in Blender, immediately improving the lighting and reflections realism.
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That’s all from me today, have a great weekend, and till next time.

~Zach

P.S. Recently, we release YouTube Shorts more frequently, with many useful Blender tips and tricks, check them out here.