3D

Blender Reflections Map… man, oh man. If you’ve ever messed around in 3D and tried to make something look *real*, you know reflections are a huge part of it. But just cranking up the ‘shiny’ setting rarely cuts it. For a long time, I struggled to get surfaces looking believable. Metals looked like perfect mirrors […]

3D HDRI Tricks – man, just saying those words brings back a flood of memories. Learning how to really *use* these things felt like unlocking a secret level in my 3D journey. For a while, I was just dropping them in and hoping for the best, getting renders that were… well, they were lit, I

Blender Shot Render… that phrase used to give me a little shiver, sometimes good, sometimes bad. See, getting your scene perfect in the viewport is one thing, right? Everything looks awesome, the animation is flowing, the lights are hitting just right. But the real test, the moment of truth, is when you hit that ‘Render

VFX Shadow Pass. Just saying those words makes my brain light up a little. Why? Because it’s one of those super important, maybe even a little bit unsung heroes in the world of making computer stuff look like it actually lives in a real movie scene. Think about it. When you see a cool creature

CGI Filter FX. That’s where the magic really starts to happen, isn’t it? Not the early messy bits of 3D modeling or rigging, and not even the first raw render that pops out looking… well, raw. I’m talking about that stage where you take the computed image, the one fresh off the virtual press, and

VFX Focus Pull isn’t about making sure the lead actor’s eyes are sharp on camera, not in the traditional sense anyway. Well, it is, but it’s also about capturing a whole different kind of sharpness, the kind that helps wizards cast spells convincingly or spaceships zip through asteroid fields without looking like flat cutouts stuck

CGI Shadow FX… man, where do I even start? For most folks watching a movie or looking at a cool rendered picture online, shadows are just… there. Like gravity or the sky being blue. They’re part of the background, something you don’t really think about unless they’re messed up. But let me tell you, for

3D Terrain Base: It All Starts Here 3D Terrain Base… It sounds simple, right? Just a chunk of something you build your cool miniature world on. Maybe it’s a block of foam, a piece of wood, or just the digital ground plane in your modeling software. For years, I thought of it as just… the

Blender Sky Texture, man, that little node is something else. When I first started messing with 3D stuff, getting the lighting right felt like magic. Especially getting the sky right. You could use an HDRI, sure, and they look great, but sometimes you want something more dynamic, more controllable. Or maybe you don’t have the

“`html VFX Color Match… that’s one of those things in the visual effects world that can sound a bit technical, but it’s honestly where a huge chunk of the magic happens. Or, let’s be real, where the magic *doesn’t* happen if you mess it up! It’s all about making sure the stuff we create on