Blender is a powerful, free, and open-source 3D creation software supported by a large and active community. Starting your journey with animation in Blender is a great choice, especially if you’re new to this field.

Before jumping into animation in Blender, it’s a good idea to get familiar with some essential tools that will make the process easier and more efficient. 

• Constraints: 

Constraints are used to control how an object moves, rotates, or scales by linking it to another object or rule. They help automate complex motion, so you don’t have to animate everything manually, saving time and increasing realism.

• Motion paths: 

Motion Paths show the route an object or bone takes during an animation. This visual guide helps you fine-tune the movement and timing by showing where things go frame by frame.

• Drivers: 

Drivers let you control one property using another. For example, if you’re animating a clock, you can set up a driver so the hour hand moves automatically based on the rotation of the minute hand—no need to animate both separately.

• Shape keys: 

Shape Keys allow you to modify the shape of a mesh and blend between those shapes. They’re commonly used for facial expressions like smiling, blinking, or frowning. Combined with keyframes, Shape Keys bring characters to life.

• Rigging: 

Rigging creates a digital skeleton for your 3D model, allowing it to move in realistic ways. For example, rigging a human model helps joints bend naturally, which is essential for character animation.

• Keyframes: 

Keyframes mark specific positions or values at certain points in time. To animate something like a bouncing ball, you would insert keyframes at different frames to show where the ball is—on the ground, in the air, and back down again.

• Grease pencil: 

Grease Pencil lets you draw directly in 2D or 3D space. It’s perfect for sketching, storyboarding, or creating full 2D animations with layers, brushes, and editable strokes.

By learning and practicing with these tools, you’ll be well-prepared to handle many creative tasks involved in animation in Blender.

Here’s a simple guide to help you start making your own 2D animation in Blender:

1. Launch the 2D Workspace

Open Blender and select “2D Animation” from the screen. This will bring you directly into Blender’s dedicated 2D animation workspace, which is quite different from the typical 3D layout.

2. Start Drawing with the Grease Pencil

First, switch to Object Mode from the menu in the top-left corner. Then, create a Grease Pencil object, which acts as your drawing surface.

Next, change the mode to Draw Mode using the same drop-down. In this mode, you can begin sketching using Blender’s drawing tools.

Use the Grease Pencil to draw your characters and backgrounds. You can customize your brushes—adjusting thickness, opacity, and style—just like in most digital drawing apps. Be sure to add colors to bring your drawings to life!

3. Add Animation Using Keyframes and Motion Paths

Once your drawing is ready, it’s time to animate!

• Select your drawing, press I to insert a keyframe for its current position.
• Move the timeline to a new frame.
• Then draw a new pose and hit I again to insert another keyframe.
  Repeat this process to build up your character’s motion across frames.

For smaller objects or repeated elements, you can animate them using motion paths and keyframes without redrawing every single frame.

To enhance your animation, consider adding some visual effects—like a blurred background for depth or camera movements to add energy and focus.

4. Preview and Final Render

Use the Play button in the timeline to preview your animation in real time.

For a quick preview, go to the View menu and choose “Viewport Render Animation”. This lets you check the animation without fully rendering it.

Once you’re satisfied, follow Blender’s rendering process to produce the final animation file.

If you want a visual guide, check out the video “Blender 2D Animation Basics for Beginners – Grease Pencil Guide” by PolyPaint for a great walkthrough of the process.

Here’s a step-by-step overview to help you get started with creating 3D animation in Blender:

1. Start a New Project

To begin, open Blender and create a new project by going to the File menu, hovering over New, and selecting General. This sets up the workspace for 3D animation in Blender, not 2D.

2. Import and Prepare Your 3D Model

Bring your 3D character or object into Blender by navigating to File > Import. Choose the correct format (e.g., .obj or .fbx), locate your model, and click Import.

Once the model is in your scene, you’ll see it placed in the 3D viewport. You can import more objects as needed to build your scene. Set up lighting using Blender’s lighting tools to enhance the look of your environment.

To animate facial expressions or mesh changes, use Shape Keys to create various versions like smiling or blinking.

3. Animate with Keyframes and Animation Tools

Use Blender’s animation features—such as Constraints, Motion Paths, Drivers, and Keyframes—to bring your models to life.

• Go into Object Mode and press I to insert a keyframe, or go to Object > Animation > Insert Keyframe.
• Place keyframes at different moments in time to define the movement or transformation of your model.
• You can set keyframes for position, rotation, and scale—and even name them if your animation gets complex, making it easier to manage.

4. Refine Your Animation

Go through your timeline and tweak your keyframes to make the motion smoother. You can adjust the interpolation type (e.g., linear, bezier) to control how movement transitions between keyframes. Don’t forget to animate smaller details to give your work a polished feel.

5. Add Sound and Camera Motion

To include sound in your animation:

• Switch to the Video Sequencer from the top-left editor menu.
• Press Shift + A, select Sound, and load your audio file.
• You can drag the sound strip along the timeline to sync it with your animation.

Adding camera movement also helps bring your scene to life. You can animate the camera just like any other object using keyframes.

6. Preview and Render

Before final rendering, use Blender’s Viewport Render Animation option to preview your scene and make any necessary tweaks. Since rendering can take time, this helps catch errors early.

When you’re happy with the result, let’s render the full animation. You may want to check some tips to optimize Blender Cycles and Eevee for fast rendering here.

Need help learning the ropes? Check out beginner-friendly tutorials like:
“How to Animate in Blender: Learning the Basics” by Alex on Story
“Animation for Beginners! Blender Tutorial” by Ryan King Art

These are great starting points to level up your skills with 3D animation in Blender.

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• Dedicated server for individuals: You have full control and access to the server you rent. The working environment (installed apps, files) will be stored for the next use.
• Easy and free file transfer between your computer and iRender’s server: The transferring task can be done via iRender GPU application for Windows and the iRender Drive application for MacOS.
• 24/7 assistance: iRender’s attentive agents are always ready to support all your queries.
• All software compatibility: iRender’s PCs are built to meet the configuration needs of all 3D software and rendering tools at a variety of cost levels for users to choose from.

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Image and information source: Skillshare, Vagon, Blender, PolyPaint

In this article, we will discuss various strategies to enhance viewport and rendering performance for Rasterization and Pathtracing (Blender Cycles and Eevee). Our goal is to lower the computational and memory demands on the GPU, CPU, VRAM, RAM, and even the hard drive

The first step to boosting the performance of Blender Cycles and Eevee is to optimize shader. Let’s explore ways to reduce memory usage and improve computation efficiency.

• Minimize Textures: Since memory reads are slow, reducing the number of textures used will significantly help. Aim to have each material reference as few textures as possible, and use the smallest necessary resolution and channel count.
  
• Use Alternatives to Color Maps: To optimize texture reads and make better use of computational resources, consider using a single grayscale mask and procedural texturing instead of color maps.
  
• Avoid Redundant Textures: By cropping your patterns or seamless textures, you can prevent storing unnecessary repetitive textures that don’t contribute to the final scene.
  
• Limit Photo Textures: Instead of using photo textures, which can be difficult to compress and are often too high in resolution, try using normal maps. For example, you can create a similar effect using a tiled rotated gradient in 3D instead of a 2D photo texture.
  
• Use Square Textures: Using square textures like 128×128 or 256×256 can help reduce the workload for VRAM.
  
• Resize Textures: If high-resolution textures don’t provide a noticeable visual difference, consider resizing them to reduce render times.

• Avoid Procedural Noise: Procedural noise is resource-heavy, so it’s better to use noise textures across multiple shaders and store various noise textures in different RGB channels to improve performance.
• Avoid Complex Procedural Masks: Ray-traced Ambient Occlusion (AO) or ray-traced beveling are computationally demanding. To minimize this load, consider using color attributes to store AO and edges in the RG channels instead of relying on heavy procedural masking.
• Simplify Complex Nodes: Nodes like HSL or Principled BSDF require significant processing power (CPU/GPU), memory (RAM), and time to calculate. Reducing the use of complex nodes can help lighten the computational load.
• Limit the Use of Volume Scattering: Volume scattering is very costly in terms of computation. To improve performance, it’s better to use a compositing pass with a depth pass or an emissive volume instead, as these are much less resource-intensive.
• Use Uber Materials: Having too many individual materials can reduce rendering performance, as each one needs to be compiled and is harder to manage. For faster rendering, use Uber materials that incorporate multiple attributes.
• Stop Using Alpha Blending: Alpha blending can slow down rendering. Switching the blend mode to Opaque, Alpha Clip, or Alpha Hashed can speed up the process.

Additionally, utilizing texture atlases or UDIMs to combine materials and choosing lower-quality filtering when possible can optimize both memory usage and computational performance.

The next step to improve the performance of Blender Cycles and Eevee is Geometry optimization.

• Remove Redundant Attributes: Attributes take up memory and need to be loaded into VRAM. By removing or merging unnecessary attributes and optimizing shaders, you can significantly reduce memory usage.
• Disable “Custom Split Normal Data” Option: The “custom split normal data” option in the Geometry data section consumes memory and doesn’t always provide noticeable visual improvements. Unchecking this option can help reduce memory usage.

• Avoid Overdrawing: Overdrawing is a big task when working with transparent objects. Drawing multiple triangles on top of each other leads to unnecessary processing. This is especially important when you need to trace rays through transparent objects. To reduce computational load, try manually cutting the mesh to minimize empty space while keeping the polycount low.
  
• Reduce Draw Calls: Every time an object or material is rendered, it generates a draw call. The more draw calls, the more work the CPU and GPU need to do. To minimize draw calls, try batching or merging multiple materials and meshes into a single one, especially when the complexity of the meshes or materials is low.
  
• Use LOD for Rasterization: When triangles are as small as or smaller than 1 pixel, the GPU still processes a 2×2 pixel block during rasterization, which wastes computational resources. To save resources and improve performance, it’s recommended to use LOD (Level of Detail), particularly for distant geometry.

• Avoid Overlapping Vertices: When importing or editing meshes, you may end up with vertices or entire faces at the same location, consuming unnecessary memory and computation power without improving the visual quality. To remove duplicates, use Edit Mode > Select All > Mesh > Merge > By Distance.
  
• Use Instances for Symmetry: Duplicating a mesh to create symmetry doubles the number of triangles the computer needs to process. This means the GPU/CPU still has to handle both sides, even if they are identical. It’s better to split your mesh and use instances instead of duplicates to save on memory and processing power

• Use rasterization when full path tracing isn’t necessary.
  
• Lower the number of samples to speed up rendering time.
  
• Turn off features that don’t significantly affect the final visual quality.
  
• Use the minimum number of lights and shadows to maintain performance.
  
• Transparent bounces can cause a significant drop in performance.

• Clamping: Controls the maximum brightness of individual light samples. Lowering this can reduce noise and fireflies.
  
• Direct Lighting: Set to 0 for unbiased results. You can increase it to 1 to reduce noise in complex light setups.
  
• Indirect Lighting: Set to 0.1 for animations to reduce noise while maintaining a path-traced look.
  
• Disable Reflective and Refractive Caustics: This helps speed up renders and reduces noise.
  
• Min Light Bounces and Min Transparent Bounces: Set to total bounces to reduce noise.
  
• Light Tree: Useful for scenes with many lights, but avoid it for scenes with fewer lights due to extra computation.
  
• Optix vs Open Image Denoise (OID): Optix is faster, but OID (GPU) is recommended for better results with RTX cards.
  
• Threads Mode: Set to fixed and use CPU threads -1 for better CPU/GPU balance.
  
• Tiling: Disable it for faster rendering unless working with high-resolution images or low VRAM.
  
• Persistent Data: Keep BVH and other data cached to speed up repeated renders.
  
• Viewport Pixel Size: Set to 2x or auto to reduce pixel count during ray tracing for heavy scenes.

iRender provides private high-configuration machines with upmarket specifications that excel in rendering, like AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 3955WX @ 3.9 – 4.2GHz or AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX @ 3.6 – 4.5GHz, 1/2/4/6/8 x RTX4090 or RTX3090,  RAM 256GB, Storage NVMe SSD 2TB.

Why can iRender be a great render farm for you?

In addition to high-configuration servers, iRender provides many other utilities to provide the best user experience.

• Dedicated server for individuals: You have full control and access to the server you rent. The working environment (installed apps, files) will be stored for the next use.
• Easy and free file transfer between your computer and iRender’s server: The transferring task can be done via iRender GPU application for Windows and the iRender Drive application for MacOS.
• 24/7 assistance: iRender’s attentive agents are always ready to support all your queries.
• All software compatibility: iRender’s PCs are built to meet the configuration needs of all 3D software and rendering tools at a variety of cost levels for users to choose from.

Let’s see how fast Blender renders on iRender’s machines!

New users will get a 100% bonus for the first transaction within 24 hours of their registration. No minimum amount!! If you top up 50$, you will get 100 points in total to hire our machines.

REGISTER NOW

If you have any questions, please get in touch with me through email duongdt@irender.vn or our 24/7 support team for a quick response.

Thank you for reading

Source of images and information: cgverse, Blender

Blender is one of the most well-known software for 3D artists all over the world and it includes a multitude of Modifiers. This article will help you learn more about Top 10 modifiers in Blender that Blender artists should know. Let’s check it now! 

Blender is a free and open-source 3D creation suite. With Blender, you can create 3D visualizations such as still images, 3D animations and VFX shots. You can also edit videos. It is well suited to individuals and small studios who benefit from its unified pipeline and responsive development process.

Modifiers are automated processes that alter an object’s geometry without causing destruction. Modifiers allow you to automate a lot of tasks that would otherwise be too laborious to complete by hand, such as subdivision surfaces, without changing the object’s fundamental geometry. 

Let’s discover top 10 modifiers in Blender that allow you to make a lot of stunning scenes with this 3D software! 

The Curve modifier is the first software on the top of the best modifiers in Blender. It provides a simple but efficient method of deforming a mesh along a curve object. It functions along X, Y, or Z, the (global) dominant axis. This implies that your mesh will follow the curve and deform like a train following and bending along rails as you move it in the dominant direction, which is the X axis by default. The object’s distance from the curve can be adjusted by shifting the mesh perpendicular to this axis.

When using the Curve Modifier, ensure your base mesh and curve have their origins aligned. This alignment ensures that the mesh follows the curve as expected, minimizing unwanted distortions or placement issues. A quick ‘Shift + S‘ to ‘Cursor to Selected‘ on the curve followed by ‘Selection to Cursor‘ on the mesh can help align them perfectly.

Let’s explore the next modifier of top 10 modifiers in Blender. The Mirror modifier mirrors a mesh along its local X, Y and/or Z axes, across the Object Origin. It can also use another object as the mirror center, and then use that object’s local axes instead of its own.

The Mirror modifier allows you to reflect a UV map, enhancing texture application and management. Plus, there’s a unique capability where you can mirror based on an angle set by another object, offering dynamic design possibilities.

A good technique to achieve an exact position is to select the edge, then snap Cursor to Selection. This will position the 3D Cursor in the center of the edge. Finally, use the Set Origin menu, and select Origin to 3D Cursor. This will move the object’s origin (and thus, the mirror plane) to where the 3D cursor is located, and the mirroring will be exact. 

An object can be given a simple deformation by using the Simple Deform modifier. Meshes, lattices, curves, surfaces and texts are supported objects. The deformation is either a rotation (Twist, Bend) or a scaling (Taper, Stretch). The amount of deformation is specified by the Deform Angle (rotation) or Deform Factor (scaling).

Here is a tip for you: When using the ‘Twist’ function, couple it with Proportional Editing (shortcut O in Edit Mode). This allows for control over the twist intensity. Blending these two functions can produce some of the most organic and dynamic spiral transformations. And always remember to scroll the mouse wheel to adjust the influence radius. 

The Warp modifier can be used to warp parts of a mesh to a new location in a very flexible way, by using two objects to select the “from” and “to” regions.

Some people will find this modifier a bit tricky to understand at first. It requires two points, specified by the two target objects’ origins. The “from” point designates a point in space that is pulled toward the “to” point. It is akin to using the Proportional Editing in Edit Mode.

Another way to use this modifier is similar to the Deform Modifier. This allows you to deform parts of the mesh without having to make a vertex group.

You may minimize form changes to a mesh while still reducing noise on its surface by using the Smooth Laplacian modifier. Additionally, it can use a negative Factor to accentuate the shape.

When reconstructing real-world objects that have unwanted noise, the Smooth Laplacian might be helpful. It eliminates noise while maintaining the original model’s shape and desired geometry.

This modifier is based on a curvature flow Laplace Beltrami operator in a diffusion equation.

One of its standout features is the ability to control both volume and boundary independently. This distinct capability makes it a useful tool, especially when you’re in the design phase and want to iterate through different drinking glass shapes and styles. 

One of its standout features is the ability to control both volume and boundary independently. This distinct capability makes it a useful tool, especially when you’re in the design phase and want to iterate through different drinking glass shapes and styles. 

Instead of using Edit Mode to deform a mesh, the Lattice modifier can be the best choice. If your object has a large number of vertices, it would be difficult to edit portions of it quickly in Edit Mode. Using a lattice will allow you to deform large portions efficiently and the smooth deformation you get from a Lattice modifier can be hard to achieve manually. In addition, multiple objects can use the same lattice, thus allowing you to edit multiple objects at once.

The Cloth modifier is a container for a Cloth Physics simulation. It can be useful for example, to simulate on a low-poly mesh then add a Subdivision Surface Modifier after the Cloth modifier to improve the visual quality of the cloth without drastically increasing simulation times.

As the modifier is only a container its actual options can be configured in the Physics Properties tab.

The Particle System modifier is a container for Particle Systems. Particles are lots of items emitted from mesh objects, typically in the thousands. Each particle can be a point of light or a mesh, and be joined or dynamic. They may react to many different influences and forces, and have the notion of a lifespan. Dynamic particles can represent fire, smoke, mist, and other things such as dust or magic spells.

To add a new particle system to an object, go to the Particles tab of the Properties editor and click the small + button. An object can have many Particle Systems. Each particle system has separate settings attached to it. These settings can be shared among different particle systems, so one does not have to copy every setting manually and can use the same effect on multiple objects.

The Shrinkwrap modifier allows an object to “shrink” to the surface of another object. It moves each vertex of the object being modified to the closest position on the surface of the given mesh (using one of the four methods available). It can be applied to meshes, lattices, curves, surfaces and texts.

This mode is similar to Nearest Surface Point, but produces a much smoother projection in return for being significantly slower. Instead of finding the closest point, it searches for the nearest point that has its interpolated smooth normal pointing towards or away from the original vertex position. Non-manifold boundary edges are specially handled as infinitely thin cylinders that emit normals in all perpendicular directions; ignore flat shading.

The Fluid modifier is the last of the Top 10 modifiers in Blender. It is a container for a Fluid Physics simulation. It can be useful for example, to simulate on a low-poly mesh then add a Subdivision Surface Modifier after the Fluid modifier to improve the visual quality of the fluid without drastically increasing simulation times.

Fluid physics is used to simulate the physical properties of liquids, especially water. While creating a scene in Blender, certain objects can be marked to become a part of the fluid simulation. For a fluid simulation, you have to have a domain to define the space that the simulation takes up. In the domain settings, you will be able to define the global simulation parameters (such as viscosity and gravity).

Gas or smoke simulations are a subset of the fluids system and can be used for simulating collections of airborne solids, liquid particulates and gases, such as those that make up smoke. It simulates the fluid movement of air and generates animated Voxel textures representing the density, heat, and velocity of other fluids or suspended particles (e.g. smoke) which can be used for rendering.

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References: docs.blender.org, cgcookie.comkie

Blender 4.2 LTS has just been released and it comes with a hugely anticipated change, some cool surprises, and a slew of top-notch improvements. In this article, let’s explore the new features in the latest release of Blender: Blender 4.2 LTS with iRender! 

Blender LTS stands for Long Term Support. It’s a specific version of Blender that is supported with updates, bug fixes, and security updates for two years after its initial release. This helps mitigate compatibility issues with users working on long-term projects and ensures your workflow stays functional and secure.

As usual with LTS (long-term support) releases, Blender 4.2 LTS comes packed with features, improvements, and fixes ready to power your projects for the next two years.

New operator in the View (regular + pie) menu: “Frame Scene Range”. This changes the horizontal view to match the scene range. If the preview range is active, the operator will be re-labeled as “Frame Preview Range” and zoom to that instead.

The dope sheet has a new keyframe type called “generated” which just indicates that the key was set automatically by an operator or an add-on rather than by hand. In the Shape Key Editor, non-relative shape keys are now visible and editable. Performance in the non-linear animation editor was also improved when zoomed in on a long action. 

Subdividing Bones now correctly names the bones sequentially. The Armature Drawing Mode Stick can now use bone colors. You can now set the wire width for custom bone shapes per bone so that the most important controls can stand out. Bones can now be active, even if they are hidden, so you can select a bone in the outliner and edit its properties even if you can’t see it in the viewport. 

The Copy Global Transforms add-on, which is one of the few that still ships with Blender,  got two new features. One bakes the animation to the camera, so the motion matches up with it, if, for example, you’re animating on twos. The other allows you to copy and paste transforms relative to another object. 

When you right-click in Object Mode, you can choose Shade AutoSmooth, which adds a smooth-by-angle modifier to the object. It’s also pinned to the bottom of the stack, which is another new feature.

You can now add clear and copy modifiers right in the 3D view using the Object menu. You can also add, remove, apply, and reorder modifiers on all selected objects by holding Alt. 

The Add Images as Planes add-on is now built right into Blender. Just go to Shift + A, Image, and Mesh Plane, select your image, change any of the settings over in the sidebar, and click Import. 

The Curve Edit mode for the new hair curves continues to mature and now includes converting hair types, an Add Menu, a new option for only drawing onto to selected objects, bezier handles, and new operators for setting the handle type, subdividing, switching direction, and toggling cyclic.

One of the most interesting updates in Blender 4.2 is the addition of extensions, which at the moment can be either a theme or an add-on, both of which were already available in Blender before. Still, now they can be downloaded and, more importantly, updated from within Blender itself.

Most of the add-ons Blender came with before are no longer pre-installed, making the download a bit smaller. But you can still get them directly in Blender by going to the Extensions tab of the Preferences Editor and installing them there, which will both download them from the internet and enable them.  

Another cool outcome is that This change has prompted some of the key features of the most used add-ons to be built into Blender itself. Once installed, you can still move these add-ons with Blender onto a thumb drive or a server and use them without any internet connection just like before.

• Eevee

Shadows are now rendered using Virtual Shadow Maps. This greatly increases the maximum resolution, reduces biases, and simplifies the setup.

Some other noticeable improvements include the fact that shadows are now sampled more accurately using virtual shadow maps, removing the need for contact shadows. To get softer shadows, increase the number of steps in the shadows panel and the number of samples. You can also jitter the shadows like in the old version if you need more accuracy when they’re soft. Just be sure to turn it on for both the light and the viewport if you want to see the effect in the viewport. 

Also excitingly, volumes finally take the shape of the mesh, are more stable, and the resolution can go all the way down to 1 pixel. Refraction and subsurface scattering approximate the thickness of the mesh a bit better now, and you have fine-tuned control over that with the new thickness output and surface setting.

• Cycles

Regarding Cycles, there’s also an entirely new shader called the Ray Portal BSDF that lets you use vector math to warp the fabric of space-time itself. This has been used already to create everything from portal effects, of course, to live camera feeds and nice-looking sword trails. 

The principal shader now supports thin film color effects like what you’d see on soap bubbles or a puddle of water mixed with gasoline, which is just gorgeous. 

The Huang principal shader now has a new rounded model that it switches to when the hair covers more than a pixel on the screen, which drastically improves the quality of close-up shots without impacting performance when the hair is farther away.

In the View Layers tab, you can now render each layer with a different world using a new override. Cycles now use a blue noise sampling pattern by default, which produces a clearer image at lower sample counts that can be denoised more easily. 

OpenImageDenoise is now GPU accelerated on AMD GPUs on Windows and Linux, and it can optionally use GPU denoising with CPU renders. It’s also been upgraded to version 2.3 which has improved quality. Rendering on  Intel GPUs now uses their host memory fallback, which allows for rendering more textures than can fit on the GPU at once, which means you should be seeing those out-of-memory errors a whole lot less often. 

Final renders can now use the new GPU compositor, which is a massive speed boost. Switch it over in the compositor sidebar or the render performance panel, but even if you don’t choose to use it, the CPU compositor has been rewritten and is several times faster than before. 

Some important effects of the change include the fact that the transforms are now immediately applied by the transform nodes, so scaling down an image destructively reduces its resolution. Also, the old compositor tried to infer an image size from upstream or output nodes while the new compositor evaluates the node tree from left to right without inferring image sizes. 

The viewport compositor is now limited to the camera region when in camera view so that it better matches the final rendered result. In addition to that you can now see how long each node took to calculate, similar to geometry nodes, by enabling execution time in the overlays. 

The fast Gaussian mode in the blur node, which has been fixed now to be the same size as the other modes, now also works in the viewport compositor, the translate node has new pixel interpolation options. 

The hue-correct node now evaluates the saturation and value curves at the original hue, not the updated one, and the curve now wraps around.  The vector blur node has been simplified and now uses the same motion blur algorithm as Eevee. 

The Realize Instances node now supports partially realizing the geometry, which gives you much more control over what you’re realizing.

Next up, the rotation socket continues its campaign of world domination. The  Curved to Points node now has one, and the Align Oiler to Vector node, many a geometry node as a first boss battle, has been depreciated, and replaced with the Align  Rotation to Vector node. There’s a Rotation Input node and a new Axis to the rotation node. This allows you to take two vectors in this example, the tangent and the normal of a curve, and convert them into a rotation. 

Next, the sample nearest surface node and the geometry proximity node now have group ID and sample group ID inputs, giving us much greater control over how we sample. The group ID separates the mesh into groups defined by what’s plugged into it. 

RemoveNamed attribute now has a wildcard function, allowing you to remove attributes with the same painful prefix or suffix onward. The mesh boolean node now has a float option, like its boolean modifier and edit mode counterparts. The faceNeighbours node has been tweaked for accuracy. 

The strips in the video sequence editor got a visual overhaul and now have rounded corners, no handles on the sides, thicker outlines, half-wave forms, and updated colors.  Adjusting strip handles feels a bit nicer now with the new cursor change when hovering and the ability to tweak connected handles. 

In the overlays, you can now turn on or off the cache line. This menu has also been reorganized. Text strips now have new options for outlines, shadow placement, and shadow blur. You can now drag and drop multiple files into the video sequence editor at the same time. 

The AVI RAW and AVI JPEG file output types have been removed since the quality was the same as H .264 anyway, but with way larger file sizes and they took a lot to maintain, so they’re gone. But on the performance side of things, both rendering speeds and playback speeds have been slightly improved. 

A new version of Blender is now slightly faster thanks to improvements in font shader compiling, which was one of the slower parts.  

Undo is now two to five times faster, which is a huge improvement for complex scenes, with the trade-off that autosave is now slightly slower. Properties dialogs, confirmation dialogs, tooltips, menu separators,  square color pickers, overlay text, and the status bar have all gotten a bit of polish. More tool shortcuts are now displayed in the status bar rather than the header. The control shift hotkey to preview nodes in the node editor is now built into Blender and you can use it without enabling Node Wrangler. 

The File Cleanup menu now has a Manage Unused  Data option, which just pops up the Outliner in that view, and purging unused data blocks now lists exactly what will be deleted. 

The Blender file view of the Outliner now shows user counts and lets you add or clear fake users. Ctrl +F now starts a search in the Outliner,  like it does in the Properties and other data editors

Composition guide visibility can now be toggled separately in the viewport overlays. There’s a new key map preference called region toggle that lets you toggle all editor regions with the hotkey. Text can now be dragged and dropped into the text editor and Python console. The text editor now supports GLSL syntax highlighting.

File format exporters can now be associated with Collections. One or more exporters can be added and configured in the Collection properties panel. Settings are stored in .blend files for easy sharing and persistence across Blender sessions. All collections in the scene can be exported with a single click through the File menu. Additionally, each collection can be exported to multiple file formats simultaneously.

The new Hair Curves Objects Types now fully work with USD. USD Importing now supports point clouds and there are new options for Unicode files, defined prims,  dome lights, and mesh validation. USD Exporting has new options for filtering objects by type, dome lights, the up-axis of the stage, X4 operators, triangulation, down-sampling textures for USDZ, generating material X from Blender Shaders, and renaming UV maps to better follow conventions. 

Alembic supports the new Hair Curves Objects type as well, it can import multiple files at once now, and there’s a big fix for animated curves not updating during rendering.

GLTF importing has new options for setting bone size and shape, and its exporting has received a ton of fixes, as well as new options for vertex colors, centering root objects and UDEMs. 

Our iRender GPU Render Farm offers from 1/2/4/6/8 RTX 4090s and 8 RTX 3090 servers. All servers at iRender are also equipped with AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 3955WX @ 3.9 – 4.2GHz or AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 5975WX @ 3.6 – 4.5GHz, 256GB RAM, 2TB Storage NVMe SSD. The high-end configuration is extremely suitable for complex Blender projects. 

Our system has pre-installed Blender. You just need to transfer your files, connect to the remote servers and render yourself. 

We just released a new server with 8 x RTX 4090 which will optimize your render with Blender, let’s check it now! 

Currently, iRender offers a special promotion for new users, a 100% bonus program for the first deposit within 24 hours of registration, making it an attractive option for those looking to optimize their rendering budget. Just register and get our best deal!

For more detailed information, please contact us via Live chat 24/7 or WhatsApp: +(84)915875500 or Email: vyvtk@irender.vn

iRender – Happy Rendering!

References: developer.blender.org, Jonathan Lampel from ‪‪@cg_cookie

With the aim to effectively equip users, reduce the procedure of using application and website at the same time, iRender has released a desktop app called iRender GPU. It will contain almost all the features, help you to recharge your account, transfer files and connect to the remote servers/machines on your own local PC without having to come to the iRender website.

Right now, the Windows version of iRender GPU is available on iRender. For the macOS and Linux versions, it will be in the near future.

The following section will help you know how to install iRender GPU and use it.

1. 1. 1. 1. Download and install the app on your local PC.
         2. Register/login the app by your iRender account and follow this instruction to use it.

Watch this video tutorial on how to use iRender GPU app:

If you don’t want to use the iRender GPU app, or you are macOS or Linux users, you still can work through our website.

Before, you needed to use our iRender drive to transfer data, and then come back to our website to create a machine and connect to it. Many users have struggled with this step, as they think that they can use our iRender drive to connect to the remote machine. They don’t know that our workflow is still web-based.

Understanding that struggle, and wanting to reduce the procedure, now, you don’t need to go to our website to create a machine and connect. You can just download our iRender GPU app, and do every step there. This all-in-one app doesn’t require you to download a .rdp file to connect, therefore it’s very convenient for anyone who doesn’t want to download many things to their PC.

iRender GPU doesn’t only integrate the workflow to the app, but also all the updates, extra services, documentation, and support. Now you can release your web browser from loading the iRender page.

The dashboard of the app helps you learn about updates, promotions, and new releases of products from iRender.

The extra service helps you request for additional services from iRender servers.

Especially, you don’t need to come to our website to chat with our 24/7 support team. You can chat with us from the iRender GPU app. Just click the Live Support 24/7 bubble on the bottom left side of the app, and you can talk with us about your issues when using our services.

This is one of the key points that makes iRender GPU one of the best solutions available for users using iRender service. You can have all of the advantages listed above while not having to pay any extra expense to use it.

Download the app and sign up for the service today to be able to experience the great advantages of iRender GPU and speed up your rendering. iRender is having the biggest promotion this year, a 50% or 100% bonus. Especially, if you use Cinema 4D and Redshift, now you can access our remote servers without having to install the software and plugin. We have an option to choose pre-installed Cinema 4D and Redshift, and provide you license free from 15^th to 31^st July 2023.

Thank you & Happy rendering!

In all periods of time, creativity is what is considered one of the most important in many industries, especially if you work in a 3D world. Creativity is something hard to achieve over time. It’s more like a talent. Of course when you work enough and know enough, you can come up with creative ideas that go well with audience taste. However, what I’m talking about here, is the idea that from your own imagination, that’s the thing nobody has ever thought about. 

And in your impression and experience, is there any rendering service that could help you achieve the complete creativity process with no boundary? Let me introduce you to iRender and its mission to unleash the creativity of 3d artists.

If you think creativity is just decided by you, you are wrong. Sometimes, a render farm can affect your creative activities in a way you would never imagine.

A render farm will look after your rendering process and be able to help you render faster. It means instead of sitting on your chair and waiting for the renderings to finish, you now have your time to do other stuff. Working on a new idea, or continuing other stages of your project, or just simply having a rest to recharge yourself, all are possible.

You don’t just create one project, render it and then boom, it’s all done. You will test rendering some frames, or a part of the project to see how it turns out. If it’s okay, you can continue to render. If it’s not okay, you can tweak more to make it as close as what you want possible. If it’s done on a weak computer, how long do you need to wait before you can see a test scene? A render farm is there to help you speed up the render time and you can check if you need to modify anything.

Your creativity will not be limited by an old and weak hardware system, if you use a render farm. You can come up with the craziest concepts, the most extravagant visual effects, the most mind-blowing looks. All of them will be taken care of by a render farm, and your job is to let your creative ideas flow.

However, a normal render farm still contains some limitations, like it cannot support all your applications, or it cannot allow you to modify your project while the render is being processed, etc. We will show you a new form of render farm that could empower your creativity.

To begin with, iRender is completely different from other normal render farms. The platform is IaaS which is Infrastructure-as-a-service, meaning that we provide you the hardware and you can customize your pipeline as you want.

You can think of iRender’s remote servers as your second new computer, but from a far. You connect to it (or them), install your software, add your license and then are free to do what you want there. iRender’s workflow is not only able to help you save time and access powerful hardware, but also help you overcome what a normal render farm cannot do.

A normal render farm will support some famous software, rendering engines, plug-ins, but not all of them. If you work with uncommon software, it’s really hard to find a rendering service. Either you use the cloud service of that software (like Keyshot has their own cloud), or you render on your personal system. If your project is too complex, your system is highly likely not able to render it. That’s what hinders your creativity to become reality.

Don’t be afraid, because at iRender, you have a second new strong computer to do whatever you need. Whether you need unpopular software, or want to modify your files as clients comment while rendering, it’s all possible.

Our clients, whether using single or multi-GPU software, still have a suitable option here. If using real-time render software such as Lumion, Twinmotion, D5 Render, or even Unreal Engine usually select server 3S to render their projects. A normal render farm cannot support single card software, or real-time render software like this. If using multi-GPU software like Cinema 4D, Houdini, Maya, Octane, Redshift, Arnold, etc. they have access to the most high-end customer graphics card right now.

They are a big company in India with a project containing 13 short videos. The render setting is resolution 6784 X1408, 25 FPS, .png sequence output. They have rented 13 servers 3S from iRender, installed Twinmotion, and distributed 13 short videos to all those servers. With their settings, render time is more or less than 22 minutes per frame, and each short video is about 70 hours to render. During their rendering process, they could save the finished renders and Shutdown the remote servers to save money, while parallelly waiting for a few comments from their clients. After that, they came back, started the remote servers again and did revisions, or continued their render.

Watching iRender’s test comparison of Twinmotion on RTX 4090 and RTX 3090

Another case from a student who was doing his final project in Lumion. His render setting is resolution full HD, quality 3 stars, 25 FPS. On his laptop i7, RTX 3070, 16gb ram, the video was gonna take 112 hours give or take. Even with lower settings, it was about 70 hours. When he came to iRender to seek for a Lumion rendering service, his whole project was rendered in 8 hours 45 minutes in total on server 3S (single RTX4090). That’s a life-saver and helped him to submit his project on time.

This is a special case of a Croatian studio who uses Unreal Engine with Blender, Substance 3D Painter, and other programs for similar purposes. They first used and installed their whole pipeline on our server RTX3090, then switched to server RTX4090, without having to re-install anything.

Their workstation is RTX 6000 Ada, with 48GB VRAM. While RTX 6000 Ada used 50 GB for this scene and couldn’t render, RTX3090 with NVLink used about 30 GB only and still rendered fine with 8k textures. RTX 4090, while not supporting NVLink, is still the best possible option for rendering.

Watching iRender’s test comparison of Unreal Engine on RTX 4090 and RTX 3090

Moving to a user of multi-GPUs software like Cinema 4D and Octane, we have a studio from Australia. Although having a workstation of RTX 3090ti with AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5975WX, they still choose iRender to be their rendering service for clients jobs. They share that they can use our server 4S (dual RTX4090s) to render, and free up their machine and keep working in the background. They can even work with other software like Redshift, Adobe suite, all on one machine.

They have rendered a lot, and each project takes between 2 to 8 hours, depending on the render settings. However, in general, their projects are 2k, using multi layered EXR files, at 25 FPS.

Watching iRender’s test of Cinema 4D & Octane on 6xRTX 4090

A normal render farm or iRender, both have their way to help you gain time, or control for the creative activities. However, when you need a service with no boundary and want to feel like you are working on your own computer, iRender is here to help you achieve that.

We hope that this article will help you to decide your cloud rendering service!

Register an account today for a 20% bonus for new users to experience our service. Or contact us via WhatsApp: (+84) 916 806 116 for advice and support.

Happy rendering!

Today, we are excited to announce iRender officially becomes sponsor for Hum3D challenge 2023 – Sci-Fi Industrial Zone. This is a competition for 3D artists to create an immersive and visually stunning 3D rendering of an industrial environment in a science fiction world.

From March 21st to June 3rd 2023, Hum3D conducts an art challenge “Sci-Fi Industrial Zone“. In this rendering challenge participants need to create a detailed and atmospheric environment, with elements of science fiction and industrial design, full of intricate machinery, dark and moody lighting, and plenty of technological details to capture the viewer’s imagination.

The challenge is sponsored by many software companies, modeling service companies, render farms, and iRender is happy to be one of them. iRender’s prizes for the winners of this challenge consist of:

1. Main Prize:

• • • • The first prize: 1000 RenderPoints
      • The second prize: 500 RenderPoints.
      • The third prize: 200 RenderPoints

2. Additional Prizes

• • • • iRender Farm’s choice: 300 RenderPoints for the artwork chosen by iRender Team

For more details of the full prizes, you can refer here.

Hum3D is a leading 3D modeling service company and library with the largest selection of 3D vehicles, architectural objects, animals and other assets suitable for a wide range of software.

Since 2005 Hum3D helps 3D artists from more than 80 countries to save time on 3d modeling and makes realistic 3D models, which are used in movies, video games, AR-apps, and visualizations. Hum3D offers customers the best combination of price and quality. All models are verified by lead 3D artists, who check their compliance with professional requirements and up-to-date 3D modeling standards.

“We focus on people and the joy of creation!”

iRender is a Vietnamese- based software company where people, joy, and creativity are at the heart of all activities, inspiring the company’s mission. As the pioneer cloud computing service provider in Vietnam, iRender offers two main services: (1)  Cloud Rendering for 3D graphics & architecture, and (2) GPU Cloud for AI/Machine Learning/Deep Learning. 

With the advanced and strong hardware ranging from 1 to 8 RTX3090s and RTX4090s, 24/7 professional human support, and the fast and completely free storage and transferring data tool, iRender is one of the most powerful high performance computing service for any 3D artists, studios or AI companies.

Thank you!