Lesson video

Hi, I'm Rebecca your computing teacher for the Blender unit.

Now, you should have already downloaded and installed Blender from blender.

org, with your parents or carers permission in lesson one.

So you should be ready with that.

You might need a pen and paper, to make some notes.

And it's also a really good idea to remove many distractions possible so you can really focus in this lesson.

And say hello to my dog which just appeared over there.

So once you've done all of that, we can begin.

In this lesson, you will add and edit lighting.

You'll set up the camera, and you'll compare different render modes.

Like any film set, you need to add lights to your scenes.

There are four types of light in Blender.

And we're going to add light to bring your scenes to life now.

Off we go, let's go and have a look in Blender and see how we do it.

You should have already downloaded the Palm Island Blender file.

So, I'm going to open mine, file open.

No, I don't want to save.

And then I'm going to go to the Palm tree Island file.

Now it might open up on your desktop like this, but actually it is there, you've just got a second windows, you just need to go down to your Blender icon and just find this one.

And then you can see the Now, this is quite similar to the one that we did in lesson four.

So, if you haven't got access to that, this file that I've got here, all you need to do, is open up yours from lesson four.

And then you could draw your own lot or build your own 3D model of a lighthouse there.

And then, we will be needing.

There's a little boat as well over here, and we will be needing that later on.

But for now, all you need is a lighthouse.

So, if you are missing the Blender project file or you're unable to download it, then you can just own the one that you did in lesson four, just add a lighthouse there and you'll see what it looks like as I'm doing the video.

Now, the first thing that we need to do is, add a spotlight.

So I'm going to go to add, I'm going to go down to light, and then I'm going to choose spot.

And that spotlight needs to be set to 50,000 Watts.

So I'm going to go all the way over here.

Now that I've got a light that's selected, this bulb appears, and I can go here, and I can just change that setting there to 50,000 Watts, which is pretty powerful.

So it's going to be a pretty powerful spotlight.

The next thing that I need to do, is move this spotlight so that it's inside the light.

So if you were designing your own, you've got to make sure that there's an open space in that top part so that you can put the spotlight in there.

Now, if you want to move around, if you're struggling with moving around, you have got this hand over here, and if you click and hold on that, then it allows you to just pan around your scene so that you can get it into the centre, 'cause takes a bit of moving around this, to get it right.

And then I'm just going to move oops, that way.

Now, here is my spotlight, so I just need to select it in the middle, like so, and you can see the spotlight is actually facing down right now.

I want to try and get it into the centre of this lighthouse.

And a little bit like when we were doing the leaves on the Palm tree, it's quite tricky to get it exactly where you wanted.

So it's just a matter of moving things around, panning around, looking at it from the top is a good thing to do, I don't know if I've almost got it perfect.

So I'm just looking at it right from the top.

I've got it pretty spot on, on this angle.

You can see that little orange dot.

I want to try and get the orange dot right in the middle of that line test, which I think I'm just about managed to do.

I'm just going to look at it from the side, it's in there.

Probably could do with having it up a little bit.

That's probably about right.

Now, this spotlight at the moment is facing down and I want it to face at 72 degrees.

And I can do that with just typing in the keyboard.

So, I've made sure that I've selected the spotlight and if I'd clicked off it by accident and it was difficult to find it again, what I can do is I could just go over here, and I can select spot from there.

I can see it, and then that will highlight it.

So, I make sure it's selected.

Oops, make sure it's selected.

And then, if you type, rotate on the Y axis 72, then it's going to move it.

So, I just did on the keyboard there.

O, Y, 72.

And that's rotated it on the Y axis, by 72 degrees.

And then I just need to press the enter key, and that fixes it.

So it was, OY72.

And now, it's facing in the right direction, is at the right angle too.

Now we're going to start doing some animation.

Now, this animation is going to start from 100 because, what I want to do is I want at nighttime, I want the spotlight to come on and turn around.

So, the first frame that I'm going to have is at a hundred for this spotlight, and for the spotlight, I want to insert a key frame.

So, can you remember how to insert a key frame? It's a few lessons since we did that.

So, I'm going to do an I, and then it's this third one from the bottom that we click on, and now I've got a key frame.

And it's going to stop spinning round at frame 160.

And I can use that trick again with the rotate, with typing it in the keyboard, for rotating it 360 degrees.

So this time it's not the Y axis, it's the Z axis that I want to spin on.

So, I'm going to put O, Z, 360, and then press the enter key.

I don't know if it did it that time.

Let me just double check.

Just try again.

O, Z, 360, Yeah I did it that time.

Or I'm not sure if he did it the other time, I didn't notice.

So, I've done it a third time and now I'm up to 160, so I've done the.

Where I wanted to be in this next key frame.

So, I'm going to insert another key frame.

So, insert, so press that I on your keyboard.

And then, third one from the bottom.

And now when I press play, as long as I did it, right, it should spin round when it gets to that point.

And yes, it does.

So, in order to get it to spin, I went to frame 160, I made sure that it was selected up here.

And then I just typed in O, Z, 360 to rotate it on the Z axis 360 degrees.

And then I put another key frame and that's all working fine now.

And if I actually switch it to the render mode, so if I go to here.

I can actually start to save for play now.

Can actually see the light of the spotlight moving around.

So that's looking pretty cool now.

Now, I want to add in some sunlight.

So I'm going to go to frame one, to get me started, but I'm going to add in the sunlight.

So I'm going to go add, light, and I'm going to add in sunlight this time and straight away, it's gone a little bit light, but not fully light.

So, I'm at frame one and I can go over here to the power of the light, to the strength one, and I can change that to five.

And now, it's super bright.

Isn't it? It's a very sunny day now.

And I want that to be a key frame.

Now, don't add a key frame up here in this situation, because we want to add the key frame to the strength of the light.

So we add to the key frame here.

So, can you see my mouse is over that strength one, I need to right click, and then I insert a key frame there.

And I know it's worked because it turns yellow like that.

And then this has a little diamond shape next to it.

Just like the key frame diamond shape that's there.

So that's that.

And then we want it to get dark just before the spotlight comes on.

So, if it's frame 100.

We want it to be dark, so I go over to here now at frame 100 and I set it to zero.

And same thing again, I right click and I insert a key frame on that part.

And we know even if it's worked because it's gone yellow, you've got the diamond shape and the diamond shape is also appeared there.

So now when I press play, this needs to go back to the start key.

but now it's got a bright sunlight and it's getting dark, and then the light has spinned around.

Now it's your turn.

Can pause the video and rewind it so that you can see and remind yourself of how to add those lighting effects to your animation.

And when you've done that, just come back.

Fantastic.

So, what we're going to do next one.

Now we're going to be looking at the camera and where we can position it in order to get the best out of our animations.

So, film cameras can be very expensive.

Different lenses are used for different effects.

And Blender can simulate any sort of lens.

It's quite clever.

Composition is the most important thing when we are positioning our camera.

So, composition is all about where we position our camera, how we angle it at what we're trying to film in order to get the best out of it.

And it's something called the rule of thirds that we use to help us with our camera angles.

And if you look there at that picture, it's been divided into a three by three grid.

So there are nine squares there.

And our main focal point, tends to sit on one of those lines.

And, typically either on the right side, the left side or the bottom or the top there.

And to the main focal point in that image is the person.

And that's why it's on that, that downward line in that right hand third.

And we'll look at that a little bit more when we start recording our own animations.

So, we're going to position the camera now using fly mode, and we're going to adjust the focus.

Let's have a look.

What we're going to do then now, is we're going to start looking at camera angles.

So, here is where we left off before.

So I've got my animation there working.

And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to start looking at the camera.

Now, I can look at the camera view by toggling this so I can click on it, and that gives me the camera view, and I can come off it, or I can press zero.

If you've got a number pad on your keyboard, then you can press zero, and that will do exactly the same thing.

So, I'm going to just press that so that I've got the camera angle.

Now, I want to put the camera into something called fly mode.

Now you're probably not aware of this key on your keyboard, is called an accent grave, and I'm going to try and show you now on my keyboard, 'cause I've got a windows keyboard, it is, Oh gosh, it's underneath the escape button.

And it looks a little bit like an apostrophe, but it's not an apostrophe.

So let's just get you closer.

Can you see it? So it's this button here.

It's got a little.

It looks like an apostrophe or comma there.

Now I'm going to have to press shift, and hold that button in order to put it into fly mode.

So if you've got a different kind of keyboard, if you're using a Mac, for example, then you just need to find where that key is on your keyboard.

So I'm going to do shift and that one as well, and that puts me into fly mode.

So you can see now, I've got like a crosshair in the centre of that camera, and, this is me now in fly mode and able to move around.

Now, if I move my mouse around, then that's going to rotate the camera.

So that's as if you were moving it up and down, left and right.

But if I want to physically move the camera, then I need to press the keys on my keyboard.

So, if you look on your keyboard, you've got a W, A, S and a D.

W is going to take you forward, A is going to take you left, D right and S will be back.

If you're used to online PC gaming, you probably already used to those keys.

But if you're not, it takes a little bit of getting used to.

So I've got W, A, S and D.

So forward is W, back is S, and then left is A, and right, is D.

And what I've got to do, is I've got to try and get to a camera angle where the boat is in the picture.

Now, if you see that dotted line across the bottom, I can't move my arrow to show.

There's a dotted line there.

And at the end of that dotted line is the boat.

So if I keep pressing back, eventually I'm going to get there.

In fact, I'm going to turn around, and I'm going to follow the boat.

So where are you boat? There you are.

So I'm going to go all the way to that boat now.

And if you want to speed up, then you can hold down shift while pressing W, and then that goes a little bit faster.

Like, so.

So I'm nearly there, and I'm going to fly past the boat, 'cause I want to have the boat in the shot.

So now, I'm going to move around back again, and hopefully I'll be able to see my boat, there it is.

And now I've got to start getting my shot ready.

Now, that shot actually doesn't look too bad, but what I want to do, is try and bear in mind that rule of thirds, and I want to have the boat or in the bottom left ish, and then the Island in the top, rightish.

So, I'm going to keep messing around, until I've figured out the right angle for this.

So, don't want to go that way.

It's not too bad.

Okay.

That's not too bad.

I think I'm going to stick with that.

So when you're happy with your camera angle, you just click your button, and then that fixes it.

So stops your arrow for moving around, with the angles now.

So, this is me setting my camera angle, and also I can set the focus.

Now, I need to find the camera icon over here.

And at the moment it's not there because the camera actually isn't selected.

Even though I'm looking at the camera lens, I'm looking through the lens, the camera isn't actually selected.

So if I select it up here, then you'll see now there's a little camera symbol down here where I can change the settings for the camera.

First of all, this things are the focus.

So if I want to change the focus to the boat, then I can do that.

And now you can see that the boat is much sharper now in the picture, because the focus has been placed on the boat, but I actually want the focus to be on the trunk.

So I'm going to just, oops, where's the trunk gone to that list just scroll down.

And then, I want it to be on the trunk of the Palm tree over there.

So, I'm going to keep it at that.

And also, there's things like the focal length that you can adjust.

So, I can press the toggle switches if I want to, I want to do it like that, or I can type in my own values.

And I think what I want to do actually with my movie, is I want to have it so it's slightly wider and it's going to come in.

So, that is me just adjusting the camera angle.

And then, here is how you can sort of use it using those key frames if you wanted to make you part of your animation as well, which is what I want to do.

So I'm going to start the frame zero, to frame one, I stop frame.

Now start saying frame zero, there we go.

We start at frame zero.

And I'm quite the way at the moment.

So, with my focal length, so if I wanted to be further away, then I press it down.

And if I wanted to be close to, then I press it up.

So I'm going to keep it at 40.

Now, just like we did with the lighting, we can set a key frame on this focal lens.

So I'm going to right click and insert a key frame there.

And then what I'm going to do, is when it gets to a hundred, so when it gets dark, I want it to stop zooming in.

In fact, I could do all the way, 260 really if I wanted to.

Now I'm going to keep it at a hundred.

And now I want to make it so that it zooms in.

Oops, not that way.

I want to zoom in, to there, like that.

Okay.

Just one, and I keep it 60.

And there we go.

And now, when I'm happy with that camera angle, I just right click and insert key frame.

And now, when I press play, I'll play when it gets back to the beginning.

You can see now that it starts to zoom in and then the spotlight goes round.

So that's just a way that we can use camera angles when we're recording our animations.

So, pause the video now, while you have a go at that yourself.

So setting up the camera angle, and adjusting the focus too.

And then if you want to do a little animation as well at the end, you can do.

And that was a bit of an explorer task, but if you want to have a go, then have a go.

So, pause the video while you get on with that.

Awesome.

So what are we going to do next? So, we're going to be looking at rendering now and how to actually make an image.

Modern games, make guesses about what something will look like.

Popular technologies are OpenGL and DirectX.

Ray tracing tries to simulate how light actually works by simulating how it bounces off objects.

Blender has Cycles, an industry standard ray tracer, and Evee, and OpenGL renderer.

And you can see the difference between the two of those there in those two images.

Ray tracing is a lot slower than OpenGL, but the outputs are better.

And you can see that from the picture there.

Pixer's Monsters University would take 495.

78 years to render on a desktop computer.

How did they render it so quickly? Do you think? Well, this is what they did.

Pixar split the film into individual frames, which were each rendered on thousands of different computers.

This is called a render farm, and it is an example of parallel processing.

Some frames might take days to render, even on the fastest computer.

It's pretty incredible, isn't it? So, we're going to look at rendering ourselves now in Blender.

We're going to render in Cycles and Evee, and we going to set up our film, a scene for rendering, and we're going to output our film too.

So let's have a look.

We're going to render our animations now, which means that we're going to make it so that it's possible to view that as a proper movie through our camera angle lens.

So we've got here, a view at the moment, and it's really important to just double check that you are really happy with your movie before you actually render it, because rendering does take quite a long time.

And you'll see when you actually do this yourself, 'cause it has to go through every single individual frame of this movie and render it and make sure that it's okay for the whole thing to build the whole animation.

So it takes a long time.

So, do make sure that it is exactly how you want it before you start rendering 'cause it is going to take quite a long time.

So, once you're happy, you need to make sure that the camera is selected, and what we're going to do is, we're going to go to the output properties now.

So, this is how the whole movie is going to be output.

So it becomes a movie file.

So I've clicked on that, I think I had already had it selected that's why it didn't look like it did anything there.

So, that's the output.

Well, now you've got different options.

So you've got dimension.

So if you and my default is this one, which is quite high resolution that is, so if you did want to try do it a little bit quicker, you could reduce that resolution a little bit.

But that's up to you.

And then, you've also got things like the frame rate.

So 24 frames per second, you could reduce that if you wanted to, or increase it.

Now, the other thing that you need to look at is the output.

And this is this section down here.

So, at the moment, the file format is set to PNG.

We don't want PNG, 'cause that will save every frame as a picture.

We want to output it as a video.

So we're going to go to FFmpeg video, and we're going to click on that one to make sure it's selected.

So, that now is going to output it as a video.

You can choose actually, if you want to, to have it in black and white.

So, that's something you might want to play around with once you've had a go at doing it in colour, you might want to have a look at it in black and white too.

And then, when you're happy with that, you can choose your output location.

So, there's a little folder icon there.

If you click on that, then it'll take you probably to where it has for me, which is just your local desk.

But if you want it in your documents folder, you can choose documents.

This is where I've been saving everything.

And then think of a sensible name for your movie, like, first movie or Palm tree Island, whatever you want it to be called.

And then you press accept and you know it's worked, it keeps popping me over to this other tab.

I'm just going to go back to my main tab, there we go.

Yeah, so, you know it's worked because, now you can see that whole file extension taking me to that, so, now whenever it's saved, it's always going to save it with that name in that location.

So it can overwrite.

And if you look there, you've got to override options so you can check it or uncheck it.

You do have to be careful if you want a different version of this, you can have to you a different name and say, it's something else.

So, I am ready to go.

So I'm going to go to render, and then I'm going to choose, render animation, like that.

And then it all start with this other window, that's there.

It'll start looking at frame zero, and it will start converting it.

So, if you look over here, it does actually, there we go.

This frame zero, and you start converted.

You can watch it happening on the other window, or, you can just stay on this window and you can see here, it's on frame four at the moment and it's rendering, so it's at 98% of that frame.

And then it's onto frame six and it at 98%.

And I'm not going to film all of this because it does take quite a long time to actually render the entire thing.

You've just skipped forward ahead in time a little bit while mine rendered.

And then, once it's finished, you'll be able to go to your documents folder, wherever you chose, your location was for your saved file.

And you'll be able to open it up, and find your documents, find the file.

So, it was called first movie.

So there we are.

And then you just double click on it and you can watch your movies.

So you'll be able to see this was my recording here, and you'll be able to view your movie.

And then you can actually, if you're allowed to, you can, and you've got permission, you can then share that movie, with other people, maybe your parents or carers or your grandparents or something so that you can see what you've been getting upto.

So that's quite a cool thing to be able to do once it's been rendered as that movie file.

Over to you then, you have a go at rendering your own movie file.

Make sure that you double check whether it's exactly how you want it to be.

And you could even reduce the frames.

I think at the moment, it's around 190 frames, but the video, even the main animation stops at 160.

So you might want to reduce it, but, do reduce it down to 160 frames before you render your animation.

That's a little tip for you if you want to have a go.

And then, when you're ready, you can just hit render, and you can see your movie as a full animation, which is a pretty cool thing to see.

So, stop the video here while you have a go of that and then come back when you're done.

Awesome.

So, that's everything for this lesson then.

So, we've learned an awful lot about Blender.

Haven't we? So, you can make your own objects now and your own, you know things.

You can move things around.

You can set up camera angles, you can do animation, you could do twining.

So I really think that you're ready to start thinking about your own project and your own animation that you'd like to do.

And that's what we are going to be doing in lesson six.

So between now, and when you start lesson six, it might be worth you thinking about what you might want to actually do in your own animation.

So, with your parent or carers, permission and supervision, you could perhaps, look on the internet for some ideas and do some searching there, or just watch some animations that you watching at time on the TV perhaps, and that will help give you some ideas and inspiration for what you want to do.

So, I'll see you again soon for lesson six.