UCU Painter for Blender
6. March 2026

Hand-painting textures in Blender with UCU Paint

6. March 2026 By admin

Especially when texturing stylized NPR assets for games or animations, the comfortable painting of textures for 3D objects is necessary. For this purpose, several commercial applications such as Substance Painter, 3DCoat or InstaMAT are available externally from Blender.

However, for my own workflow for animations and games, I have been using a free Blender Extension called “UCU-Paint by ucupumar” for some time.

This amazing add-on allows me to work directly in Blender. In the background, this extension creates a standard node-based Blender shading tree and can even work with my own shaders or external textures for a PBR workflow.

This extension can be easily installed in Blender under „Preference → Get Extensions“.

https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/ucupaint/?utm_source=blender-4.5.7-lts

Here are some of the features:

  • Stack images, vertex attributes, generated textures, or many other types into layers and masks.
  • All Ucupaint nodes are contained inside a single node group and can be connected to any other nodes.
  • Channels in Ucupaint are flexible, add or remove them based on your needs.
  • You can add modifiers like a color ramp or math operation for quick adjustments.
  • Works well with multiple objects using the same material.
  • Decal support
  • Ability to load images from asset browser or file browser
  • UDIM is detected automatically based on UV islands.
  • Bake final channel images and easily arrange them so most exporters can read them.
  • Dedicated alpha channel for flexible transparency workflow
  • Bake AO, multires, other object’s normal, and more.
  • You can add drivers or keyframes to most Ucupaint inputs.
  • Support realtime displacement and even vector displacement map.
  • Preview mode to check your layers or channel colors.
  • Pack baked channel results into a single image using a custom bake target (useful for creating ORM texture or DirectX normal).
  • And so much more.

If you want to learn more about the features and workflows:

https://www.youtube.com/@ucupumar/videos

Version 2.4.5 was released yesterday, which, in addition to some bug fixes, now offers the option to paint custom Normals directly. A frequently used technique, especially for anime-styled characters.

Have fun painting in Blender

Helge

Image from „Horripilant - A game by Pas Game“
5. March 2026

Godot Engine 4.7 Dev 2

5. March 2026 By admin

Only recently, at the end of January 2026, the new stable version Godot 4.6 was released.

With this release and the first bugfix patch shortly afterwards in mid-February, the development of Godot 4.7 is now progressing in great strides.

Today the second Godot 4.7 Dev2 was released.

So if you want to look into the future and directly dive into some new features, you can find builds for the various platforms here:

👉 https://godotengine.org/download/archive/4.7-dev2/

Some of the highlights so far:

  • Add support for copy/paste of section/category properties
  • Use monospaced font for code names in UI
  • Collapse groups in animation track editor
  • Support HDR output for Apple
  • Add a scene painter tool for 2D
  • Bult-in VirtualJoystick for mobile games (Joypad controls)
  • Drawable Textures
  • Enable Path3D collider snapping
  • and much more

Image from „Horripilant – A game by Pas Game“

Road to Vostok - Game made with Godot Engine
1. February 2026

Road to Vostok – Early Access Trailer is out!

1. February 2026 By admin

In July 2024, I first wrote about the game “Road to Vostok,” which was in development at the time, on my Patreon page.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/godot-engine-to-107308034?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

What’s special about this game for me isn’t necessarily the survival thriller genre, but rather its origins as a Unity game and its subsequent transition to the Godot Engine. The developer log, which is very well documented, demonstrates that even projects of this size can be handled by the free and open-source Godot engine.

Starting in April 2007, this game will be available as Early Access on Steam (a demo for Windows is already available there):

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1963610/Road_to_Vostok/

Road to Vostok is a hardcore single-player survival game set in a post-apocalyptic border zone between Finland and Russia. Survive, loot, plan, and prepare to cross the border into Vostok, a permadeath zone where one mistake can end it all.

Congratulations to the developers!

Here’s the link to the trailer: https://youtu.be/OTFgTRsz43Q?si=UT_cw2eYJytTQXg6

Projects like this motivate me to create my own worlds in Godot, in 2d or 3d. For beginners and advanced programmers.

If you’d like to learn more about Godot and Game Development, you can find my German-language online courses here: https://visualisierungs-akademie.ch/

I offer also English-language courses through the pixeltrain Academy: https://www.pixeltrain.net/pixeltrains-academy/

I look forward to seeing you there!

Helge

Material Maker 1.5
19. January 2026

Material Maker 1.5 has been released

19. January 2026 By admin

The new release of Material Maker 1.5 has been released and is available for download:

👉 https://rodzilla.itch.io/material-maker/devlog/1312764/material-maker-15

Anyone looking for a free open-source solution for procedurally creating materials, textures, sprite sheets, etc. should definitely check out Material Maker.

More info like that on my Patreon:
👉 https://kurzlinks.de/3p4w

Have fun!

Helge

9. January 2026

Let’s talk about 2026

9. January 2026 By admin

Hi folks,
Today is my first work day in the new year, so it’s time to write my traditional years review on my (free) Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/lets-talk-about-147466572?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

I wish you all a healthy, successful and creative year 2026.
The world needs more real (indie) artists and art than ever.

Ci vediamo, Helge Maus

P.S. For my upcoming Blender and Godot trainings, please look at pixeltrain Academy | Blender for Production | Godot Game Development for Indies

Krita 5.2.14 was released!
11. December 2025

Krita 5.2.14 release!

11. December 2025 By admin

Good news for all you digital painters: Krita 5.2.14 has been released.

Krita is for me the best digital painting application on the desktop and it’s free and open-source! I use if for making game assets, drafts and also animated characters for games.

This version is (almost) entirely a bug fix release and concludes the Krita 5.2 series.
The focus now shifts towards Krita versions 5.3 and 6.0 in the next year 🙂

As mentioned, this version primarily focuses on bug fixes, but the color picker has also been improved. Nice!

More information can be found here:
https://krita.org/en/posts/2025/krita-5.2.14-released/

Have fun!

Helge

P.S. You can also read me Post on my (free) Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/krita-5-2-14-145607603?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Helge Maus - Senior Trainer & Mentor 3d | animation | game art | game dev
5. December 2025

Blender Modeling Course in December 2025

5. December 2025 By admin

The year is slowly coming to an end, and with it, our Blender training calendar for this year.

My last Blender Modeling course (2 days) in collaboration with Visualisierungs-Akademie Schweiz will take place online on December 18th and 19th. This is a german course.

Here’s the link to the course:
👉 https://visualisierungs-akademie.ch/de/kurs/blender-modelingkurs/ff1b0321-e948-41c1-bca6-1c23651e75ea

If you’d like to learn Blender or Godot online in English, check out the pixeltrain Academy website:
👉 https://www.pixeltrain.net/pixeltrains-academy/

Have a amazing weekend! 🙂

Helge

BlackmagicDesign Fusion Tutorials by Helge Maus / pixeltrain
1. December 2025

Reworking my DaVinci Resolve & Fusion tutorials collection

1. December 2025 By admin

Hi folks,
At the moment I’m reworking the DaVinci Resolve & Fusion tutorials collection on my pixeltrain Patreon. So you now can watch all my tutorials there without YouTube’s advertising bombardment.

https://www.patreon.com/collection/533543

The introductory tutorials for BlackmagicDesign Fusion and Fusion in BlackmagicDesign DaVinci Resolve are now relinked and therefore available to all Patreons.

This software package is simply fantastic for anyone who wants to edit videos, composite animations and renderings, and create HUDs. I hope you enjoy it.

Let me know if you’d like to delve deeper into BlackmagicDesign Fusion.
Then we can plan more for the future.

Cheers,
Helge

19. November 2025

Blender 5.0 has arrived!

19. November 2025 By admin

A new era for Blender has begun – Blender 5.0 is a major step forward.

Many new features are included in this version, but unfortunately, this also means that many artists with older hardware will now have to remain on Blender 4.5 LTS. Some platforms and hardware configurations are no longer supported! I will be taking this into account in my training courses.

Many areas have undergone a massive overhaul:
ACES Colorspace, color management in general, adaptive subdivision, multi-resolution baking, shader nodes improvements, NanoVDB, Compositor improvments, VSE, and of course, numerous improvements to Geometry Nodes.
I love specially the Drag & Drop compositor setups and the ability to save out node-setups for the use in other files.

Again the Blender team made a wonderful overview page for all the features:
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/5-0/

Here’s the usual feature overview as a video, this time over 50 minutes long:
https://youtu.be/4wEqD-jK0DU?si=Ah2WbuMHIp2OixY2

The Story Tools have also been integrated now:
https://youtu.be/4wEqD-jK0DU?si=Ah2WbuMHIp2OixY2

Here is also a nice overview for the Grease Pencil features:
https://youtu.be/WYZY4n3fRM0?si=mLoz83gI6VMXA-6I

And here for the Blender 5.0 Animations & Rigging updates:
https://youtu.be/s3kcPME65ic?si=SCA6NiqO_3-ZPb_0

Overall, a very large update. I’m curious to see how these features are received in practice by the community.

17. November 2025

Godot Engine 2025 Showreel

17. November 2025 By admin

Dear followers,

As you may have noticed, I’m currently very involved in various projects.
However, things have calmed down a bit now, and I have time to write content for you again.

Today, I’d like to draw your attention to the new Godot Engine Reel 2025.

Comparing this collection of projects with those of previous years, two trends are becoming apparent:

  • In addition to the very strong 2D games for which Godot is traditionally used, more and more 3D games are now appearing. This is a fantastic development, which is of course also thanks to the ever-improving 3D features of Godot 4.X.
  • Furthermore, the quality of the projects shown is constantly increasing. It’s clear that the Godot Engine is becoming more and more established, and more and more talented teams are relying on this open-source engine.

Enjoy!

Helge Maus

P.S. You can also follow my Post on my (free) Pareon:
https://www.patreon.com/c/pixeltrain3d