Helge Maus 2024
9. January 2024

Let’s talk about 2024

9. January 2024 By admin

Dear Followers,

Today is officially my second day at work and I would therefore like to wish you all a healthy, successful and happy year 2024. I wish you many creative thoughts and projects.

I would also like to thank my dear Patreons, for their support and loyalty. Their constant support means a lot to me and it motivates me to stay on track with my vision:

I want to give indies an opportunity to learn and develop creatively.
I want artists to be able to make a living from their creativity, no matter where they live and without having to sell themselves, their lives and their families into the big machine of the 3D, VFX and games industry.

I would therefore like to present to you a plan for the first half of 2024.

In addition to further publications about Blender, free tutorials and technical articles, I would also like to spend more time with you as a community. I hope that the pixeltrain Discord Server can become a platform for this, but I’m also looking for other ideas.

The pixeltrain Academy is developing, but I would like to find other platforms for mutual exchange.

For example, live events like the View Conference in Turin, which kindly gives me the opportunity every year to talk about open-source tools like Blender and Godot and to offer training sessions for indies. If you have any further ideas on this, I would be happy to talk about them.

Here are the two big topic areas I want to focus on this year:

Blender for Production

Blender is now widespread in the 3D, animation, VFX and games industries and is already widely accepted. Therefore, having in-depth Blender production knowledge can now be a ticket to a professional career entry.

But Blender is also the all-round solution for artists who work on indie projects, set up indie studios or simply work on their private projects.

I would like to help here and provide suitable training material.

Godot Game Development for Indies

The second big area I want to focus on is game design and development with Godot. Again, it is FOSS – Free Open Source software. For the same reasons I chose Blender.

Godot is available to everyone free of charge, but is also open source. Therefore, there are no license changes, restrictions or anything similar to worry about. And we saw a lot of this in the games sector last year. It has been shown that only „free of charge“ can be very dangerous, Unity, Unreal and others have shown this clearly this year and have threatened the existence of many projects in development and the artists behind them.

Godot is already a capable 2D and 3D (more and more) game engine with a constant and community-driven development cycle.

Godot has its own, highly effective scripting language with GD Script, which is also easy to learn for beginners. Anyone who comes from professional game development, for example from Unity, can also work in C#. Many free add-ons (plugins) extend Godot, similar to what we know from Blender.

The created games or applications can be exported for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and, with the help of third-party providers, also on consoles such as XBOX, Playstation and Nintendo Switch.

Game design and development is the consistent development of telling stories and building new user experiences. In addition to the 2D and 3D environment, audio and interactivity give artists further opportunities for expression.

I am currently in the process of transferring, adapting and expanding my long-standing Unity training concepts to Godot. Therefore, I hope that I will soon be able to present you new tutorials, publications and training courses on Godot.

In addition to these projects, I continue to train Blender in company training, one-to-ones and for some training providers in order to be able to pay my bills.

I look forward to your feedback and am excited to see what this new year brings us.

Thank you and best regards

Helge

P.S. If you want to support me and get ad-free tutorials, discount vouchers and more, please consider to become a Patreon. Thanks 🙂

Helge Maus / pixeltrain talking about Blender for Production at the View Conference
22. December 2023

Interview about the State of Blender and How to Learn It

22. December 2023 By admin

Some time ago I had the pleasure to talk to Kirill (Kyrylo) Tokarev from 80.lv about the State of Blender in the industry, how to learn it and my personal journey into the 3d & vfx industry:

https://80.lv/articles/helge-maus-on-the-state-of-blender-and-how-to-learn-it/

Hope you like it and find some inspiration in it!

Helge

P.S. You can also follow me on my (free) Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/interview-about-95061738?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Godot Game Engine - Cooperation with Google and The Forge
15. December 2023

Godot Game Engine – Cooperation with Google and The Forge

15. December 2023 By admin

Yesterday a new partnership between Google, The Forge and the Godot Foundation was announced on the Godot Blog. The goal is to optimize and expand Godot’s mobile engine for Vulkan-enabled devices, i.e. Android devices. However, changes and enhancements in this area will also be useful for other mobile devices as the Godot code will be optimized.

From the announcement and the social media posts from Godot Foundation Members you can read that Goole Engineering and the developers at The Forge are optimizing the code base in cooperation with Godot contributors.

I’m very happy about that, because this principle has also worked very well at the development of Blender, for example when you see the collaboration with Apple (Metal Backend), AMD, Intel or NVIDEA.

This commitment makes the open-source product better and more valuable for all users.

So, great news in my opinion 🙂

Helge

More information here:
https://godotengine.org/article/collaboration-with-google-forge-2023/

Link to my (free) Patron article:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/godot-game-with-94709607?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

1. December 2023

Godot 4.2 released!

1. December 2023 By admin

Godot is an open-source general purpose game engine aiming at helping you develop both 2D and 3D games. It’s powerful, fast, light and easy to learn.

The new version Godot 4.2 has been available since yesterday after an active beta phase.

This update is important because the Godot 4.x branch was a very big step towards modernization, performance and feature expansion. Many workflows between Godot 3.x and Godot 4.x were deliberately broken in order to prepare Godot for the future and to further advance it as an alternative to commercial game engines.

With this very large shift, there were of course some problems/bugs to be fixed, but also features to be completed. This path is not yet complete with this update, but game engines never are. That’s why the quick and regular updates of the version 4 branch are so important. The team now has a constant update cycle and quick response to critical bugs.

But be careful, this time too there were some critical and breaking changes between 4.1 and 4.2! Therefore, test existing projects intensively before upgrading them!

I have already done small test projects with Godot 4.2 in the beta phase and I am becoming more and more enthusiastic about Godot.

For me, Godot is now the complete Unity replacement for the things that I like to implement:
Be it 2D micro games, interactive 3D scenes from Blender and perhaps in the future a complete 3D experience of a stylized level. Let’s see.

Here is the official announcement:
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-4-2-arrives-in-style/

Download:
https://godotengine.org/download

If you have any questions or experiences to share, please let me know.

Helge

P.S. If you want to can also follow these articles me on my (free) Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/godot-4-2-93878014?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Blender Shortfilm "Supertramp" by Fabrizio Gammardella
29. November 2023

Blender Shortfilm “SUPERTRAMP”

29. November 2023 By admin

Some time ago I’ve written about the Shortfilm “Supertramp” by Fabrizio Gammardella. It was made in Blender by a small team of talented artists. At the moment there is the opportunity to watch it in the free section of the Festival del Cinema di Salerno.

https://show.festivaldelcinema.it/animazione/supertramp/

The film is heartbreaking on one side, but also a wonderful experience to watch. The animation of the dog and the communication without words is done quit well in my opinion.

You find the article about the Making-of here on my free Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/blender-92163540?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Blender is such an amazing tool for story telling. If you want to learn more about Blender in Production, please visit my Blender trainings website www.pixeltrain.net or reach out directly to me info [at] pixeltrain.net .

Have fun,

Helge

pixeltrain Blender Academy 2024
16. November 2023

pixeltrain – Blender Academy 2024

16. November 2023 By admin

🔥 pixeltrain Blender Academy 2024 🔥 dates are fixed now!

Would you like to learn Blender in a well-founded and practice-oriented way?
Without watching hundreds of redundant and shallow tutorials?

Learn online, with live teaching sessions, in small groups and with personal mentoring from Senior 3D & VFX trainer Helge Maus.

Through our modular system, you can build your own curriculum to suit your previous knowledge, pace and goals.

The next Blender Fundamentals module starts on January 19th 2024, the Blender Shading & Rendering module on January 26th and Blender Animationsystem on January 31th.

You can find more information here:

👉 http://www.pixeltrain.net/pixeltrains-academy/

For questions and registrations, I am available directly at info@pixeltrain.net .

Have fun!

#b3d #blender #blender3d #blenderforproduction #3d #vfx #animation #training #schulung #course #helgemaus #pixeltrain #pixeltrainacademy

MACHIN3tools_1.6.0
15. November 2023

Blender for production tools – Free Machin3tools Add-on

15. November 2023 By admin

Today I would like to introduce you to a free Blender add-on that I constantly use in my daily work with Blender: Machin3Tools.

This add-on is a detailed and very complex collection of functions and tools that complement but also change Blender’s functionality.
The nice thing about this add-on is that you can choose which functions are useful for your own workflow in the preferences.

In my case I only use some of the pie menus and only some of the additional tools. All keyboard shortcuts and many of the functions are customizable.
Little by little you learn what you really use in practice and which functions are more of a hindrance.
You can then deactivate them.

Here’s a warning to beginners in Blender:
Machin3tools changes native Blender’s functions and behavior in some chases.

Therefore, you should first have a good overview of Blender’s behavior before digging in too deeply.
I’ve experienced in training sessions that beginners tend to lose track of why their blender behaves differently than expected 😉

What I love about Machin3Tools is the quick access to common functions via Pie Menu and so many timesaving operations.

For example, changing component modes, changing orbit functions or then quickly creating cameras with SmartCamera. Or quickly setting and changing pivot points of objects and aligning elements.

You can find Machin3tools under this link on Gumroad:

https://machin3.gumroad.com/l/MACHIN3tools

Oh, yes, there is also the extended “Deux Ex” variant. This has some additional functions.
However, you don’t need this at the beginning…

If you have any question about that, please let me know.

Have fun!

Helge


I’ve written about that on my (free) Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-blender-add-92931047?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Blender Flip Fluids Add-on
9. November 2023

Blender for Production tools – Flip Fluids Add-on for Blender

9. November 2023 By admin

Today I would like to introduce you to one of my frequently used tools from the “Blender for Production” series: Blender Flip Fluids Add-on .

Flip Fluids is a paid add-on that seems quite expensive at around $75 for a Blender add-on.
So a little background information about this add-on.

Trailer

Blender itself has a fluid engine called Mantaflow. Mantaflow is able to simulate liquids, fire, smoke and the like.

Mantaflow’s feature set is actually quite broad. Unfortunately, there is currently no maintainer for this project, meaning bugs and limitations cannot be fixed. Therefore, there are many things in Mantaflow that are very annoying in production and occasionally disrupt the workflow.

This is exactly where Flip Fluids scores for Blender.

This add-on specializes in liquids. If necessary, these can also be highly viscous, e.g. honey, chocolate, etc.

The add-on is very fast and has been actively maintained by the manufacturer for many years. This means that bug fixes and feature updates appear very frequently. Completely free for owners. Therefore, anyone who needs fluids in their 3D scenes should take a look at this add-on. I am very satisfied with that!

I’ve written a short article about that on my (free) Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/blender-for-flip-92578445?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

If you have any Blender needs as training or mentorship, please contact me:
http://www.pixeltrain.net

Have fun!

Helge

25. October 2023

pixeltrain’s Academy 2023

25. October 2023 By admin

Would you like to learn Blender in a well-founded and practice-oriented way?

Without watching hundreds of redundant and shallow tutorials?

Then our pixeltrain Academy 2023 is just right for you.

Learn online, with live teaching session, in small groups and with personal mentoring from Helge Maus.

Through our modular system, you can build your own curriculum to suit your previous knowledge, pace and goals.

The next Blender Fundamentals module starts on November 3rd, the Blender Shading & Rendering module on November 9th and Blender Animationsystem on November 18th.

You can find more information here:

👉 https://www.pixeltrain.net/pixeltrains-academy/

For questions and registrations, I am available directly at info@pixeltrain.net .

Have fun!

4. October 2023

Godot 4.1.2 – New Maintenance update

4. October 2023 By admin

Due to the new status that Godot has now acquired as a free open source 2D & 3D game engine for many newcomers, I would like to give you more news and information about this great project on my Patreon and blog.

As some of you have read here in the past, I discovered Godot some time ago and have spent a lot of time there since then. The Godot project reminds me a lot of Blender a few years ago, so I’m happy that it’s getting so much more attention now.

After starting with it, I found myself opening Unity no more …

Here is the link to the article with an initial overview:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/84258291

I hope that I will have time in the future to make a short introduction for you.

But now the current news,

Helge

Godot 4.1 is celebrating its 3 month anniversary this week, and that means Godot 4.2 is entering the beta testing phase shortly after. This development cycle has been packed with bugfixes and other improvements. As always, we take the safest of these contributions and we compile them into a patch release for the current stable version of the engine.

Such is the case of Godot 4.1.2, which is officially available starting today! Engine contributors provided fixes for almost every area of the engine.

More information:

https://godotengine.org/article/maintenance-release-godot-4-1-2/