Blender

I’ve been trying to use Blender since what feels like the dawn of time, but its notoriously opinionated user interface clearly hasn’t stuck, and every time I go back to it I find myself having to re-learn the basics.

Regardless, I go back to it every year or so.

Resources

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Models	2020	CC0 Public Domain models	an amazing collection of free to use models
Plugins	2020	BlenderGIS	OpenStreetMap plugin for importing textures and 3D terrain meshes
	2021	growth plugin	a progressive path animation plugin for textures
	2022	the archimesh plugin	A must for doing indoor/home layout scenes
	2022	CAD Sketcher	A plugin for accurate CAD drawings
	2024	BlenderBIM	An OpenBIM plugin
Tools	2018	Armory3D	A 3D game engine based on Blender
	2020	Sofware OpenGL	For Windows. Essential if you want to run Blender via RDP
		SpaceshipGenerator	a procedural spaceship generator
		CAD Transform add-on	a genius free add-on with multiple snapping options
	2022	sonic-sound-picture	a music visualizer that takes Blender files as templates

Setting Blender to Millimeters

This is essential if you want to do precision modeling for 3D printing:

Right pane, Scene Properties, Units - Metric
Right pane, Scene Properties, Unit Scale - 0.001
Right pane, Scene Properties > Length - Millimeters
Top right toolbar, Overlays (Viewport Overlays), Scale - 0.001
Pull the View Tab, End - 100000 mm
Click the camera, Right Pane, Camera Settings, End - 100000 mm

…then go and save preferences (don’t forget to set Emulate numpad in input settings)

Notes on network rendering

The canonical way to do network rendering out-of-the box in 2.76–2.79 was to:

Remove objects and lighting from the default scene
Enable the netrender addon in User Preferences...
Select it from the top-level menu
Set mode to Master and set the master parameters in the side panel
Save the file as master.blend
Set mode to Slave and set the slave parameters in the side panel
Save the file as slave.blend

After copying the .blend files to the relevant machines, they should be invoked as such:

# master
blender --background master.blend --addons netrender -a -nojoystick -noaudio

# slaves
blender --background slave.blend --addons netrender -a -nojoystick -noaudio

This is, of course, ridiculous since it bakes the IP address and port of the master into the .blend file, but might be fixable by manipulating the file itself.

Caveats:

The 2.76b version that ships with Ubuntu Xenial (16.04 LTS) armhf doesn’t include the netrender add-on for some reason. 2.79 is slated to ship with Bionic (18.04 LTS) armhf, and appears to include the add-on.

Add-Ons

Stuff I typically turn on:

CAD Sketcher
3D-Print Toolbox
Modifier Tools
Loop Tools
Precision Drawing Tools

Tao of Mac