How to Blender (IN0012)
Time, Place: | Monday, Sept. 29., 2025 through Thursday, Oct. 02., 2025 Daily from 8:00 - 17:00 hr Room: 02.13.008 |
Details: | This is a block-course with mandatory attendance. |
Prerequisites: | Interest in computer graphics or visualization |
Registration: | Please register via the matching system |
Contact: | dennis.bukenberger(at)tum.de |
Outline
This is a 3-day block course designed for Bachelor and Master students in Computer Science.
It focuses on practical, hands-on experience with Blender - a powerful 3D modeling and animation tool.
Each day runs from 08:00 to 17:00, with a lunch break from 12:00 to 13:00.
The course blends theory, live demonstrations, and practical exercises.
Practical exercises can be done on the available workstations or you can bring your own laptop (at your own risk, with the latest Blender version installed and if you are familiar with your hardware setup & configuration).
The preliminary schedule is outlined in the following (subject to changes).
🧩 Day 1: Blender Fundamentals & Modeling
🧠 Getting comfortable with Blender, understand core 3D concepts and learn basic modeling.
Time | Topic | Content |
08:00–08:30 | 🎓 Course Introduction | Blender’s role in CG/3D pipelines, real-world applications (film, games, VFX), goals for the course |
08:30–09:30 | 🔍 Blender UI & Navigation | Interface overview, workspaces, view navigation, selection, transform tools, object vs. edit mode |
09:30–10:30 | 📐 3D Basics & Meshes | Mesh primitives, vertices/edges/faces, modifiers,object hierarchy |
10:30–12:00 | 🛠 Practical: Simple Modeling | Create a basic scene (e.g., stylized house or robot), use loop cuts, extrude, inset, merge tools |
13:00–14:00 | 💡 Materials & Shading Basics | Understanding shaders, the Shader Editor, Principled BSDF, basic lighting setup |
14:00–15:00 | 👪 Scene Hierarchies & Collections | Parenting, constraints, linking objects, outliner view |
15:00–17:00 | 🛠 Practical: Add Materials & Hierarchy | Apply basic materials to objects, organize a small scene using collections and parent-child hierarchies |
🎨 Day 2: Texturing, Lighting & Animation
🧠 The artistic side: make things look nice with textures, light and animation.
Time | Topic | Content |
08:00–09:00 | ✏ UV Mapping & Texture Painting | Unwrapping meshes, applying image textures, texture painting overview |
09:00–10:30 | 💡 Lighting & Cameras | Point/spot/sun/area lights, three-point lighting, depth of field, camera setup |
10:30–12:00 | 🛠 Practical: Lit & Textured Scene | Texture your previous day’s model, set up camera angles and lighting for a nice render |
13:00–14:00 | 🎞 Keyframe Animation Basics | Timeline, Dope Sheet, Graph Editor, inserting keyframes, animating transforms |
14:00–15:00 | 🎥 Object & Camera Animation | Animate a bouncing ball or camera flythrough, curve-based paths |
15:00–17:00 | 🛠 Practical: Animate Your Scene | Add simple animations (e.g., door opening, object spinning, camera orbit), prepare a short animation clip |
🏭 Day 3: Geometry Nodes & Rendering
🧠 Understand procedural geometry and node-based systems and advanced rendering methods.
Time | Topic | Content |
08:00–09:30 | 🧱 Geometry Nodes Intro | Overview of procedural modeling, node editor basics, data flow concepts |
09:30–10:30 | 🕸 Procedural Modeling Examples | Distribute objects on surfaces, random transforms, parametric models |
10:30–12:00 | 🛠 Practical: Procedural Setup | Create a basic procedural asset like a scattering system or parametric fence |
13:00–14:00 | 🖼 Final Rendering & Output | Render settings, Eevee vs Cycles, output formats, baking, compositing basics |
14:00–15:00 | 🛠 Project Completion | Students finalize their models, animations, or geometry nodes setups |
16:00–17:00 | 🎉 Mini Showcase & Q&A | Students present a short animation or scene render, open discussion, feedback, wrap-up |