How to Blender (IN0012)

Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Westermann, Dr. Dennis Bukenberger

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