SOFTWARE: BLENDER | AFTER EFFECTS
Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills
Mike Griggs Mike Griggs is a digital content creator with over two decades of experience creating VFX and CGI for a wide range of clients. www.creativebloke.com
Paul Hatton After graduating with a first-class computer science degree, Paul Hatton has spent nearly two decades working within the 3D visualisation industry.
Glen Southern Glen runs SouthernGFX, a small Cheshire-based studio specialising in character and creature design. He is a Wacom ambassador, VR Artist, and accredited ZBrush instructor.youtube.com/c/SouthernGFX/videos
Pietro Chiovaro Pietro is a freelance 3D artist and YouTuber. An expert in the creation of game assets and environments, he shares many of his creations on his channel. www.pietrochiovaro.com
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Blender is continuing to turn heads in the content creation community with its increasing ability to match or even surpass the features of paid content creation apps. And with version 4.0 now available, more and more professional artists and studios are using Blender to augment, or in some cases replace, their existing paid tools.
However, the issue with switching over to open-source software such as Blender is that it may not adhere to the traditional content creation workflows in its out-ofthe-box state. For example, while some artists render everything in Blender and will happily output a JPEG file, for other projects, especially those that will use Blender renders with content created in different applications, having the ability to output a range of render passes for use in compositing software is essential.
In its standard configuration, Blender has an easy way of selec ting the render passes you require within the View Layer attributes palette, but outputting them is a very different issue. In the Compositing tab, which is the best way to manage your outputs clearly, the default setup is to use a single render output, meaning adding other options seems like a tedious task of sorting more outputs.
That’s where Exr Auto-Pass Saver can ride in and save the day. This powerful plugin provides a one-click solution to creating a render output that delivers all the passes needed. As well as creating an Output node, with a dialogue to where the renders will be saved, Exr Auto-Pass Saver also outputs when the Render Image tools are used, which is a better workflow than the stock option in Blender that uses the Render Animation for multioutput options, that’s counterintuitive for new artists to Blender who are only using it for creating stills.
