Cloud and Rain Animation in Blender for Beginners
What you'll learn
- How to use a simple cube to create a cloud
- The only 2 modifiers you need to add to create entire clouds in seconds
- How to use displacement textures
- What is a volume and how to use it
- How to transform a cube into a volume
- The difference between non-realistic clouds and realistic clouds
- How to use displacement textures on volume shapes
- How to create big and small displacements at the same time
- How to create materials for your volume
- Why you shouldn’t put low volume density to your cloud
- How to use particle systems to make rain
- How to create raindrops for your animation
- How to make your particles look like perfect raindrops
- The only setting you need to change to make your rain fall straight down in a realistic way
- How to make the rain start directly from the cloud
- How to edit the starting point to make it the same size as your cloud
- How to make your raindrops invisible inside your cloud before falling down
- The only setting you need to change in your volume material to make it look natural
- How to create simple animated waves with physics
- How to make your raindrops interact with the water
- How to make your waves look smooth
- What physics properties to add to your rain and to the water
- How to make your particle system a dynamic object in your physics
- How to make your raindrops disappear after hitting the water
- How to adjust the scale of the waves proportionally to the size of your raindrops
- How to not make your waves bounce or not at the extremity of the water
- How to make bumpy grounds
- How to generate displacement textures for your ground
- How to create a hole to put the water in it
- One add-on you need to activate to generate multiple realistic landscapes
- How to create hills manually
- How to use particle systems hair setting to make grass
- A simple click to multiple the grass density without having more particles on your viewport
- How create patches of grass on your ground
- How to assign the grass only on one part of your ground
- How to use weight paint and vertex groups with particle systems
- Create realistic material for your ground
- How to have two different materials for the ground and the grass
- How to textures your clouds to make them look fluffy
- How to create a water material
- How to assign your water material to every raindrops
- How to make realistic skies
- How to put HDR images for your environment light
- Where to download high quality HDR images
- How to add HDRI for your scene
- Where to place your sun in your scene to make your clouds not look flat
- How to put HDRI + sun light and not have 2 different suns
- What are caustics and why you should activate them
- How to activate caustics on your different meshes
- How to make your water look more realistic with caustics
- How to activate caustics for your HDRI or sky
- How to make your sun create caustics for your water and raindrops
- What to put in the background of your scene
- How to make your background have a nice and natural color
- How to use HDRI to make backgrounds
- How to make your background transparent
- How to make your camera square or rectangular
- What focal length to add to your camera to view all your scene
- How to use depth of field to create a more realistic look
- How to make your background and foreground have a nice blur
- How to create a focus point for your camera
- Where to place the focus of your camera
- What render engine to use to have good looking clouds
- How to make your raindrops have a little motion blur in your animation
- How to render your animation without any particles problems
- The only step you do not want to skip to render your animation with perfect physics
- How to load all of your animation images before rendering
- How to export the video of your animation
- Should you export your animation in PNG or MP4
- What frame rate to put for your animation
- How to adjust the contrast and exposure of your scene before rendering
- How to drag and drop realistic 3D models in your scene with this free add-on
- How to generate infinite personalizable trees to add to your environment
- How to add texture to your trees with a simple drag and drop from a free library
- Learn how to create oceans
Requirements
- Have a computer less than 10 years old
- Have Blender installed on your computer
- Know basic navigation of Blender
Description
Particle systems, volume, physics simulations, and 3D animation.
This is a lot to learn when you’re just starting to learn 3D in Blender.
You can make a lot of cool things with these tools!
But first, how to use them correctly…
This is the difficult part and it can take a very long time to learn.
There are a lot of settings to understand to be able to make your animation work properly and not get weird bugs.
You can fully go in depth and follow 10-hour courses about these tools,
But, it’ll quickly become too confusing to understand for a beginner, you’ll get lost and never use them.
A simple way to start learning how to use these tools is by creating a cool project you can make in a few hours.
I created a project that I think is very good for beginners.
The steps are simple :
Use a volume to make a fluffy cloud
Use a particle system to create rain falling from the cloud
Use another particle system to create grass
Use physics to create dynamic water where the raindrops are going to create little waves
I made this 2-hour course about this project and you can follow it right now.
In this course, I teach you everything you need to know, step by step.
You’ll learn how to use volumetrics and displacements to make clouds,
Use different particle systems to make the rain and grass,
Use physics simulations to make the raindrops interact with the water,
Create the whole scene and render your 3D animation smoothly!
By the end of the course,
You’ll have learned all of these tools easily,
You’ll be able to reproduce the animation and make your own new versions of it.
See you,
Nicholas
Who this course is for:
- Beginners in 3D who want to learn to create simple animations
- Beginners in 3D who want to learn physics simulations
- Beginner in 3D who want to improve by creating a full project
Instructor
- 3.8 Instructor Rating
- 12 Reviews
- 68 Students
- 10 Courses
Hi, my name is Nicholas and I help artists, designers, students and others to learn 3D modeling of human-sized objects and interiors in Blender in order to create visuals, models or 3D prints.
I like to share my passion for 3D creation in my courses, videos on YouTube and Instagram.
I make sure that all of my courses are easy to follow and that the methods used go straight to the point, I don't want my students to be bored... I want them to be able to create their own 3D projects quickly with no worries.