Blender Lab

Step 1: Downloading and installing Blender

Minimum system requirements for Windows:

• OS: Windows 8.1 (64-bit)
• CPU: 4 cores with SSE 4.2 support
• RAM: 8 GB
• GPU: 2 GB VRAM with OpenGL 4.3

Minimum system requirements for macOS:

• OS: macOS 11.2 (Big Sur)
• CPU: Apple Silicon or Intel
• RAM: 8 GB
• GPU: GPU with Metal 2.2

Minimum system requirements for Linux:

• OS: Distribution with glibc 2.28 or newer (64-bit)
• CPU: 4 cores with SSE 4.2 support
• RAM: 8 GB
• GPU: 2 GB VRAM with OpenGL 4.3

You can download Blender here from its official website or find the software on Steam.

After completing the installation, you can run the software.

Step 2: Getting familiar with the environment

After opening the software, your screen should look like this.

At first glance, the number of options may seem overwhelming. However, realize that you won't use everything. Blender is a powerful tool that can handle many tasks. If you focus only on asset creation, you won't need the entire software.

For camera movement, you can use the panel in the top right corner of the screen.

It consists of 5 elements:

• 3D manipulation widget (also known as Gizmo): allows orbital movement
• Zoom: zooms in and out of the view
• Hand: pans the display
• Toggle camera: shows camera view

• Grid projection: switches view between perspective and orthographic mode

For camera control, you can also use keyboard shortcuts:

• MMB (middle mouse button): orbital rotation of view
• Mouse wheel (Scroll): zoom in and out in fixed steps
• CTRL + MMB: smooth zoom in and out
• SHIFT + MMB: pans the display
• Numpad 0: camera view
• Numpad "." (dot): zoom to selected object (useful for setting ideal distance for rotation)

Other useful keyboard shortcuts:

• SHIFT + A: add object or node
• G: move selected object/objects, edges, points, etc.
• S: scale selected object/objects, edges, points, etc.
• R: rotate selected object/objects...
• (G,S,R) then X/Y/Z: corresponding operation will be performed on given axis
• SHIFT + D: duplicate selected object/objects...
• H: hide selected object/objects...
• ALT + H: unhide all objects
• TAB: switch between edit and object mode
• A: select all objects in object mode, points in edit mode
• E: extrusion (pushing out) of vertices
• N: show object properties
• T: show/hide left tool panel
• CTRL + P: join objects into one - set parent
• CTRL + B: bevel edges
• CTRL + R: cut object

The Blender environment consists of parts called regions.

The areas we will use most frequently are highlighted in the image above.

1. Main viewport (Green): This is the most prominent part of the editor, you will spend most of your time in Blender in this area.
2. Tool panel (Blue): Contains a set of tools for interacting with objects.
3. Last operation panel (Pink): This area appears only after adding an object and disappears after deselecting it. It serves for "final" adjustments (e.g., adding vertices).
4. Scene elements (Red): Displays the hierarchy of objects located in the scene.
5. Properties section (Orange): Contains various settings related to the selected object, such as color, modifiers, and others.

Step 3: Creating assets! (low poly snowflake)

In this tutorial, we will show how to create a snowflake. Since there will be many of these flakes in the scene, this flake will be low-detail.

Our flake will be a simple "+" symbol, because it will be used in large numbers and should be computationally undemanding.

If we want to edit an object, we must select it and enter edit mode, as seen in the image, or with the "TAB" button.

Then we select 4 points (vertices) on the cube and extrude them with the "E" button. We can select points by holding the "SHIFT" button and manually selecting points or by holding the left button and moving the mouse.

Switching to "Wireframe" view makes it easier to work with point selection.

We can choose any length for each extruded shape, but each side should have the same value for the object to be symmetrical. We perform these operations in the object properties. If this window is missing, it can be displayed with the keyboard shortcut "N".

After creating the object, we can rename it in the scene elements. Before exporting, we select the object in object mode and then export the object as an FBX (from Filmbox) file. (.obj, .gltf and .glb will also work)

Step 4: Creating assets! (More detailed snowflake)

In this tutorial, we will show how to create a snowflake. This flake will be used near the camera, or player, which means it will be visible up close. There will be fewer flakes, so these can be more detailed.

With the keyboard shortcut "SHIFT + A" we add a new object to the scene, now we will want to work with a cylinder.

After creating the object, this window will open:

In this panel, we will adjust the cylinder edges to 6.

Now we will start making edit changes to the object. Again, it is necessary to enter edit mode for these modifications. In it, we will now choose the option to select faces instead of points, this will allow us to select object shapes directly instead of manually selecting points.

Using your mouse while holding "SHIFT" we will select the entire circumference of the cylinder.

Whether you chose manual selection or automatic circumference selection, you should have the entire circumference selected. Now by pressing "ALT + E" a window with possible extrusion methods will open. We will choose the "Extrude individual faces" option. After choosing the option, we can extrude.

While we are extruding walls from the object, we can notice in the top left corner the length of how long the extruded segment is. For these purposes, try to extrude walls "2m" long.

After extrusion, the object should look something like this.

If you completed the task, you should get the following shape.

At this stage, it doesn't really represent a flake, we need to give it some "depth". We will add branches to the flake that will give it shape. At this point "ALT + LMB" won't help us, we need to select all shapes manually. By holding "SHIFT" we select all shapes in the circumference and then extrude them in the same way using "Extrude individual faces", just like in the previous steps. The edge length is arbitrary, but I chose "0.75m". At the end we should get something like this.

Now we have a flake that is more detailed, but it is very flat, it doesn't look completely finished. For a simple improvement, we can slightly modify the flake ends. We will go to the wireframe model of the flake and using the numeric keypad we can change the view to top view.

Next, we will start selecting the sides on which we will then perform the scaling function. We will select all the flake ends as shown in the image. You don't need to have the entire wall in the selection box, the dot represents what must be included for the wall to be selected.

Now it's time to shrink these segments, by pressing "S + (corresponding axis X/Y/Z)" the scale change will be performed only on this axis. This is because if we didn't press the letter of the corresponding axis, the flake part would shrink in all dimensions. The image shows that the flake lies on the "Y (green)" and "X (red)" axes, so I will press "S + Z" and then scale the object parts to the desired size.

After successful scaling, we should get something like this:

If we want to add even more detail with minimal effort, we can also use "modifiers". Clicking on the modifiers button will open this window.

By clicking the plus I will add more modifiers, we will be interested in the modifier called "subdivision surface", which is located under "add_modifier/generate/subdivision_surface".

This will automatically set the modifier strength to 1, we won't need more so it won't be demanding for the computer due to the large number of polygons. Since this object will be called very quickly in the snow effect, it would accumulate.

The final version should look something like this