IMPORTANT INFORMATION: WAITING LIST

If the course gets fully booked, no more registrations are accepted through this website. However, you can be included in the waiting list: for that, please send an email to training-research@surf.nl and you'll be informed when a place becomes available.

[NOTE: this course consists of a self-paced course period of 2 weeks, with 3 online sessions to monitor progress. Please read the details below.]

Overview

Would you like to make 3D visualisations that are visually more attractive than what ParaView or VisIt can provide? Do you need an image for a grant application that needs to look spectacular? Would you like to create a cool animation of your simulation data? Then this course may be for you!

The goal of this course is to provide you with hands-on knowledge to produce great images and basic animations from 3D scientific data. We will be using the open-source package Blender 3.0 (http://www.blender.org), which provides good basic functionality, while also being usable for
advanced usage and general editing of 3D data. It is also a lot of fun to work with (once you get used to its graphical interface).

Example types of relevant scientific data are 3D cell-based simulations, 3D models from photogrammetry, (isosurfaces of) 3D medical scans, molecular models and earth sciences data. Note that we don't focus on information visualization of abstract data, such as graphs (although you could convert those into a 3D model first and then use them in Blender).

We like to encourage participants to bring along the data they normally work with, or a sample thereof, and would like to apply the course knowledge to.

Topics covered:

- Blender UI and workflow, scene structure
- Basic importing of data
- Simple 3D mesh editing with modifiers
- Basic animation
- Rendering, lighting and materials

Course duration

The basis of the course is self-paced training during the two-week course period, using course materials that we provide (videos and exercises) and with three short online sessions (19th of April, 26th of April and 3rd of May). The first one will be an introductory webinar and the two following two will be feedback sessions. During the course period you will be working on the assignments at your own pace, and meanwhile we provide a communication channel with the course teachers that you can use for questions and feedback during the course. There are also several webinars were we discuss your projects and make sure you are able to make progress. Part of the course material, like our YouTube videos and tutorials, is available outside the course timetable.

More specific information on the course schedule will follow soon.

Your own project and data

To get the most out of the course we would like you to take a dataset from your work that you want to use for visualisation with Blender. This course will give you the skills to start on your own project. During the interactive moments (webinars and chat channel) our visualisation team will help you further with your specific project and challenges. So please collect some data you think would be great to make a 3D visualisation of. During the webinars we will expect input from you also. We would like you to present your visualisation goals, your data and your first try at making a visualisation with Blender.

All the contents and more detailed information

Please find more details in https://surf-visualization.github.io/blender-course

 

Starts
Ends
CET
ONLINE

Prerequisites:

  • A laptop, preferably with a decent GPU
  • Possibility to install Blender on your laptop
  • Prior experience in working with 3D data is useful

Required course setup:

  • Computer with Blender 3.0 installed
  • Account with Discord to join the chat and webinar server

Level of course materials

  • 66.6% Basic
  • 33.4% Intermediate
  • 0% Advanced