Denoise – A Podcast about Blender

Ian Hubert is a legandary Blender VFX artist who is best known for directing the Blender open movie project, Tears of Steel, authoring the Lazy Tutorial series on YouTube, and creating the mesmerizing dystopian sci-fi short film series, Dynamo Dream. 

Lampel and Kent caught up with Ian at BCON LA to find out what it's been like to scale up his productions, where his inspiration comes from, the one time he used AI, and a weird shift he's noticed in the creative landscape. 

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

You can follow Ian on:

• Twitter: twitter.com/Mrdodobird
• YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCbmxZRQk-X0p-TOxd6PEYJA
• Patreon: patreon.com/IanHubert

In many ways, Colin Levy has lived the dream of many Blender artists. He directed the Blender open movie, Sintel, right out of college, landed a job at Pixar, and later quit the 9 to 5 to pursue his dream of creating a television series called Skywatch after his short film of the same title took off and attracted a lot of attention. In recent years though, the Skywatch project has stalled out, gotten dropped by multiple studios, and Colin has been learning the hard way how difficult breaking into Hollywood as a writer and director can be. 

In this episode, Kent sits down with Colin at BCON LA to talk about the current state of Skywatch and what Colin has learned about mental health after watching his decade long dream slowly die... for now.  

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

You can find Colin's work on his website, Twitter, Instagram, and IMDB.

Andrew Price, a.k.a. Blender Guru, has been a notable member of the Blender community for many years and recently passed 3 million subscribers on YouTube. Kent and Jonathan caught up with him at BCON LA and learned more about how he got started, the real reason he switched from creating Blender courses to building Poliigon, what eventually happened with the donut NFT, moving to America, and what's in store for him next. 

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

You can follow Andrew on:

• YouTube
• Twitter
• Poliigon

Blender was used to produce a motion magazine cover for Entertainment Weekly as part of their promoting the new Borderlands movie. Guest host Jason van Gumster speaks with Wyatt Winborne from Studio Khimaira along with Nick Pitts and Ben Johnson from Wolverine VFX about how they made it happen. 

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

See the cover in action and the full breakdown on our blog:
https://b3d.cgcookie.com/borderlands

You can find out more about this episode's guests at the following links:

• Wyatt Winborne - Studio Khimaira
• Nick Pitts - Hughey House Productions
• Ben Johnson - Hello There Animation, Ben Johnson VFX
• Wolverine VFX

Jonathan talks with YouTubers Nathan, Martin, and Riley at BCON LA about what their experience has been like teaching Blender online, how they make a living (certainly not adsense!), how the education landscape has changed over the last few years, and how far to go in order to please the algorithm. 

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Follow Ducky on:

• Twitter: x.com/Ducky3d
• YouTube: youtube.com/@TheDucky3D

Follow Bad Normals on:

• Twitter: x.com/badnormals
• YouTube: youtube.com/@BadNormals

Follow Riley Brown on:

• Twitter: x.com/rileyb3d
• YouTube: youtube.com/@rileyb3d

Kent is no stranger to community projects, after having directed three large collaborations in the CG Cookie community, and he was especially interested in talking with Blender Bob after hearing about Tiki - a feature length animated film created by the Blender community for the Blender community. Listen in as they talk about the current state of the project and how Bob's history in the VFX industry and as a Maya beta tester brought him to Blender. 

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.


Follow Blender Bob on:

• Twitter
• YouTube

Kent Trammell sits down with Chris Parks of Barnstorm VFX at BCON LA to hear the unique story of how he found his way into the VFX industry and how he's used Blender on blockbuster films and award winning TV shows. Chris has worked on Avengers: Endgame and Infinity War, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Aquaman, The Man in the High Castle, Robot Chicken, and many more! 

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

You can follow Chris Parks on IMDB: imdb.com/name/nm6692024

The animation system in Blender has been undergoing quite the overhaul recently, and the developers are turning one of the software's weaker areas into one of its strengths. In this episode, Jonathan sits down with Brad, Luciano, and Sir Wade at BCON LA to talk about their experiences animating in Blender, how the recent upgrades are changing the game, and how community feedback directly led to those improvements. 

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Follow Brad Clark:

• Twitter - https://x.com/bclark_cgchar
• Website - https://www.riggingdojo.com/
• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@RiggingDojo

Luciano Munoz:

• Twitter - https://x.com/lucianomunoz_
• Website - https://pintamonos.cl/
• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/theadventuresoflollypopman

Sir Wade:

• Twitter - https://x.com/SirWadeFX
• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@SirWade

Blender’s recent surge in popularity has not shown any signs of slowing. As artists pick it up for the first time and discover how powerful it is, they often wonder whether it's capable of being used to create their favorite movies, games, and shows.

In this episode, Kent Trammell and Jason van Gumster, two of our Blender experts here at CG Cookie, sit down with the visual effects pros Henning Sanden and Morton Jaeger of FlippedNormals to talk about Blender’s place in their industry.

You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

You can follow Morton and Henning's work at flippednormals.com or their YouTube channel.

Creativity is, at its essence, a type of problem-solving. It is fundamental to our work as 3D artists and needs to be cultivated over time. Not everyone goes about that the same way. In this episode, the CG Cookie instructors Wayne, Kent, and Jonathan talk about their journeys in creativity and how to get inspired.

You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Neural network-based text to image generators have been around for quite a while now, but only in the last year or so have gotten good enough to capture the attention of the general public and force us to ask real questions about the value of art and artists.

One big reason they have improved since the days of blurry 240p results is because of the vast amount of data, i.e. images, that they’re trained on. Many of these images are copyrighted by companies or individual artists and can be closely replicated by the generator if given the right prompt. The question of whether or not the practice of training an AI on copyrighted data is legal is still up for debate in court, but regardless of the technical legality, many artists are understandably furious that their own past work is being used to render their future services less necessary.

In this episode, Kent, Tim, Kyle, and Dr. Denning share their thoughts on the rapidly evolving and impossible to ingnore technology.


You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Making mistakes is an inevitable part of learning any discipline, and we've all made more than our fair share while working in Blender. In this episode, Jonathan, Chris, and Martin talk about what tripped them up along their journey to becoming Blender artists and how to navigate the common traps most artists face when starting out.

You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Jay, Jason, and Jonathan get together to talk about why Blender's license matters. Most people know that Blender is free, but not everyone knows that wasn’t always the case or how its current license, the GPL, impacts what one legally can and can’t do with the software. At CG Cookie, Blender Market, and Orange Turbine, their livelihoods directly depend on Blender’s license. It’s safe to assume they understand it well and have some thoughts on the topic.


You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Jonathan, Kent, and Adrian discuss what it was like to learn Blender, why learning any 3D software is universally experienced as challenging, and what beginners can reasonably expect to be able to accomplish at different points along their Blender journey.

You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Tim von Reuden, our friend and former CG Cookie concept instructor, drops by to talk to Kent, Wayne, and Jonathan about the story, visuals, and importance of Blender's latest short film, Charge.

You can read more about this episode on our blog.

Denoise is a podcast about Blender, from the folks at CG Cookie. If you're interested in leveling up your skills in Blender and supporting what we do, check out our extensive library of courses on cgcookie.com and subscribe to our YouTube channel.