No one wants to learn a program that can’t accomplish what they want to do—like making a movie. So, let’s see if it’s possible to make a movie inside Blender.

Just like Houdini, Maya, and Cinema 4D, Blender is designed to be versatile in managing different aspects of filmmaking. Anytime you talk about filmmaking and a 3D program, you’re either talking about creating a fully animated movie, like The Lion King—yes, The Lion King was fully animated, none of it was live-action, that was marketing BS. Every lion, every bird, every blade of grass, every tree was either modeled or scanned with photogrammetry. That’s why you barely see any trees waving in the wind—adding a wind effect to that many trees would probably cause Disney’s computers to blow up like a nuclear explosion.

The other time people are talking about 3D applications like Blender in filmmaking is when they plan to integrate CGI or 3D models into live-action scenes, like in Top Gun: Maverick. Yes, I know Tom Cruise himself said everything was real, no CGI was used in the making of Top Gun 2, but just like Disney’s marketing team claimed The Lion King was a live-action movie, Tom Cruise saying everything was real and no CGI was used is equally BS.

If you watch enough trailers, you’ll start to realize that every time they say “no CGI was used,” you can be pretty sure that CGI was used.

Anyway, let’s get back to making a movie inside Blender. This time, let’s begin with integrating CGI effects into a live-action movie, which is the most common use case for 3D applications like Blender.

Motion tracking

while shooting scenes in your movie that you plan to add cgi elements into, you need to plan ahead, to add 3d elements in to your shot, you have to do something called match moving, this is when you match the real world camera movements with a digital camera that way when the camera moves the digital elements line up with the live action footage, you can add tracking marks in your shots to help blender’s motion tracking program but now days its not necessary as motion tracking in blender is getting better at tracking random features in your scenes, you have to manually select the features you want to track but there is also addons like flaxtrax which automate the whole process making it faster and more efficient, the more tracking points you add the better the camera match.

Object Tracking

If you are filming in a country without freedom, where you can’t buy an assault riffle on your school lunch break to film your movie, blender offers object tracking, this feature is similar to motion tracking but instead of tracking the camera movement, blender is tracking a particular movement of an object, you can shoot your scene with a stick for a gun, and in blender you can track that stick and replace it with a cgi gun, you can do this for more things like creating a part human part cyborg character like they did in the blender movie, teers of steel or like Bucky as winter soldier in captain America.

Face Tracking

While object tracking great for tracking objects even body parts like heads, arms, or vehicles moving through your scenes, if you want to track organic movements like facial expressions you will need something that specializes in that, like this faceit addon, it works by recording your face and translating or mapping that information on to a 3d models face so that what ever you do on the phone camera is translated on the 3d characters face, if you can do these three things your skills are going to be invaluable in film making, if you add 3d set extension to the list of things you can do, you are going to be one of the most important person on any set,

Set extensions.

when ever you see a movie set in the industry era or classical era, like the great Gatsby, where the sets look like old streets of london or new york or any other city, its likely that you are looking at a set extension, most of the time these are just built up sets where a few cardboard buildings are built close to the camera with enough detail to fool anyone and give the actors something to act with, and then a large green or blue screen in the background to replace with a 3d extension of the city hence the name, this is much easier than using full greenscreen backgrounds as reflective surfaces get better reflection and you also have less green spill, which is when light bounces off the green screen and is reflected on skin, and on objects, it can be hard to remove, sets like these also help with lighting and directing scenes.

if the camera is moving you would have to do some motion tracking, and if objects continue to move from the real set to the 3d extension you may have to do some object tracking to align them with the digital objects that will replace them. there no dedicated tools for set extension in blender but you can use addons like Perspective Plotter which can be useful for matching the perspective and camera angle of a photo to start your set extension. 3d scanned models look better in set extensions as they have more detail than modeled objects Piotr Krynski has an amazing collection of different scans for abandoned buildings, factories, boats that have amazing detail and textures, when creating set extensions like these especially ones where the camera is moving, its important to keep both the live action and the digital one seamless with the same vibe, if you have crowds in the live action, you should have crowds in the digital one, there addons to help you with crowds in blender like procedural crowds, obviously you want the crowds to match how your live action actors are dressing, if its medieval it should be medieval all the way, its impossible to find an addon with everything you like especially dress cord, but procedural crowds, also has character packs that includes a business pack, and summer, another great option is population which has similar functionality and characters with there own unique animations.

the challenge with set extensions is making the line between real and cgi invisible and a great way to hide that line is by adding effects like smoke, smoke simulation can be heavy and complicated to do especially if you want it to look real and not standout in your live action scene, something like smoke cards from this steam pack collection can be a great alternative, this is just smoke recorded on a green screen that you can add to your scene, they are lite and render quick without needing any simulation setup.

As you can see set extension doesn’t just end with creating background elements to make your location look bigger than it, but requires a myriad of layers to make it work well, this detail can be detailed hand made models or 3d scans or Ai generated models, this is a controversial topic but inescapable one, there is an ai for creating 3d backgrounds called Auto depth, and would work really well for set extensions since set extension is all about adding stuff in the background, with this addon you can use ai to generate 3d shop extrusions, buildings and more as things to add in the background these extrusions are usually not used for closeups but are great as background elements to add missing detail.

If Ai is not for you but dont have the time to create background elements like buildings, procedural generators are even better, they offer more customization and variety like this auto building generator which you can use to generate different buildings in different styles, and level of detail, from modern buildings to castles to large industrial structures.

if you want more about set extensions Ian hubert has some amazing tutorials and movies he has made that are amazing demos of the power of motion tracking, object tracking and set extensions inside blender.

Cleanup and Masking

set extension is just a small part of film making, when you want to integrate cgi into live footage you likely need to do cleanup work as well, this is when you remove objects and elements from your live footage that was there to help with production but should not appear in the final composition like, tracking makers, line work especially for stunt work where actors are acting on wires when performing high risk stunts or removing unwanted objects like lights, star barks cups and mustaches,

Blender has masking features, but unfortunately, there aren’t many tutorials covering this topic. The only tutorial I could find was about rotoscoping by CG Cookie, which is essentially the same thing. Masking and rotoscoping are very important in filmmaking because, in many cases, green screens aren’t the best choice. When adding CGI elements into live footage—like dragons, cars, and other objects—the CGI layer is usually the top layer unless it’s a set extension, in which case the CGI serves as the background.

If the CGI is in the foreground, sometimes you need CGI objects to go behind live footage objects, like placing a car or building behind a person, or showing a CGI creature fighting a character where they interchangeably come forward and go to the back. The only way to achieve this is by using masks. Blender may not be the best application for complex scenes like this; most artists rely on compositing software like Nuke, which is designed with these kinds of scenes in mind.

to make cgi feel more integrated with the live action, effects are simulated between the cgi layer and the live footage, usually called visual effects, these could be dust, smoke, fire, bullet hits, blood spill or splash effects, each effect can be complicated to create but blender is well suited for the job even without any addons, my buddy topchannel1on1 and grant abitt corroborated on an amazing course covering rigid body dynamics which should be a great starting point for anyone who want to get into this kind of stuff, they show how you can destroy buildings, add dust effects, fire and explosions step by step give it a try.

you can also expand on the effects you can make in blender by using addons like flip fluids which is a more advanced fluid simulation system than the build-in blender manta flow simulator, where it shines is when you want to create magic water effects like from the avatar the last air bender series, where you need custom forces to morph water into different shapes and behave in magic ways.

there is also fluidlab which is a newer addon that does a little bit more than fluids, you can use it to create sand, viscous fluids and more, flip fluids and fluid lab are both blender addons that try to accomplish the same thing which is fluid simulation but both approach it differently, each with its own advantages and drawbacks which you would have to explore depending on what you want to achieve.

As you can see, blender is fully capable of making a movie but you have to be educated on its strength and weaknesses, some of the weaknesses are easy to resolve with addons others no so much, this is why its not used widely in film especially for effects heavy movies like avengers, because blenders physics engine has not been updated in a while, its not the most reliable way to create large scale vfx, that job is best left to houdini, fortunately most film makers are not trying to create avengers, most artists want collapsing buildings, car crashes, explosions and more which can be easily be done with addons like rbdlab which greatly improves the blender simulation system to make it competitive and capable of making advance effects like metal deformation, custom forces and controlled fracturing.

if you want to learn more about vfx in blender topchannel1on1 has a free blender course on youtube that is a series of videos showing you how to produce special effects used in movies and advertisements, with project files to explore and reverse engineer.

there is more to making movies in blender but its impossible to exhaust all of it in just one video, so if this is a series you are interested in let me know in the comments and we shall continue to explore it thanks for watching see you in the next one.