• Make Mountains in Blender from Heightmaps

    Blender can make mountains from heightmaps, and this is a tutorial to show you how. Follow along and recreate two volcanoes from New Zealand's Central Plateau.
    Mountains with Heightmap in Background

  • Diameter Compensator for Engraving or Printing onto Cylinders

    Blender can create engravable and printable artwork for bells, cups, glasses, mugs, nozzles, shell cases, tankards, and other cylinders with varying diameters. It allows designers to click a button and have elements of their design compressed or expanded to suit the change in diameter. Read how and experiment using the file provided.
    Screenshot of Sample Design in the Diameter Compensator

  • Designing the 2020 Hugo Awards

    The Hugo Awards are the most prestigious award in the science fiction genre, honouring literature and media as well as fan activities. Each year a base is designed for the trophy. Read about how I came up with the 2020 design and used Blender and Inkscape to create it.
    2020 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist

  • Smoothie Ingredients

    This is a gallery of non-photo real smoothie ingredients created in Blender to be used in any way that you see fit.
    NPR Coconut

  • Patterns

    A collection of patterns, created in Blender, that can be used for any purpose.
    German Floral Pattern

  • Create Text for Subsurface Laser Engraving

    Blender can produce text for Subsurface Laser Engraving that is superior to using a bitmap. By extruding the text and then arraying it on top of itself it is possible to go beyond creating the extra layers required for bright text - the faces on the sides of the letters will be engraved making the edges appear crisp.
    Layered and Arrayed Text

  • Two Tone Non Photo Real Shader

    Blender is capable of shading objects in a stylistic manner. This tutorial shows how to shade objects using two tones to mimic the style of 2d vector art. The advantage of using a 3d package is that it is possible to alter the angle of the lighting by moving a lamp instead of tediously drawing new shadows by hand.
    Two Toned Food

  • Export Terrain Contours from Blender Using Freestyle

    Learn to create contours from terrain and export from blender in the SVG format for making maps, 3d printing, or cutting from physical materials.
    Contours and Terrain.

  • Colour by Altitude

    Learn to assign colour to terrain based on altitude with Blender.
    Altitude Colour

  • Sow a Grass & Chamomile Lawn

    Whilst living in Milson, Palmy for a few years I'd put up a paddling pool for summer. It left behind a circle of dead grass and bare dirt. Learn to remedy this by sowing chamomile and grass.
    Chamomile Lawn

  • Finding Heightmaps on the Web

    This tutorial provides heightmaps, links to them, and talks about what to look for. It is written from the point of view of someone wanting to use them for modelling terrain in Blender, but it is relevant to modelling with other 3d packages
    Mt Taranaki

  • Heightmap Conversion with GDAL

    Learn how to use GDAL through the command line to extract 16bit heightmaps from Data Elevation Models.
    Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe Heightmap

  • Export Heightmaps from QGIS by Print Layout

    To get the highest quality heightmaps from QGIS we use the Print Layout function. This tutorial builds on the heightmap refinements taught in Export Heightmaps from QGIS by Screenshot.
    QGIS Print Layout Window

  • Export Heightmaps from QGIS by Screenshot

    This tutorial shows how to export heightmaps from QGIS 3.0.1 by using the screenshot method.
    Export Heightmaps from QGIS by Screenshot

  • Narrow Garden at Front of House

    A small garden can have a big impact on our native animals. The value is not in attracting animals but through beauty inspiring the visitor to value the life around them. This article covers the design and planting of this garden.
    Narrow Garden at Front of House