Dust Particles+ has always been about a lightweight, procedural way to add atmosphere (and life!) to your scenes without the default Blender particle system headaches. This update pushes things a fair bit further in that direction by introducing… well, procedural life.

We’ve included generators for things like swarming insects, bees and birds. It’s all powered by Geometry Nodes, so it stays fast in the viewport – actually now about 5x faster than in 1.2 – while giving you that extra layer of believability.

What’s new?

• Custom 3D Objects each with their own custom generators – Bees, Birds, Raindrops etc (Pro)
• 3D Object deformation options (Pro)
• Now uses a faster points based method (Pro & Lite)

See full changelog below for more details…

—

CHANGELOG v1.3

Lite & Pro

• Changed from planes to points
• Scale with bounding box (there was a request to bring that back)
• Transparency variation (in addition to emission variation)
• Dithered alpha option
• Cast shadow option
• Bug fixes and optimisations

Pro only

• Custom 3D Objects; birds, bees, flies, moths, leaves, papers, clumps, raindrop – each with its own geometry nodes control in the modifier panel
• Added ‘Use texture color’ option to preserve more varied texture colors on some of the objects (e.g. birds and bees)
• 3D Object deformation options (good for floating bags and underwater stuff)
• Align rotation to direction
• Random rotation amount (should work for 2d and 3d)
• Particles following curves can now be influenced by the curves radius and tilt

Superhive

Gumroad

—

v1.2 Changes

• Wind and Curve Flow (Pro)
• Extra wind themed sprites, leaves and papers (Pro)
• Extra example project files (Pro)
• Asset Browser Icons (Pro)
• Box fade (Pro & Lite)
• Cleaner UI (Pro & Lite)
• Point rendering (Pro & Lite)

See the full v1.2 changelog below for more.

Superhive

Gumroad

—

CHANGELOG v1.2

Main asset can be found in these zips:
dust_particles_lite.zip
dust_particles_pro.zip
These include v1.0, v1.1 and v1.2 versions

Extra Project Files:
Project file folders for pro now includes extra demo blends for the v1.2 features. These also contain the v1.1 and v1.0 project files for convenience

Pro:

• New looping directional wind with edge fade feature
• 3 extra paper animated spritesheets
• 1 leaves type animated spritesheet
• New looping wind section – i.e. directional flow to the particles, with it’s own edge fade
• Experimental section – Curve, this makes the particles flow along the selected curve, then use the settings to customise the look and the behavior
• Asset browser icons implementation

Free & Pro:

• UI Updated to take advantage of Blenders collapsible panels that can now be used within the geo nodes modifier
• Camera now no longer needed to be selected, instead there’s a new section at the top ‘Align camera to sprites’, with that enabled Blender will orient the particles towards whatever happens to be the active camera. This is useful for when using multiple cameras
• New ‘Domain’ section has been added to contain the domain related options like v1.1’s sphere fade. This includes a new ‘edge fade’ feature – useful for longer domains
• Experimental section – Point rendering – useful in cycles where we can use spheres as points in the viewport, this gives a very optimised rendering of a 3d object (a sphere in this case). This still works with the rest of the system – however note that the alpha/border settings are relevant in this context.
• Galaxy A and Galaxy B have been tweaked to include some nicer color detail

—

CHANGELOG v1.1

Main asset can be found in these zips:
dust_particles_lite.zip
dust_particles_pro.zip
These include v1.0 and v1.1 versions

Extra Project Files:
Project file folders for pro and lite now include extra demo blends for the v1.1 features. These also contain the v1.0 project files for convenience

Pro:

• Created new ‘use mesh shape’ feature so that shapes of any kind can be used as the shape the particles should spawn within
• 5 extra star themed spritesheets

Lite & Pro:
Main Changes

• Created a spherical fade option
• Created a new ‘Scale with Bounding Box’ option which toggles whether or not the particles scale automatically as the bounding box of the domain object changes (in edit mode)
• Created a new ‘Scale Multiplier’ movement parameter to conveniently scale all the movement settings manually (including uniqueness) all at once if needed

UI Changes

• Renamed movement ‘noise scale’ to ‘uniqueness’

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the movement noise scale/uniqueness to properly scale with the rest of the noise parameters when the domain was scaled up or down
• Fixed a bug where the further the mesh domain is from the origin point of the object the more that would affect the type of movement giving inconsistent results in those cases
• Slightly altered how the alpha is used for sprites without alpha channels (old method could result in slightly more transparency than intended)

Miscellaneous
Added a new pro v1.0 blend file that has been refactored to allow it to work for anyone still using older versions of Blender, specifically Blender v3.3 LTS (long term support). Unfortunately we can’t currently support any Blender versions further back than that.
dust_particles+_v1.0_pro_3.3LTS.blend

—

Dust Particle Tutorials

• Overview v1.2 update : https://youtu.be/bAGFH1Sy1FE
• Overview v1.1 update : https://youtu.be/mvXgVhbhLFM?si=tLUN5cbeyWHFUYo2
• Original Release tutorial : https://youtu.be/5UGC8xUDgys?si=FATzOkXEbOEoFQR2
• Original Overview by Gleb: https://youtu.be/4sZpmNLMOWU?si=aUIXiXtUs7yZ95eY
• Create a 3d starfield: https://youtu.be/7S-u8X-XH58?si=8hItSP52cNdjq1yl
• Snowglobe : https://youtu.be/jKd_nUSKceQ?si=lNioWUdHjIGfqiHr

• Snowglobe (Short) : Snow Globe Illusion with Particles in Blender #3dblendered #motiongraphics #blender #animation #b3d – YouTube
• DOF in Eevee: https://youtu.be/rO8xupUuN5U?si=W1zsgL6P8RZLkkOM

—

p.s. If you’ve already grabbed the pack, the v1.3 update is ready and waiting for you.

Links to the store pages for quick access: Superhive & Gumroad

The post Dust Particles Update v1.3 appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Wishlist our course : https://www.creativeshrimp.com/free-sample-eevee-lighting

Lighting and rendering in all shots: Gleb Alexandrov

Modeling, production: Aidy Burrows

All shots rendered in EEVEE, Blender 5.0, Vulkan

—

Character model by Yaw Onyina

A folder with the images from the demo reel (kind of a press kit if you want to share it on social platforms): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZOFtwj8B94DwLvDDzLpKiKYN4GtSYw5S?usp=sharing

—

Credits

Wirtualne Muzea Małopolski, CC0 and Creative Commons attribution assets on Sketchfab

DemNikoArt and Marlon Nunez – the Alien Monster collab

Lino Thomas – Sci-fi Pizza Delivery scene (patreon.com/LinoThomas)

Lech Sokołowski – Chocofur Library for Arch Vis

Freesound.org

Mārtiņš Upītis, Gints Zilbalodis and the entire ‘Flow’ team

Yaw Onyina – Tribal Character model

Omar Hewady, Ahmed Naguib (Photon Town) – facial animation

Kitbash Sci-Fi Building Hardsurface Vol 03 by cgextend

Albin Merle – NASA ACES Spacesuit

Pavel Matoušek – Green Wreck car model

Morbase on Sketchfab: Tholos do Escoural model (CC0)

SuperLuminal render farm

—

Special thanks to:

Blender Institute and developers

Sebastian Mattukat

Jan van den Hemel

Seth Ruthledge

Kaizoe

Vaik Nay

George Rebeiz

Sreliata

Jordan Cain

sorashido

celestia | on hiatus @notyourclaude

Ian Hubert

Andrew Price

Nick Stath

Jonas Dichelle

Lord Odin

Kyokaz

Rahul Chandwaney

Samuel Krug

Daniel Bystedt

Spot’s Kitchen

Andres Stephens (Trinumedia)

CypherPoet

Alyx

PJZ

Alena Alexandrova

RDCsanctvs

Jonathan Lampel

Also, huge thanks to our wonderful Creative Shrimp community!

The Course Coming (Very) Soon!

Wishlist : https://www.creativeshrimp.com/free-sample-eevee-lighting

The post EEVEE: Realistic Rendering Reel (Blender 5.0, Vulkan) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Blender Development Fund

The post Blender Needs Our Help ❤️ appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

We’re offering a free LUT pack for DaVinci Resolve, perfect for grading OpenEXR (.EXR) sequences rendered in Blender (or other 3D software).

Free Download on Gumroad

What’s inside this free Resolve LUT pack?

23 display rendering transform LUTs (DRTs), including:

• AgX (vanilla Blender AgX + Resolve version)
• AgX Kraken
• Filmic
• OpenDRT
• 2499 and its variants (including print emulation)

And many more view transforms.

Designed for 16-bit and 32-bit OpenEXR sequences (half-float EXRs, DWAA-compressed EXRs) exported from Blender or any other 3d software

Baked from the Pixelmanager OCIO config (by Joe Genco) – these LUTs provide high-quality color transforms without clipping your luminosity range.

Created professionally: And we can’t stress this enough! – These LUTs don’t clip the luminosity range!

—

Why use these LUTs in DaVinci Resolve?

When you render EXRs from Blender, the color management (AgX, Filmic, etc.) isn’t embedded in the files – so EXRs often look wrong when imported into Resolve.

This LUT pack lets you apply Blender’s view transforms – or other DRTs – right inside Resolve, making grading Blender renders a breeze.

—

How to Use These LUTs in Resolve? Quick Steps:

1⃣ Install the LUTs:

• Go to the Color tab → LUTs tab → right-click root folder → Open File Location
• Create a new folder, paste the LUT files (after downloading/unpacking the .zip Gumroad)
• Right-click inside Resolve LUT browser → Refresh

2⃣ Set up your node tree:

• First node: Apply a technical LUT (e.g. LinearRec709 to ARRI LogC4) to convert linear Rec709 EXR input to log
• OR use the Color Space Transform effect:
  • Input: Rec709 / Linear
  • Output: ARRI Wide Gamut 4 / ARRI Log C4
  • No tone mapping
• Second node: Apply your chosen view transform LUT (e.g. AgX, Filmic, OpenDRT)

3⃣ Optional: Add an exposure node at the start of the chain (adjust via gain wheel).

—

FAQ

How do I get AgX in DaVinci Resolve?

Download our free LUT pack, install it in Resolve’s LUT directory, and apply it to your EXR sequences following the setup guide above.

Do these LUTs work with Blender’s EXR renders?

Yes – they’re designed specifically for Blender’s 16-bit and 32-bit OpenEXRs.

What’s the difference between using LUTs and OCIO directly?

LUTs are a fast and easy solution for view transforms inside Resolve, especially if you don’t want to set up a full OCIO pipeline or use DCTLs (which only work in Resolve Studio anyway).

—

BONUS: Creative Shrimp LUTs for DaVinci Resolve

18 quick color grading LUTs to apply to your EXRs in DaVinci Resolve.

• Designed for 16- or 32-bit linear EXRs
• Combines both the view transform (based on DaVinci DRT) and the creative ‘look’
• Instant, high-quality results to speed up your grading process

—

Get the pack:
Download free from Creative Shrimp Gumroad

—

Links:

Built on the Power of Pixelmanager OCIO

These LUTs wouldn’t be possible without the incredible work of Joe Genco and the Pixelmanager OCIO config. Pixelmanager is truly an OCIO configuration to rule them all, greatly extending the selection of view transforms available for Blender and other software. It’s an incredible resource that empowers artists to achieve stunning color consistency and artistic looks across their pipelines.

Also, check our Blender to Resolve freemium course.

The post Free AgX, Filmic & Creative LUT Pack for DaVinci Resolve appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

https://lizhihao6.github.io/Sparc3D/ – Sparc3D – Sparse Representation and Construction for High-Resolution 3D Shapes Modeling by Nanyang Technological University. This method offers a robust alternative to traditional photogrammetry by generating detailed 3D meshes from a single input image.

https://huggingface.co/spaces/ilcve21/Sparc3D – live demo

Tencent’s Hunyuan 3D 2.1 (open source) alternative

—

What is Sparc3D? A Diffusion-based 3D Mesh Generator from a Single Image

Developed by Nanyang Technological University, Sparc is a new algorithm that builds 3D meshes from just A SINGLE IMAGE! It’s a significant leap beyond anything we’ve had before.

While traditional photogrammetry captures real-world objects using multiple photos to create detailed 3D models (something we dive deep into in our Creative Shrimp Photogrammetry Course), Sparc takes a different approach. This new tech can handle complex inputs – open surfaces, intricate geometry – all from one photo, powered by the latest in diffusion models. It’s pretty wild.

This technology has serious potential to shake up our industry. I don’t particularly like the word “disrupt”, as it’s overused in all sorts of silly contexts. But it feels disruptive.

Just browse through that comment section (1100+ comments, my god!), and you’ll see what I mean.

Now, let’s see what it means for us all.

—

How to Use the SPARC3D Demo

There’s a public demo online right now.

For how long? Who knows – on the one hand the authors said something about making it open-source upon receiving all permissions, but you can never rule out a sudden sale to a commercial company.

How to use SPARC demo?

• upload an image,
• hit “generate”
• and after a short wait (the queue is starting to get longer though, haha!),
• you get a full 3D model.

If you don’t get a full 3D model, then it’s most likely the fault of the source image. Try again, with a different one.

—

Use Cases: Game Assets, AI Art to 3D Props, and More

So, what’ll be the most popular use case (popular as in pop songs)? I’m betting on this: turning AI-generated images (from MidJourney, ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Rundiffusion etc.) directly into 3D props and assets. Not that we endorse that – but let’s be FRANK, it’s the first thing that comes to mind and I can already hear the sloshing of AI slop (with occasional amber) crashing onto our shores. I’m bad at metaphors though.

And before you asked – I’m writing this article mostly in an old-school way, with just Aidy GPT being my only helper.

What is so new and revolutionary about Sparc?

Well, it does something crazy: it fills in the blanks. The underside, hidden geometry – whatever’s missing from your single image. This workflow makes mass production of 3D assets remarkably feasible, compared to an older-school photogrammetry (where abundance of input images has always been necessary, to avoid gaps and general geometry syphilis).

—

Limitations of SPARC3D (And What Needs Improvement)

Is the resulting model a mess? Yeah – it’s not fully production-ready (yet). You still get dense meshes, no real topology flow, no textures (in Sparc3D at least – some other tools can do textures). It’s still a pain in the back to do retopo. It’ll probably take a few more research papers to change that.

But nevertheless, the surface quality is a generation ahead. Flat surfaces are actually mostly flat now. The connections are smoother, more coherent. The geometry actually doesn’t look that bad (I’m surprised to say that).

What sets Sparc apart from traditional photogrammetry, where meticulous coverage is key, is its ability to infer geometry on the hidden side of an object. It even tackles thin, intricate parts surprisingly well –something previous 3d reconstruction tools always struggled with.

To be fair, gaussian splatting solved thin and furry stuff to *some* extent, but this is a step forward (and it outputs good old polygons, unlike gaussian splatting).

—

The ‘Traditional’ Photoscan Apps Will Have to Upgrade Their Tech

I’m dying to see what Reality Scan’s (aka Reality Capture’s) response will be. I bet the devs are already speedrunning the ways to integrate a tech like this into their app – which is one of the best already, and just waits for that extra push. Gosh, I can only imagine the power it’ll give to the tech that was somewhat overdependent on physical world constraints (objects that are often impossible to shoot from all sides, or cars covered in birds’ excrements making it difficult to scan).

And how would it interplay with the latest advances in triangle splatting, 3d gaussian splatting and more – another tech is becoming mainstream really quickly?

—

The AI Slop Wave Incoming?

This blend of increased speed and quality of this new diffusion-based method makes it clear (to me) we’re heading for an avalanche of AI slop. Soon we’ll see a lot more models that are good enough, mass-produced and flooding the market. Like a viewer of our original video pointed out: the future will be good enough.

Putting aside the massive issue of the environment for a moment, this raises big questions about copyright, too, and how marketplaces like Sketchfab will handle it. Remember that user who uploaded 38,000 AI assets to Fab?

We’ll see more of that.

—

Blender’s Role: The Hub

So what is Blender‘s role in all that? With a huge influx of new 3D props (if and when it happens), Blender effectively becomes the hub – the central point where all elements are assembled and made sense of.

As we’ve mentioned, the Sparc-generated assets are similar to photogrammetry exported assets: messy, dense, high-poly. These will have to be prepared for exporting to Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot or other game engines, or just for using it within Blender for scene creation. From this perspective, very little will change for 3d artists… just yet.

Your skills remain valuable, YOU remain valuable and this will likely continue…

for some time.

—

If you’re looking to take these high-poly, often messy assets and optimize them for games or other production pipelines, our Game Asset Creation Course focuses specifically on retopology, optimization, UV maps and efficient asset preparation.

Just mentioning.

—

Creativity vs Complacency

This new accessibility that AI-driven tools bring to life is pretty exciting – and as many of you pointed out in the comments to our video, pretty disturbing as well. If you have an image – whether your own creation or something found online, or (god forbid), ai-generated – you are now significantly closer to realizing that thing in 3D.

From there, the possibilities to build your own worlds and tell your own stories are immense.

However, as Aidy pointed out when proof-reading this article: fast and easy does not always equate to better or more meaningful. Like processed fast food, that’s usually an easy option but still best used with caution. AI should probably serve as a tool to augment our creativity, not diminish the artistic skills that make our work distinctive. Think atrophied creative muscles.

The tech like SPARC will spark (ahem) new workflows and a lot of questions: Where does it fit? Kitbashing? Concept art? What about automatic retopo, for heaven’s sake? Expect tools like ZBrush’s ZRemesher or Quad Remesher to become even more valuable, as clean topology could be in higher demand than ever.

But why, oh why, AI-based automatic retopology isn’t a thing yet.

Also, will Blender cement its role as the hub where such content is being assembled?

—

So many questions!

So, what do YOU think? Do you feel threatened, or see this as an opportunity to level up your workflow? Let us know on Discord!

That’s it from us, Gleb Alexandrov and Aidy Burrows at Creative Shrimp, keeping you updated on the latest in computer graphics.

—

Links

https://lizhihao6.github.io/Sparc3D/ – Sparc3D

https://huggingface.co/spaces/ilcve21/Sparc3D – live demo

Tencent’s Hunyuan 3D 2.1 (open source) alternative

TrueDepth add-on for Blender – tutorial

Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér – Two Minute Papers channel

—

Game Asset Creation Course

Photogrammetry Course: Photoreal 3D With Blender And Reality Capture

Creative Shrimp Discord

Gleb Alexandrov Youtube

—

Are We Screwed? The original Youtube video

PixelReconstruct Youtube channel – gaussian splatting and more

Photoreal Environments and Photogrammetry: an article

RealityScan

Blender

The post SPARC3D: Revolutionary Single-Image 3D Reconstruction Explained (with Live Demo) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Expect behind-the-scenes tips, tricks and creative insights (and some music and coffee chatter!). Stay tuned for what’s coming next!

The post We’re on Patreon! appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

The Making-of (Patreon)

The post Blender FLIP Fluids Simulation Cycles (Demo) appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

Download the Oil Fire VDB. P.S. So this is our first official offering onto Patreon! Start by bringing the of course!

The post Oil Fire VDB Freebie appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

The post Teaser: Blender to Resolve appeared first on Creative Shrimp.

• Wind and Curve Flow (Pro)
• Extra wind themed sprites, leaves and papers (Pro)
• Extra example project files (Pro)
• Asset Browser Icons (Pro)
• Box fade (Pro & Lite)
• Cleaner UI (Pro & Lite)
• Point rendering (Pro & Lite)

See the full v1.2 changelog below for more.

Blender Market

Gumroad

CHANGELOG v1.2

Main asset can be found in these zips:
dust_particles_lite.zip
dust_particles_pro.zip
These include v1.0, v1.1 and v1.2 versions

Extra Project Files:
Project file folders for pro now includes extra demo blends for the v1.2 features. These also contain the v1.1 and v1.0 project files for convenience

Pro:

• New looping directional wind with edge fade feature
• 3 extra paper animated spritesheets
• 1 leaves type animated spritesheet
• New looping wind section – i.e. directional flow to the particles, with it’s own edge fade
• Experimental section – Curve, this makes the particles flow along the selected curve, then use the settings to customise the look and the behavior
• Asset browser icons implementation

Free & Pro:

• UI Updated to take advantage of Blenders collapsible panels that can now be used within the geo nodes modifier
• Camera now no longer needed to be selected, instead there’s a new section at the top ‘Align camera to sprites’, with that enabled Blender will orient the particles towards whatever happens to be the active camera. This is useful for when using multiple cameras
• New ‘Domain’ section has been added to contain the domain related options like v1.1’s sphere fade. This includes a new ‘edge fade’ feature – useful for longer domains
• Experimental section – Point rendering – useful in cycles where we can use spheres as points in the viewport, this gives a very optimised rendering of a 3d object (a sphere in this case). This still works with the rest of the system – however note that the alpha/border settings are relevant in this context.
• Galaxy A and Galaxy B have been tweaked to include some nicer color detail

CHANGELOG v1.1

Main asset can be found in these zips:
dust_particles_lite.zip
dust_particles_pro.zip
These include v1.0 and v1.1 versions

Extra Project Files:
Project file folders for pro and lite now include extra demo blends for the v1.1 features. These also contain the v1.0 project files for convenience

Pro:

• Created new ‘use mesh shape’ feature so that shapes of any kind can be used as the shape the particles should spawn within
• 5 extra star themed spritesheets

Lite & Pro:
Main Changes

• Created a spherical fade option
• Created a new ‘Scale with Bounding Box’ option which toggles whether or not the particles scale automatically as the bounding box of the domain object changes (in edit mode)
• Created a new ‘Scale Multiplier’ movement parameter to conveniently scale all the movement settings manually (including uniqueness) all at once if needed

UI Changes

• Renamed movement ‘noise scale’ to ‘uniqueness’

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the movement noise scale/uniqueness to properly scale with the rest of the noise parameters when the domain was scaled up or down
• Fixed a bug where the further the mesh domain is from the origin point of the object the more that would affect the type of movement giving inconsistent results in those cases
• Slightly altered how the alpha is used for sprites without alpha channels (old method could result in slightly more transparency than intended)

Miscellaneous
Added a new pro v1.0 blend file that has been refactored to allow it to work for anyone still using older versions of Blender, specifically Blender v3.3 LTS (long term support). Unfortunately we can’t currently support any Blender versions further back than that.
dust_particles+_v1.0_pro_3.3LTS.blend

Dust Particle Tutorials

• Overview v1.2 update : https://youtu.be/bAGFH1Sy1FE

• Overview v1.1 update : https://youtu.be/mvXgVhbhLFM?si=tLUN5cbeyWHFUYo2

• Original Release tutorial : https://youtu.be/5UGC8xUDgys?si=FATzOkXEbOEoFQR2

• Original Overview by Gleb: https://youtu.be/4sZpmNLMOWU?si=aUIXiXtUs7yZ95eY

• Create a 3d starfield: https://youtu.be/7S-u8X-XH58?si=8hItSP52cNdjq1yl

• Snowglobe : https://youtu.be/jKd_nUSKceQ?si=lNioWUdHjIGfqiHr

• Snowglobe (Short) : Snow Globe Illusion with Particles in Blender #3dblendered #motiongraphics #blender #animation #b3d – YouTube
• DOF in Eevee: https://youtu.be/rO8xupUuN5U?si=W1zsgL6P8RZLkkOM

Links to the store pages for quick access: Blender Market & Gumroad

The post Dust Particles Update v1.2 appeared first on Creative Shrimp.