Denoise - A Podcast about Blender CG Cookie

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.