Level: Beginner.
This project is an introductory lesson for Blender that familiarizes students with the very basics of the interface, core 3D object concepts, basic mesh manipulation, camera animation concepts, rendering, and file output. A version of this lesson used to be called Noob Canyon by the Blender Foundation, but I renamed it Valley of Despair as it prepares students for the frustration that learning sophisticated systems like Blender elicit.
Before you start this lesson, make sure you’ve practiced a bit learning to drive Blender’s 3D viewport and feel competent that you can zoom in/out, pan, turntable around a scene, and add/move/scale/delete 3D objects.
Start with a large plane and subdivide it about 100 times. Using various tools like Circle Select and Proportional Editing, you’ll create a valley into this plane. Add a subdivision modifier to smooth the plane a bit more. Be sure to use Smooth Shading. Then add another plane that intersects with the valley, and using various shading methods, make that plane appear to be water. Give the valley land a unique color and change the sky of the scene from the default gray to a sky of some kind. Next, using simple keyframing, make a roughly 30-second animation in which the camera flies through the canyon. The camera movement should be fairly smooth like that of a drone flying over the water. Lastly, render the animation as a 1920 x 1080 h265 video file.