Vibing Vertex

Abstract 3D animations made in Blender

Concept

This is one of the rare cases where I am not entirely sure how the idea came into my head despite it not being so long ago. There was almost definitely a part in me that was inspired by the anime Land of the Lustrous' 3D animation and another from seeing really cool animated wallpapers on Wallpaper Engine. But what ended up pushing me into downloading Blender I unfortunately forgot.

My beginning with Blender was very similar to many others: Following BlenderGurus classic donut tutorial to learn the basics of blender, watching various other tutorials to learn examples of abstract 3D and eventually trying out my own ideas. You can definitely see which tutorials I was following in my earlier animations but over time I tried to create my own concepts and animate them (with varying degrees of success). Somewhere along the way geometry nodes started to come out in Blender which gave me new methods to create unique animations without relying on manual object creation and modeling. After that it’s been a process of trial and error and despite still being far from a blender pro I’ve managed to reach a point where I can usually not worry about the 'how-to' and spend more time trying out ideas (and waiting for them to finish rendering 😉).

Result

Over the years I ended up with a few different animations some of which I am still very proud of. Unfortunately I have not found the time to continue animating as much as I would like and the recent advancements in generative AI have swindled my motivation somewhat. Nonetheless I am still keeping up with Blender and its continued updates and I am sure I will come back to this project one day.

Below are a few screenshots of my favorite animations and you can see the full version of all of the animations I made on my Instagram or the full res version on Youtube.

Screenshot from the 'rose gold folds' animation
Screenshot from the 'Swirls' animation
Screenshot from the 'Virtual Sunset' animation

Project Conclusion

Fun

4 / 5
Frustrating at times but very satisfying to end up with pretty animations

Polish/Viability

4 / 5
Final results look great in my opinion

Difficulty

3.5 / 5
Coming up with abstract animation ideas is not easy, and trying to animate them is often challenging and time consuming.

Cost

0.5 / 5
Free except for the increased electricity bill from rendering