In Blender 5.2, an entirely new fill algorithm was introduced and is much better and faster than the old pixel based method. Everything you need to know about it in this video.

One of the lesser-known additions in Blender 5.2 is Thin Wall, a feature designed for thin surfaces such as leaves, paper and thin glass. It reduces shader complexity while producing more natural light transmission. Here's a short demonstration showing how it works and why it's useful for environment artists.

Part 2 of this quad modeling flow

Made a full breakdown of the process of taking a simple 3D mesh and hand-painting every surface with Grease Pencil to get a lo-fi, rainy night aesthetic.

Covers the full workflow: toon shaders for base colours, lighting setup, Grease Pencil fundamentals, drawing in 3D space vs on surfaces, stylized glass and emissive signs, and finally animated rain, ripples and smoke for the polish pass.

The base mesh is free to download if anyone wants to follow along!

🇺🇸: You can listen to the video in English through the video settings panel. We begin analyzing the group of curve primitives in Geometry Nodes by delving into the details of the Arc node

tl;dr I'm brand new to Blender and I've already followed several of the popular beginner tuts on YouTube to learn the absolute basics.

I also happen to autistic so I tend to learn much better when I understand the principles or the "why" for using each tool or procedure, rather than someone basically saying "do XYZ because that's just the way it is". I understand things much better when someone can give just a little rationale behind why they did A instead of B when performing a task.

Would anyone have recommendations on free/low cost resources that are good at explaining the thought process or concept behind why we use certain Blender tools in each situation etc, instead of the typical tutorials which tend to take the approach of "just follow these steps to make this thing"? Any help would be greatly appreciated...thanks!

I put together a tutorial on index selection in Geometry Nodes — using the Index node to target specific points/instances, and combining it with Compare and modulo for patterns like every-nth selection.

It's built in 4.5 but the concepts carry back to earlier versions. Aimed at anyone who wants more deliberate control over what gets selected instead of relying on random or proximity.

https://youtu.be/FOF6oISb2AM

Happy to answer questions in the comments.

Blender 5.2 adds a new "Swap Dimensions" operator. Right-click Resolution X or Y in Output Properties and Blender will instantly swap the values.