This article is about baking normals with the Cycles Render Engine. But it also contains excerpts from our book The Cycles Encyclopedia. This is where you can get extensive information about how normals work internally and what they are used for.

Volume scattering is used to create effects like smoke, dust, clouds, sun beams (a.k.a. god rays) and similar things. This tutorial will help you understand everything about volume scatter in Cycles and how to get the effects you expect from it.

OpenVDB is not in Blender yet, but there are plans to include it in future releases. You might wonder - what is this OpenVDB all about? BlenderDiplom talked with Ken Museth, lead developer of OpenVDB at Dreamworks, about the project and what users can expect from a software that uses OpenVDB.

Tamito Kajiyama is the developer who has worked on the integration of Freestyle into Blender for the longest period of time. Since 2009 he is the maintainer of the project. In this interview, he talks about the history and hurdles of the Freestyle integration development and how motivating it is to have active users in early stages of development.

Sean Kennedy is a compositing artist who has been working for the notable studio R&H until it went bankrupt (and got a special effects oscar). In his work he had used Blender every now and then to polish his shots. BlenderDiplom talked to him at last year's Blender Conference.