Blog - CGI Academy Hub

Geometry Nodes Motion Graphics in Blender: Full Guide

Geometry nodes motion graphics turns the frame number into data you can plug into any parameter: no keyframes, thousands of instances pulse,...

Diego Cortés 23 Oct, 2026

Game-ready assets: polygons, LODs and draw calls

To optimize a 3D model for games is not about stripping polygons until the mesh looks ugly: it is about managing four costs that are measured separately and...

Diego Cortés 22 Oct, 2026

Quadruped animation: walk, trot and gallop cycles

Quadruped animation is not a biped with two extra legs: it is two offset walks running inside the same body. Lose that offset and the animal skates across th...

Diego Cortés 21 Oct, 2026

Realistic water in Blender: ocean and foam step by step

Realistic water in Blender is the fastest way to give a render away: no other material exposes a fake scene so quickly. And the shader is al...

Diego Cortés 20 Oct, 2026

Retopology in Maya: Quad Draw step-by-step guide

A sculpt with millions of polygons looks perfect until someone tries to animate it: the rig breaks it, the UVs do not fit and the viewport crawls. Re...

Diego Cortés 19 Oct, 2026

Bad Normals: Blender effects, layer by layer (guide)

A tornado that drags a car, a trail that traces the hit, a title spinning in mid-air. Bad Normals solves one thing per video, and that narrow scope is exactl...

Diego Cortés 18 Oct, 2026

Arnold Utility Shaders: 7 Nodes That Solve the Render

Arnold utility shaders do not paint a surface: they return a measurement. Distance, occlusion, curvature. Once that clicks, seven nodes that...

Diego Cortés 17 Oct, 2026

Overlapping action and drag: 3D animation without stiffness

The character hits the pose and every part of the body freezes on the same frame. That is the sign of missing overlapping action and

Diego Cortés 16 Oct, 2026

Baked Lighting in UE5: Lightmaps and GPU Lightmass

Your Unreal Engine 5 scene looks stunning and runs at 20 fps. The fix is not lowering quality: it is deciding which lights get baked and which ones stay live...

Diego Cortés 15 Oct, 2026

3D Turntable: 360 Camera and a Seamless Loop

A turntable is the acid test for a model: a 360 camera travels all the way around it and no angle is left to hide a mistake...

Diego Cortés 14 Oct, 2026

UDIM and UV Tiles: Texturing with Multiple Maps

One UV map means one resolution for the whole model: too much on the face, not enough on the boot. UDIM and UV tiles split...

Diego Cortés 13 Oct, 2026

ZBrush Polypaint: Paint Your Sculpt, Then Bake It

Polypaint in ZBrush paints on the polygons before a texture map exists, so resolution and UVs stop being irreversible decis...

Diego Cortés 12 Oct, 2026