How to make a BobbyBroccoli video

The wait is over, here's a quick overview of how I make my videos! Please feel free to ask questions in the comments.
Check out my class on Nebula to get access to my Blender project files: nebula.tv/how-to-make-a-bobby...
Charlie Arsenault - Assistant Editor
@hotcyder on KZbin for the thumbnail
My Patreon: / bobbybroccoli
My Twitter: / bobbybroccole
(If you cannot see your scene through your camera when you zoom super far in or out, try changing the "Clip Start" and "Clip End" properties for your camera)
Some Blender creators whose videos have helped me in the past:
/ @chrishanel
/ @theducky3d
/ @erindale
Intro to Blender videos:
• Learn Blender 3D in 20...
• The BEST Way To Learn ...
The three tutorials mentioned at the end:
• Sunset Animation (Blen...
• CREATE A PROCEDURAL CO...
• Blender - 80's Style A...

[@BobbyBroccoli]

Want to directly support me and get access to my Blender project files? Nebula is the best way to do that: nebula.tv/how-to-make-a-bobbybroccoli-video

[@slyseal2091]

when will you comment on the mr shit situation

[@corydonk]

How do you find such interesting topics?

[@benoi5]

I wanna subscribe to you, directly on youtube, if it is possible that’d make it much more accessible to everyone. If commisions are a problem, i think even at a doubled price (and different support tiers) is still Ok since you are a lot of peoples favorite creator

[@BobbyBroccoli]

@benoi5 No worries if you can't support on another site, KZbin is still a great way to watch my work!

[@YourCanadianGuide]

Foolish mistake! Here comes the competition. Get ready for the channel Colin Cauliflower where I will be discussing the Nobel prizes in 1 hour and 45 minute videos!

[@BobbyBroccoli]

Colin better have his guard up

[@YourCanadianGuide]

But honestly though, as someone who grew up in Ottawa and lived through the collapse of Nortel and all of the other "-tels" in the early 2000s, those videos hit hard.

[@restitvtororbis5330]

I guess I'm stuck with Benny Brussels Sprouts or Kenny Kale then 😐 There aren't enough Cruciferous vegetables to keep this naming convention going much longer.

[@user-yl5ki7it6q]

@@restitvtororbis5330 🤪

[@bmac4]

Unironically, I'd watch more videos on Nobel Laureates. There's so many fascinating ones. You got guys like John B Goodenough, who got his at age 97. You got Andre Geim, the first person to ever win both a Nobel prize and an Ig Nobel prize. You have Harry Martinson, who was so depressed by the fact that his win was controversial (due to him being a member of the academy for the prizes) that he took his own life in a horrifically gruesome way. So many stories to tell.

[@Diamondminer49r]

Step 1: be the GOAT

[@konataizumi5829]

Truuuuuuue

[@AliMoradi-bd6qc]

Yes

[@yurareigiryu]

No cap

[@2Links]

he's 100% the goat dude

[@pain4066]

he's not a goat he's a broccoli

[@Cantdecidethough]

Dear Robert broccoli. Thanks for this. I was a university drop out that eventually worked my way back and now finishing my PhD in physics. I’m going to be doing my medical physics residency in July and for the past 6 months doing applications and interviews, I documented all of it to make a really cool documentary in your style. I’m so happy you posted this tutorial to get me started!

[@tfk_001]

now repeatedly commit academic fraud and you can have a video on this channel about you!

[@orangeants]

That's so cool! I'm about to start applying for PhDs, so I hope you'll be posting your journey. I've subscribed!

[@4thalt]

thank you robert broccoli i'm now gonna make a 2 hour video essay on the history of banana bread

[@Jieuns_Flori]

Yessssss

[@LeakyTrees]

Dew it

[@Vanq22114]

Oh, holy shit, a BobbyBroccoli video teaching me skills that I'm never going to use! I'm absolutely going to watch this at least two or three times anyway.

[@universodolucas6023]

No way, a 15 minute video

[@Grand-Rose]

But one question: How do you ALWAYS manage to find such poetic metaphors and endings to your videos? Like the July 4 announcement in the Superconducting Super collider or even the SS Edmund Fritzgerald for the Nortel one?

[@BobbyBroccoli]

Both of those were based in fact! I just had to read enough about the topics

[@Grand-Rose]

@@BobbyBroccoli Yes, but still it is commendable that you put so much effort into researching for your videos, perhaps that's why researching takes so long for you. Thanks for that. You have persuaded me with this to read more. I hope I can find such things in the future too.

[@ekki1993]

That's just creative writing, which is a specific skill you can train for.

[@elsie485]

​@@Grand-Rose Yeah, the cool thing about reading and learning more is you start building up lots of connections and parallels between events, times, and places and you just start noticing those sorts of things without even trying half the time.

[@Grand-Rose]

@@elsie485 Indeed so. Already have caught many such things while reading the Superheavy book. And it is also one of the few things that work to INCREASE my attention span.

[@Gurmudgin]

My man discusses blender, and how to learn blender, and then DOESN’T link the doughnut tutorial. How could you?! In all seriousness this was a really cool peek behind the curtain. Thanks Broccoli.

[@adned6281]

If you start to make Nebula exclusives I'm finally getting it. That's it, that's the final straw.

[@batteredthem]

Not this video causing me to rewatch all of your long-form essays again. XD

[@Daffothrill]

1) Thanks for making this. It's something I wish more artists would do. It's great not just for people who want to take inspiration from your style, but also for non-artists to better understand how involved this process can be. 2) For anyone watching this that isn't familiar, Blender's keyframing system has changed slightly since the version of blender this was filmed on. You hit K instead of I to bring up the keyframing menu. I will now default to keying using whatever Keying Set you have enabled (Loc-Rot-Scale by default). 3) The Add Camera Rigs addon can help a lot with getting more specific camera control, like an orbiting camera or a dolly zoom. Blenderkit is an addon that allows you to search and bring in free assets directly in blender. I've used it extensively and it's a lifesaver.

[@rvdeddrift]

This is literal Blender GOLD for folks just starting or even a fair bit into the journey! This really needs to get pinned up there! Fur eels!

[@harryjsunshine1742]

i spent all of this week teaching myself using your google earth tutorial so i could make a documentary for my ecology class assignment. i’m glad you have more to teach me.

[@tenta9876]

I love your videos Mr. Broccoli, I gotta say smashing all the graphs and models together is a genius way to tell a story, helped me work through some more difficult topics I would have never been interested in.

[@hughjackful]

Comment for the algorithm. We will support you to the death Mr. Broccoli

[@lava172]

I genuinely watched your old tutorial on how to make the Jon Bois-style video in Google Earth the other day bc I wanted to make my own video in that style. The timing is amazing thank you Bobby

[@blobofdespair]

This makes me want to rewatch all of your videos! You use this medium so well and your great storytelling skills mesh beautifully with it. You're top tier, my man.

[@Pailamps]

Bobby, the timing COULD NOT be better. You and Jacob geller are my heroes, and I'm sure there's a lot to takeaway from this video. Thank you so much for all these tips.

[@Cheskaz]

Sharing knowledge is hella rad

[@minebeast3169]

I *just* finished binging almost all of your videos, and now i have another. Yessssssss

[@hazeust]

Making your style of art accessible and fun to all is often an overlooked appreciation. Thanks for sharing your "secret sauce".

[@TH_5094]

Your videos are some of the most high production value and good quality content on the entire internet. It is rare to come across a channel that makes such well researched videos AND presents it in such a nice way. Thank you :)

[@sciguy4297]

Huh, I was wondering if you were using blender for this stuff! Glad the software is finally getting friendly enough for new users to take it up! For context, I have been doing freelance blender work for years now. It is a super powerful tool for being completely free, and near perfect for this kind of task. Really hoping more people take up something similar to your style, it is much more dynamic than the usual flat video editing associated with video essays. A couple random tips from someone who knows blender like the back of their hand at this point lol: EEVEE is your, (much faster rendering), friend. You sort of dismiss it a bit, but for the fairly flat and lighting-less shading your work typically has it is a near perfect match. EEVEE works on the same principals as a high-end game engine, just without the requirements for low latency on each frame. The main things it suffers under are transparencies (IE glass/water) and high resolution lighting/shadows. Cycles has the benefit of being a full ray tracing engine, so lighting is extremely realistic but this comes at the obvious cost of performance, especially on older GPU's without hardware support for ray tracing. This style of animation you are doing, really doesn't need much lighting at all. And just cranking up EEVEE's cube map sizes will likely fix any aliasing anyways. If you want more keyframe control, especially for how your camera motions accelerate and decelerate, look into the 'Graph Editor' window. I typically add this window right below my active camera view viewport, as the camera view is always more rectangular and there is space for a small window below it. The Graph Editor lets you mess with your keyframe's handles, allowing control over steepness, acceleration and deceleration. In this window you can also add modifiers to your keys for things like procedural noise (which makes for good camera 'shake'), bounce/rebound effects and much more. Python is another friend! I am so happy to see someone using it. Blender is built on top of python, or at least the UI is. ANYTHING you can do in the UI, you can do in the scripting tab. If a task seems mundane or repetitive, you can probably automate it! Free blender assets are literally everywhere! You mention this, but I want to reiterate for anyone else. You can find free assets in blender for near anything, or tutorials for how to built it yourself. To do this kind of animation you really don't need any sort of modeling skill or knowledge. Same goes for textures, CC0 is my personal go to for free textures but that is more suited for proper Cycles environments. The node editor is extremely powerful! You showed it for a brief moment, generating your corkboard textures. I would recommend trying learn a bit about how it works to anyone using blender. There is so much it can do and so many neat effects you can pull off with it. The node editor is the sole reason I can even texture models, as I have practically no innate 2D art skill. Most if not all of my textures are generative, because my programmer brain can understand it. Also as a final little warning for anyone wanting to get into this. Your recommendation of rendering to PNG is a good one, as if your render breaks or crashes and you are rendering to a video directly you WILL lose all of your progress. But do keep in mind that a full PNG render will take up MASSIVE amounts of space. Put it on a big hard drive, or you are going to run out of space mid render... Ask me how I know...

[@lenapawlek7295]

So cool to hear about your process! Seeing the pictures just makes me want to watch the videos again

[@Antsylum]

Thanks so much for this. I've been working towards making some video essays in my spare time, and you've definitely been one of the inspirations for that. I've got a little bit of experience in blender, and often thought about your style and how you put it all together. This is great 😁

[@CraftyMasterman]

Already made one in Minecraft 😅 Kinda crazy how many parallels that video process has to yours

[@jbug1979]

Huge Secret Base fan, so I'm happy to see the style spreading. Love your work too BB!

[@TheFilmFatale]

Oh wonderful! I have truly thought about this exact question. Deeply appreciate this video❤

[@JoyRender]

I love this video, i have been learning blender for around a year and this has showed off some really cool tricks and better ways to do things! thank you!

[@swisha_223]

This is incredibly helpful and insightful, the look at the behind-the-scenes and workflow is great, thank you so much!

[@homborgor]

Thank you so much for this. I've been using blender for 2-3 years now and I always struggle with telling stories with this, I might actually start uploading things now

[@Nuc04]

Thank you for this! I animated two of my videos in Google Earth and my friend has been practically begging me to learn how to animate in Blender, lol

[@7catsinatrenchcoat789]

So amazing to see more of your process :}

[@Jackmarlin]

Thank you so so much for making this! I've recently started making videos in Blender, highly influenced by you and Jon Bios' animation style, and this is insanely helpful, and even your prior Google Earth tutorial as very helpful in laying out the fundamentals

[@sooskitashi1907]

The production value for your videos is insane and I always wanted a peek behind the curtain. Thanks this is fantastic!

[@MilesMister]

Its so interesting to see the way you make videos! Thanks!

[@the33rdguy]

This video is amazing for me! I have been wanting to get into blender for my own upcoming documentaries! So this will be so helpful man!

[@vluverr]

god i love you bobby im so glad you took your love for jon bois and added your own elements to it. you are one of the most skillful “documentarians” (i use quotations because i don’t think that accurately describes your content) in the entire youtube scene. I remember commenting this felt like chart party after watching your videos for the first time. keep up the great work!

[@VegaTheLyra]

I just realised the comedic genius of the thumbnail, well played Bobby, well played

[@osukarui]

As someone who has made videos using a very similar process in blender its a lot of fun seeing someone else's process listed out like that. Also, your videos are awesome and have been a lot of inspiration! Thanks for sharing this.

[@Crowald]

There are four creators I drop fucking everything for when I see they've uploaded a new video; you, Soup Emporium, Ahoy, and Barny64. Nothing even comes close to approaching the kind of content I find that is, somehow, specifically formulated to fit right into my brain that you make. It's so good, and being primarily someone who learns through listening as opposed to a visual learner, it's pretty incredible that I can't take my eyes off of some of the scenescapes. Without a doubt, the $21,000,000,000 Missing Collider is one of the most excursive, thoughtful, complex and descriptive documentaries I've ever seen. I was captivated from end to end. Most of your videos do the same, but I love the interlacing political drama side-story that insinuates itself into the SSC's journey from dead idea to burial ground.

[@DaveWhiteInYoFace]

I love your videos. Please keep making them.

[@flyingfoox1365]

I’ve actually been thinking about this! Thank you!

[@paulvillerius848]

A video styled after a board game would go HARD

[@ALittleOffProduction]

YES! I've been waiting for this video.

[@Pdasniper]

What an incredible contribution to the community

[@HussainBassam]

You know he is humble when he watches erindale videos and doesn't tell anyone

[@Wmann]

One of the steps being such a great content creator overall…

[@flatypus]

Thanks so much for sharing your tips a couple months ago!

[@santoast24]

#7 is by far the most useful tip, dont miss it if this is your first introduction to Blender!

[@amberfaux2329]

can't believe bobby recreated blender and the whole video animation in blender!

[@ritac9769]

I've just made the decision to start my own science youtube channel and I also already know how to used Blender for static scientific illustration. Had no idea you could do these kinds of animations so I'm stoked to try it now!!

[@Ttrain909]

Honestly I thought the presentation was a similar program to Presi. Realizing that you essentially build your information from the ground up, then move through 3D space yourself with no transition software helping you out makes me further respect the absurd amount of work you put into your videos!

[@Yezpahr]

I hope this inspires people to make more videos of that style. I saw a video Nuclear Engineer Reacts, he was reviewing your island of stability video and he also loved the animation style.

[@Jieuns_Flori]

I love free to use community driven resources~ Thank you Bobby 😊

[@ThEnDoFRS]

When do we get How BobbyBroccoli Makes Broccoli?

[@froggo9367]

lets go new video (i will watch it again on nebula later)

[@PlatFormerlyKno]

Incredibly cool thank you

[@whamer100]

that's... a lot simpler than I was expecting it to be! I've been meaning to try learning to use blender for reals, and this might be a fun way to try it out.

[@dragonfluf]

Thank you, I've always wanted to learn how to blend broccoli

[@aze4308]

yoooo let’s gooooo thank you for making this

[@firesoul453]

Very interesting! Thank you!

[@RealTal.]

You inspired me to learn blender you're amazing.

[@finnmckinlay]

hot tip! the default short cut for walk mode is Shift + ~

[@parksto]

Very inspiring 🙏

[@MattGree]

Thanks for making this! I’ve been using apple motion for some 3D work I’ve been doing but it’s really painful for a lot of things. This is probably the push I need to start learning blender instead!

[@cutebeloved]

was literally going to wait until jon bois was mentioned and it didnt even take 20 seconds HAHA he really is the goat man

[@thebetterjay6125]

Dang this is another good broccumentary

[@2Gamerss]

Thanks!

[@squillz8310]

Jon Bois and SB are some of the best content on youtube if you love sports. Love seeing their inspiration in your work. Such an engaging and enjoyable editing form

[@Lockon9573]

Thank you. I've downloaded this and will pursue this

[@VirtuelleWeltenMitKhan]

Thank you for sharing

[@yeaeayaye]

that thumbnail caught me off guard, too lively and bright (unlike your stories)

[@RESPRiT]

As someone who has also made a Boisean Google Earth video (based on your original tutorial!), and has since moved onto learning and using Blender, it's really cool to see how the workflow you've developed is similar to mine! I wanted to share another quick tip, and also ask two quick questions: - TIP! If the colors of your images don't look quite right after importing them to Blender when using Images to Planes, even when using shadeless or emission textures, check to make sure that the "View Transform" setting under Color Management (Render Properties -> Color Management) is set to "Standard." Blender seems to default to "Filmic", which caused me a ton of grief when initially trying to create color-accurate visuals. - QUESTION 1! You mentioned on Twitter that it is possible to replicate Google Earth-style camera motion in Blender - it doesn't look like that made it into this tutorial, so I'm curious how you recommend getting that kind of "steady angle, lift up, ease back down" camera movement? - QUESTION 2! When I initially tried doing data visualizations, I attempted a geo nodes setup but really struggled to get things going. Since then, I've used Python scripts for all my viz work, but the scalability seems quite poor (on my older mid-range computer, once you hit hundreds of objects, things start to chug). Do you have any recommendations for resources to help ease into geo nodes? Love the vids, cheers!

[@BobbyBroccoli]

The best way to get into geonodes for visualizations is the Nortel project file I have on Nebula. You're instancing points instead of making seperate mesh objects

[@Lucas72928]

I know it's not as flexible, but if you want to animate the visibility of an object just popping in/out instead of having it grow into existence, you can hover the mouse cursor over the camera icon in the outliner (that's the render visibility toggle) and press "i" to keyframe it. That way you save a bit of memory and speed the render a tiny bit... Or a lot depending on the object

[@forever_stay6793]

I was JUST thinking to myself, "hmm I wonder when BobbyBroccoli is gonna upload a new video" and then I opened KZbin and this was the first recommendation on the homepage!!! Perfect timing lol

[@letter_n]

walk navigation is default keybinded to SHIFT + GRAVE (`), this works both in camera and in viewport

[@KillianTwew]

Awesome. Been looking forward to this video! I was recently trying to animate a Hopf Fibration with Python, but the libraries available don't handle it well. I think Blender is exactly what I was looking for

[@rge9992]

Now I want a video on your research process.

[@willyfeumba]

Merci pour le petit tutoriel Thank you for the little tutorial

[@HK_808]

Thanks for helping me keep going in college. Working on my 2 year electronics engineering degree rn

[@alexlowe2054]

When I saw the title, I expected a joke video, but instead the man himself actually shows us his workflow in great detail. That's pretty awesome. For anyone looking for the next Bobby Broccoli, check out "The Scale of Mushroom Clouds" by RojoFern. It's not full 3d, but the tone, editing style, and general intelligence and wit remind me of John Bois. He's got some other similar videos.

[@jonathanord]

Shift + F Ah, the pre-2.8 Walk/Fly shortcut. Glad to see someone else uses it over panning and tilting, which i find more inconvenient.

[@isaiahbarr452]

I thought you were gone but I'm very much happy to see you again your videos are the best.

[@BobbyBroccoli]

I take several months between projects, this is normal for me these days haha

[@starryskies9655]

Even this was enjoyable to listen to, you just have a nice voice

[@alexbenjamin8117]

you can hit ( I ) on the render and view icon in the collection to toggle viability for the render insted of scaling it to zero

[@BobbyBroccoli]

This unfortunately is not able to be keyframed easily as the keyframe disappears from the dopesheet

[@alexbenjamin8117]

@@BobbyBroccoli yes if you hide it from the viewport the keyframes will disappear but if you use the camera icon it shouldn't disappear when you click on them

[@Vachan_notavailable]

lets goo hes on NEBULA too finally

[@BobbyBroccoli]

I've been on there for about 1.5 years now!

[@ekki1993]

That thumbnail is awesome

[@Sam-yo6rb]

omg ur videos sooo reminded me of chartparty

[@bakayuki]

hi from japan!👋thanks for good videos!

[@aequinoctiale]

fuckin KNEW it was inspired by Jon Bois. god i should revisit the funny space lads. you're so good at this style and it's so well done. congrats! and of course all your videos are backed up by insane amounts of research so its even better.

[@csecskristof]

Damn, this was incredibly helpful. I always get stuck on the visual parts of video essays. I have some experience with the writing and the audio parts, but the visuals are just unpenetrable to me. (And most people i like are doing unique art animation, so copying that is a bust). Always loved your style of videos because of how clean and simple they are. Hopefully this will stick :)

[@TheaVanherst]

That's crazy, I legimately thought based on how the sheer amount of assets needed to do something like this, it would be obvious you use After Effects for the composition & layer system being ideal for something like this.

[@teotab4293]

No waaay the timing could not have been better

[@SirNardManhawk]

Must have used a kay frame.

[@titotatitod6846]

Im not even a content creator but im watching til the end for sure

[@RikoDiko]

So weird, I'm working on a video and was just thinking last night I could use your work as inspiration, then this pops up the next day.

[@LendriMujina]

I'm someone who constantly second-guesses myself, so if I ever did something like this, I'd probably have to take extra steps like turning the sketches into an animatic in the video editor before even _thinking_ of moving on to Blender. To make _absolutely sure_ everything that would be hard to change won't have to be.

[@GSR600Relaxed]

Very interesting video.

[@limbolegs]

ive said to my friends for a while that jon bois is the favourite youtuber of their favourite youtubers. its insane how many people hes influenced who dont even know

[@chugusbungus1533]

thank you bobby!!!