Blender has become a key tool in major production pipelines for animation, modeling, rigging, and VFX in recent years, with Flow's Oscar win last year marking a major milestone, and it has also been used in critically acclaimed projects like the Chainsaw Man movie and A24's Backrooms.

Blender's applications also go beyond entertainment: BlenderNation spotted its frequent use in the School of Football, part of Boston Dynamics and Hyundai's collaboration for training the Atlas robot in soccer skills. Soccer requires a complex combination of balance, timing, coordination, and precise movement, making it a major challenge to teach a robot to move naturally, all the more so with the global focus on the World Cup now.

The video above captures Atlas learning the Ghost Rabona kick, which combines a fake-out step over with a crossed-leg rabona kick. Boston Dynamics noted that this move is challenging even for humans, let alone a robot. The researchers began by capturing soccer players' movements, then retargeted them to match Atlas' body. Reinforcement learning was then used to let the robot practice, helping Atlas not only imitate humans but also learn. In a way, it learns as we do through trial and error, but super fast: a year's worth of practice in just 24 hours.

Learn more about the School of Football here, and make sure to try out Blender 5.2 LTS beta to help speed up the release. There's new experimental Geometry Nodes physics for hair and cloth, along with a Thin Wall rendering mode, and a Paint Filter node:

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