Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook

Book description

If you’re already au fait with Blender, this book gives extra power to your artist’s elbow with a fantastic grounding in Cycles. Packed with tips and recipes, it makes light work of the toughest concepts.

  • Get acquainted with the lighting and rendering concepts of the Blender Cycles engine
  • Learn the concepts behind nodes shader system and get the best out of Cycles in any situation
  • Packed with illustrations and a lot of tips and tricks to make your scenes come to life

In Detail

Blender provides a broad spectrum of modeling, texturing, lighting, animation and video post-processing functionality in one package. It provides cross-platform interoperability, extensibility and a tightly integrated workflow. Blender is one of the most popular Open Source 3D graphics applications in the world.

Modern GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) have some limitations for rendering complex scenes. This is mainly because of limited memory, and interactivity issues when the same graphics card is also used for displaying and rendering frames. This is where Cycles rendering engine comes into play. Cycles is bundled as an add-on with Blender. Some of the features of Cycles is its quality, speed and having integrated industry standard libraries.

This book will show you how to carry out your first steps in Cycles - a brand new rendering engine for Blender. In a gradual and logical way, you will learn how to create complex shaders and lighting setups to face any kind of situation that you may find in Computer Graphics.

This book provides information on how to setup your first application in Cycles. You will start by adding lights, materials, and textures to your scene. When it’s time for the final render, you will see how to setup Cycles in the best way. You will learn about a wide variety of materials, lighting, techniques, tips, and tricks to get the best out of Cycles. Further on in the book, you will get to know about animation and still shots, and learn how to create advanced materials for realistic rendering, as well cartoon style shaders.

This cookbook contains a wide range of different scenes, proposed in a structured and progressive order. During this journey, you will get involved in the concepts behind every step you take in order to really master what you learn.

Table of contents

  1. Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook
    3. Credits
    4. About the Author
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more
        1. Why Subscribe?
        2. Free Access for Packt account holders
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code and colored graphics
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    8. Introduction
      1. Knowing your ingredients
      2. A look at the hardware
    9. 1. Key Holder and Wallet Studio Shot
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting up Cycles for the first run
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
      3. Creating a three-point light setup in Cycles using mesh emitters
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
          1. Key Light
          2. Fill Light
          3. Rim Light
      4. Learning environment lighting
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      5. Using the Glossy shader to create a clean metal material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      6. Adding realism to the keys with a bump texture
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      7. Creating a rubber shader for the key holder
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      8. Adding color to the key holder
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      9. Creating a leather material for the wallet
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      10. Using the Cycles camera's depth of field
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      11. Setting the Cycles render parameters
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
    10. 2. Creating Different Glass Materials in Cycles
      1. Introduction
      2. Creating a simple glass shader
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      3. Creating a glass full of water
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      4. Using default Cycles caustics
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      5. Creating custom fake caustics
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more...
      6. Creating a custom and more versatile glass shader
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      7. Creating more complex glass materials
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      8. Obtaining a dispersion effect
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more...
      9. Creating an absorption glass shader
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
    11. 3. Creating an Interior Scene
      1. Introduction
      2. Creating fake portals to decrease the noise in the scene
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
      3. Creating a parquet material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
      4. Creating materials for the plant in the scene
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      5. Creating a different kind of leather
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      6. Creating the materials for the lamp
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Assigning the different materials
          2. Creating the marble
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      7. Creating a carpet using hair particles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      8. Setting up night lighting
        1. Getting started
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
      9. Using IES files in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
    12. 4. Creating an Exterior Scene
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting up the lighting with an external plugin
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      3. Creating the road material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Creating the asphalt
          2. Creating the mud
          3. Mixing the two node groups
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      4. Creating the grass material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more
      5. Texturing the tree trunk and creating realistic leaves
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Creating the bark
          2. Creating the leaves
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      6. Adding flowers to the scene
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Creating the stigma
          2. Creating the petal and the stem
        3. How it works
        4. There's more
        5. See also
      7. Creating the wood material for the table and the fence
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Creating the wooden planks
          2. Creating the wooden poles
          3. Creating the wooden poles ends
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      8. Giving final touches to the image using render passes
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Adding the background and a bloom effect
          2. Creating a blur mask for the horizon
          3. Creating masks for color correction
          4. Final touches
        3. How it works…
          1. Adding the background and a bloom effect
          2. Creating a blur mask for the horizon
          3. Creating masks for color correction
          4. Final touches
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
    13. 5. Creating a Cartoonish Scene
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting up the environment and lighting
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Lighting and render settings
          2. Sea
          3. Floor
          4. Balustrade
          5. Dust Particles
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
      3. Creating skin, teeth, and other body parts
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
          1. Skin
          2. Eye
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      4. Creating the hair material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. See also
      5. Creating the dress material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
          1. Boots
          2. Foular
          3. Belt
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      6. Compositing the scene
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. See also
    14. 6. Creating a Toy Movie Scene
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting up the lighting
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
          1. Setting up scenography lights
          2. Other lights
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      3. Creating a realistic plastic material for the characters
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
          1. Creating the material for the soldier's face
          2. Creating black plastic material
          3. Creating material for the soldier's chest
          4. Creating the Officers's plastic material
          5. Creating the Darth's plastic material
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      4. Creating the environment
        1. Getting started
        2. How to do it...
          1. Creating the floor
          2. Creating the column wall
          3. Creating a plain wall
          4. Creating other wall materials
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      5. Achieving a movie look using the compositor
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
          1. Render settings
          2. Compositing the image
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
    15. 7. Car Rendering in Cycles
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting up the lighting
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      3. Creating the car paint material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      4. Creating the material for the tyres and the rims
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
          1. Creating the Rims material
          2. Creating tyres
          3. Creating brakes
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      5. Creating the material for headlights and other details
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
          1. Creating the tail lights
          2. Creating other parts
        3. How it works…
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      6. Compositing the scene
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
    16. 8. Creating a Car Animation
      1. Introduction
      2. Setting up the lighting
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      3. Creating a car paint material
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      4. Creating the materials for the exterior environment
        1. Getting Started
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      5. Setting up the scene for the animation
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      6. Compositing the scene
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See Also
    17. 9. Creating an Iceberg Scene
      1. Introduction
      2. Creating the ice and snow materials
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
          1. Creating ice
          2. Creating snow
          3. Mixing ice and snow
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      3. Creating the sea material in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      4. Compositing the scene
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
    18. 10. Creating Food Materials in Cycles
      1. Introduction
      2. Creating grapes in Cycles
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      3. Creating parmigiano cheese
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more…
        5. See also
      4. Creating bread
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it…
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
      5. Learning the Branched Path Tracing render
        1. Getting ready
        2. How to do it...
        3. How it works...
        4. There's more...
        5. See also
    19. Index

Product information

  • Title: Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook
  • Author(s): Bernardo Iraci
  • Release date: December 2013
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781782164609