Book description
Over 40 practical recipes to create stunning materials and textures using the Cycles rendering engine with Blender
In Detail
Blender is the graphics software of choice for designers and media professionals alike. This book will teach you how to utilize the power of the Blender 2.7 series to create a wide variety of materials, textures, and effects with the Cycles rendering engine. You will learn about node-based shader creation, and master cycles through step-by-step, recipe-based advice. With this book, you will start small by rendering the textures of stones and water, then scale things up to massive landscapes of mountains and oceans. You will then learn how to create the look of different artificial materials such as plastic, carpenter wood, and metal, and utilize volumetric shaders to create the effects of smoke, clouds, and subsurface scattering effects of skin. You will also learn how illumination works in Cycles, improvising the quality of the final render, and how to avoid the presence of noise and fireflies. By the end, you will know how to create an impressive library of realistic-looking materials and textures.
What You Will Learn
- Create a basic Cycles material by mixing the shader components
- Connect nodes of different kinds to build more advanced materials
- Add node-based textures to the shaders
- Create both simple and complex materials following step-by-step recipes
- Switch the shader components easily without affecting a possibly complex network of links
- Parent and rename the nodes to better organize the Node Editor window
- Build material interfaces for general use in complex materials by grouping the shaders inside groups
- Set up light sources and world global illumination
Table of contents
-
Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook Third Edition
- Table of Contents
- Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook Third Edition
- Credits
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- About the Reviewers
- www.PacktPub.com
- Preface
- 1. Overview of Materials in Cycles
- 2. Managing Cycles Materials
-
3. Creating Natural Materials in Cycles
- Introduction
- Creating a rock material using image maps
- Creating a rock material using procedural textures
- Creating a sand material using procedural textures
- Creating a simple ground material using procedural textures
- Creating a snow material using procedural textures
- Creating an ice material using procedural textures
-
4. Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles
- Introduction
- Creating a generic plastic material
- Creating a Bakelite material
- Creating an expanded polystyrene material
- Creating a clear (glassy) polystyrene material
- Creating a rubber material
- Creating an antique bronze material with procedurals
- Creating a multipurpose metal node group
- Creating a rusty metal material with procedurals
- Creating a wood material with procedurals
- 5. Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles
- 6. Creating More Complex Man-made Materials
-
7. Subsurface Scattering in Cycles
- Introduction
- Using the Subsurface Scattering shader node
- Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Translucent shader
- Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Vertex Color tool
- Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Ray Length output in the Light Path node
- Creating a fake Subsurface Scattering node group
-
8. Creating Organic Materials
- Introduction
- Creating an organic-looking shader with procedurals
- Creating a wasp-like chitin material with procedural textures
- Creating a beetle-like chitin material with procedural textures
- Creating tree shaders – the bark
- Creating tree shaders – the leaves
- Creating a layered human skin material in Cycles
- Creating fur and hair
- Creating a gray alien skin material with procedurals
- 9. Special Materials
- Index
Product information
- Title: Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook - Third Edition
- Author(s):
- Release date: February 2015
- Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
- ISBN: 9781784399931
You might also like
book
Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook
If you’re already au fait with Blender, this book gives extra power to your artist’s elbow …
book
Blender 3D: Designing Objects
Build your very own stunning characters in Blender from scratch About This Book Packed with illustrations …
book
Foundation Blender Compositing
This book provides concise yet step-by-step examples on using all of the power of Blender to …
book
Learn Blender Simulations the Right Way
An in-depth guide to using the power of Mantaflow, rigid body, soft body, cloth simulations, and …
