Shading, Lighting, and Rendering with Blender EEVEE

Shading, Lighting, and Rendering with Blender EEVEE

by Sammie Crowder
Released April 2022
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781803230962

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Book description

Get to grips with new real-time animation techniques and tricks to improve your artistic and technical skills in shading, 3D rendering, and scene creation using Blender 3.0

Key Features

  • Learn real-time rendering engine concepts by creating three projects
  • Understand how to update workflows to Blender 3.0
  • Explore intermediate to advanced-level tutorials on creating art inside Blender

Book Description

Blender is the most important up-and-coming 3D software package in the world. EEVEE, a state-of-the-art real-time rendering engine is a fairly new addition to Blender and provides the capacity to create artwork at blazing speed, almost 12 times faster than Cycles.

Lighting, Shading, and Rendering with Blender's EEVEE provides a high-level overview of what EEVEE is capable of, then teaches users about Geometry Nodes, Rendering Techniques, using shortcuts like Kitbashing and Alphas to speed up scene creation, volumetrics, reflections, adding lights, cameras and even special effects like fire and smoke, all in EEVEE. All of this is in the context of creating actual scenes that readers will work through from start to finish. By the time a Blender Artist completes the book, they will have created three separate works that have challenged them to iterate and design with the full power of Blender's EEVEE.

What you will learn

  • Explore EEVEE Render Properties for optimal outcomes
  • Focus on shading processes, including those that are both traditional and more cutting-edge
  • Understand composition and create effective concept art inside Blender
  • Discover procedural workflows to shorten the artistic process instead of getting mired in details
  • Understand intermediate Blender workflows for working in a professional environment
  • Develop art in different styles and learn why each style has different workflows and conventions
  • Create interactive, rapid changes in Blender's EEVEE engine

Who this book is for

This book is for 3D animators, sculptors, modelers, and concept artists who want to use EEVEE to speed up their work in movies, TV, and game design. Readers are expected to have a basic to intermediate-level understanding of 3D programs and ray-tracing engines.

Table of contents

  1. BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI
  2. Shading, Lighting, and Rendering with Blender EEVEE
  3. Contributors
  4. About the author
  5. About the reviewers
  6. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
    4. Download the example code files
    5. Download the color images
    6. Conventions used
    7. Get in touch
    8. Share Your Thoughts
  7. Section 1: Configuring in EEVEE – Mini-Project 1 – Stylized Scene
  8. Chapter 1: Introducing EEVEE – A Real-Time Rendering Engine
    1. Technical requirements
    2. What is EEVEE? EEVEE as a rendering engine
      1. Why use EEVEE and what are the advantages of using EEVEE?
      2. Limitations of EEVEE
    3. Setting up – configuring the start of mini-projects
      1. File structure
      2. An overview of the mini-projects
    4. Summary
  9. Chapter 2: Creating Materials Fast with EEVEE
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Materials in EEVEE
      1. Why materials are a little different in EEVEE
    3. Quickly previewing lighting ideas for fast iteration
    4. Creating our first image-based material
      1. Two-click Principled Setup
      2. Shader to RGB
    5. Creating our first procedural texture
      1. The base mesh
      2. Texture creation with procedural nodes
      3. Adding shading to the material
    6. Summary
  10. Chapter 3: Lights, Camera...
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Adding lighting to our mini-project
      1. World lighting system
      2. Changing to the world shader editor
      3. Changing the HDRI to fit our scene
      4. Adding lights to our scene
    3. Creating and configuring cameras
      1. Adding a camera
      2. Camera properties
    4. Learning about the Line Art modifier
    5. Summary
  11. Chapter 4: Non-Physical Rendering
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Adding clouds to our composition
    3. Configuring Render settings
      1. Sampling
      2. Ambient Occlusion
      3. Bloom
      4. Screen Space Reflections
      5. Film
    4. Compositing Render layers
      1. Final compositing
    5. Summary
  12. Section 2: Real-Time Rendering – Mini-Project 2 – Creating a Realistic Environment Concept
  13. Chapter 5: Setting Up an Environment with Geometry Nodes
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Setting up the scene – adding grass and rocks to the Asset Browser
    3. Setting up the scene – adding grass and rocks
    4. Adding more complexity and applying the modifier to other objects
      1. Adding rocks to the node tree
      2. Customizing our Geometry Nodes system
    5. Summary
  14. Chapter 6: Screen Space Reflections – Adding Reflection to the Water
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Screen space reflections
    3. Light probes – reflection planes
    4. Advanced water – volume and transparency
    5. Summary
  15. Chapter 7: Faking Camera Effects for Better Renders
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Atmospheric lighting
    3. Bloom
    4. Ambient occlusion
    5. Depth of field
    6. Summary
  16. Chapter 8: Using Alphas for Details
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Adding detail to the scene (with birds!)
    3. Faking volumetric mist
    4. Using an image to create a background
    5. Summary
  17. Section 3: Advanced Features – Mini-Project 3 – Creating a Sci-Fi Concept
  18. Chapter 9: Lighting an Interior Scene
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Troubleshooting a common lighting error
    3. Designing the lighting for our interior
    4. Previewing render passes to inform our lighting decisions
    5. Summary
  19. Chapter 10: Working with Irradiance Volumes and Cubemaps for More Accurate Rendering
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Implementing an Irradiance Volume
    3. Implementing a Reflection Cubemap
    4. Summary
  20. Chapter 11: Kitbashing – Adding Details Fast
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Kitbashing with small objects
    3. Using Geometry Nodes to create sci-fi panels
    4. Summary
  21. Chapter 12: Special Effects with EEVEE – Fire and Smoke
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Creating fire with Quick Smoke
    3. Tweaking the shader for fire and smoke in EEVEE
    4. Optimal EEVEE render settings for the smoke and fire
    5. How to combine renders in Cycles and EEVEE
    6. Summary
  22. Chapter 13: Exploring the Wide World of Blender
    1. Technical requirements
    2. Review of the main concepts covered in this book
    3. Further reading (or watching)
      1. Learning more about: Geometry Nodes
      2. Learning more about: The Asset Browser
      3. Learning more about: Physics simulations
      4. Learning more about: Character animation
      5. Learning more about: Modeling
      6. Learning more about: Materials
      7. Learning more about: The Grease Pencil
      8. Learning more about: Sculpting
      9. Learning more about: Scripting
    4. Add-ons for further improving your workflow
      1. Free
      2. Paid
    5. Further projects to tackle
      1. Environments
      2. Characters
      3. Grease Pencil
      4. Studies
    6. Summary
    7. Why subscribe?
  23. Other Books You May Enjoy
    1. Packt is searching for authors like you

Product information

  • Title: Shading, Lighting, and Rendering with Blender EEVEE
  • Author(s): Sammie Crowder
  • Release date: April 2022
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781803230962