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Photorealistic Materials and Textures in Blender Cycles

You're reading from   Photorealistic Materials and Textures in Blender Cycles Create impressive production-ready projects using one of the most powerful rendering engines

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Product type Paperback
Published in Oct 2023
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781805129639
Length 394 pages
Edition 4th Edition
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Author (1):
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Arijan Belec Arijan Belec
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Arijan Belec
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Table of Contents (21) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Part 1: Materials in Cycles FREE CHAPTER
2. Chapter 1: Creating Materials in Blender 3. Chapter 2: Introducing Material Nodes 4. Chapter 3: Mapping Images with Nodes 5. Part 2: Understanding Realistic Texturing
6. Chapter 4: Achieving Realism with Texture Maps 7. Chapter 5: Generating Texture Maps with Cycles 8. Chapter 6: Creating Bumpy Surfaces with Displacement Maps 9. Part 3: UV Mapping and Texture Painting
10. Chapter 7: UV-Unwrapping 3D Models for Texturing 11. Chapter 8: Baking Ambient Occlusion Maps 12. Chapter 9: Introducing Texture Painting 13. Chapter 10: Creating Photorealistic Textures on a 3D Model 14. Part 4: Lighting and Rendering
15. Chapter 11: Lighting a Scene in Cycles 16. Chapter 12: Creating Photorealistic Environments with HDRIs 17. Chapter 13: Preparing the Camera for Rendering 18. Chapter 14: Rendering with Cycles 19. Index 20. Other Books You May Enjoy

Understanding Ambient Occlusion maps

AO maps are texture maps used to simulate soft shadows on 3D models. Figure 8.1 shows a model without an AO map (left) and a model with one (right). The left model has no shading and does not look realistic, while the right model has visible shading and looks like it is in a real environment.

Figure 8.1 – A model before and after adding an AO map

Figure 8.1 – A model before and after adding an AO map

Now let’s dive into what an AO map looks like. In Figure 8.2, we can see the AO map used on the model from Figure 8.1.

Figure 8.2 – An AO map

Figure 8.2 – An AO map

As you can see, it is mostly white with some gray and black areas. The purpose of this texture map is to shade the creases of the model. We can use this image texture in combination with other textures to improve their shading and shade creases to make the model look more realistic.

Now that we understand what an AO map is, we will move on to learning how to make one in Blender.

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