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Home > Game Development > Game Design > Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook
Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook
Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook

Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook: 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. , Second Edition

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Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon 3.5 (13 Ratings)
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Paperback Dec 2013 274 pages 2nd Edition
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Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook

Chapter 1. Key Holder and Wallet Studio Shot

In this first chapter we will learn how to set up Cycles. Then, we will create our first materials and lights in Cycles. We will cover the following topics:

  • Setting up Cycles for the first run
  • Creating a three-point light setup in Cycles using mesh emitters
  • Learning environment lighting
  • Using the Glossy shader to create a clean metal material
  • Adding realism to the keys with a bump texture
  • Creating a rubber shader for the key holder
  • Adding color to the key holder
  • Creating a leather material for the wallet
  • Using the Cycles camera's depth of field
  • Setting the Cycles render parameters

Introduction

Here we are at the beginning of our journey. In a short time we are going to set up our first Cycles scene. We will start with some basic lighting and materials, but at the end of this chapter we will have already learned a good amount of knowledge, which we will use to proceed with the other chapters and the creation of more and more complex things in Cycles.

Setting up Cycles for the first run

In this recipe we will see how to set up Cycles for the first run.

Getting ready

Let's open Blender and set Cycles as the rendering engine. If you are using the CPU to render, you are pretty much ready to go. If you want to use your video card, we need to change a couple of settings.

How to do it…

  1. Let's go to File | User Preferences.... As an alternative you can use the hotkey Ctrl + Alt + U.
  2. Let's start by going to the System tab and in the lower-left corner you will see the Compute Device setting area.
    How to do it…
  3. As default it is set to None, but to use your Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) device, you need to click on the CUDA button. From the drop-down menu, select your device (or devices if you have more than one card installed in your computer).
  4. At this point you may want to save the settings. To do this, click on the Save User Settings button in the lower-left corner so that Blender remembers these settings at the next startup.

    Tip...

Creating a three-point light setup in Cycles using mesh emitters

For our first lighting setup we will look at one of the most important and common ways of lighting: the three-point light setup. As the name suggests, this consists of three lights—the key light, the rim light, and the fill light. With different positions, colors, and intensities we can create a huge variety of moods for our image and this is why every artist should know how to set up this kind of lighting. Let's get started!

Getting ready

From the smaller viewport header, select the Display mode and from the drop-down menu, click on the Rendered mode.

Here you have it! The awesome real-time viewport. Now the scene is quite empty, so it is not so heavy and Blender should still be quite responsive. Anyway, it is up to the artist to decide when to turn the real-time viewport off if it becomes too heavy.

Tip

When we activate the real-time viewport, in the upper part of it we can see some technical info. The last one on...

Learning environment lighting

Even if we already set up a proper three-point light system, a real studio shot usually has some more elements around the scene that will contribute to the reflections on the object.

Getting ready

To recreate the environment that will contribute to the lighting and the reflections, it won't be necessary to model a whole scene. Instead, we can use an image to fake the environment around the scene and give our objects something to reflect.

How to do it...

To create the environment lighting, we will be following these steps:

  1. Let's go to the World node editor and add the following three nodes:
    • Texture Coordinate
    • Environment Texture (Add | Texture)
    • Mapping (Add | Vector)
  2. The environment texture is the kind of texture that we always have to use for a World BSDF (Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function). The Mapping node is really useful. It allows us to move, rotate, and scale an image on a surface or, as for this situation, on the environment. Let's...

Using the Glossy shader to create a clean metal material

Now that the lighting is ready, we need to add some material to the objects of our scene. Let's start with the key.

Getting ready

Select the key from the scene, add a new material and name it Key. Even if the key material alone will be quite simple, this time we are going to use the node editor in order to set it up.

By default when we add a new material, Cycles will add a Diffuse shader node and of course, the material output. For the key metal we will also need this node, so let's leave it where it is. Moreover, we are going to need a glossy shader in order to add reflections to the key surface.

How to do it...

These are the steps to create the materials of this recipe:

  1. To add a new node, we need to keep the cursor on the node editor and press Shift + A to make the Add menu appear. Now let's go to Shader | Glossy BSDF. A new Shader node will appear where your cursor stands.
  2. Now we need to mix the Diffuse BSDF and the Glossy...

Adding realism to the keys with a bump texture

In this recipe we will learn how to use bump maps to distort the surface of an object or at least create the illusion of it.

Getting ready

Now the surface of our key is reacting in a realistic way to light, but it is still missing something. Every real key has got some word or pattern on it. To obtain this effect, we are going to add a bump texture at the key material in order to add these details on the surface.

How to do it...

These are the steps we are going to follow to create the bump for our material:

  1. Let's go to our node editor and add a new node. To do this press Shift + A and go to Inputs | Texture Coordinate. This node will allow us to tell Cycles what kind of coordinate we want to use for the textures of our material. Now we need to add an Image Texture node. We will find it in the Textures section of the Add menu. Before we start to link the nodes, we need the last one. From the Vector section of the Add menu, add a Bump node.
  2. Now...

Creating a rubber shader for the key holder

Now we will create a material for the key holder. It will be a soft rubber material and something completely different from the metal of the key.

Getting ready

Before we start to create the material we need to add it to the mesh. Let's select the key holder mesh, add a new material to it, and name it KeyHolder.

How to do it...

These are the steps we are going to take to create the rubber material:

  1. Now, erase the Diffuse BSDF node from the node editor as we will not use it. Instead, we will be using the combination of Translucent BSDF and Glass BDSF nodes. Add them from the Shader section of the Add menu. Also add a Mix Shader node and link the Translucent BSDF node to the first Shader input and the Glossy BSDF one to the second Shader input of the Mix Shader node. Also set the Fac value to 0.100.
  2. As you can see in the viewport, the key holder now has a white milky material, with the light scattering inside itself. Anyway, to give it a rubber-like...

Adding color to the key holder

In this recipe we will learn how to use a color texture inside a material. We will also learn a really interesting technique to make the material more realistic and "live".

Getting ready

As you will have probably noticed our key holder has the shape of the Blender logo. Of course we cannot have just the shape, we need to add proper colorization!

How to do it...

To effectively use a color texture, we need to follow these steps:

  1. First of all let's add the colors of the Blender logo to it. In the node editor add a new Image Texture node and a Texture Coordinate node. Also, for these textures we will use the UV coordinates.
  2. Now link the Color output of the Image Texture node to the Color input of the Translucent BSDF node. It is already much better! Now we have a nice Blender logo! Some could say that we could even stop here, but let's tweak this material even further.
  3. It would be nice to have a bit of dirt in the occluded parts of the the key holder...

Creating a leather material for the wallet

Now let's see how we can create a material for a wallet. We want to recreate a smooth, worn eco leather.

Getting ready

First of all we need to add a new material to the wallet. Let's select the wallet mesh, add a new material to it, and name it Wallet.

How to do it…

To create the leather material, we will be following these steps:

  1. Now in the node editor add a Glossy BSDF node and mix it with the default Diffuse BSDF node using a Mix Shader node. Set the mix factor to 0.300 and the Glossy BSDF node's Roughness value to 0.100. Still not so great looking... is it? Let's make this material look a bit better! To do so we are going to use a combination of image textures and procedural textures.
  2. First of all let's add our Texture Coordinate node (Add | Input). Then we need to add a procedural texture. From the Texture section of the Add menu, click on Noise Texture. Link the Vector input to the Generated output of the Texture...

Using the Cycles camera's depth of field

Creating images using a 3D program is often all about imitating reality. When we take a picture, something that often occurs is that some of the objects are out of focus. Such an effect is called depth of field (DOF) and is what we are going to recreate in this recipe.

Getting ready

Our first scene in Cycles is almost ready. However, we can still do a couple of things to make it look even more realistic. We will now see how to add a nice DOF effect.

How to do it...

To recreate the DOF effect in Cycles, let's follow these steps:

  1. Let's jump in now to our scene in Blender and select the camera. First of all we need to set the point in the scene where we want to keep the focus. To do this we need to select the camera and go to the Object Data menu (the one with the little camera icon).
  2. From here we need to activate the Limits option in the Display panel. In the viewport we will see that the camera now has a line going towards where it is looking...

Setting the Cycles render parameters

In this recipe we are going to learn how to set the parameters for the final render. We will learn how to make our image noise-free and how to set the parameters in order to optimize our render times as best as we can, without losing quality.

Getting ready

We are getting closer to the conclusion of our first scene in Cycles. It may sound strange but even if we have already set up materials, lighting, and DOF, we still didn't actually render anything yet by pressing the render button. We only looked at the scene through the real-time viewport! So we can see how powerful the Cycles real-time viewport is. But the time for the final render has come, so it's time to talk about render settings.

How to do it…

I thought that a description of each render setting would be better than a mere list of the values I used in this scene. In this way, we can understand better how and why we are doing something like this. Anyway, the following is a screenshot...

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Key benefits

  • 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

Description

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.

Who is this book for?

If you are a digital artist who already knows your way around Blender, and you want to learn about the new Cycles' rendering engine, this is the book for you. Even experts will be able to pick up new tips and tricks to make the most of the rendering capabilities of Cycles.

What you will learn

  • Understand how to use the node editor
  • Learn to create your first material in Cycles
  • Light a scene in Cycles
  • Deal with animations in Cycles
  • Design complex shaders and lighting setups
  • Get the best out of your renders thanks to Cycles render passes
  • Create complex realistic shaders using advanced techniques
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Dec 26, 2013
Length: 274 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782164609
Vendor :
Blender Foundation
Category :
Game Development
Languages :
C++
Concepts :
Game Design
Tools :
Blender

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Product Details

Publication date : Dec 26, 2013
Length: 274 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781782164609
Vendor :
Blender Foundation
Category :
Game Development
Languages :
C++
Concepts :
Game Design
Tools :
Blender

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Table of Contents

12 Chapters
Introduction Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Introduction
Knowing your ingredients
A look at the hardware
1. Key Holder and Wallet Studio Shot Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
1. Key Holder and Wallet Studio Shot
Introduction
Setting up Cycles for the first run
Creating a three-point light setup in Cycles using mesh emitters
Learning environment lighting
Using the Glossy shader to create a clean metal material
Adding realism to the keys with a bump texture
Creating a rubber shader for the key holder
Adding color to the key holder
Creating a leather material for the wallet
Using the Cycles camera's depth of field
Setting the Cycles render parameters
2. Creating Different Glass Materials in Cycles Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Creating Different Glass Materials in Cycles
Introduction
Creating a simple glass shader
Creating a glass full of water
Using default Cycles caustics
Creating custom fake caustics
Creating a custom and more versatile glass shader
Creating more complex glass materials
Obtaining a dispersion effect
Creating an absorption glass shader
3. Creating an Interior Scene Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Creating an Interior Scene
Introduction
Creating fake portals to decrease the noise in the scene
Creating a parquet material
Creating materials for the plant in the scene
Creating a different kind of leather
Creating the materials for the lamp
Creating a carpet using hair particles
Setting up night lighting
Using IES files in Cycles
4. Creating an Exterior Scene Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Creating an Exterior Scene
Introduction
Setting up the lighting with an external plugin
Creating the road material
Creating the grass material
Texturing the tree trunk and creating realistic leaves
Adding flowers to the scene
Creating the wood material for the table and the fence
Giving final touches to the image using render passes
5. Creating a Cartoonish Scene Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Creating a Cartoonish Scene
Introduction
Setting up the environment and lighting
Creating skin, teeth, and other body parts
Creating the hair material
Creating the dress material
Compositing the scene
6. Creating a Toy Movie Scene Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Creating a Toy Movie Scene
Introduction
Setting up the lighting
Creating a realistic plastic material for the characters
Creating the environment
Achieving a movie look using the compositor
7. Car Rendering in Cycles Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Car Rendering in Cycles
Introduction
Setting up the lighting
Creating the car paint material
Creating the material for the tyres and the rims
Creating the material for headlights and other details
Compositing the scene
8. Creating a Car Animation Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Creating a Car Animation
Introduction
Setting up the lighting
Creating a car paint material
Creating the materials for the exterior environment
Setting up the scene for the animation
Compositing the scene
9. Creating an Iceberg Scene Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Creating an Iceberg Scene
Introduction
Creating the ice and snow materials
Creating the sea material in Cycles
Compositing the scene
10. Creating Food Materials in Cycles Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Creating Food Materials in Cycles
Introduction
Creating grapes in Cycles
Creating parmigiano cheese
Creating bread
Learning the Branched Path Tracing render
Index Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Index

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M. J. Anders Apr 11, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Pros- cookbook style with many examples- thorough coverage of all things Cycles- gentle learning curve- some really great materials (especially carpaint and food)- addresses lighting as well- plenty of relevant external referencesCons- could do with some detail renders of the individual materials- doesn't cover volume shadersThe Cycles rendering engine has been available for some time now in Blender but it is still hot because it enables the artist to produce great results. However, its many options can overwhelm a person just starting out, so Bernardo's cookbook is a blessing both for beginners as well as for more accomplished artists.The book is well written and covers almost everything from basic node setups to very complex ones, including subsurface scattering nodes and script nodes. The illustrations of the node setups are also very clear and although the book's style is a cookbook, the reasoning behind the creation of the materials is often explained as well which really helps to understand why the materials are set up the way the are.I also like that the is a fair amount of information on lighting because now matter how good your materials are, without proper lighting your render won't shine. The book presents some useful lightning setups and covers both mesh lighting and HDRI lighting quite well.The criticisms I have are minor indeed: the book doesn't cover the new volume shaders but this is of course not a fault of the author. Cycles evolves at a rapid pace and at the time of writing volume shaders were not yet available.Also it would have been clearer of some of the many materials presented in this book would have closeup example renders; now there is just a larger overall render of a scene at the beginning of each chapter which doesn't show the smaller details very well. Of course the sample scenes are available to the reader so you can render them yourself but it would have made for an easier read.All in all I really enjoyed reading this book and in my opinion it is one of the better ones on Blender published so far.ConclusionA well written book that delivers what it promises. Well worth its money (but consider buying the e-book as the print version is in black and white).
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Ann Jan 25, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Reading this book I came to realize how Blender can produce images with photorealism accuracy. The author's recipes are float point precision from RGB colors, Index of Refraction to factoring levels in mixing nodes. Photographic terms: depth of field, bokeh effect and exposure levels are used. Bernardo begins by discussing GPU vs. CPU and video cards. He introduces the reader to the three point light system using emitting planes and gives those lighted mesh subtle hues. I like the way he lights the environment. An hdr image is loaded in the environment texture which adds reflection. He uses sun position along with an IBL plug in and chooses Latitude, Longitude and Time settings for the outdoor landscape. Grass is made with the particle system which is ready for animation. He guides the reader for changing the scenes. The interior scene with plant, lamp, chair bathed in sunlight becomes night. IES, a plug in used by professionals, saves on polygon count. Throughout the book the author maintains focus on the lighting, IOR, rendering time, nodes while he develops textures for a glass full of water, a glass of wine, bottle of wine, grapes, a car with realistic reflections, toys inside a space ship, and a model of a young lady by the sea.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
ricarda4846 Jun 12, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Excellent, in Detail, fundamentals well explained and steps up to pro.Good examples, really goes into depth and very hands on, the way it should be.Time is taken to explain the how's, what's and whys
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Suzette Gray Aug 18, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
a gift for my brother and he seems happy with it
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Davin Cheaney Mar 04, 2014
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
My review pretty much echors that of the other posters.This is my second cookbook from Packt that I have worked through. The first being "Blender 2.6 cycles: Materials and Textures". In this book it is very clear that the author has an amazing amount of knowledge. The book also covers so many things that I am very interested in learning and improving on.Having said that , I feel the same about this book as I did about the first one I went through. It DESPERATELY needed to be reviewed by a technical editor before being released. Also, as others have said, you MUST get the PDF version with color imagages. The black and white that comes in the print version will make things more difficult.If this author was to put out another book on this subject, would I get it? In a heart beat. I would pre-order it today if if I heard there was a second edition coming out. I am actualy praying that when Blender 2.70 is released, the author will do just that. I learned alot from this book, and that is what I was hoping for.
Amazon Verified review Amazon

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About the author

Profile icon Bernardo Iraci
Bernardo Iraci
Bernardo Iraci was born in Livorno, Italy in 1985. He followed a standard education career until he graduated in Economics in 2009. He always had a great passion for computers, especially gaming. During the latter part of his studies, he also developed a passion for 3D graphics, and this soon became the main focus of his career. It was at this time that he came to understand that his passion was the most important thing to pursue, more important than even attending university. Even though Bernardo later participated in various online courses teaching the different aspects of computer graphics, he has been largely self-taught. In 2010, he moved to Warsaw, Poland, where he was finally able to start working full-time in computer graphics as a 3D generalist in the field of movies VFX and advertisments. He also started work as a freelancer. Bernardo constantly works to improve his skills and knowledge about computer graphics and thinks that this is the only way to keep pace with this field. When he is not busy with graphics, he likes to travel, watch movies, and play the guitar.
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