Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook: With this book you'll be able to explore and master all that the Cycles rendering engine is capable of. From the basics right through to refining, this is a must-read if you're serious about the realism of your materials and textures.

Enrico Valenza

Ton Roosendaal

€8.99 ~~€28.99~~

3.7 (10 Ratings)

eBook Jun 2013 280 pages 1st Edition

Enrico Valenza

Ton Roosendaal

€8.99 ~~€28.99~~

3.7 (10 Ratings)

eBook Jun 2013 280 pages 1st Edition

What do you get with eBook?

Instant access to your Digital eBook purchase

Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats

Access this title in our online reader with advanced features

DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want

View table of contents

Preview Book

Key benefits

Create naturalistic materials and textures - such as rock, snow, and ice - using Cycles
Learn Cycle's node-based material system
Get to grips with the powerful Cycles rendering engine

Description

Cycles is Blender's new, powerful rendering engine. Using practical examples, this book will show you how to create a vast array of realistic and stunning materials and texture effects using the Cycles rendering engine. Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook is a practical journey into the new and exciting Cycles rendering engine for Blender. In this book you will learn how to create a vast array of materials and textures in Cycles, including glass, ice, snow, rock, metal and water. If you want to take your 3D models to the next level, but don't know how, then this cookbook is for you! In this practical cookbook, you will learn how to create stunning materials and textures to really bring your 3D models to life! Diving deep into Cycles you will learn Cycle's node-based material system, how to set-up a 3D scene for rendering, how to create a natural and man-made materials as well as the correct organization and re-use of Cycles materials to save you time and effort. To ensure that your creations look stunning you will learn how illumination works in Cycles, improve the quality of the final render and to avoid the presence of noise and fireflies. Each chapter of Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook builds on the complexity of the last so that by the end of this book you will know how to create an impressive library of realistic-looking materials and textures.

Who is this book for?

This book is perfect for you if you have used Blender before but are new to the impressive Cycles renderer. You should have some knowledge of the Blender interface, though this is not a strict requirement. If you want to create realistic, stunning materials and textures using Cycles, then this book is for you!

What you will learn

Create a basic Cycles material mixing the closure components
Connect nodes of different kinds to build more advanced materials
Add node-based textures to the shaders
Create simple and complex materials such as glass, stone, fire and ice
Switch shader components without affecting a possibly complex network of links
Parent and rename the nodes to better organize the ‚ÄúNode Editor‚Äù window
Build material interfaces for general use in complex materials by grouping the shaders inside groups
Set-up light-sources and the ‚ÄúWorld‚Äù Global Illumination

What do you get with eBook?

Instant access to your Digital eBook purchase

Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats

Access this title in our online reader with advanced features

DRM FREE - Read whenever, wherever and however you want

Frequently bought together

Blender Cycles: Lighting and Rendering Cookbook

€41.99

€41.99

€37.99

Total € 121.97

Filter reviews by

All

Amazon verified reviews

Drtomtron Aug 08, 2013

PROS: Detailed Explanation of creating materials Wide variety of materials, both man made and natural (Over 40) Mainly created using procedural textures, so you don't require textures Pictures included to show node setups and finished effectCONS: After the initial materials, it ramps up in complexity and might be a little confusing for beginners until they get the hang of the advanced node setups Sometimes it goes pages at a time with no pictures and just list after list of nodes to add, maybe a little dry (disclaimer, I read the ebook version)The "Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook" written by Enrico Valenza is chock full of node "recipes" to create a huge variety of materials in cycles. It spans from simple man made materials such as plastic and rubber, to advanced natural materials like faded copper, or even an ocean material with foam. The majority of these materials are created using blenders procedural textures, which means you don't even need external textures to create these.The author writes these in a simple to follow, step by step fashion. Beginners to blender, or at least cycles, may have a little learning curve to get over, but the book ramps up in such a way that it begins with simple materials to get you to understand the basics, and as it progresses, the materials get more and more advanced.Overall, this book is a great value as it not only gives you exact recipes for creating materials, but it also gives you a strong foundation in cycles to create your own materials that might not be included. This is a very useful book that would be a welcome addition to any blender 3D artist's library that wants to learn how to create complex materials using cycles, or for advanced users that want an easy step by step guide to creating these materials.

Amazon Verified review

rschiwal Dec 02, 2014

Love owning it. If you can master materials in Cycles you are a CGI artist and your work is pure genius.

christopher Perdue Jan 07, 2014

The downloadable example files are also very useful as starting points. This book explains the core concepts of cycles nodes and will get you going in the right direction for your own projects.

Red Lantern. Sep 19, 2013

I like this after looking it over, but when I downed the sample files and tried to load in the underwater files it crashed my copy of blender. I have a decent system with 4 gigs of ram and a cuda processor pci express video card with 2 gigs of ram on it, but still some of the sample files crash blender when I try to open them.Edit: I tried to contact the publisher about the problems I have with a couple files but they never replied. Disappointed.Edit2: No sooner than I typed the above than the author himself replied to an email with a helpful suggestion.

Feeding Back Sep 30, 2013

Unfortunately it comes a bit late as there are enough changes that can effect the results of the materials that you want to create. That said, it is still worth the price of admission. Solid examples and are well planned out. The one observation I would say for most of the books in this category is that they can benefit from having a proof reader familiar with the product they are writing about. Some documentation refers back to steps that do not exist either in set up or procedural steps. These criticisms are not show stoppers though as the formulas are fairly rock solid.

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook: With this book you'll be able to explore and master all that the Cycles rendering engine is capable of. From the basics right through to refining, this is a must-read if you're serious about the realism of your materials and textures.

What do you get with eBook?