Blender Guru

How to Make Cherry Blossom Flowers

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:01:18 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover how to:

Model a cherry blossom flower
Create a beautiful translucent material
Use depth of field effectively

Alright boys, it’s time to put our manly passions behind us and endeavor on something a little more “feminine”. No guns, grenades or explosions this time. We’re making flowers. And pink flowers at that.

What spurred this on? Well recently here in Korea (and Asia) it was cherry blossom season. Which meant that for one week, parks and roads were filled with these beautiful white pinkish flowered trees.

My wife and I at a parklands in Seoul, Korea

If you’ve never experienced it before, it’s quite mesmerizing. You feel like you’re in a surreal Dr Seuss world where the trees have turned pink and white.

I was so inspired by the experience that I decided right then and there that I would try to recreate the feeling in Blender.

So here it is…

Finished Result

Download the Finished Result

Resources

Flower Petal Texture (modified version of this texture from CGTextures)
Bark texture (modified version of this texture from CGTextures)
Bark Displacement texture
Sunny Sky HDR (free sample from my upcoming Architecture Academy course)
My reference photos

Text Version

Modelling the Petals

Delete the default cube and lamp and replace it with a plane.

Press N to bring up the sidebar and load this background image (modified version of this texture from CGTextures). Set the size to 1.

Subdivide the plane 3 times (W).

Turn on sharp proportional falloff (O) and grab the top left corner and drag to the shape of the petal.

Use proportional falloff to push and pull the vertices around the petal, till you have created a rough ‘cage’ around the petal:

Rip the very top vertex (V) and move it slightly to the side. When we add the subsurf modifier later, this will create the little divet which appears in the cherry blossom petal.

From top view, press U and select Project from View.

Go to the UV image editor and load in the same image texture, and position the mesh as shown (make it slightly larger than the petal).

We want to avoid that ugly protruding tip, so grab the top two vertices and push them down slightly as shown:

The petal is currently actually much wider than a cherry blossom’s petal, so in top view, scale it down along the X-axis (S, X) by 0.7.

Select the edges of the petal and using sharp proportional editing, pull them up to create the concave shape of the petal.

Add a subsurf modifier, turn on smooth shading, and position the mesh, so that the root is at the origin point as shown:

Now we’ll create the Petal’s material. Go to the node editor and create this setup:

You don’t need to add those colored boxes (frames) that’s just to help you understand it

If we render this right now with a lamp, we get this:

Petal is great success!

Creating the flower

Tilt the petal on it’s axis as shown (the steeper you make it, the more newly bloomed it will look)

Go to top view, and with the petal selected, press Alt+D (linked duplicate) and rotate it roughly 60 degrees:

Repeat this process to create 5 petals:

Now is the tricky part; rotate and position the petals so that they aren’t intersecting each other. You’ll need to twist some and position others so they are behind etc.

Once finished, you should be rewarded with something like this:

Crikey! That almost looks like a flower!

Making the Pollen Stems

A cherry blossom wouldn’t be complete without some white stems sprouting from the center. So we’ll create some with a simple cylinder.

Position your cursor in the center of the flower and add a Cylinder. Press T to bring up the toolbar, and set these settings:

In side view, go into edit mode and scale the top of the cylinder down, then add two loop cuts (Ctrl+R).

Select the top vertices and using proportional falloff (O), tilt the pollen stem sideways slightly:

Now we’ll create the little yellow bud on the end. Position the cursor at the top of the stem and add a sphere with these parameters:

Scale the sphere down so it appears as a tiny ball at the top of the stem:

Turn on smooth shading and add a subsurf modifier level 1.

Go to the materials panel and add a new material, then call it White Stem:

Go to the node editor and create this setup:

Create another material, call it YellowBud, and in edit mode with the sphere selected, press Assign.

Go to the node editor and create this setup:

In top view, press Alt+D (linked duplicate) and rotate to another position. Repeat this till you have roughly 30 pollens:

Huzzah! The pollen is complete.

Modelling the Stem

When we look at this reference photo, we can see how freakishly ugly the stem actually is:

Clearly God had other things on his mind when designed this alien looking thing.

But alas, let’s get started on creating it.

Add a circle with 5 vertices and position it at the bottom of the flower:

Size it so it tightly fits the bottom of the flower, then extrude it upwards and scale it out as shown:

Select a vertex at the top and rip it (V). Do the same to an adjacent vertex. Then select both vertices and scale it by 0.1.

Repeat this for all 5 edges of the circle, until you’ll eventually have a starfish lookin thing:

Take the bottom row of vertices and extrude it downwards. Continue extruding and resizing the rings until you’ve created the rough shape of the stem in the reference photo.

Add a solidify and subsurf modifier with the following settings:

Texturing the Stem

In edit mode, select any vertical edge loop, then press Ctrl+E and select Mark Seam.

Next, select all the vertices (A) and UV unwrap the mesh (U):

In the UV image editor you should get a result, which isn’t terrible, but could do with some fixing up:

A quick shuffling around of the vertices and you’ll get a much more accurate looking map:

Since finding a texture of a pink-to-green-stem is going to nearly impossible, we’re going to paint our own. What what? You’ve never done that before? Don’t worry, it’s far easier than it sounds.

At the bottom of the UV image editor, find and click the button that says ‘New’. In the popup box, set the color to darkish green color (this will be the color of the stem).

In the toolbar change the mode to Paint.

Press T to bring up the toolbar and set your brush to a darkish purple color.

Begin roughly painting around the top end of the stem. Leave a few patches of green for the next step (smudging). If you can’t see the mesh outline, go back to your 3d viewport and make sure you’re in edit mode.

See what I mean by rough?

Now for the fun part; change your brush to smear.

Using different sizes and strengths of the brush, smear the painting around (mostly vertically) to create a more natural looking plant texture:

This is optional, but if you’re up for more realism, pepper the stem with a white and black brush…

Then smear it up and down to create streaks:

Now do yourself a big favour and save the image now before you forget it, then close blender and lose it forever.

With the stem still selected, go to the node editor and use the newly created texture in this node setup:

Yay. Looks a little bulbous and alien, but it’ll pass.

Displacing the Petals

For added realism, it really helps if the petals are a little more ‘random’ looking than they currently are. And for that there’s only man for the job: DisplaceMant

Go to the modifier stacker and add a displacement modifier, then under Texture click New.

Go to the texture panel, select Displace then set the cloud size to 0.65 and Depth to 4.

We want each petal that receives the displacement to look different, so for that we need to create a separate object to use as a coordinate marker. So for that, add an empty.

Go back to the petal, and in the displacement options, set the coordinates to Object: Empty, and change the strength to 0.1.

Now in order to apply this same setup for all petals, we’ll need to select all the petals and select our new petal last, then press Ctrl+L, Modifiers.

Finally, in order to make our lives easier, we’ll select all the flower objects and parent it (Ctrl+P) to the stem.

Setting up the foreground

Finally we can get to actually setting up the shot. We’ll start with the flowers in the foreground.

First, in order to keep things closer to real life size, select the flower and the empty and scale it down to 0.1 of it’s original size. This will make the stem about 27cm tall, instead of 4 meters.

Why does size matter? First of all, that’s what he said. Secondly, if we aren’t working in real world measurements, we can run into problems later when setting up depth of field for the camera etc.

Position the camera front on to flower by going into front view (Numpad 1) then pressing Ctrl+Alt+0 to move the camera to that location.

Next, rotate the stem of the flower towards the camera as shown. It should be pointing slightly upwards and to the left (to guide the viewers eyes to the rest of the scene).

Duplicate the flower and place it underneath the first one.

Create two more duplicates and position them as shown. The idea being to create the illusion of a branch of flowers up close to the camera.

Select a single petal off one of the flowers and duplicate it (Shift+D) then place it really close to the camera as shown. This will create some soft out of focus elements in the foreground.

Lighting the scene

The best way to light outdoor scenes is to use an HDR skydome, and I just so happen to have a one from my upcoming Architecture Academy course, that you can download for free here.

Go to the node editor, change the mode to World, then add an Environment Texture node and load in the skydome.

If you looked through the camera (without the flowers) you’d see we have a view of the sky with a grassy field.

But we don’t actually want the grass in the shot, so we’ll rotate it’s axis.

Add a Texture Coordinate and Mapping node and connect as pictured. Set the X rotation to 19 degrees:

Now the grass is out of the shot:

Aren’t we clever?

Next, we need some sunlight. Add a sun lamp and set the strength to 3 and the size (of the shadow) to 0.02.

Rotate the sunlamp slightly towards the camera to cast a nice shadow over the petals on our main flower.

Render now and you’ll see this:

Finally the fruits of our labor are starting to “blossom”. Yes it’s cringy, but it’s all I’ve got right now.

Now for some DoF (Depth of Field). We want the focus point to be on the center of our main flower. So find out the name of one of those pollens, then go to the camera settings and enter it as the Focus object. Set the aperture to F/Stop 4.

Ahh the wonders of dof

Creating the branch

This step is rather convoluted for something that’s barely in the frame, but we like to induce pain on ourselves so let’s indulge!

Go to a new layer and add a cylinder with these settings:

Lie the cylinder flat, then go into edit mode and create enough edge loops (by scrolling) to create square faces.

Select an edge (Hold Alt+Right Click) then press Ctrl+E to Mark Seam.

Next press U > Unwrap.

In the UV Image editor, load in this texture (which is a modified version of this texture from CGTextures) and scale the UV coordinates to fill it:

Go to the node editor and setup this material node setup, using the bark texture:

Render it now and you should have this:

That right thur is a stick. Give yourselves a pat on the back.

But wait! There’s more! Now we’ll make those bumps actually affect the geometry of the branch.

Go to the modifier stacker and add a subsurf modifier (level 3), then a displacement modifier with these settings:

Spectacular results so far, but wait, it get’s worse!

Go to the texture panel and for the displacement, set it to Image, and load this displacement texture (which was generated from the original texture).

Now return to the displacement modifier, and set the strength to 0.10.

Scale it down along the Y axis by 0.5, then switch to rendered view and you should have this:

Now that’s either a delicious snickers bar, or something more sinister.

Time to increase the length!

Add an Array to the modifier stacker and place it at the top, with these settings:

For it’s first use, place the branch underneath the flowers in the foreground:

Creating the Background

Finally it’s time to fill out the background!

Duplicate the branch we created earlier, move it to a new layer, then create a smaller branch off it by duplicating it then reducing the array count to 2.

Now duplicate one of the flowers we created earlier and move it to the same layer as the branch. Select the stem, remove the solidify modifier.

Then select all the flower parts, selecting the stem last and press Ctrl+J to make it one single mesh object.

Not only will this make it easier to move the object around, it will also be a lot more low poly so your rendertimes will be quicker.

Create several linked duplicates of the flower (Alt+D) and create bunch of 5-6 flowers on the branch.

Duplicate that bunch of flowers (Alt+D) several times along the branch, rotating and resizing to create the appearance of random natural growth.

Move the branch along with it’s flowers into the background, along the left side of the frame.

Duplicate that branch and flowers multiple times and distribute at varying lengths from the camera (this will help with the DoF). Also place a few flowers behind the foreground ones so it looks less bare.

Finally, after all this work we’re ready to render!

Not bad! But let’s spruce it up quickly to make it “pop”.

Post Processing

I’m going to use Photoshop, and Magic Bullet Looks to make a few adjustments. You can do all of this with Gimp or with the built in compositor, but I choose these tools because I like their speed.

In Magic Bullet Looks, I’m using a Warm/Cool filter, Diffusion, Vignette, Curves, Saturation and Auto Shoulder filter:

Again, all of this stuff can be done inside Blender’s compositor, but for the sake of brevity I’m using Magic Bullet looks coz it’s faster.

Next, in Photoshop I’m going to add a little color using a large blue and purple brush on a separate layer:

Then I’ll change the blend mode to Overlay, and set the Opacity to 20%.

At long last we’re finished!

Further Inspiration

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I look forward to seeing some cool flower scenes from the community

PS. In a few weeks time I’m going to be releasing my new course The Architecture Academy! If you could spare a few minutes of your time, I’d love to hear what you struggle with most: Quick Architecture Survey. Cheers!

Sci-fi Competition Winners

Andrew Price — Wed, 01 May 2013 06:49:59 +0000

A staggering 190 images and 27 animations were entered into this competition, and the quality was some of the best I’ve seen. There’s just something about the topic of the ‘future’ that inspires wonder and creativity. And although judging the entries were hard, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing what you all created.

So first...

Read the whole entry... »

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How to Make a Rainy Window

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:04:22 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover how to:

Model rain drops
Realistically texture a wet pane of glass
Use depth of field effectively

Final Result

Download the Finished .blend

Resources:

Text Summary

Making the Rain Drops

Delete the default cube and lamp, and replace with a plane rotated at 90 degrees.

Position the camera front on to the plane.

Move to a new layer and add a UV sphere.

In side view mode, rotate the sphere 90 degrees. Then go in to top view, edit mode, and select the bottom most vertex.

Using proportional editing (O), move the vertex inwards, to create a squashed droplet.

Split the view to a UV image editor and load in this reference image. Duplicate the rain drop and start to model a droplet based off the reference image.

Model 6-8 more droplets based off the reference images. Set the shader to smooth.

Select all the droplets and press Ctrl+G to form a group. In the toolbar, name it Rain Drops.

Assign it a material with a glass shader, and apply it to all the droplets.

The Droplet Particle System

Add a particle system, set the type to Hair and check Advanced:

Set the rest of the particle settings as shown:

Creating the running droplets

Go back to the layer with the droplets, and duplicate the first one.

Select the top vertices as shown:

Extrude it upwards:

Scale the top part in so that it tapers off slightly:

Create a bunch of loopcuts (Ctrl+R) as shown. Download this reference image and load it into a split view image editor.

Using the image as reference, create a squiggly line by pushing and pulling vertices around:

For more squiggliness, add a subsurf modifier, then a displacement modifier with these settings:

Change the displacement texture size to 0.55:

Go into weight paint mode and paint the whole object red (value 1) except for the droplet head which should be blue (value 0). Now set the displacement vertex group to Group.

Create two more variants of that squiggly droplet by simply pushing and pulling around verticies:

Form a group out of the new droplets and call it Long Drops.

Go back to the glass and add a copy the old particle system, but name it Long Drops.

Change these settings:

Setting the scene

Position the camera close to the plane as shown:

Assign a material to the plane and give it a glass shader:

Add a Circle object (with a fill face) and place it above the glass as shown:

Assign an Emission material to the circle with these settings:

Select the plane, go into edit mode and press U to UV unwrap it:

Go to the node editor, add an Image Texture node, load in this custom texture and connect it to the Roughness input of the Glass shader.

Yay! Water trails!

Add a new Image Texture node and load in this texture. Connect it to the other texture with a MixRGB node with these settings:

Add a ColorRamp node and place it between the Multiply node and the new texture node. Move the black slide to the middle and set the white color to a mid-grey (this will reduce the amount of roughness).

Yeah makin’ progress!

Tiny Droplets

For a more misty effect, we’ll add some physical tiny droplets.

Go to the layer with all the other droplets, and add an Icosphere (to keep it low poly).

Go into edit mode and squish it against the origin point as we did earlier.

Create one or two variants:

Select all the new droplets, press Ctrl+G and name the group Tiny Droplets.

Assign the same droplet material as before.

Go back to the glass, and copy the same particle settings from the first system, but make these changes:

Huzzah! Tiny droplets.

Background Lights

Now we’ll create some out of focus lighting for the background.

Start by adding a sphere into the background far behind the plane and camera:

Give it an emission type, with a strength of 20 and color of orange.

Nice. Now let’s do more.

Create a bunch more spheres of varying sizes, colors, and strengths:

Like Christmas

Final Touches

The funnest part of this scenes comes from the Depth of Field.

Add an empty and place it on the droplet that you want to be in focus. Name the empty Dof.

With the camera selected, set the focus point to Dof, the Aperture to F/Stop 1 and Blades 8 (which makes more interesting Bokeh)

Noice

This is completely optional, but feel free to add some vignette and sharpening in the compositor:

Finished!

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial! If you made something awesome with it, feel free to post it in the comments below

How to do Camera Mapping

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 03:03:50 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover:

What camera mapping is
How camera mapping can be used with stunning results
How to camera map any still photograph

I’ve actually already made this tutorial once before. About 2 years ago infact. But over time, the tutorial became outdated, due to the “sticky” texture coordinates being removed from blender.

Since then, I’ve been bombarded with requests to re-do the tutorial. In the last month I think I must have got 10 or more separate requests. Crazy.

So in order to appease the masses (and end the emails) here’s the updated tutorial.

Finished Result

Download the finished .blend

Resources

Old Factory – Free stock image

Text Summary

1. Delete the default cube and lamp. Position the camera front on to the grid as shown:

2. Add the original image to the background:

3. Set the render resolution of your scene to match the photo’s dimensions:

4. Set the camera’s focal length to match the scene. If you don’t know the focal length, you’ll have to experiment.

5. Position and rotate the camera so that the grid floor is in line with the floor in the background image. These are the settings I used, but usually you’ll just eye it:

6. Add a cube to the scene and resize to fit the basic size of the room:

7. Make every face a separate object, and delete the ceiling.

8. Resize the walls to fit the image:

Mapping the floor

1. Open Photoshop or Gimp. Load in your image and using the lasso tool, select the floor as shown:

2. Copy and paste the floor onto a separate layer, on a transparent background:

3. Using the Clone Brush tool, carefully paint away over the middle column till it vanishes.

It should look like this when finished:

CLONE BRUSH: Not just for fixing military mistakes

Once finished, save it as a PNG with transparency.

4. Return to the scene and with the floor selected, subdivide it a good 10 times. This is important, as blender needs geometry in order to deliver accurate mapping.

5. From the camera’s viewpoint, press U, and select Project from View (this replaces the old “sticky” texture coordinates).

6. With the floor still selected, add a new material, go to the node editor, and create this setup using the image texture we just created:

If you render it out now, you should see this:

First object complete! Now for the walls…

Mapping the Walls

1. Jump back over to Photoshop and using the Polygonal Lasso tool, select the left wall:

2. Copy and paste the wall onto a separate layer:

3. We need to get rid of that wall in the foreground, so select a portion of the left wall as shown:

4. Copy and paste it, then resize it till it fits on the wall, effectively blotting out the front facing wall:

Save this image as a transparent PNG.

5. Repeat the above steps to do the same to the right wall:

6. Repeat the steps again for the backwall:

7. Return to blender and just as we did before, select the wall, subdivide it then unwrap it using “Project from View”.

8. Do the same for the right wall:

9. And the same for the back wall:

8. Give each wall it’s own material and texture, using this node setup that we created before:

You should now have this:

Mapping the doorway

1. Jump into photoshop, and just as we did before, crop the front face, paste it onto a new layer, then save it as a transparent PNG.

2. Go back to blender, add a plane, then rotate and position it so it’s line with the front wall in the photo:

3. Go into edit mode and create the basic facade by extruding the plane:

4. Model some basic steps into the mesh to reflect the original image (modelling this will make it look more accurate when the camera moves):

5. Finish modelling more detail into the mesh as shown:

6. Create several loop cuts in the mesh (for more accurate mapping) then UV project from view:

7. In blender, select the front wall mesh and assign the same material with the new texture we just created:

You should now have this:

Mapping the Ceiling

1. To create the curved ceiling, add a cylinder and position as shown:

2. Delete the unimportant parts of the mesh and align it to the background image:

3. Create some loop cuts (for more accurate mapping) then UV project from view:

4. Go back to photoshop, isolate the ceiling and remove the girders as shown.

This one will probably be the hardest to achieve since there’s a lot of girders. All it takes is time, patience and a clone brush.

5. Assign the texture to the mesh as per usual and you should have this:

You should now have this:

Resize your image dimensions to 1920×1080 and you’ll have this:

To make an even more believable illusion, add finer detail to your scene like support beams, cords and little raised surfaces on the floor and walls. This is all optional, but it’ll really help to sell the animation.

Eventually you’ll have this:

Now go ahead and animate that camera!

Further Inspiration

Deserted – MUST SEE! This is the one I mentioned in the tutorial. Best camera mapping I’ve ever seen.
Camera Mapping Demo with breakdown

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Make something cool? Post it in the comments below

New Competition: Scifi

Andrew Price — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 05:28:06 +0000

As requested by followers on twitter, the theme for this blender competition is: Scifi! (aka Science Fiction, aka every teenage boys favourite topic, aka most images on every cg forum ever).

Aliens, deep space travel, robots, futuristic worlds, I’m sure you’re aware of the possibilities.

To try something new, there will also be a...

Read the whole entry... »

]]>

How to Make Metallic Text

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:13:19 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover how to:

Quickly create 3d text
Create a grungy metallic texture
Fake a volumetric spotlamp

3D typography has a big place in the industry. Any company with a message to tell can use a designer who knows how to make attention grabbing 3d typography.

So it makes sense to hone your craft now so you can make yourself more employable.

In this tutorial we’ll be creating a typical, big, bold, attention grabbing title.

Finished Result

Download the Finished .blend

Resources used in the tutorial:

Text Summary

Creating the text

1. Delete the default cube and lamp, replace it with text (Add>Text).

2. Rotate the text by 90 degrees so it’s standing upright.

3. Go to the font settings and click the folder icon to change the font.

4. You can use any font you like, but I’ll be using Bebas.

5. Set the text extrude to 0.5.

6. So that the edge catches more light, set the Bevel to 0.007 and the resolution to 4.

7. Now we’ll create the text outer shell. To do this, duplicate the font (Shift+D) then press Escape.

8. With the new text object selected, go the font settings and change these settings:

9. With both text objects selected, press Alt+C to convert the object to a mesh.

Setting up the scene

1. Position the camera so it’s facing directly infront of the text, and set the focal length to 18.

2. Go to the world settings and set the color to almost solid black.

3. Add a plane and scale it along the x-axis to create a rectangle. Position it directly above the text, looking down:

4. Set the material for the plane to an Emission shader, with the strength set to 10.

5. Add a plane and scale it so it fits the grid floor.

Render it and you should see this:

Just getting started…

Creating the material

1. Select the inner text mesh, go to the node editor and add a new material.

2. Add a mix and glossy shader. Connect them as shown:

3. Add an Image Texture node and load in the Grungemaps0119 texture.

4. In edit mode, go into front view then press U and select Project from View.

5. Next add an RGB curves node and connect it between the image and glossy shader. Create a bow in the curve to increase contrast:

Render it and you should have this:

6. To make the texture have even more of an impact, connect the output of the RGB curve node to the Mix Shader Fac input.

Like some sprayed with a fine layer of molasses

7. Change the color of both the Glossy and Diffuse shader as shown, to create a gold material:

Mmm dirty gold

8. To give the material a fine brushed metal look, add a noise texture and Bump node (Add>Vector>Bump). Connect and set the settings as shown:

In order to make the texture looked “brushed” we need to fake it, by stretching it along one axis. To do this, add a Texture Coordinate and Mapping Node and connect as shown. Set the X scale to 0.01.

It’s subtle but it adds an extra element to the material

MOAR LIGHTS!

The scene is alright, but the text is reflecting too much black background. It needs more highlights and edge lights.

1. Add two planes on both sides of the text, and set the material as Emission and Strength 3.

2. Add two rectangular planes behind the camera as shown, with an emission of 3.

3. Place a spotlamp behind the text, set the size 0.5 and strength 60.

You should now have this:

The outer shell material

1. Select the outer text mesh and add a new material.

2. Go to the Node editor, and setup a mix node with a glossy shader as shown:

3. Set the diffuse color to dark grey:

4. UV unwrap the text, by going into side view mode and selecting U, Project From View.

5. Go back to the node editor and add an Image Texture node. Load in the Grungemaps0088 texture, and connect to the Mix Shader Fac input:

6. Add a Bump node (Add>Vector>Bump) and set the Strength to 0.001, connect it as shown:

Gettin’ there!

Texturing the Concrete

1. Select the floor plane and in top view mode press U, Project from View (bounds).

2. Go the node editor and a new material.

3. Add a mix and glossy shader and connect as shown. Set the glossy roughness to 0 and the Mix Shader Fac to 0.7.

4. Add an image texture node and load in the ConcreteDamaged (tiled) texture:

5. Add a Mapping and Texture Coordinate node and connect it as shown. Set the Scaling to 16:

YEEAHH now we’re really getting there

6. You may also like to add DoF (Depth of Field). To do that, place an empty at the front of the text:

7. Next, select the camera and set the Focus point to the empty, and the Aperture to F/stop 3.2.

Volumetric background

To make the background less dark and heavy, we’re going to lighten it with a foggy spotlamp from behind. Unfortunately at the time of writing this (March 2013) Cycles does not support volumetric lighting, so we’ll have to do some trickery by combining a blender internal scene with our current render.

1. In the top toolbar find the box that says ‘Scene’ click the + next to it and select new.

2. A new scene should open, rename it volumetric spotlamp.

3. Go back to your previous scene, and select the floor plane, spotlamp, camera and both text meshes, then press Ctrl+L. In the popup select Objects to Scene > Volumetric Lamp.

4. In the newly created scene, go to the lamp settings and check Halo and Step 1.

5. In the newly created scene, select the spotlamp and move it to a separate layer.

6. In the render panel, go to the layers section and select the layer which the spotlamp is on. In the Mask Layer section, select the layer that the rest of the scene is on (this is for blocking out the rays of light).

Coming to a theater near you

Compositing

1. Go to the original scene and set the screen mode to Compositing.

2. Add a new RenderLayer (Add>Input>Render Layers) and from the dropdown box, select the ‘Volumetric Spotlamp’.

3. Add a Mix node, and connect it to both Render Layers. Set the blend type to Screen and Fac to 0.2.

With the foggy spot lamp, the background is less heavy

4. Now we’ll do some color grading. Add a Color Balance node and connect as shown. Push the midtones (middle wheel) to light blue, and the highlights (right wheel) to light yellow.

5. Now we’ll create a vignette. Add an Ellipse Mask and change the settings as shown:

6. Add an Invert and Blur node and connect it to the Mask node as shown. Set the Blur settings as shown:

7. Finally, add a Mix node, set the blend type to Mulitply, and connect as shown. Change the bottom input to a grey color:

Final compositing setup:

Finished!

Further Inspiration

Not sure where to take this tutorial? Here’s some 3d typography inspiration:

Shiny Binary – Awesome website by an awesome UK based typographical artist
Typography 10 – Clean, funky 3d text.
Harley Davidson – Cool fabric themed text. The detail in the stitching is great.
AT&T – Great poster that shows typography embedded into architecture.

If you create something cool, post it in the comments below!

If you like this tutorial you may also like, How to Create a Professional Logo Animation.

Video Game Competition – Winner

Andrew Price — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 08:50:44 +0000

The theme for this competition was Video Games. Contestants had 5 weeks to create an image related to a video game(/s) of their choice, and were encouraged to be “creative”.

A whopping 176 entries were submitted. So deciding on the winner was quite challenge. But after sifting through them all, I found a favorite. Scroll down to...

Read the whole entry... »

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3 Massive Features of Blender 2.66 and How To Use Them

Andrew Price — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 02:37:07 +0000

Blender 2.66 is out! Download it now if you haven’t already.

So what’s all the fuss about this new release anyway? Well besides a whole bunch of bug fixes, there’s also some pretty big features included…

Let’s take a look at each new feature in detail…

1. Cycles Hair Rendering

...

Read the whole entry... »

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How to Render Hair with Cycles

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:40:53 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover:

How to quickly and easily render hair with Cycles
The difference between the old and the new way of rendering hair
A breakdown of the hair settings

If you’ve been to the blender forums recently, you’ll know that quite a few people are a buzz with new hair rendering feature of Cycles.

On December 9 2012, the first hair renders started appearing online, and since then it’s grown from an experimental feature, into something stable. In fact, hair rendering will be included in the next official Blender release: 2.66, which is due out in the next week

So what better time to get into it?

Finished Result

This tutorial covers the rendering of Hair only.

Download the Starter File

Text Version

Not a fan of videos? Here’s the full text version:

Intro

This tutorial is all about taking a previously made model with hair, and making it work with Cycles.

Learning how to render hair has more uses than you may think. Whether you’re an architect or a character animator, you’ll probably be called upon to use strand rendering at some point.

This phenomenal hair render was made with 3ds max. Can you top it?

Image Courtesy of Max Malyy.

Comparison of Old vs New

The old way of rendering strands entailed a lot of button pushing, certain lamps, fiddly textures and aligning of the planets to make it work.

The new method is simpler, faster to set up and produces more realistic results.

Hands On

Particle settings

Kick open the starter file and you should see Sintel, posed and ready to render with only the hair needing materials:

With the hair selected, go to the particle panel and scroll down till you see the Cycles Hair Rendering settings:

If you don’t see those options then:

Download the latest build
Go to the render settings and set the mode to CPU and Experimental.

The first thing we’ll look at is the hair rendering modes:

Don’t be confused by the terminology, it’s actually pretty easy to grasp…

The modes on the left side are faster to render but lower quality, and the modes on right side are slower to render but higher quality:

If you aren’t sure what to pick, stay with the default mode: True Normal. It offers the best results for most scenes. Change modes depending on how close the camera is to your subject.

Now lets move onto the next setting: Shape.

The shape setting defines how quickly or slowly the width of the hair strand will taper off:

For human hair, you should use something in the negative value.

We’ll use -0.8:

Next are the Root and Tip values. These are quite simply the width of the hair at it’s Root and Tip (duh).

For some bizarre reason the default value for Root is 1, which will give you strands almost as big as Sintel’s head. A more reasonable value for hair is 0.002:

Leave Tip as 0, since we want the hair to taper down to 0 width.

Materials

Add a new Material and name it Hair. You may also wish to set the preview to Strand mode (and also let out a mighty hoorah for the introduction of preview capabilities).

Thankfully, you don’t need to relearn materials for the sake of strands, since the strand’s materials work the same as any other object in Cycles.

Switch to the Node editor. To get hair shiny we’ll add a Glossy shader node and connect it to the default Diffuse shader, using a Mix node. Set the values as shown:

Now let’s give the hair some color. We’ll be using the hair texture that comes bundled with Sintel:

Hair Texture (Click to Download)

Add an Image texture node and load in the hair texture, then connect it to the Diffuse Shader node:

You should now get this noisy mess:

…but at least you can see that it’s working

Now to make her a red head.

Add an RGB Curve (which is another new feature!) between the Image texture and Diffuse Node. Click the R (red) channel and give it a slight hump:

Finally, we’ll give the hair some translucency so that light can pass through it.

Add a Translucency node and connect it to the RGB node:

Next add an Add Shader node and connect it between the Translucent Node and the final Material node.

Final Node Setup

Finished!

YEEAAAAAHHH

You should now have hair that would make a balding man weep.

Bonus Tip: Fading out the hair

In certain circumstances, it may be necessary to have the hair fade out. Generally this isn’t good for human hair, but it’s great for fur.

1. Using the node setup from above, add a Transparent node and connect it with the output from the Add shader, using a Mix node:

2. Next add in a Hair Info node and connect the Intercept output to the Fac input of the Mix shader:

The Intercept acts to alter the material along the length of the strand (like this).

Here’s a before and after from a different scene:

And if that’s a bit extreme, you can add a ColorRamp between the intercept and mix node for added customization.

Hope this tutorial was useful!

Create something cool from this tutorial? Post it in the comments below.

New Competition: Video Games

Andrew Price — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:17:07 +0000

As requested by fans of the Blender Guru Facebook group… the theme for this blender competition is: Video Games.

Your image could be a homage to Mario, a remix of how you think Half Life should have ended or just an action moment from Call of Duty. The possibilities are limitless!

Prize

The winner will receive:

$500 for a...

Read the whole entry... »

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The Secrets of Realistic Texturing

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:19:37 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover:

The fundamentals of texturing
How to use CrazyBump to generate texture maps
How to make a realistic cobblestone material

I realized that there aren’t too many tutorials out there that explain the different texture types. Diffuse, normal, specularity, displacement, occlusion. WHAT DO THEY MEAN!? Well in this tutorial I cover exactly that.

We’ll be creating our own versions of those texture types using a base image, then using those textures in Cycles to create a realistic cobblestone material.

Finished Result

This tutorial covers how to create the cobblestone street material.

Download the Finished .blend

Download the texture used in this tutorial

Text Version

Not a fan of videos? No worries! Here’s the text summary:

Most people are taught that in order to texture something all you need is an image. However this gives boring, flat and very unrealistic results. It’s essentially the same as printing off the texture onto a piece of paper and sticking it onto a wall:

The light doesn’t interact with the bumps in the texture, nor the gloss. It’s completely flat and unrealistic:

A better method is to generate a normal map, specular map, occlusion map and displacement map.

This allows the light to interact with the bumps, gloss and displacement, resulting in a much more realistic material:

Very few artists can be bothered creating all of these, but it’s the biggest thing that separates realistic materials to average materials.

Adding a basic texture in Blender

We’ll start by adding a base color texture to a plane and setting up the lighting.

1. Load the default scene in Blender and replace the cube with a plane.

2. Change the default lamp into a Sun lamp, set the Energy to 10 and Size to 0.010. Rotate the sun so its shining along the surface of the plane:

3. Go into Top View (Numpad 7), then edit mode and unwrap (U) the plane via Project from View (bounds).

4. Add a new material to the plane, and split the window to show the node editor:

5. Add an Image Texture node (Add>Texture>Image Texture) and load in the FloorsRegular0105 image (tiled), then connect it to the Diffuse Color input.

If you render it now you should see this:

How FLATtering

Using CrazyBump

For the next part of this tutorial we will be using a program called CrazyBump. It’s not free but it does offer a full 30 day trial.

CrazyBump is used for taking an image texture and easily generating a normal, displacement, specularity and occlusion maps from it. You don’t “need” it, but it will save you hours of work from trying generate those maps yourself using Gimp or Photoshop.

1. Once you’ve downloaded and installed CrazyBump, click the Open button in the bottom right hand corner of the main screen.

2. Locate and select the FloorsRegular0105 texture on your harddrive. After it loads it should ask you to select a shape. Click the one on the left:

3. Once it loads you should be taken to a screen where you can adjust the Normal map. A Normal map is a special texture type that will create realistic bump maps.

Intensity: Adjusts the height of the bump

Sharpen: Artifically sharpens the texture

Noise Removal: Useful for removing excessive noise in the bump mapping.

Shape recognition: Changes how accurate it finds the shape. High values will give crisper edges.

The parts highlighted Red are what I changed, but are optional. The settings will be entirely different depending on what image texture you’re working with.

4. Next click the Displacement tab. This type of texture will be used to physically change the geometry of the plane.

Depth: Changes the height of the displacement.

Enhance Detail: Changes how much of texture will influence the map.

Soften: Blurs the texture slightly (use if displacement appears too jagged).

5. Next click the Occlusion tab. This type of texture will be used to fake dark crevices.

Power: Changes the power of the Occlusion effect (lower is more).

Enhance Detail: Changes how much of the texture shows through the map.

Lighten: Artificially lightens the map.

6. Next is Specularity. This type of texture will change where the shader will be shiny (black=no shininess, white=full shininess)

Slope Influence: Smooths the specularity shape to make the object appear round. Texture Influence: Changes how much texture shows through the specularity.

Enhance Detail: Sharpens the detail.

Noise: Generates noise over the map.

7. Once you’re satisfied with everything, click the Save icon then in the popup, Save All Textures.

8. Choose a location on your hard drive to save the files and voila! The textures are generated and ready to use:

Adding a Specularity Map

1. Add a glossy shader and set the roughness to 0.1.

2. Add a mix node and connect it to the diffuse and glossy shader.

3. Add an Image node and load in the Specularity map we created earlier.

4. Add a mix node, connect it to the Image node and the Fac input of the Mix Shader. Set the bottom input to black and the Fac amount to 0.985.

Your material should now render like this:

Adding the Normal Map

Updated: 11th January 2013 to correct a previous error regarding inputs.

1. With the plane selected, go to the node editor and add a new image texture node. Click the Open button and load in the Normal map texture we just created. Since it’s a normal map, set the type to Non-Color Data.

2. Add a Normal Map node (Add>Vector>Normal Map) and connect it to the image texture node. Connect the output to both the Diffuse and Glossy shader Normal inputs.

You should now have this:

Looking better already!

Adding a Displacement Map

1. Before we add the displacement map, we need to add more geometry to our plane. Go into edit mode, press W then in the toolbar (T) set the Number of cuts to 30 (you’ll need to type it in manually).

2. Next go to the modifier panel and add a subsurf modifier level 2, for even more vertices.

3. Add a Displacement Modifier directly beneath it and click New texture.

4. Go to the texture panel and change the type to Displace. Select Image from the dropdown, then select the generated displacement map we created earlier.

5. Return to the modifier stacker and set the strength to 0.012 and the direction to Z.

Render now and you should have this:

Adding the Occlusion map

Depending on the material, this is probably the least important of all the texture maps as it’s very subtle. Still, it can help push your material closer to “photorealism” territory.

1. Add an Image node and load in the Occlusion map we created earlier.

2. Add a mix node and drop it between the diffuse shader and the image texture. Connect the occlusion texture into the bottom input and the diffuse texture into the top input. Set the blend type to Multiply.

Your final render should now look like this:

Final material node setup:

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

Create something cool? Post in the comments below

Top 20 Blender Artworks from 2012

Andrew Price — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 15:20:06 +0000

Congratulations everyone! Despite grim predictions we actually made it through the year 2012. On the off chance any of you want to buy a 20 year supply of bottled water and shelter supplies, hit me up.

In other news, the Blender community really came through this year! There were some absolutely stellar artworks posted all over the...

Read the whole entry... »

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2012 Christmas Competition – Results

Andrew Price — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 09:49:40 +0000

Last year’s Christmas competition saw a huge amount of entries, and this year’s is no different!

198 artists entered into the competition. Which is quite a feat seeing as I gave you less than 3 weeks to complete it!

Let’s get into it…

All Entries

...

Read the whole entry... »

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Introduction to Anisotropic Shading

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:13:50 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover:

What Anisotropy is
When to use it
How to use it to create a realistic saucepan

If you’ve heard the term “Anisotropic” thrown around the blender community recently, it’s because the last release (2.65) included a new shader called Anisotropy.

This new shader allows you to create some complex materials like brushed metal, vinyl, saucepans, kitchen sinks and other materials which have been sanded.

It’s kinda like the glossy shader but nerdier.

In this tutorial I’ll be giving you some in-depth information on what it is, when it should be used and how to use it.

Finished Result

Download the HDR kitchen lighting probe used in the tutorial here.

Text Summary

Not a fan of videos? I’ve summed up the tutorial into this easy to read text version:

What is Anisotropy?

A real world example of Radial Anisotropy. Photo by Kurtis Garbutt

Anisotropy is similar to a glossy shader, only it pulls the reflection in a certain direction:

Comparison of a glossy shader and a (linear) Anisotropic Shader

Take this example:

Viewed from the side, the reflection is stretched sideways.

But when viewed 90 degrees to the right, it creates a very different reflection:

So Anisotropy allows us to (finally) create materials like; brushed metal, CDs, vinyl, fry pan bases, kitchen sinks etc.

Brushed metal. A real world example of Linear Anisotropy. Photo by Guido Muermann

Using the Anisotropy Shader

For this example we will be applying both linear and radial Anisotropic shading to a saucepan. Modelling the saucepan isn’t really part of the core lesson of this tutorial, so I won’t write it out, however it’s covered in the video version at the top of the page.

With the saucepan selected add a new material, and from the shader dropdown, select Anisotropic BSDF.

Go to the node editor and you should see the Anisotropic Node. Here’s a brief description of what each setting does:

Set the Roughness to 0.05 and the Anisotropy to 0.95.

The saucepan should now look like this:

Pretty easy right? Well the base is finished, but technically the walls aren’t correct yet as it’s using the default radial anisotropy when it should be using linear.

Creating Linear Anisotropy

So we need to make another material and only assign it to the walls.

Linear shading needs UV coordinates to know which direction the light should stretch. So before we can continue, we need to UV unwrap the saucepan.

In front view select all the vertices, press U and select Cylinder Projection.

Then select the base of the saucepan and from top view, press U and select Project from View (Bounds).

If you look at the UV view you should now see this:

The anisotropy will stretch the light vertically along the UV coordinates. So if you’re using this tutorial for another purpose, make sure to rotate the uv coordinates according to which way you want the light to stretch.

Now that you’ve UV unwrapped it, go back to the Node Editor (making sure the Linear material is selected) and add a Tangent node (Input>Tangent). Set the type to UV Map and select the name from the drop down box:

Throw it in a scene and you’re finished!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you create something cool, post it in the comments below

New Competition: Christmas 2012

Andrew Price — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:32:24 +0000

It’s almost the end of the year, so it’s time for another Blender Guru Christmas competition!

Last year’s was a big success, so I can’t wait to see what comes out of this year’s competition.

The theme is simple: Create a Christmas themed image using Blender. The best image wins

Prize

The winner will...

Read the whole entry... »

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‘Open Movie Remix’ Competition Results

Andrew Price — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 05:16:45 +0000

It’s been 5 weeks since the Open Movie Remix Competition was released and since then, 39 artists have submitted their entries.

The rules were simple, take any of the elements from the Blender Open Movies and use them to create a new concept. Sadly, many users experienced difficulty finding the open movie assets online, but for the few...

Read the whole entry... »

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How to Make Sparks

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 13:56:11 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover:

How to create realistic sparks using Cycles
How to use the new particle info node
How to create motion blur

I’ve always been fascinated with the beauty of sparks, and have wanted to create them for a while, but the results were always disappointing. This was mainly due to their being no way to change the color or opacity of the sparks throughout the animation.

However, the particle info node recently came to Blender and saved the day! We can now finally delve in to creating some satisfying sparks

Here’s what we’ll make:

Finished Result

Plus, a bonus slow mo version:

Download the Finished .blend

Reference Videos

Text Version

Not a fan of video tutorials? Not a problem. I’ve typed out the whole tutorial so that you can scroll past the stuff you know and skip to the good bits. (Italian Translation)

Creating the spark emitter

1. Delete the default cube and lamp, and add a Cylinder.

2. Go to side view (Numpad 3) and rotate the cylinder by 90 degrees.

3. Go into edit mode and from the front view (Numpad 1) select 3/4 of the mesh as pictured, then press delete.

You should now have a quarter cylinder like this:

4. Scale it down along the Y axis to make it thinner, then scale the whole thing as pictured:

Creating the sparks

5. With the cylinder still selected, add a new particle system and set the settings as shown:

6. Set the normal amount to 10, and random to 5, to shoot the sparks in every which way.

7. For even more randomness, add a subsurf modifier above the particle system so the cylinder shape isn’t so visible in the particles:

8. We need a floor, so add a plane and scale it up to be the size of the grid floor.

9. To make the sparks bounce off the floor, go to the collision settings and change the Damping and Friction as shown:

10. Add an icoshere and place it somewhere below the floor. This will actually be what each particle looks like.

11. Select the particle emitter, go to the particle render settings and set it to use the icosphere as shown:

Making the Sparks change color over time

12. Since the particle system is using the icosphere to render it, the spark material must be applied to the icosphere.

13. Switch to the Node Editor coz it’s about to get advanced and we need more control.

14. Press Shift+A and add a Particle Info node (new feature!).

The Particle Info node is a wonderful addition to blender that allows you to change a particle’s material according to a particle system’s velocity, lifetime and age etc. This allows us to (finally) be able to make particles fade out, as you’ll soon see…

15. Add a Math node (Add>Convertor>Math) and set the type to Divide, then connect it to the Age and Lifetime outputs as shown:

This confusing looking setup basically takes the particles Age and Divides it by it’s Lifetime, allowing us to change it’s material based on how long it’s been alive. If you’re confused, it’ll make sense soon…

16. Add a ColorRamp node (Add>Convertor>ColorRamp) and connect as shown:

This Color Ramp will now act as the color of the particles. The left side will be the color at the particles birth, and the right side will be the color at it’s death.

17. When sparks are born they are white/yellow hot and slowly cool to a red color before dying. So change the Color Ramp node to match that:

Give it a render to see if our ploy worked:

Great success! The particles start white hot, but turn red as they die.

Making the Sparks Fade Out

Next we’ll make the sparks fade out. This will be accomplished by blending the emission shader with a transparent shader.

18. Add a transparent shader:

19. Add a Mix Shader node and position and connect it to the Math node and two shaders as pictured:

Success! It’s not very noticeable, but the particles now fade out as they die. This makes for a much smoother animation.

Adding Motion Blur

A new feature available in trunk is Motion Blur for Cycles. Applying it to this scene will give the sparks that familiar trailing look. Let’s try it out…

20. Go to the render panel and enable Motion Blur with a shutter speed of 0.7. ~~Motion blur is currently only supported in CPU.~~ Update! Motion blur now works in GPU as well! Available in any release after revision 52645 (download latest build here).

Finished!

Serving suggestion: Add a circular saw for some sweet particle bounces.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

Creating something cool using this tutorial? Post it in the comments below.

4 Easy Ways to Speed Up Cycles

Andrew Price — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:07:32 +0000

Did you know that the Blender Internal render engine has been discontinued?

*gasp!*

I know. Apparently the decision was made 2 years ago that the Internal Render Engine development would cease, and be focused on Cycles instead.

For some reason this news was never broadcast to the community, so I’m doing it right now.

What does this...

Read the whole entry... »

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How to Create a Professional Logo Animation

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 03:32:04 GMT

In this tutorial you will discover:

The Secrets behind making a good logo animation
How to make metallic, brushed metal text
How to create a shiny gemstone
How to create a blurry particle background

Finished Result

Download the Finished .blend

It used to be that only big name movie companies could afford logo animations, but now that every man and his dog owns a youtube channel they’re becoming somewhat common. Throwing some bevel on your text just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

If you want to stand out you need to plan your logo animation carefully.

When you’re just starting out, the best thing you can do is watch as many logo intros as you can. You’ll learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t just by doing this.

So here’s some good videos to start with:

Tips for making a good logo animation

Think about what the company stands for, and how to portray this in the animation (is it professional, creative or fun?)
Start the animation by not giving much away. Make the viewer want to see more, then reveal the logo piece-by-piece.
Keep it under 10 seconds. The shorter the better.
Most intros end with the logo on a black background. It’s not a rule, but if you want to keep it consistent with the industry, it’s a good idea.
Spend time building a quality sound design. Bad sound can ruin any good visual.

Text Version

Hate long videos? Find what you need in the steps below. (Italian Translation)

Creating the Logo

1. Add new text (Shift+A > Text) and type out your company name.

2. Change the font to anything you like. I chose Optimus Princeps. Rotate the font by 90 degress so it’s flat when looked at in front view (Numpad 1).

3. Set Extrude to 0.05, Depth to 0.009, and Resolution to 4.

4. Convert the text to a mesh (Alt+C) and clean up any problems that was caused by the bevel (the first E in my example).

Creating Brushed Metal text

5. UV unwrap the text (U) using ‘Project from View’ (in front view).

6. Add a new material and set the shader type to Glossy. Set the roughness to 0.05.

7. Go to the Node Editor, and create the following node setup:

Lighting the Text

8. Position the camera front on to the text.

9. Add a plane and scale and position as shown. This will be used to cast reflections on the text. The text is 100% glossy, so it won’t catch any diffuse light.

10. Add a new material to the plane. Set it to Emission with a Strength of 3.

11. Go to the Object panel and under Ray Visibility, uncheck Camera. This will make the object invisible to the camera.

How to make an object invisible to the camera in Cycles

Oooo… slick. But the text kind of disappears at the bottom. Let’s fix that…

12. Duplicate the plane and place it below the text as pictured. Make a new material, set the strength to 1 and color to slightly yellow (for mo drama yo).

Much better! Now the whole word is visible, whilst still lookin schmexy…

Creating a Gemstone

13. Go to File>User Preferences>Addons and enable the Extra Objects addon.

14. Go to a new Layer. Press Shift+A, Mesh>Extra Objects>Gemstones>Gem.

15. Press T to bring up the toolbar with the mesh options. Set the settings as shown:

16. Add a new material to the Gemstone. Set the shader to Glass and the color to light green-aqua.

17. Go to the modifier stacker and add a Bevel with a width of 0.0040.

Creating the gemstone reflections

Without anything to reflect, the gemstone will be nothing more than a green smudge on your screen. So let’s add some “sparkle” using the background.

18. Go to the node editor and click the World icon in the bottom bar. Add a Checker Texture node and connect it to the background. Set the Scale to 20and Strength to 3.

“Cool refractions bro, but the background’s makin’ me trip!”

19. Add a Light Path and Mix node, then connect as pictured below. This will make the background invisible to the camera.

How to make the texture invisible to the camera

Much better! Checkerboard wallpapers were like soooo 1970s anyway.

But wait, there’s more! We actually don’t want the checkerboard background to cast any reflections either. Otherwise we’ll run into problems later with our text. So let’s turn off reflections too.

20. Duplicate the previous Mix node and connect as pictured:

How to make a background texture not show up in reflections

21. Select the text and go into edit mode. Select “Pictures” using the box tool (B) and press P>Selection to make it a separate object.

22. Separate the two words and place the gemstone in the middle.

Slowly getting there.

Creating a “floating particle” background

23. Add a Plane, scale it up to cover the grid floor and place below your scene out of view of the camera. Add a Location Keyframe (i) on Frame 1.

24. Go to Frame 10, move the plane above the camera and add another Location Keyframe (i).

25. Go to the f-Curve editor. Delete the X and Y location tracks (as they aren’t needed). Select the Z-Location track and press V>Vector (this will make the animation linear without slowing down).

26. With the plane selected, add a new Particle System.

27. Set the Emission amount to 5000. Start: 1, End: 10. Lifetime: 260.

28. Set the Normal to 0. Brownian: 0.1 (subtle drifting behavior). Gravity: 0.

Play the animation now and you should see this

29. Somewhere out of view of the camera, add a Circle and in the toolbar, set the Vertices to 8 and Fill type to Ngon.

30. Add a new material to the circle. Set the surface type to Emission with a Strength of 4.

31. Select the plane again and under the Particle Settings, Render, click Object select the name of the Circle. Alter the size till you have small-ish particles.

32. Go to the Particle settings, enable Rotation and Dynamic. Set the Initial Orientation to 1 and Angular Velocity to Random: 2. This will make the particles gently rotate as they float around.

Yay, particles! But it looks terrible because there’s no sense of depth.

33. Select the camera and set the Focus point to the Text (should be the word “Emerald”). Set the f/Stop to 0.05.

Yay! Sweet, sweet DoF.

Volumetric Lighting

NOTE: Volumetric lighting is currently not available in Cycles (as of November 2012), so the Internal Render engine will be used.

34. Create a new scene using Link Object Data.

35. Name the new scene Volumetric Lighting and set the render engine to Blender.

36. Add a spotlamp with a Halo step 5.

37. Add a plane and subdivide it 7 times (W).

38. Use the circle tool (C) to select random holes in the mesh.

39. Delete those vertices and position the plane at the top of the spotlight cone, but out of view of the camera.

40. Move the spotlight and plane to a separate layer. Go to the render layer settings and select that layer in the layer options. Check All Z.

41. Go back to the main Scene and jump to the compositor. Add another Renderlayer and set the scene to Volumetric Lighting. Add another mix node and connect as shown:

The Fac value determines how thick to make the volumetric light.

Making the text glow

42. Select the Text, go to the object panel and set the Pass Index to 1 (do each text object separately).

43. In the RenderLayer check Object Index.

44. Go to the compositor and add an ID Mask (Add>Converter) and a Mix Node. Connect as shown:

45. Add an RGB Curve Node and Blur Node. Connect and change as shown:

46. Finally, add a Mix Node, set to Add and connect to the rest of the compositor as shown.

47. To keep things organized, create a group out of the newly created nodes (Ctrl+G). Set the name to “Text Glow”.

Making the gemstone “shine”

48. Select the gemstone and set the Pass Index to 2.

49. Go to the compositor, add an ID Mask set to 2, and a Mix node. Connect as shown:

50. Add a Glare node and set as shown:

51. Add another Mix Node and set as shown:

52. Keep it organized by grouping the newly created nodes (Alt+G).

The new method for creating Vignettes

53. Add an Ellipse Mask (Add>Matte) and set the settings as shown:

54. Add a Blur Node, set to Fast Gaussian, Relative, Y, 10% and connect to the Ellipse Mask.

55. Add a Mix node, set to Multiply and connect as shown:

56. Keep it tidy by making a group out of those newly created nodes (Alt+G).

57. For the final touch, add a color balance node and tweak the middle wheel to be slightly purple (complimentary color of green).

Complete composite:

Animating the logo

58. Go to Frame 200. Select the text and add a LocationRotation keyframe (i).

59. Select the camera and position your cursor over the Focal Length and press i to create a keyframe.

60. Go to Frame 100. Move the Emerald right in front of the camera. Add another LocationRotation keyframe (i).

61. Position the word “Emerald” behind the gemstone, slightly rotated. Add another LocationRotation keyframe.

62. Move the word “Pictures” behind the camera. Add another LocationRotation keyframe.

63. Zoom the camera in to Focal Length 60 and create another keyframe by hovering over the field and press i.

Playback the animation now and you should see a completed logo animation, fit for any movie production company

Finished!

Wow that was a long text summary! Give me some feedback: Do you find text summaries helpful?

Did you make your own logo animation using this tutorial? Post your results in the comments below!

New Blender Competition: Open Movie Remix

Andrew Price — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:20:27 +0000

There are now four open movies created by the Blender Foundation; Elephants Dream, Big Buck Bunny, Sintel and the latest addition; Tears of Steel.

These short films are unique because every single file, texture, model, video or asset, can be downloaded by anyone and used completely free!

So far the blender community has done a few funky...

Read the whole entry... »

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Achieving Photorealism in Blender

Andrew Price — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:41:49 +0000

This is a summary of the presentation that I gave at the 2012 Blender Conference in Amsterdam.

For those that couldn’t be there, I’ve written this summary…

(Unfortunately the video I recorded on the day was too dark and difficult to hear, so I figured there was no point in uploading it. Sorry about that!)

In...

Read the whole entry... »

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Blender Guru

How to Make Cherry Blossom Flowers

Finished Result

Resources

Text Version

Modelling the Petals

Creating the flower

Making the Pollen Stems

Modelling the Stem

Texturing the Stem

Displacing the Petals

Setting up the foreground

Lighting the scene

Creating the branch

Creating the Background

Post Processing

Further Inspiration

Sci-fi Competition Winners

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Final Result

Text Summary

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Finished Result

Resources

Text Summary

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Mapping the Walls

Mapping the doorway

Mapping the Ceiling

Further Inspiration

New Competition: Scifi

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Creating the text

Setting up the scene

Creating the material

MOAR LIGHTS!

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Video Game Competition – Winner

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3 Massive Features of Blender 2.66 and How To Use Them

1. Cycles Hair Rendering

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Finished Result

Text Version

Intro

Comparison of Old vs New

Hands On

Particle settings

Materials

Finished!

Bonus Tip: Fading out the hair

New Competition: Video Games

Prize

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The Secrets of Realistic Texturing

Finished Result

Text Version

Adding a basic texture in Blender

Using CrazyBump

Adding a Specularity Map

Adding the Normal Map

Adding a Displacement Map

Adding the Occlusion map

Top 20 Blender Artworks from 2012