Book Image

Blender 3D: Designing Objects

By : Romain Caudron, Pierre-Armand Nicq, Enrico Valenza
Book Image

Blender 3D: Designing Objects

By: Romain Caudron, Pierre-Armand Nicq, Enrico Valenza

Overview of this book

Blender is a powerful, stable tool with an integral workflow that will allow you to understand 3D creation with ease. With its integrated game engine and use of the Python language, it is an efficient choice for many productions, including 3D animated or live action films, architecture, research, and even game creation. Blender has an active community that contributes to expanding its functionalities. Today, it is used in many professional products and by many companies. Throughout Blender for Designers, you will create many types of complete projects using a step-by-step approach. Start by getting to know the modeling tools available in Blender to create a 3D robot toy, and discover more advanced techniques such as sculpting and retopology by creating an alien character. Move on in the second module to engage with the workflow used to create characters. Run through the process from modeling to the rendering stages, using the tools of the latest official release of Blender. The last module will teach you how to utilize the power of the Blender series to create a wide variety of materials, textures, and effects using the Cycles rendering engine. You will learn about node-based shader creation, and master Cycles through step-by-step, recipe-based advice. Start small by rendering the textures of stones and water, then scale things up to massive landscapes of mountains and oceans. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: •Blender 3D By Example By Romain Caudron and Pierre-Armand Nicq •Blender 3D Cookbook By Enrico Valenza •Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook - Third Edition By Enrico Valenza

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Blender 3D: Designing Objects
Romain Caudron | Pierre-Armand Nicq | Enrico Valenza
Nov, 2016 | 21 hours 21 minutes
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Table of Contents (6 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this learning path covers
What you need for this learning path
Who this learning path is for
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Module 1
1. Module 1
1. Straight into Blender!
2. Robot Toy – Modeling of an Object
3. Alien Character – Base Mesh Creation and Sculpting
4. Alien Character – Creating a Proper Topology and Transferring the Sculpt Details
5. Haunted House – Modeling of the Scene
6. Haunted House – Putting Colors on It
7. Haunted House – Adding Materials and Lights in Cycles
8. Rat Cowboy – Learning To Rig a Character for Animation
9. Rat Cowboy – Animate a Full Sequence
10. Rat Cowboy – Rendering, Compositing, and Editing
2
2. Module 2
2. Module 2
1. Modeling the Character's Base Mesh
2. Sculpting the Character's Base Mesh
3. Polygonal Modeling of the Character's Accessories
4. Re-topology of the High Resolution Sculpted Character's Mesh
5. Unwrapping the Low Resolution Mesh
6. Rigging the Low Resolution Mesh
7. Skinning the Low Resolution Mesh
8. Finalizing the Model
9. Animating the Character
10. Creating the Textures
11. Refining the Textures
12. Creating the Materials in Cycles
13. Creating the Materials in Blender Internal
14. Lighting, Rendering, and a Little Bit of Compositing
3
3. Module 3
3. Module 3
1. Overview of Materials in Cycles
2. Managing Cycles Materials
3. Creating Natural Materials in Cycles
4. Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles
5. Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles
6. Creating More Complex Man-made Materials
7. Subsurface Scattering in Cycles
8. Creating Organic Materials
9. Special Materials
4
Bibliography
Bibliography
5
Index
Index

Chapter 2. Managing Cycles Materials

In this chapter, we will be covering the following recipes:

  • Preparing an ideal Cycles interface for material creation
  • Naming materials and textures
  • Creating node groups
  • Grouping nodes under frames for easier reading
  • Linking materials and node groups

Introduction

As with Blender Internal materials, Cycles materials can (and should) be organized to optimize your workflow.

Material nodes in Cycles can easily grow quite complex, and it's sometimes a good idea to split and label the different parts of a shader's network, just to make the meaning of the different sections clearer (even to yourself because maybe at a certain point of your workflow, you will forget how exactly that 120-node material you made a couple of months ago works). Moreover, organized materials can be easily reused in other files and projects or as parts of bigger and different materials.

Organization of materials is basically done by grouping them or giving them proper names...

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