Book Image

Photorealistic Materials and Textures in Blender Cycles - Fourth Edition

By : Arijan Belec
Book Image

Photorealistic Materials and Textures in Blender Cycles - Fourth Edition

By: Arijan Belec

Overview of this book

Blender is one of the most versatile tools in the 3D software industry, and with a growing audience and constantly expanding set of features, it has become more powerful, useful, and in demand than ever before. This updated fourth edition of Photorealistic Materials and Textures in Blender Cycles is an all-inclusive guide to procedural texturing, rendering, and designing materials in Blender, covering all aspects of the 3D texturing workflow. The book begins by introducing you to Blender’s material nodes and material property functions, and then helps you create photorealistic textures by understanding texture maps and mapping them to 3D models. As you advance, you’ll learn to design high-quality environments and lighting using HDRIs and Blender’s lighting options. By exploring, breaking down, and studying the underlying mechanics that allow you to develop these elements, you’ll create any material, texture, or environment and use it to improve your artwork and present them in a professional way. Finally, you’ll discover how to correctly set up scenes and render settings, and get to grips with the key elements of achieving realism. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained a solid understanding of materials, textures, shading, lighting, rendering, and all the critical aspects of achieving the highest quality with your 3D artwork.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Materials in Cycles
5
Part 2: Understanding Realistic Texturing
9
Part 3: UV Mapping and Texture Painting
14
Part 4: Lighting and Rendering

Baking a custom Normal map

We will now learn how to create a custom Normal map pattern. Although these textures can be downloaded as at the beginning of this chapter, you are encouraged to bake the pattern yourself to learn how to create custom Normal maps. In the following steps, we will model and bake the custom pattern as a Normal map:

  1. Shape a simple hexagon using a plane, as shown in Figure 10.17. Make sure to copy the exact measurements.

    It is important to use the same measurements because otherwise the texture will not be seamless, and there will be inconsistencies in the pattern.

Figure 10.17 – Modeling a hexagon

Figure 10.17 – Modeling a hexagon

  1. Inset the faces and push them down as shown in Figure 10.18.
Figure 10.18 – Insetting faces in the hexagon

Figure 10.18 – Insetting faces in the hexagon

  1. Add an Array modifier with a Constant Offset value of 2m on the Y axis.
Figure 10.19 – Adding an Array modifier

Figure 10.19 – Adding an Array modifier

  1. Add...