Book Image

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

By : Enrico Valenza, Ton Roosendaal
Book Image

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

By: Enrico Valenza, Ton Roosendaal

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

Preparing an ideal Cycles interface for material creation


Before starting with the actual organization, it's a good idea to prepare a material creation screen to be saved in your Blender preferences.

It is possible, in fact, to prepare a basic scene setup including the elements and the settings we need to do the job in the best way.

In any case, just take this paragraph with a pinch of salt; that is, more as a suggestion or as a starting point that you can eventually modify to better agree with your needs.

How to do it...

  1. Start Blender and in the upper menu (Engine to use for rendering button) switch to Cycles Render.

  2. Split the 3D view into two horizontal rows: move the mouse cursor onto the edge of the window; the cursor changes to a double arrow icon, right-click, and from the context menu select Split Area.

  3. Change the upper window into a Node Editor by selecting the item from the Editor type button in the left-hand corner of the bottom bar.

  4. Select the default cube in the scene and press Tab...