Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

By : Enrico Valenza, Ton Roosendaal

Buy this Book

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

By: Enrico Valenza, Ton Roosendaal

Buy this Book

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.

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Overview of Materials in Cycles

Introduction

Material nodes in Cycles

Procedural textures in Cycles

Setting the World material

Creating a mesh-light material

Using displacement (aka bump)

Managing Cycles Materials

Introduction

Preparing an ideal Cycles interface for material creation

Naming materials and textures

Creating node groups

Linking materials

Creating Natural Materials in Cycles

Introduction

Creating a rock material using image maps

Creating a rock material using procedural textures

Creating a sand material using procedural textures

Creating a simple ground material using procedural textures

Creating a snow material using procedural textures

Creating an ice material using procedural textures

Creating a clean running water material

Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles

Introduction

Creating a generic plastic material

Creating a bakelite material

Creating an expanded polystyrene material

Creating a clear (glassy) polystyrene material

Creating a rubber material

Creating an antique bronze material with procedurals

Creating a multipurpose metal group node

Creating a worn metal material with procedurals

Creating a rusty metal material with procedurals

Creating a wood material with procedurals

Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles

Introduction

Creating an ocean material using procedural textures

Creating underwater environment materials

Creating a snowy mountain landscape with procedurals

Creating a realistic planet Earth as seen from space

Creating More Complex Man-made Materials

Introduction

Creating cloth materials with procedurals

Creating a leather material with procedurals

Creating a synthetic sponge material with procedurals

Creating a brick wall material with procedurals

Creating a spaceship hull

Creating Organic Materials

Introduction

Creating a snake-like scaly material with image maps and procedurals

Creating a wasp-like chitin material with procedural textures

Creating a beetle-like chitin material with procedural textures

Creating a grass shader

Creating tree shaders – the bark

Creating tree shaders – the leaves

Creating a Gray Alien skin material with procedurals

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Creating a clean running water material

The simpler way to make a water shader is by using a glass node and setting the IOR value (Index Of Refraction, a number specifying the capacity of a medium to refract the light passing through it) to 1.33, and actually, this should be enough; by the way, although physically correct, this does not work well in every light condition or particular situation. A better approach is to use the glass shader mixed with another "specularity" node and, in some cases, also with the aid of a texture.

Getting ready

Start Blender and switch to the Cycles rendering engine. Select the cube and scale it at least six units on the z axis (press S followed by Z, digit 3, and hit Enter; the default cube is already of 2 units, so 2 X 3 = 6). Then scale down to the half its width (press S followed by Shift + Z, digit 0.500, and hit Enter).
Go in edit mode, and press Crtl + R and scroll the middle mouse wheel to add four horizontal cuts to the cube.
Select the upper and the bottom...

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

By : Enrico Valenza, Ton Roosendaal

Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

By: Enrico Valenza, Ton Roosendaal

Overview of this book

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Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook

Creating a clean running water material

Getting ready