Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook, Third Edition

Book Image

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook, Third Edition

By : Enrico Valenza

Book Image

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook, Third Edition

By: Enrico Valenza

Overview of this book

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook Third Edition

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook Third Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Overview of Materials in Cycles

Overview of Materials in Cycles

Material nodes in Cycles

Procedural textures in Cycles

Setting the World material

Creating a mesh-light material

Using volume materials

Using displacement

Managing Cycles Materials

Managing Cycles Materials

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

Creating Natural Materials in Cycles

Creating Natural Materials in Cycles

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 Man-made Materials in Cycles

Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles

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 node group

Creating a rusty metal material with procedurals

Creating a wood material with procedurals

Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles

Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles

Creating an ocean material using procedural textures

Creating underwater environment materials

Creating a snowy mountain landscape with procedurals

Creating a realistic Earth as seen from space

Creating More Complex Man-made Materials

Creating More Complex Man-made Materials

Creating cloth materials with procedurals

Creating a leather material with procedurals

Creating a synthetic sponge material with procedurals

Creating a spaceship hull shader

Subsurface Scattering in Cycles

Subsurface Scattering in Cycles

Using the Subsurface Scattering shader node

Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Translucent shader

Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Vertex Color tool

Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Ray Length output in the Light Path node

Creating a fake Subsurface Scattering node group

Creating Organic Materials

Creating Organic Materials

Creating an organic-looking shader with procedurals

Creating a wasp-like chitin material with procedural textures

Creating a beetle-like chitin material with procedural textures

Creating tree shaders – the bark

Creating tree shaders – the leaves

Creating a layered human skin material in Cycles

Creating fur and hair

Creating a gray alien skin material with procedurals

Special Materials

Special Materials

Using Cycles volume materials

Creating a cloud volumetric material

Creating a fire and smoke shader

Creating a shadeless material in Cycles

Creating a fake immersion effect material

Creating a fake volume light material

Index

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Using Cycles volume materials

In all the recipes we have seen so far, Cycles used the Surface input socket and (very rarely) the Displacement input socket for the bump effects of the Material Output node to make the renderings. Assigning colors or textures to the surface of an object clearly means that interaction between a ray of light and an object happens only at the surface level of the object, and until this surface doesn't show what should be inside, that's OK. The surface attribute is enough for a realistic rendering.

Things get more complex when there is a need to show what's inside an object, for example, water inside a glass container, smoke and clouds in a thick atmosphere, and so on.

Usually, these are effects that require the use of the volume attribute more than the surface attribute to be effectively rendered.

So, in the first recipes of this chapter, we are going to see the use of the Volume input socket of the Material Output node. Rather than covering a specific material,...