Book Image

Blender 2.5 Lighting and Rendering

By : Aaron W. Powell
Book Image

Blender 2.5 Lighting and Rendering

By: Aaron W. Powell

Overview of this book

<p>Blender 3D is a popular, open source modeling and animation package. It is used for game design, architectural visualization, character design, animation, and still images. However, creating believable lighting and texturing is difficult in any 3D program.<br /><br />This step-by-step tutorial aims to familiarize you with Blender's new interface and basic features as well as take a look at what it takes to produce a believable scene using lighting, texturing, compositing, and rendering.<br /><br />By using the example of a tricycle in an outdoor scene you will learn to establish an effective workflow to increase your productivity. You will also thoroughly studying the scene and deciding how your tricycle would look on a sunny, cloudless day using Blender lamps. Not just that, you will also learn to implement your decisions by applying a 3-point light rig, adjusting the color of the lights, adding shadows, and using light groups to control the lighting. You will learn to add ambient occlusion effects to your scene by using both ray-traced and approximated ambient occlusion algorithms. A mesh example shows you how to give a particular look or "feel" by adding and editing materials. You will light a wine bottle on a table by taking a look at lighting interior spaces and how to create complex light rigs and custom UV textures for your scenes using Blender's UV editing capabilities. You will create a custom UV map, export it as a file type Blender can read, and finally add your UV map to the wine bottle mesh. In the same example you will add wood material to booths. You will further enhance the background by adding wallpaper, giving color and metallic tint to the lamps, and adding material to light bulbs. You will look at lighting techniques used in scenes that include both interior and exterior light sources in a scene that has sunlight traveling in through the window and a light bulb hanging from the ceiling.</p>
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Blender 2.5 Lighting and Rendering
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

About the Reviewers

Yorik van Havre is a Belgian architect who currently lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Blender occupies the major part of his daily work. He regularly writes articles and tutorials about Blender, architecture and architecture software, and is actively involved in several communities and open-source projects. He has also reviewed two other Blender books, Blender 3D: Architecture, Buildings and Scenery and Blender 3D Incredible machines, both by Allan Brito. More about Yorik's work can be found at his website: http://yorik.uncreated.net

Sanu Vamanchery Mana is a 3D artist from India with over 11 years of experience in the fields of animation, gaming, and special effects, and is Lecturer of Interactive Media Design/Animation and Game Design at Raffles Design Institute, Singapore. As a lecturer he has given many workshops, trainings, and presentations in many countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Currently he is reviewing two Blender 3D books for Packt Publishing.

He has worked for gaming projects such as Golden Eye 007 (Electronic Arts ), Neopet (Sony Entertainment), and World Series of Poker (Sony Entertainment). He was also involved in the Short movie "JackFrost" was which nominated for a BAFTA.