Photorealistic Materials and Textures in Blender Cycles : Create Impressive Production-Ready Projects Using One of the Most Powerful Rendering Engines / Arijan Belec.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Belec, Arijan, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Video games--Development.

Video games.

Video games--Programming.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (394 pages)

Edition:

4th Revised edition.

Distribution:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing (UK), 2025.

Place of Publication:

Birmingham : Packt Publishing, 2023.

System Details:

text file HTML

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright and Credits

Contributors

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1: Materials in Cycles

Chapter 1: Creating Materials in Blender

Technical requirements

Preparing the Shading workspace

Creating materials

Adding multiple materials to an object

Tweaking material properties

Specular

Roughness

Metallic

Clearcoat

Emission

Summary

Chapter 2: Introducing Material Nodes

Understanding the default nodes

Creating textures with the Image Texture node

Loading images into materials

Generating images with nodes

Exploring powerful nodes

Color control nodes

The Mix node

The Noise Texture node

The Voronoi Texture node

The ColorRamp node

Generating a camouflage texture

Chapter 3: Mapping Images with Nodes

Understanding image mapping

Using the Node Wrangler add-on

Texture Coordinate node

Mapping textures to 3D models

Part 2: Understanding Realistic Texturing

Chapter 4: Achieving Realism with Texture Maps

Using Albedo maps to create a base texture

Introducing Roughness maps

Using Normal maps to detail surfaces

Creating transparency

Understanding Alpha maps

Creating realistic glass in Cycles

Chapter 5: Generating Texture Maps with Cycles

Using texture libraries

Applying texture maps in Blender

Creating Roughness maps in Blender

Baking Normal maps in Blender

Generating Roughness maps in GIMP

Generating Normal maps in GIMP

Chapter 6: Creating Bumpy Surfaces with Displacement Maps

Understanding displacement maps

Generating a Displacement map in GIMP

Applying Displacement maps in Blender

Generating Displacement maps in Blender

Summary.

Part 3: UV Mapping and Texture Painting

Chapter 7: UV-Unwrapping 3D Models for Texturing

Understanding UV mapping

Unwrapping basic shapes

Unwrapping a cylinder

Unwrapping complex shapes

Chapter 8: Baking Ambient Occlusion Maps

Understanding Ambient Occlusion maps

Baking an Ambient Occlusion map

Applying the Ambient Occlusion map with nodes

Mixing Diffuse and Ambient Occlusion maps in GIMP

Chapter 9: Introducing Texture Painting

Understanding the basics of texture painting

Improving edges with texture painting

Creating custom brushes in GIMP

Creating a bullet hole decal

Using stencils in Blender

Chapter 10: Creating Photorealistic Textures on a 3D Model

Adding basic materials to the steering wheel

Adding texture to handles

Adding texture to the center pad

Adding carbon fiber to the steering wheel

Baking a custom Normal map

Applying a logo to the steering wheel

Painting buttons with stencils

Part 4: Lighting and Rendering

Chapter 11: Lighting a Scene in Cycles

Generating light in Blender

Using light objects

Emission lighting

Environmental lighting

Simulating realistic lighting

Generating studio lighting

Chapter 12: Creating Photorealistic Environments with HDRIs

What are HDRIs?

Downloading HDRIs

Applying HDRIs in Blender

Chapter 13: Preparing the Camera for Rendering

Getting to know Blender's camera

Snapping and moving the camera

Snapping the camera

Moving the camera

Controlling camera settings and parameters

Animating the camera with keyframes

Animating the camera

Animating the focus distance

Chapter 14: Rendering with Cycles.

How does rendering work in Blender?

Configuring render properties

Eevee versus Cycles

Sampling

Adding background transparency

Exporting images and videos

Index

Other Books You May Enjoy

Blank Page.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9781805127345

1805127349

OCLC:

1407627027