Get to grips with new real-time animation techniques and tricks to improve your artistic and technical skills in shading, 3D rendering, and scene creation using Blender 3.0
Key Features
Learn real-time rendering engine concepts by creating three projects
Understand how to update workflows to Blender 3.0
Explore intermediate to advanced-level tutorials on creating art inside Blender
Book Description
Blender is the most important up-and-coming 3D software package in the world. EEVEE, a state-of-the-art real-time rendering engine is a fairly new addition to Blender and provides the capacity to create artwork at blazing speed, almost 12 times faster than Cycles.
Lighting, Shading, and Rendering with Blender's EEVEE provides a high-level overview of what EEVEE is capable of, then teaches users about Geometry Nodes, Rendering Techniques, using shortcuts like Kitbashing and Alphas to speed up scene creation, volumetrics, reflections, adding lights, cameras and even special effects like fire and smoke, all in EEVEE. All of this is in the context of creating actual scenes that readers will work through from start to finish. By the time a Blender Artist completes the book, they will have created three separate works that have challenged them to iterate and design with the full power of Blender's EEVEE.
What you will learn
Explore EEVEE Render Properties for optimal outcomes
Focus on shading processes, including those that are both traditional and more cutting-edge
Understand composition and create effective concept art inside Blender
Discover procedural workflows to shorten the artistic process instead of getting mired in details
Understand intermediate Blender workflows for working in a professional environment
Develop art in different styles and learn why each style has different workflows and conventions
Create interactive, rapid changes in Blender's EEVEE engine
Author(s): Sammie Crowder
Publisher: Packt
Year: 2022
Language: English
Tags: Blender
Cover
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Section 1: Configuring in EEVEE – Mini-Project 1 – Stylized Scene
Chapter 1: Introducing EEVEE – A Real-Time Rendering Engine
Technical requirements
What is EEVEE? EEVEE as a rendering engine
Why use EEVEE and what are the advantages of using EEVEE?
Limitations of EEVEE
Setting up – configuring the start of mini-projects
File structure
An overview of the mini-projects
Summary
Chapter 2: Creating Materials Fast with EEVEE
Technical requirements
Materials in EEVEE
Why materials are a little different in EEVEE
Quickly previewing lighting ideas for fast iteration
Creating our first image-based material
Two-click Principled Setup
Shader to RGB
Creating our first procedural texture
The base mesh
Texture creation with procedural nodes
Adding shading to the material
Summary
Chapter 3: Lights, Camera...
Technical requirements
Adding lighting to our mini-project
World lighting system
Changing to the world shader editor
Changing the HDRI to fit our scene
Adding lights to our scene
Creating and configuring cameras
Adding a camera
Camera properties
Learning about the Line Art modifier
Summary
Chapter 4: Non-Physical Rendering
Technical requirements
Adding clouds to our composition
Configuring Render settings
Sampling
Ambient Occlusion
Bloom
Screen Space Reflections
Film
Compositing Render layers
Final compositing
Summary
Section 2: Real-Time Rendering – Mini-Project 2 – Creating a Realistic Environment Concept
Chapter 5: Setting Up an Environment with Geometry Nodes
Technical requirements
Setting up the scene – adding grass and rocks to the Asset Browser
Setting up the scene – adding grass and rocks
Adding more complexity and applying the modifier to other objects
Adding rocks to the node tree
Customizing our Geometry Nodes system
Summary
Chapter 6: Screen Space Reflections – Adding Reflection to the Water
Technical requirements
Screen space reflections
Light probes – reflection planes
Advanced water – volume and transparency
Summary
Chapter 7: Faking Camera Effects for Better Renders
Technical requirements
Atmospheric lighting
Bloom
Ambient occlusion
Depth of field
Summary
Chapter 8: Using Alphas for Details
Technical requirements
Adding detail to the scene (with birds!)
Faking volumetric mist
Using an image to create a background
Summary
Section 3: Advanced Features – Mini-Project 3 – Creating a Sci-Fi Concept
Chapter 9: Lighting an Interior Scene
Technical requirements
Troubleshooting a common lighting error
Designing the lighting for our interior
Previewing render passes to inform our lighting decisions
Summary
Chapter 10: Working with Irradiance Volumes and Cubemaps for More Accurate Rendering
Technical requirements
Implementing an Irradiance Volume
Implementing a Reflection Cubemap
Summary
Chapter 11: Kitbashing – Adding Details Fast
Technical requirements
Kitbashing with small objects
Using Geometry Nodes to create sci-fi panels
Summary
Chapter 12: Special Effects with EEVEE – Fire and Smoke
Technical requirements
Creating fire with Quick Smoke
Tweaking the shader for fire and smoke in EEVEE
Optimal EEVEE render settings for the smoke and fire
How to combine renders in Cycles and EEVEE
Summary
Chapter 13: Exploring the Wide World of Blender
Technical requirements
Review of the main concepts covered in this book
Further reading (or watching)
Learning more about: Geometry Nodes
Learning more about: The Asset Browser
Learning more about: Physics simulations
Learning more about: Character animation
Learning more about: Modeling
Learning more about: Materials
Learning more about: The Grease Pencil
Learning more about: Sculpting
Learning more about: Scripting
Add-ons for further improving your workflow
Free
Paid
Further projects to tackle
Environments
Characters
Grease Pencil
Studies
Summary
Index
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