Cycles is a great production renderer, but it currently struggles with one thing: caustics! Thankfully there are other open source render engines available. One is of particular interest for this case: appleseed. This quick tutorial shows how to render caustics in Blender with Blenderseed, the appleseed plugin for Blender.
Blender is a really versatile program. It can even be used as a replacement for image manipulation programs like Photoshop or Krita in some cases, with the added benefit that real and fake 3D can be combined.
This article is about baking normals with the Cycles Render Engine. But it also contains excerpts from our book The Cycles Encyclopedia. This is where you can get extensive information about how normals work internally and what they are used for.
This second BlenderDiplom winter special will focus on a stylized snowflake inside a snowstorm rendered in Cycles. The first part is about easy snowflake modeling and is presented to you by Christoph Pöhler while in the second part Gottfried Hofmann will show you how to render it in Cycles.
By baking normal maps, you can add lots of details to models without increasing the polycount. Baked normal maps are used a lot in games, but are also useful for animations and still renderings. This tutorial shows you how to bake normals using the Blender Internal renderer.
Volume scattering is used to create effects like smoke, dust, clouds, sun beams (a.k.a. god rays) and similar things. This tutorial will help you understand everything about volume scatter in Cycles and how to get the effects you expect from it.
Jonathan Lampel shows you how to set up a Cycles shader that turns your Blender models into modern day holograms.
Blender 2.7x got a great new feature - volumetrics in Cycles! Learn the basics of the volume scatter effect in this tutorial.
A stencil for an animated background is a nice element for motion graphics. Unfortunately, the compositor is not always well-suited here. But Cycles comes for the rescue!
Learn how to add great looking particle fur for any animal!
In this guest tutorial by Christoph Pöhler you will learn how to create a cute ghost animation using the cloth simulation and some advanced Cycles shaders.
The new ray length node in Blender 2.64 allows to fake absorption even without a volumetric shader. This tutorial shows you how to create your own absorption shader and make it re-usable.
This tutorial for Blender 2.64 or later shows you how to create an advanced particle trail in Cycles using new features like the particle info node.
The praying mantis is going Octane! In the fifth part of this tutorial series Frederik Steinmetz explains how to mix materials in Octane using nodes and maps. If you have not seen the other parts, we recommend that you watch the scene setup and if you are fairly new to Octane, please watch the Octane Pitfalls tutorial as well.
In this tutorial you will learn how to install the Blender to Octane exporter by yoyos. Frederik Steinmetz will guide you through the process and help you to avoid the most common pitfalls that still exist, due to the beta status of both the exporter and Octane.
This is Blenderdiplom's way of saying: have some nice winter holidays. In this tutorial Frederik Steinmetz will demonstrate how to set up a beautiful macro scene consisting of a few frost-covered plants with a nice backlighting effect. It's rendered in Cycles with a little compositing. Enjoy!
The grand mantis series Part 4: Material setup for Blender Internal! Learn how to use Subsurface Scattering to create a stunning organic material in Blender Internal renderer.
The grand mantis series Part 3: Material setup for Luxrender! Organic materials in physically-based renderers like Luxrender tend to be difficult. Unless Frederik Steinmetz is your tutor!
In this interim tutorial for the great mantis series Frederik Steinmetz will show us how to light in Luxrender and Blender. As usual he shows us possible problems and their solutions!
The grand mantis series Part 2: Advanced Cycles materials! Learn how to set up advanced materials in Cycles, plus even more lighting tips from Fredrik Steinmetz!
Ladies and Gentlemen - introducing: Frederik Steinmetz! He has prepared an intermediate tutorial on Cycles. Not the usual "How to start Cycles and set up a simple scene" kind of tutorial but a guided tour around current pitfalls and lots of tips and tricks!
It's fairly easy to dissolve objects in Blender, but you can go even further. Learn how to use particles, a point density texture for volume rendering and a moving force field to get a ghost-like effect.