Blender 3D

Cycles       
Rendering Engine
A practical approach
Cycles Rendering Engine
• Introduction: Cycles Render 5
•  Shaders and Nodes 5
• Insight: Global Illumination and Direct Lighting - Samples and Light
9
Path Integrators
•  BiDirectional Path Tracing 9
•  Global Illumination 10
•  Direct Lighting 11
•  BSDF and BSSRDF 11
• Before you begin: Nodes Editor, and basic commands 13
•  Engine choice, the rendering engine 13
•  GPU Compute with CUDA devices 13
•  Rendered Preview and real-time interactivity 14
•  Final rendering 15
•  Nodes and Node Editor 16
•  Shaders, Colors and Object Color in the 3D View 19
•  The Scene Files and Resources of This Manual 20
• Scene 1: Still Life 21
•  Preliminary Operations and Settings 22
•  Device: CPU and GPU Compute 23
•  Render – Sampling and Clamping 24
•  Render – Integrators and Light Paths 25
•  Lighting: standard light sources (Area Lamp) 26
• Cloth: Velvet Shader (mixed with Diffuse), part I: overview 29

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 •  The Diffuse Shader 30
•  The Velvet Shader 31
•  The Mix Shader Node 32
• Cloth: Velvet Shader (mixed with Diffuse), part II: the making 35
• Glass (and wine): not only Glass 41
•  The Glass Shader 41
•  The Glossy Shader 42
•  The Transparent Shader 43
•  Alternatives: The Translucent and the Refraction Shaders 44
• The Light Path Node; output "is Shadow Ray" as Mix
45
Factor
•  Final scheme of the Nodes for the glass 47
•  Wine Nodes scheme 48
• The dish: ceramic (simple mix) 50
• Fruit, Part I: Diffuse Shaders; Image Textures 52
•  UV Mapping Textures 52
•  Bumping; grayscale for Displacement 55
•  RGBtoBW and Math Multiply 55
•  Tips 57
• Fruit, Part II: Normal vs. Displacement 59
•  Material Output Displacement 59
•  Bumping: Normal and Displacement 60
• Normal Map Node 61
•  Final thoughts 62

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• Scene 2: car 63
• Preliminary Operations and Settings 65
•  Film – Transparent 65
•  Samples and Other Settings 66
• Lighting: HDR Images; Equirectangular Environment 67
•  LDR and HDR Images 67
• In Blender and Cycles: World Background and
69
Environment Texture
•  Equirectangular and MirrorBall 70
•  Using an image as an HDR Environment Texture 70
• Ambient Occlusion 71
• The Body: Fresnel Mix 74
•  The Fresnel Effect 74
• Using Holdout and Emission to Interpret Fresnel (and
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Other Effects)
•  Alternatives: Layer Weight Node 77
• Scene 3: Interior 78
•  Preliminary Operations and Settings; Base Materials 80
•  Lighting: Planes with Emission and Ambient Occlusion 82
•  Ambient Occlusion 82
•  The Planes with Emission Shaders 83
•  Anisotropic Shader 84
• Scene 4: Exterior 87
•  Preliminary Operations and Settings 88
•  Lighting: World Sky Background 89

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 •  The Grass : Materials for Hair Strand 91
•  CPU Experimental 91
•  The Material to Use, Part I 91
•  The Material to Use, Part II : Hair Info Node 93
•  Cycles Hair Rendering 93
•  Volumetric Effects 95
• Volume Absorption 97
•  Volume Scatter 97
•  Limitations 97
• Scene 5: Sub Surface Scattering 98
• The SSS Node; Comparison with Diffuse 100
• Example: Marble Chess Board 102
• Global Settings 103
•  The Spot Lamp 104
•  Volumetric Material (Cone of Light) 105
•  Pieces and Chessboard Materials: SSS and Color Mix 106
•  Depth of Field for the Camera Object 107
• Ray Length and Ray Depth 109
• Appendix A: Toon Shader 110
• Appendix B: OSL (Overview) 117
• Appendix C: Motion Blur; Object Info 120
• Appendix D: Compositing the Render Passes in Cycles (Outline) 124
• Appendix E: UV Unwrap and UV Mapping (Bases) 130

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 Mixing Glass and Glossy Shader to get the specular reflections of the
glass object.

To use Transparent only for shadows produced by the object, however, we need a Node capab-
le of detecting the various light rays produced when a ray hits an object, thus producing secon-
dary rays which can be divided between diffuse, specular, refractive, transparency, shadow. We
need to precisely isolate the “Shadow Rays”, to bind these transparent Shaders with pure white
color, instead of the Glass-Glossy combination, which is to be used for all others.

Light Paths: the various types of rays generated by projections and im-
pacts.

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with an average size set by the Scale parameter) I added a node of this type with Add - Texture -
Noise, then connected the output to the Color input of the Glossy Node.

View the outcome by choosing the Plane Preview in the Material tab. The result is a slight

disturbance in the area of the specular reflections, so as to make the object appear less smooth
and provide it with "fake" facets, realized during the rendering by the use of the texture, without
having to resort to modeling the mesh.

This solution is very flexible with respect to modeling as it allows you to easily try out various

combinations of colors, size of the "dop" (in my case, I set Scale to 100) and interactions with
other Nodes and other effects.

The effect produced by the Noise Texture with Scale 100 on specular
highlights of the Glossy Shader.

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This manual is intended for those who have a basic knowledge of Blender, including the funda-
mental techniques of UV unwrapping. In the Appendix there is a chapter dedicated to that topic
for those who are first timers with these instruments.

The mesh of the apple unwrapped and with an Image Texture mapped on as seen in the
UV – Image Editor window.

To connect a color image texture as input to a Shader Node (usually a Diffuse one, but you can
also do this with other Nodes) you need to insert a Texture – Image Texture Node in the diagram
and connect it to the Color input of the Shader Node. In general, there is also a channel for Al-
pha (Opacity) information, with the transparency values of the image (if transparency is present
in the source file), with a gray output port to indicate that it is of numeric values. For example, to
be used as a mixing factor in a Mix Shader, or values to be used in a Converter - Math Node to
calculate results by using the areas of transparency, etc.

In the Nodes scheme of apple Material, on the Vector input socket (which has a blue color, indi-
cating that it is a vector data type) of the Image Texture there is a Texture Coordinates Node. He-
re it is superfluous, since "UV" is the default option of Cycles, but I'm choosing to mention it in
the tutorial as it is good to know that it is possible to map the image with other systems.

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typically displayed in shades of blue, while displacement maps are usually grayscale.

Normal inputs of the Shaders Nodes.

Bumping: Normal and Displacement

The distinction between Normal and Displacement is more technical and will not be covered.
For our purposes, it is sufficient to say that both effects deploy Bumping, or simulated hills and
irregularities on the surfaces at render time. The Normal channel is also available per-Shader,
meaning that you can use images and different combinations for the individual Shaders availab-

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Scene 2: car

The rendering of the scene we are going to analyze in this chapter.

This scene has been made in order to talk about two major topics: the use of Fresnel Node to
vary the shading depending on the angle of observation of the car and the use of HDR images
f o r l i g h t i n g .


The Materials with the "basic" Nodes, as already discussed in the previous chapter, will be li-
sted, without discussing them again, to focus instead on these two different ways of mixing and
lighting.

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Four "stops" or levels of exposure of the same scene can be used to create an HDR image
using special software.

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Using Holdout and Emission to assess the effects of a Fresnel Node as Mixing Factor.

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The handles of the cabinets are equipped with a Mix Shader mixture with a factor of 0.1 (ie 90%
first Node), mixing a gray Diffuse and Glossy, giving objects a plastic appearance.


The faucet and sink are provided with a Material having, as a single Shader, Glossy, so there are
specular reflections, but with a Roughness of 0.2 in order to not achieve a perfect mirror or chro-
me effect. Instead, we'll get blurred reflections and softened "specular highlights", ie areas of pu-
re specular reflection.

Glossy satin Material for faucet and sink.

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 A “straight” UV Unwrap of the pots to determine the direction of the Anisotropic effect
(which is given by the vertical axis in the UV - Image Editor window).

The UV Unwrapping of the object is used to specify the orientation of the Anisotropic effect (re-
placing then the Rotation parameter of the Anisotropic Node); in particular, the direction of the
ironing coincides with the vertical axis of the UV Map, so if you want a vertical effect on the pots
you will have to provide a "straight" UV Mapping, for example in Ortho from a side view. On the
other hand, to obtain an effect that cuts the pots horizontally you will have to rotate the Unwrap-
ping by 90 degrees, so as to match the horizontal direction of the pots with the vertical axis of
the UV Image Editor (where you have the Unwrapping).

In the scene, the lids and the bottom parts of the pans have an Anisotropic Submaterial with
Roughness set to 0.1, Anisotropy set to 0.9, and Radial Tangent. The lateral surfaces of the pots
and the front part of the oven have a similar Submaterial, except for the UV Map mode for the
Ta n g e n t N o d e c o n n e c t e d t o t h e Ta n g e n t i n p u t o f t h e A n i s o t ro p i c S h a d e r.


For these parts, simple UV projection have been made using "Project From View" from a lateral,
orthogonal view.

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Scene 4: Exterior

The rendering of the scene we are going to analyze in this chapter.

The objective of this chapter is to create a special atmosphere, framing a grassy landscape with
soft, Diffuse lighting, in an open environment where there is a bit of mist.

The scene is very simple, however in this chapter we will focus on three topics:
• particle rendering of grass, made by the Hair particle system;
• the creation of a background with Sky Background;
• the creation of a simple Volumetric effect, to be used as an introduction to the features regar-
ding Volume Render introduced in version 2.7 in Blender Cycles.

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Lighting: World Sky Background

Beyond the Sun Light source, which is used to provide directional lighting and shadows on the
landscape, as discussed in the previous section, most of the work in this area is made up by
World, here set to a mode different from those discussed so far (pure RGB or HDR Environ-
ment): Sky Background.

Sky Background is a real “sky” simulator, provided with Cycles.

The spherical selector allows you to specify, by clicking the left mouse button and dragging to
adjust the shadow of the ball (and thus, the orientation of the light rays that strike), the direction
and angle of the light rays going from noon (white ball, the highest point in the frame) at mid-
night (dark sphere) and also simulating twilight effects.

The spherical selector Sky Background

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The scene represents a chessboard, with particular emphasis on the part of the White King,
viewed from a point of view in the field of Blacks. The Volumetric light cone and the selective fo-
cus on the White King are essential components in the realization of the right atmosphere for
this rendering.

Rendering the White King with no effect and with a Diffuse Shader instead of SSS
(left); the same rendering with the Sub Surface Scattering Shader (center); and the same
rendering again with SSS, Defocus, and Volume (right).

Global Settings

In the Render tab of the Properties window, select the CPU Device in Experimental mode, with
1,200 Samples for final rendering and, as usual, Full Global Illumination with Clamp set to 0.99.

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 The final rendering of the scene.

It must be said also that the rendering time of a scene with Toon Shader remains relatively high,
so it is recommended to evaluate alternatives based on non-photorealistic rendering engines
when you need to get results of this type. Some solutions include the use of Blender Render En-
gine, Blender Toon Materials, and some post-production with Freestyle, which is now integrated
in the Blender Render Engine.

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The effect is only available in the final rendering, not in Rendered Preview mode in the 3D View.
The quality is proportional to the number of Samples used in the rendering stage. The image be-
low shows the effect with 1200 Sample used.

Rendering of the example scene used to show the effect of Motion Blur: the
marbles falling out of a bowl, "photographed" at the 28th frame of the animation.

Object Info e Color Ramp

The coloration of the marbles used for the demonstration of the Motion Blur has been perfor-
med with only one Diffuse Material, by means of adjusting the color of the Node using Object In-
fo and a Color Ramp.

The Object Info Node allows, as the name suggests, to obtain information about the object that
owns the Shader currently in use.

This Node allows the recovery of, in particular, the "Pass Index" value of the object (with
the value specified in the Object Data tab, inside the Properties window), called Object In-
dex, or to generate a random value, using the Random output.

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Appendix D: Compositing the
Render Passes in Cycles (Outline)
As mentioned in the introduction to this manual, the rendering in Cycles is made by considering
the light rays that cross the scene, bounce off or pass through Surfaces and Volumes.

The topic of Post-Production with Compositing Nodes in Blender and Cycles is very vast and de-
serves a separate discussion. Here we will examine the breakdown and manipulation of the
steps of rendering (Render Passes) of Cycles.

According to the provenance or the Material of the object with which the impact occurs, the
rays can be distinguished between Camera Ray, Light Ray, Diffuse Ray, Transmission Ray (tran-
sparency effects of Transparent, Glass) and so on.

Types of rays detectable on the basis of origin and impacts (ie, according to their light
path, the path made).

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 The Backdrop preview in the Nodes Editor window; in this case, a Filter Glare Node
was added to the Glossy channel in order to accentuate the specular reflection (Specular Hi-
ghlights Boosting).

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