Hey all!

Didn't get any requests for this one, but I believe HE wants it shared. So, here it is. I had to modify it a bit, because the single mountain landscape, just didn't cut it. I added a few more and some mist as well as a few other things, but I really wanted to add as much photographic qualities as I possibly could to just give it that bit of a boost, including a vignette (it is that bright spot in the middle of most photos). Because this is a very bright scene, the appearance thereof w...
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Hey all!

Very excited about sharing this particular image. While working on the first part of the book, HE showed me how to add snow, using only the Blend texture. And that is also a tutorial in the first section.

Anyway, on Cycles it is now called the Gradient texture and I wondered if it would still respond similarly or possibly even better. While I wouldn't necessarily call it better, I definitely like the almost stylistic cartoony background approach to how this looks.

Hope you like it too:


T...
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Hey all!

My brother is a personal trainer and a very good one at that. To inspire his clients to push as hard as they can, he wants to give them a certificate system. One that goes as the title of the post; the client that achieves the best results in that month, is client of the month and receives this certificate with their name on it:


I think it is a fantastic idea and I really enjoyed working on it. Originally, I wondered how we would put this thing together, but my brother is just the idea...
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Was wondering what to post today and I believe this will be of great help to you if you are new to Blender or even been working with it a long time and need some tips.

A while ago, just after starting with Blender, I would always render out directly to video. I thought that was the best way of doing it, because I mean, after all, I wanted the final piece to be a video. Logic doesn't always apply when you are new to a program, especially not Blender.

Shortly after I was lead to Andrew Price's we...
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Who knows what caustics are?
Well, as simply put as I can:
It's the light pattern you see after light has passed through a transparent medium, such as glass. Great examples are of course the following:
 - Light stripes at the bottom of the pool
 - Rainbow lights when light shines through cut crystal
 - That focus point you can get with a magnifying glass
 - And naturally this:

Those white light spots you see that come...
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Heya!

Finished the toast today. What a work-out with Cycles!
Here is the final toast:

I have to say, I really enjoyed this project and I have learned quite a bit on Cycles. Particularly how to layer procedural textures. It was a blast. For the toasted color I think it is too black, but I tried getting it lighter (didn't wanna budge). Oh well. Would still look good as a prop for a scene's background, so in that sense I believe it ...
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Hey all!

Yesterday I wanted to make a proper render with full global illumination and so on, and after about 2.5 hours, it reached 900+ passes and I stopped it there. When I wanted to print screen, I pressed F12 instead; bam!! There goes 2.5 hours, hahaha.

Oh well. This morning I rendered again and stopped it at 896 passes. Here it is:


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Hey all!!

Here is an update on the toast!
Knocking it back a level from yesterday's color problems, I found it wisdom to make normal brown bread first and then add the toasting to it afterwards (that's what it looks like in real life; the one over the other).

So as a bonus in this update, I included what the node system for this one looks like: a ship (isn't HE the coolest with such surprises!!!!!!!)

Anyway, here's the update:

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Hey people!!

I have been working hard today on this piece of toast and although I am happy with the texture of the flat surface, it can still use some adjusting (as you can see). I also still need to work on the coloring of the bread and the toast itself. I've noticed that brown bread is somewhat grey-ish and the toasted parts are almost a chocolate brown leaning into orange. Quite a stark contrast that I don't want people looking at going: "did he even use reference?!". The answer would be ye...
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Hey people!!

Today I wanted to take my first shot at wood with Cycles and did some water, sky and so on, and this was the result:


The render was done at 10 samples. Not bad considering the low amount. Here is a free tip. While working with the render view, it is much much faster to set it to a single sample, Direct light and while layering textures to use an emission shader. It means that you don't have to wait nearly as long for a preview and you pretty much get to see a live result on your ob...
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Hey all!!

I've been a bit quiet lately, because I've been finishing up the Blender Render section of the book and today I started with the Cycles Render section!!! Yey!!

The main focus for today I wanted to be caustics at one point, but then I realized it's more important to find out how in the world you can layer the textures like in Blender Render and HE helped me by reminding me of a tutorial Andrew did. His introduction to Cycles tutorial to be precise. Anyway, the details on the how is for...
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