147
votes
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Render with a wider dynamic range in cycles to produce photorealistic looking images
Update as of June 23, 2019
Plenty has changed since the original posting. I figured it was worth updating this post to highlight two excellent videos provided by two of the celebrities in the ...
- 12.1k
90
votes
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How do I put an image texture on a material in Cycles?
Applying an Image Texture in Cycles
Select the object you want to put the image on
Give it a new material with an Image Texture Shader:
Object Properties window -> Materials tab -> click the New ...
- 16k
76
votes
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How to assign a new material to an object in the scene from Python?
Here you go, code with some safety checks:
...
- 49.3k
76
votes
How do I create repeating patterns with cycles' procedural textures
You can use the math Modulo node on mapping vectors to create tilling for procedural textures:
To tile them seamlessly you need to flip tiles in X and Y axis:
For the Tilling X and Y nodes use ...
- 49.3k
72
votes
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Control Cycles/Eevee material nodes and material properties using python?
Here is how to change material properties, you can see all of them here or see the python path when you hover over in the UI on some material attribute:
...
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68
votes
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How to create a mirror shader?
1. Mirror shader as material with mirror reflection (roughness = 0):
To setup a physically correct material we need to base it on real measured values and setup the nodes so it follows the equations ...
- 49.3k
67
votes
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How do I bake a texture using Cycles bake
With out more detail about the situation, it's hard to say how you might go about this if there are any special considerations.
Here are the basics:
UV unwrap your object.
Create a new image in the ...
- 152k
67
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Creating Inky-looking characters in Blender
If I understand correctly, your question is essentially asking how to emit smoke from a rigged and animated character.
This should work just fine, as long as the smoke modifier is after the armature ...
- 152k
60
votes
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How to make a cycles light emisson object invisible to the camera?
You can turn off Ray Visibility of the 'emission object'. In Blender 3.0+ go to Object Properties > Visibility, open up the Ray Visibility panel and disable the Camera property:
As of Blender 2.8x,...
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56
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Can anyone give me some tips on Lighting in Cycles?
Lamp Strength
One thing that might be confusing in the beginning when learning lighting is how the Strength value effects different light sources. For example, when you add a new spot lamp, the ...
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56
votes
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How to make a "reflective tape" material in cycles?
Such a material works by reflecting the incoming light back towards the direction it originated - since your car headlights are very close to your own line of sight, you see a strong reflection of ...
- 42.3k
55
votes
How do I emit light from inside a object?
Cycles is a physically based render, and often the best approach is physical recreation.
Components:
Light source
Light cover
Light Source:
This would simply be an emission shader since it is ...
- 18.1k
51
votes
what can you call from the attribute node?
Currently you can get:
density When used on a domain object, this is gives a scalar defining the density of any smoke inside the domain. All three outputs are the ...
- 152k
48
votes
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How to make a holographic reticle shader in cycles
Pure Shader Solution!
Hey look, high-school maths does have a purpose......
From what I could understand with a little research, holographic/reticle sights display a holograph that appears (when ...
- 18.1k
47
votes
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How to Construct a Diamond or Other Gemstone Material in Cycles
You need dispersion
Dispersion is the phenomenon of multicolored highlights you see in most transparent substances, resulting from different colors (light frequencies) refracting at different angles (...
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44
votes
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How to change hair color along length of strand?
You can accomplish this in multiple ways, the easiest way is to use a Hair Info node, and use the Intercept value to drive a Converter > Color Ramp node. Use this to drive the Factor on your mix or ...
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44
votes
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Stars background in cycles
First you need to jump over the the Node Editor view, then select Shader Nodes and World. Also make sure Use Nodes is checked.
Then add a Noise Texture node and a Color Ramp node. Plug the Fac of ...
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44
votes
How do I create a reflective white material?
The floor is actually more reflective near the horizon. This effect is called Fresnel and it adds a lot of realism into the scene.
Your shader should look like this:
Instead of controlling the ...
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44
votes
What does the simplify AO bounces value do?
TL;DR:
To put it simply, after n light bounces, Cycles switches the material shader to a simplified diffuse material (i.e. AO), instead of evaluating the full material node tree.
This Simplify to AO ...
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43
votes
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How to pixelate a texture in Cycles?
This is done with rounding the mapping vectors.
The resolution for X and Y can be set with value nodes.
It will work for any texture (for 3D texture just copy the rounding nodes into the Z channel) ...
- 49.3k
42
votes
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How to create clear plastic? (Cycles)
This is very similar to the thin glass problem.
It can be fixed by giving it a thickness, (i.e. Solidify Modifier, as already sugested), which in some cases raises some topology problems, besides the ...
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41
votes
Aliased edge around light source in cycles
This is not a rendering artifact, everything is behaving exactly as designed.
First an explanation of why these edges appear aliased, but if all you want is to solve this issue and don't care about ...
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40
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Make a gold reflective object
To do this in cycles, you'll want a glossy shader.
You can do this from the properties menu like this:
But this actually will create the corresponding material nodes in the material node editor:
At ...
- 152k
40
votes
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What is Dot Product?
Let's start with some definitions:
Vector: A list of values that are all contained under the same "roof" so to speak. For instance, the location of an object in 3D space is a vector of 3 values (the $...
- 15.2k
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