This file gives an introduction to Blender 3.1. Do not hesitate to contribute by improve the base blend file or by providing additional advice !
Downloads
Blender is an open source software for 3D rendering. You can download it here. This tutorial was made using Blender 3.1
In the scene_static.blend file, you can find a simple setup with two lights, different cameras and backgrounds which you can leverage for your renders. You may have to adjust the setting to best emphasize your results but here are the basic tips to use it.
Rendering on GPU
If rendering is too slow, it may be done on CPU. To change it : Edit->Preferences->System->Cycles Render Devices and select CUDA. By default, the Cycles render engine is selected, if you wish to use EEVEE for faster rendering, do not forget to bake indirect lighting in the renderer properties : Renderer Properties -> Indirect Lighting -> Bake Indirect Lighting
Backgrounds
There are three backgrounds :
- A flat background with checkerboard texture
- A uniform white background, with a back wall to benefit from some light bounces
- A uniform white cube, to benefit from some light bounces and provide a back wall for rotating cameras
To chose a background, simply toogle its visibility in the viewport / final render by clicking on the eye / camera icon in the view layer tool (usually on the right, with all the objects and collections).
Cameras
Three cameras are provided : front camera, back camera and moving camera. The cameras are all set to look at the "CameraTarget" object in the camera collection.
Selecting the Active camera
To set the active camera, select it and press "Ctrl + numpad 0". To go in camera view, press "numpad 0".
Moving cameras
For the moving camera you can chose two different paths : BezierCircle and CirclePath. Circle is a simple rotation around the center while BezierCircle adds some up and downs.
To change the path, parent the moving camera to the desired path. "Select Moving Camera & Desired path" -> Ctrl+P -> Follow Path (Tip : when you parent make sure that the camera is on the path or the offset will cause issues, in this test example it mean being at Frame 0 in the timeline)
Lighting
There are two front lights, where only one of them cast shadows, depending on your object it is advised to play with lighting to make attenuate the shadows on your object.
There is a global illumination that you can tune up/downb in the world settings.
Rendering pointclouds
Rendering pointclouds is tricky in blender. A possible trick is to write your pointcloud as an obj file without faces. Then :
- import the pointcloud obj (File->Import->Wavefront(obj))
- create a UV sphere (Shift+A->Mesh->UV Sphere)
- parent the UV sphere to the mesh : To do so, select both the sphere and the pointcloud (the sphere object should be highlighted in orange and the pointcloud in yellow), then click Ctrl+P -> Object(Without Inverse).
- Then select the mesh and set Object Properties->Instancing to Vertices. (It should be None by default)
A sphere should appear on each vertex of your faceless mesh. You can change the sphere scale and color by modifying the sphere object that was created previously.
Rendering sequences
To visualize mesh sequences, you can use the STOP-MOTION-OBJ addon which is available here : https://github.com/neverhood311/Stop-motion-OBJ Installing blender addons is relatively easy, here is the link to a quick tutorial : https://brandonsdrawings.com/how-to-install-and-activate-add-ons-in-blender/
Compositing
Blender allows to do some post rendering processing to make a nicer image. By going to the Compositing tab, it should display the compositing Node graph. By default, I added Ambient occlusion and enhanced the contrast to better visualize the geometry. By clicking Shift+A when in the node tree, multiple nodes are available. For photography enthusiasts, the nodes under Shift+A -> Color should ring a bell.