CG Masters - Character Creation Volume 3.5: Cycles Convert

webm format | Video: AVC 1920 x 1018 | Audio: AAC 48KHz 2ch | Duration: 2hr 29min | 3.98 GB

Genre: eLearning | Language: English

In this condensed training DVD, Greg Zaal (taking the reins from Lee Salvemini’s finished Ninja character in Volume 3) shows you everything you need to know to create your own realistic and physically accurate Cycles materials.

Not only will you learn how to use the Cycles render engine, you’ll also learn the core principles of physically based shading. Using the ninja character as an example, we’ll go through all the various kinds of surfaces and study how and why they look the way they do, and then replicate that using node-based materials.

Cycles can often seem slower than traditional renderers, due to the fact that it’s a brute-force path tracer (meaning that instead of trying to fake or approximate light, it calculates it exactly as it behaves in reality), giving us the best possible image quality by default. For this reason, we’ll also cover several ways to optimize our scene and speed up the render without losing image quality.

This DVD is aimed at Blender users who have previous experience with the old Blender Render engine and would like to begin their adventures with the modern path tracer, Cycles. But if you’re new to materials and textures in general, don’t worry, all the basics are explained thoroughly.

Instructor: Greg Zaal

Video Info: 2hr 29min, 1920 x 1018 resolution, webm format.

Software Used: Blender 2.7x (Cycles)

Skill Level: Intermediate

DVD Features

Blend files included for every stage of the process, including most demonstrations

High resolution videos recorded at 100 DPI

Clean and simple web interface for watching the videos

A comprehensive help and info page including links to further reading.

Translates methods used for Blender Render to Cycles

Setting up reliable HDR lighting

Discover the possibilities of node-based materials

Conductive (metallic) vs. non-conductive materials

Optimizing thin glass and the cornea

Setting up reusable node groups

Destructive and non-destuctive render optimization

Using the Node Wrangler add-on

The difference between the glossy distribution functions and where you should use them

DVD Chapters

0. Introduction

1. Building a Basic Material

2. Texturing Overview

3.1. Lighting Setup

3.2. Fresnel

3.3. Subsurface Scattering

3.4. Metals

3.5. Clothing

4.1. Sai

4.2. Goggles

4.3. Eyes

4.4. Hair

5. Node Groups

6. Render Optimization

http://www.cgmasters.net/training-dvds/character-creation-volume-3-5-cycles-convert/

How to play .webm files:

http://www.webmproject.org/users/