Blender 2.4 / Indigo 0.5 Tutorial / Manual online !!!

[radiance]

A complete tutorial / manual for blender users who want to learn how to use the Indigo renderer.

Blender 2.4 / Indigo 0.5 Tutorial / Manual
http://www.indigorenderer.com/blender_tut

It's version 0.1, altough it's mainly complete.
I'll refine it more in the days to come...

We also have a newly designed main page:
http://www.indigorenderer.com

And a preliminary (incomplete) Indigo FAQ in the documentation section.

Enjoy!,
radiance

Index (list of topics covered):

INDEX

1. Introduction

A. What is Indigo ?

B. What are the differences between Indigo and the Blender Internal render engine and Yafray ?

2. A basic overview of Indigo

A. System Requirements
B. Indigo Directory Structure Overview

2. Installing indigo and the Blender export script

A. Downloading and installing indigo
B. Downloading and installing the Blender / Indigo export script.

3. Indigo Materials overview

A. The <Diffuse> Material
B. The <Phong> Material
C. The <Specular> Material (dielectric)
D. A practical example (optional)

4. Getting started: A basic scene and render

A. Creating a basic scene
B. Assigning materials
C. Export and render
D. Help and Support

5. Advanced: Lightning in Indigo

A. <skylight> / Physical Sky
B. <background> / Uniform background environment light
C. <env_map> / HDRI environment map.

D. <meshlight> / A light emitting mesh object

6. Advanced: Texture / Bump mapping
7. Advanced: Complex IOR / nkdata phong materials
8. Advanced: The export script in detail (contains DOF options)
9. Network rendering / dual core CPU's and SMP

[radiance]

can someone point me on how to get this link into the tutorial section on www.blender3d.org ???

Thanks,
Radiance

[Heavily Tessellated]

" Contrary to popular belief, Indigo's rendering thread(s) run just as fast under wine/linux than nativeley on Windows ! ;-)";

Uh, couldn't you find a better way to say that?

But a few grammar explosions aside, kudos! That will go a long way for getting the timid and those that need hand-holding to start tinkering with Indigo. Now, as long as the render times don't send them running...

(psst! you say "lightning" a lot when you mean "lighting")

Also, cover blackbody illumination a bit more, as they'll love this when they see it.

---

[[edit]] Chapter 9 is vauge in places, and wrong for at least one - If you run a master controller on a box, it will not contribute to the render. You'll need to run another instance on that same machine, if you want it to contribute to the rendering process, even single-threaded non-hyper normal old CPUs. Also, don't say "Windows share" as I don't want to scare off any would-be linux users; just say something like "common network file system" (it works fine in wine, you can expose your wine "drive" via any method, sshfs, or FUSE even. - whoohoo! Random strangers helping to render.) Lastly, link some of those examples to .blends and/or the .xmls. Give them something to chew on and edit while playing around trying to figure out what's what.

Go Team Radiance!

[Sutabi]

Very good tutorial! And I really enjoyed the new site look. Thank you

[Big Fan]

Fantastic! Thanks radiance
I am impressed you managed to produce this in 4 hours.
Just what I need...
..and now off to try some renders...

[LarryPhillips]

Can't get much easier than this. Thanks for the nudge!

[radiance]

heavily tesselated,

i'll fix the manual up more tomorrow,
my brain hurts now ;-)

greetz,
radiance

[BgDM]

I just had a quick glance through this, (cause I just woke up ), and it looks great. Thanks for pulling this together.

BgDM

[dodgydavec]

Beautiful work. This tutorial makes everything crystal clear (what's the IOR for crystal ). Does the indigo exporter cope with objects that have multiple materials assigned to them?

[Myke]

Thank you VERY much for this - I wanted to take a look at Indigo for quite a while now and already did some tests but with this manual it will be much easier to explore the full power of it

[afecelis]

Thanks Radiance! This surely clarifies things.

[The M.h.p.e.]

This might just be one of the things that will "lurke" me into trying out Indigo.
Nice tut!

...but am I the only one experiencing very slow loading times on the images?
//Mathias

[IanC]

Excellent stuff, Radiance!

...but am I the only one experiencing very slow loading times on the images?

I get that too.

[vliegtuig]

This tut is o_O
5 stars!
P

[JA-forreal]

I just have to say............Indigo Rockkkkkkkks!

Thanks for the tut' radiance!

[radiance]

dodgydavec -> yes it does (export objects with multiple mats)
mhpe -> they're's a lot of images on that page ;-)

greetz,
radiance

[mzungu]

Thanks for putting this out there, radiance. I've only just glanced it over and it looks great (the new front page, too! Awesome! ) but I was embarassed to note your use of one of my old crappy test images (the "blue" (and hovering) Honda). Mind if I shoot you a version that's a bit less "gravity-challenged" when I get a chance?

Kudos on the work you've contributed!

[radiance]

mzungu -> it's just for showing the blue environment light. if you really want to send something else, do so ;-)

greetz,
radiance

[radiance]

Update: v0.11 -> bugfixes, typo's, and general style

[NodeRanger]

awesome. just awesome. this should be a sticky.