hi,
i’m just beginning to learn blender from noob to pro ebook. in some of the screen shots rendering looks oily, where as in the gallery of this forum rendering very pretty. why is that? do they use different render.
What do you mean by oily? Is it reflecting a lot of light? Go to the materials tab and increase the hardness setting and decrease the diffuse and specular. It probably wont make it beautifful, but it will stop it from reflecting too much light.
Well, some people use cycles, luxrender, yafaray, octane, etc. But you can get amazing renders (and I think most of the gallery images are as well) with internal. I’m assuming when you talk about the “oily”-ness, you’re talking about the “shinyness”, a.k.a. specularity. To remove it, just slide it all the way down, or mess with the hardness. Specularity, in case you don’t know, is a way to fake reflectivity. Also, since internal is a direct source lighting renderer, you don’t get light bouncing around, e.g. like cycles, yafaray, lux, etc. To fake this, you can add more lights or ‘fill lights’ as they are called to fill in some of the shadows, or you can use ambient occlusion, which fakes the way light bounces around and between objects, or you can use environment lighting to use the environment as a lighting source (ambient occlusion and e. lighting are in world tab). Or you can use a combination of them all, which I usually end up doing. Lastly, the key to good renders is proper materials and textures. If it’s bumpy, add a normal or bump map. If certain parts are specular, add a spec map. Regardless, it takes quite a while to master rendering in internal. There really isn’t even a tutorial that can make you better at it. The key is to practice, play around a lot with rendering, and patience. Then your renders will look nice.
thank you both for you replies. it is amazing how you both understood what i meant by oily. i’ve also learnt the proper word for it from you replies, i knew the word from computer games graphics but i didn’t know i could use it. you can see in below pic what i had in my mind when i said oily. the work in the pic is not mine. i found it on this “http://glydeck.blogspot.in/2011_08_01_archive.html”. i’m still learning to build the ginger bread man.
As GraphiX mentioned, bump mapping is a good way of removing oily look by adding some roughness. When you mentioned gingerbread man I take it that you probably haven’t got as far as mapping yet? A simple way of giving a bumpy look is to add a material to your model, then go to the texture tab and add a clouds texture (Or whatever you prefer) and in the “influence” drop down, uncheck “Color”, and check “Normal” (Normal and bump mean the same thing). That will help add a look of depth so its not smooth like oil. If the bumps are too small or large drag the normal slider, if the scale of the bumps are too small or large go to the “Mapping” drop down and drag the XYZ sliders under “Size”.
Anyway, there is a lot to learn about mapping so don’t worry if it doesn’t turn out right now. Its one of those things that you just get a feel for over time so you just know what settings need to be changed by looking at the material.