Training Log 13: Depth of Field/Post-Processing

Date: 6/10/19, 6/12/19

Time logged: 1.5 hours

Summary:

Here, a familiar concept from photography class popped up. Depth of Field. Adjusting depth of field and other post-processing details made sure that my focus in the final image was interesting and clearly in focus. Here’s the final image.

 

Training Log 12: Fireflies using Particles

Date: 6/9/19

Hours Logged: 0.75 hours

Summary:

Started off by creating a single firefly, implementing the right materials to make it look firefly-like, making duplicates and placing those in the right place. Then joined the fireflies together and moved them to the flower.

Training Log 11: Creating the Forest

Date: 6/8/19

Time: 1 hours

Summary:

All about putting together everything learned to form the forest, such as making particle effects of trees, having the right lighting, have the right textures, etc.

 

Training Log 9: Particle Effects

Date:

5/27/19

Time:

1 hour

Summary:

Used particle effects to spam leaves on a surface. Also learned about how to use HDRs to provide better lighting and scenery for the render.

It was really nice to work on the more ambient surroundings of the tree to better complete the scene.

As one can guess from the time stamp on this blog post, I’ve recently been procrastinating on this project. Reflecting back on this, I think it’s because I haven’t been making a plan, setting goals, or prioritizing this recently in general. I’ll make sure to make an effort for the rest of the day to make a better plan to go forward and set a reminder for myself of why I chose to go through with this in the first place. To really put my best foot forward right now in this regard, I’ll assert that I’ll post details about that tomorrow in the Uncategorized section.

For now, enjoy this picture below.

Above: That nice background in the render. That’s the HDR. The particle effects allow me to populate this image with leaves from just one reference leaf.

Training Log 8: Lighting Intro

Date:

5/26/19

Time:

1 hour

Summary:

Went over the basics of lighting. Got introduced to the three-point lighting scheme and applied it to one of Blender’s built-in models.

It was really interesting to take a quick aside to switch from working on the tree to working on a separate application. It was a nice break to give my long-term attention span a bit of a break.

Above: Suzanne head to practice lighting on.

Training Log 7: Cycles Materials and Texture Mapping

Date:

5/23/19

Time:

1 hour

Summary:

Learned about Cycles materials and the node editor. Cycles materials are quite different from ordinary Blender engine materials with a lot more options to adjust the scene to make it more photo-realistic. Learned about Fresnel and PBR (Physically Based Rendering), and used diffuse and gloss shaders, as well as normal maps. Also learned about how to import other models from another Blender project into my own.

This was a really fun section. It’s really enjoyable to change little details about the texturing and shading and have it reflect on the final image.

Above: A picture of the node editor for the tree material.

Training Log 6: UVs and Textures

Date:

5/20/19

Time Elapsed:

2 hours

Summary:

Learned how to make seams on an object to unwrap it for texturing. Unwrapping is essentially fitting a 3-D object to a 2-D image, which is why I had to do it for texturing.

This is a section I particularly liked, because it turned the object from a lifeless, gray tree trunk, to a tree trunk which actually looks like it’s made of wood. While I don’t have a before and after picture describing this, I hope you can imagine how much of a change that is from the description I gave.

Above: An example picture of a UV unwrap mapped on an image of a leaf.