Basic Lighting and Shading in Blender 4 for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hello. My name is Zcaalcot, and I am a tread artist. Are you ready to upgrade your shading and lighting skills in blender? In this class, you will learn how to tan the render of your scene before even opening blender. We'll create a color palette and use it to guide the colors we'll use to shade our model. Then we'll create materials in blender to match our vision. We'll also work on the lighting, so at the end of this class, you can have a professional render of your character or Sina. Come with me and let's explore the amazing world of three D art together. 2. Color Palette: So first of all, we're going to pick a color palette. We're going to use a Dub color. It's a free tool on the Internet. In here, we're going to use the ton ton color palettes. Sorry, mine is in French, but you can have the same thing in English or in another language. So I'm going to pick very saturated colors. I want something that's very joyful and that pops. So I think I'm going to pick a yellow, almost orange for the eyes. This kind of pinch. Then more saturated king. Almost Almost magenta. It's good to have variation variations of the same tone. Okay, T this color. It should be nice. Now I'm going to pick the last 12 blue. I think this could work fine. I'm going to make a print of this screen, and we're going to import this in blender to do shading. Oh. 3. Lighting: So before doing the shading, I like to light my scene with gray shader. So if the light is working on a gray shader, it would be easier to work when I'm going to put materials and textures and colors. So be sure to have your blender set on cycles, your device on GPU compute if you can. Up per your samples and lower your noise threshold. So we shift A, I'm going to create a sun. So the sun is a very simple light. We just have to give it a good rotation. So I'm going to put it here to be easier to see it. Right now it's above the character. The shadows are 90 degrees of the ground. I'm going to rotate it a bit with r and x, I can rotate the light on the x axis. T. I think I'm going to use the strength on the strength and give it a bit of an angle. So the shadows are not 100% sharp. So this is the main light. The sun will be our main light, the stronger light in the scene. We shift A, I'm going to look for a dar light. I'm going to create a top light coming from behind the character. The goal is to detach the character from the background. So I'm going to put it here. Right now, it's not very visible. I'm going to put the power. Now we're seeing. This is working nice. Fin telling a bit the rotation. G is for move the objects and r to rotate the objects. L et's add a rim light to give a strong impact on the right side of the character, our left side, screen left side. Let's organize a bit or scene collection, put the lights on the light collection. Rename them. It's always a good idea to be organized. You can find the things easily later. Another light shift A to create new objects. I'm going to increase the size 5 meters like the top light. This will be almost the same thing as the top light. But it to come from behind from the side of the character. I will the power also so you can see it a bit behind the character. Now you can see it. We have a s more problem that we will fix later. The light is too strong on the ground on the background, and we don't want that. It's just this small edge lit by this light. It's detaching the character from the background. So let's finish it here and we're going to do some light lining on the next lesson. 4. Light Linking: Just a quick detour to show you the light linking tool. It's really useful. Here, my ring light are having a very strong impact on the ground on the BG. So I'm going to exclude this light from the BG. The BG will not be affected by this light. So I can, I create a new light linking in the light, and I put my object in here. So right now it's doing the opposite. It's light early this object. If I click here, now this light is not affecting the BG anymore. 5. Basic Shading: Okay Let's start the main part of this curse. Let's bring our color palette. Shift A to create a new object. I create a card, g z to move the card on the z axis, r x to rotate on the x axis. I'll apply a material. You can name it as you want. I can name it cool pilet. And I'm going to look for our emage textures. I'll bring my texture. So it's a bit stretched. Let's just scale it S x to scale it on the x axis. Let's roughly move it behind the character. And rotate. It's really experimental process, so you can use it as a basis and build from here using your own own creativity. Be shading and lighting should be a creative process. We have our colors here so we can use this card display to pick the colors quickly. But we can change the colors. We are not bound to use exactly these colors on our final blod Let's start with the eyes. So I select the eyes. I will create a new material, so I delete the gray shader. I create a new material. I will name the materials as we go, but just to have them named. No very special. So the eyes I want them to be yellow. This part, I'm going to make them black with a hint of blue of a dark blue. So we're going to we can work with the specular with the roughness parameter. So can be more or less plastic, more or less reflective. The edge of the eyes, I'm going to make them white. The body, it's the main part, this one will be blue. I I can test this dark blue, but I prefer the light one. It will be very complementary if the pink and magenta colors. I I use a metallic shader, but not the case on the t. We're not going to do that. We're going to have something very small and nothing too reflective. I think the bots were too nice. I change and beat the hue on the yes to have more of an orange. A beat the black, at some value, so we can have a hint of blue. You can use these lighters or the color pallets and work out as you want your shoe barrel. I use the same material of the y on the pals and the nose. We can recycle this material. Working n for the eyes and going to to create a white material, not completely white. Because with the lighting too white will be will attract too much attention. So it's not the main area we're going to to attract the eye. Let's just work on this part. Now I'm going to create a bit because I don't know which order I'm going to use these three colors close to the pink and violet. So I I like very much this light pink. I think this could work in this order. The light pink for the hair. The magenta. I really like this magenta too. For the wings, let's test a bit. If I select two objects and in the keyboard, I do control L. I can link the material. So the first selected object, we pick the material from the second selected object. So you select the first one and then you select the second one and you and you press control. The keyboard. Well, K. Let's speak this dark qui. Hear. And Maybe the light pink for the first part of the wings. Yeah. This is working nice. I just invert the order. The dark w will be close to to the body and the light pink I will be the part of the wing. Okay. This is working nice. I can just just fine tune a bit of the colors to have them more close one to another. You can do the same thing on your side with different colors. I will put this model on the resources page. You can use it and play as you want. Do wherever you want with it. It's really basic shading, but it's more an exercise to see and test colors and see what is working or not. You can play a lot with adopt color too. You have several kinds of color palette in adopt color, so play with them and you will learn a lot. So I'm going to for the base, this object where it is what they always on. I'm going to give it a light pink also to stay on the the same terms of color. And for the background, white is work, but I think I will stay with pink. A bit more saturated. Pink with blue are two colors that really work well together. 6. Conclusion: Thank you for finishing this blender class. You now have the skills to enhance the render of your characters with beautiful materials and lighting. If you can leave a review and share your project, it will mean the world to me. And don't forget. Keep learning and having fun with blender. Bye bye.