Blender Beginner Crash Course: Create a Jack-o-Lantern Scene | Ruan Lotter | Skillshare
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Blender Beginner Crash Course: Create a Jack-o-Lantern Scene

teacher avatar Ruan Lotter, VFX & 3D Artist

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction (What you will learn)

      1:08

    • 2.

      Lesson 1: How to model a Jack-o'-lantern (Pumpkin)

      7:40

    • 3.

      Lesson 2: Carving the eyes and mouth

      11:02

    • 4.

      Lesson 3: Use basic rigging to create the stem

      10:26

    • 5.

      Lesson 4: Create materials for the pumpkin and stem using nodes

      7:17

    • 6.

      Lesson 5: Lighting the scene

      8:18

    • 7.

      Lesson 6: Create a camera and render using the Cycles Renderer

      8:07

    • 8.

      Conclusion: Thanks for watching

      0:39

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About This Class

Welcome to this Blender Beginner Crash Course: Create a Jack-o-Lantern Scene

This Blender course is beginner friendly and you will learn how to create everything in this scene in about one hour!

What you will learn:

  • Lesson 1: How to model a Jack-o'-lantern (Pumpkin)
  • Lesson 2: Carving the eyes and mouth
  • Lesson 3: Use basic rigging to create the stem
  • Lesson 4: Create materials for the pumpkin and stem using nodes
  • Lesson 5: Lighting the scene
  • Lesson 6: Create a camera and render using the Cycles Renderer

I've designed this course with beginners in mind. Follow along and learn how to create your own 3D characters and scenes. Learn how to model organic objects, use bones to rig certain object, apply materials using the Blender material nodes, adding lighting to bring your scene to life and finally I will teach you how to render your final scene using the Cycles render engine.

All of this in under one hour!

Are you ready to become a 3D artist?

See you in the first lesson!

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Ruan Lotter

VFX & 3D Artist

Teacher

Ruan Lotter is a VFX & 3D Artist, Online Teacher, Music Producer and Author from Cape Town, South Africa. He has worked on many short films and TV commercials for brands such as Hasbro, Lipton, RB, Ryobi and HP doing mostly camera tracking, general 3D work and compositing.

It all started in 1994 when he discovered 3dsmax for DOS! Back then it was called "3D Studio" and that changed everything... A few years later, 3dsmax for Windows was released and the world of online tutorials was born. Ruan instantly started binge watching online tutorials on a website called "3D Buzz" and dove deep into the world of 3D. Over the years he used many different VFX related software such as Adobe After Effects, Maya, Cinema4d, Modo, PFTrack, Boujou and Nuke to name a few and he fell in love with t... See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction (What you will learn): Hey, and welcome to this blended course where you will learn how to create a macro lens and seen, my name is Irwin and I'll be your instructor. I currently work as a VFX and 3D artist, working mostly on international commercials for brands such as Hasbro, leptin, Ray OB, OB and HP doing 3D tracking, general 3D work as well as compositing. This course is perfect for beginners as well as anyone interested in creating organic objects and characters in blender. You will learn how to model the pumpkin than using basic modelling tools. We will carve out the eyes and mouth. You will also learn how to use bones or armature to create the stem of the pumpkin. Then you will learn how to create your own materials using material nodes. And we will also create the lighting setup. And finally, we will render the scene using the Cycles Render Engine. All of this in under 1 h. So grab a coffee, sit back, or follow along. And I hope you enjoyed this course. Please reach out if you have any questions and I can't wait to see your final renders. Please remember to share them with me, but more on that later. I will see you in the first lesson. 2. Lesson 1: How to model a Jack-o'-lantern (Pumpkin): Hey, and welcome to the first lesson. In this lesson we're going to look at the basic shape of the pumpkin. So let's delete everything in the scene by pressing a x and then just click Delete. And then before we start there is one add-on that I just want to show you guys that I'm going to use in this course. If you go to your blender Preferences and go to the add-ons section here. Then the only thing we need to add is the auto mirror or mesh auto mirror add-on. So you can simply just search for that. That comes actually worth blender. And then you can just tick that to install it. And then go to this little thing here at the bottom and click on Save Preferences. Alright, so let's close the preferences and let's begin by creating a UV sphere. So press Shift a go to Mesh and then we're going to select UV sphere from this dropdown. And yet the bottom is a little pop-up menu. If you just click on this, it will show you all the information about this UV sphere. And we're going to change the segments to 12 and then also the rings to 12. And then you can just click anywhere in the scene to set those parameters. Next, what we're gonna do is we're going to go into edit mode. So select your severe press tab. And then we're going to switch to edge select by pressing on the keyboard, and then just click anyway to de-select everything on this model. What I wanna do is I want to select all these vertical rings around this sphere. So an easy way to do this is hold Alt and then just click on one of these edges and make sure it selects the line from the top to the bottom. And we want to select all the lines going around. So an easy way to do that is hold Shift and Alt and then just click on these edges. So just kinda move around it and just make sure that you select all these vertical lines, something like this. Now, with these edges selected, we're going to bevel them on the keyboard, press Control B, and then just pull them out slightly. Now I want you to keep an eye at the top of our sphere. Because if you can, if I'm going to just change the width here, you can see these edges just make sure that they don't go over like that because that's going to cause some problems. If you don't see this menu on the side, it might be minimized like this. You can just expand that so you can see all these parameters. So kinda get it something like that, not too close to that edge. And then also I want to change the segments number 1-2 so that we actually get this middle edge for each of our bevels. Alright, once you've done this, just click anywhere to accept that. Next we want to select all these middle edges again. So we're going to use the same shortcuts. So we're going to hold Alt and then click on one of these to select that middle edge. So you can see that edge is actually inside our bevel. Then I'm going to do the same for all the other edges. So hold Shift, Alt, click, and then just click all of these until you have all of these ones selected. Alright, now on your keyboard we're going to press S to scale these edges in. So just press S and kind of just move the mouse until you get something like that. You don't want to go too deep, but maybe something like that should be fine. Alright, next one we can do is let's press Tab to go back to object mode, and then let's add a subdivision surface modifier to our object. So go to the modifiers little button here on the side, click on Add Modifier, and then we're going to select a subdivision surface from the menu, increase the levels in the viewport to two. And you should get something like this. Now, let's go back into edit mode by pressing tab and then click on this y-axis year on the site to view it from the front. Next, we want to press one to see the vertices. And then I also want to enable X-Ray mode here at the top so we can see all of them right through. Now what I wanna do is I want to select all the vertices here at the top. All of these vertices kinda sitting at the top of our pumpkin. And then when you have them all selected, you can press S and then z to scale them on the z-axis and then press zero to flatten them all out and then just click to confirm. So as you can see there, if I just disable the X-ray mode, you can see all these vertices are now sitting on the same plane. They're all flat. So let's do the same with the bottom ones as well. So I'm going to press this y-axis to view this from the front. And then we're going to select all of these vertices here at the bottom, just make sure you get them all. Then S, z, and then just move them around and then press zero to flatten them out and then just click to confirm. So now we can press Tab again and we can disable x-ray mode. So now we have something like that. It's kind of starting to look like a pumpkin if you use your imagination. But let's fix that. First of all, I'm going to press S and Z to just scale our pumpkin. So it's a little bit more of a pumpkin shape. Next we're going to press tab again to go into edit mode, and then press three on the keyboard to go into face select mode. Now I want you to select all of these phases right at the top. So just drag a box to select all of these faces. And then the same at the bottom. So holding Shift and then just select these ones as well. So now we have those phases at the bottom selected and at the top. Alright, so next we're going to scale them down. But if we just do a S and Z, you're gonna get something like that. But we want to affect all of the other geometry around this as well. And an easy way to do that is to use proportional editing. You can use the shortcut 0 on your keyboard, or you can just click on this little circle here at the top. So now if I press S and Z, you can see how that's affecting the whole shape. Now on your keyboard you can use page up and page down to make the influence circle bigger or smaller. You can see how that's actually affecting. If it's too big, it kind of flattens out the whole thing. If it's too small, it only affects a certain part of the model. So I find it works pretty well if it's kinda this shape. And then you can just play with that distance and then just click once you are happy with your shape. I think that looks kinda okay. Now press tab again to go out of edit mode. Let's have a look. So we can also shade this smooth. So just right-click on your pumpkin and then select shaped smooth. Or you can use the new shade, auto smooth, which will actually keep any sharp edges if you have any. Let's rename our pumpkin in the outliner. So just double-click on sphere, you're on the side and it's just called a pumpkin. Like so. Alright, so if you have a shape that looks something like this, you can now go ahead and save this project. In the next lesson, we're going to look at how we can actually call the eyes and the mouth. So I will see you in the next lesson. 3. Lesson 2: Carving the eyes and mouth: Hey, and welcome to listen to. In this lesson we're going to look at are we can actually call the eyes and the mouth into our pumpkin. So first of all, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to apply the subdivision surface modifier because we don't really need this and we need the extra geometry if we're going to cut those eyes and mouth. So go to the modifiers, panel E on the side. Click this drop-down and then just click apply to apply that. Now if you go into edit mode, you'll see that we've got all this extra geometry that we can use to create our eyes and mouth. So what I'm gonna do is I'm going to enable that auto mirror add-on that we installed in lesson one. With a pumpkin selected. I'm going to press N on the keyboard to bring up this side menu. And then you can go all the way down to edit. Yours might be in a different position. And then right here at the top you'll see auto mirror. So just expand that. And we're going to auto mirror across the x-axis. So that's why we're looking from the y axis. So the left-hand side and the right-hand side will mirror up. So make sure that's on x and then just click this auto mirror button. Now I can press Enter again to hide that panel. Now if you go into edit mode, you can see anything we do on the one side will actually happen on the other side as well. You can also view it from this side if you prefer to work on the right-hand side. So maybe let's do that. So just zoom in until you have something that looks like this. Go ahead and save your project now. And this is where we're going to start creating the eyes. So a really easy way to do that is to use the knife tool. The shortcut for the knife tool is simply k. So make sure you're in edit mode and then you just press K to bring up this knife tool. Now we can go ahead and draw the eyes basically. So you can either click on vertices or you can click in-between vertices or just on a face and it'll actually automatically create those vertices for you. So I'm going to basically start on this corner and I'm going to draw a straight line, maybe something like that. And then I'm going to follow a little curve, maybe something like that. You can be creative and see what you can come up with. And then just close it again and then press Enter to confirm. Let's now zoom into this area. Make sure you're on your normal select again. Now we're going to select all these faces. So make sure that you face select mode by pressing three on the keyboard and then just start selecting all of these phases you can hold Shift to just kinda select all of them like this and make sure you select all of the smaller faces in the corners of these eyes. So that little triangle there, just make sure you get them all. Sometimes you might need to just zoom in and get those small ones as well. So let's just do that. Alright, so once you have all those faces selected, press X on the keyboard and then select faces from the drop-down. You can see there we have our cut-out for the eyes. And because we've got the mirror modifier, it's going to mirror it over to the other side. So now let's create the mouth. So I'm going to click on this minus y-axis again to view it from the front. And then we're going to start somewhere in the middle. So just press K again to bring up that knife tool. And yeah, you can be very creative and either make it quite big or small. It all depends on what you want. I'm just going to click here. And I'm going to try and just draw some interesting looking teeth or a mouth, maybe something like that. And then just come back and follow this shape. Maybe something like that. And just click there, press Enter. And now we've got those edges that we can go in and delete those faces. So I'm going to save my project and make sure you're on the normal select. And I'm gonna go in here and select all of these phases again. So again, make sure you get all the small ones, as you can see, is a small one there. So just go through this and make sure you get all those phases. Once you have all those faces selected, press X on the keyboard and select faces to delete those faces. Then you can see we have a very basic shape of our mouth and the eyes. And now I can press Tab to go out of arithmetic and I just have a look at your model to see how it looks like. Next, we can add a solidify modifier to our model to give it some thickness. So with your pumpkin selected, go to the Modifiers tab here on the side, click on Add Modifier, and this time we're going to add solidify. Now if we move a little bit closer, you can already see that it's got some thickness now. And I can also adjust this thickness to just see how thick you want the inside of the pumpkin to be. Maybe something like that. Works great. So yeah, just play around with that thickness value. You can also take this even thickness and that will just give you a very universal thickness throughout the model. And let's just scroll down here under normal. So you can also enable high-quality normals. Sometimes this gives you a little bit of a better result. So just make sure that you tick that as well. Alright, so once you are happy with the thickness of your model, we are going to create a lattice to kinda just deform the overall shape of our pumpkin. So let's just zoom out a bit and make sure you are in object mode. And now we're going to create our lattice. So press Shift a and then select lattice from the Add menu. Now you want to make sure this lattice is big enough or just a little bigger than your model. So I'm going to look at this from the side, and I'm just going to scale this in the y, so y can make it a little bigger like that. And then let's have a look from the front. So I'm going to scattered on the x. So it's x, scale it, something like that. And you also don't want to make it too high, so make sure it just fits inside that box. Now with the lattice still selected, click on the little lattice tab here on the side and increase the resolution to fall. So just set this to 444. And you'll see that's going to create these extra points on the lattice so that we have more control of R2, the form, our pumpkin shape. So next we need to apply a modifier to the pumpkin to tell it to use this lattice. So let's select the pumpkin, go back to the modifies tab. And as you can see, we've got the mirror, we've got this solidify. And now we've got to add a third one, which is the lattice modifier. So just click on Add Modifier and then go to lattice. And then you need to select the letters objects. So you can either use the droplet where you can just click here. And because we only have one lattice, you can just select that lattice from the drop-down. So now you can click on the letters, go into edit mode. And you can select some of these points and you can move them around. And as you can see, that is now forming our pumpkin without changing the geometry. So if I go back into object mode and if I select my pumpkin going to edit mode, you can see that it's still keeps original shape. So that's pretty cool. Just an easy way to deform something using a lattice. Now you can go in and you can kinda move some of these around just to deform it a bit. You can also use, as you can see, I've got my proportional editing is still on. So if you have that and you can play with the page up and page down buttons to see how that affects it. Or you can switch it off if you only want to manipulate that certain parts of your model. I'm just going to drag some of these points around to just make it a little bit non uniform or not as perfect. Because you never get a perfect pumpkin as you know. Alright, so once you're happy with your overall shape, you can just go back into object mode. And let's have a look at our pumpkin head. You can also go in and you can hide the lattice from the viewport, so we don't see that. And I think that looks pretty good. So before we move on to lesson three, I want to duplicate this pumpkin, because I want to apply all of these modifiers, but I will also want to save a copy. If I want to make any changes to the pumpkin, I can go back. So select the model in the viewport, then press shift D, and that's going to duplicate it. And as you move it around, you can actually see how the letters is affecting the model because we're moving the model and not the letters. So that's perfectly fine. Just press Escape to snap that back into place. I can see we've got two pumpkins in the outliner. So I'm going to hide the first one. We can add it from the render as well. Now the second one, I want to apply all of these modifiers. So the mirror modifier, the solidify, and the lattice. Now it is kinda important the order in which you apply these, if I apply it from the bottom up, I will get different results than if I apply it from the top-down. So we're going to apply this from the top-down. So we're gonna go and do the mirror modifier first. So click on the drop-down, then apply, then the solidify. So dropdown apply. And lastly the lattice drop-down applied. So I just did some tests and I found that that order work the best for this model. So, yeah, so now I can go ahead and I can select this pumpkin, this new copy press Tab. And now you can see this is an actual model. We can go in here and we can move some things around. Yeah, it's not using any of those modifiers anymore, so that's exactly what we want. Alright, so save your project now and in the next lesson, we're going to create the stem. I'll see you there. 4. Lesson 3: Use basic rigging to create the stem: Hi and welcome to lesson three. In this lesson we're going to create the stem. So first of all, select our pumpkin press Tab to go into edit mode. And now we're gonna go just zoom in here and select these faces right at the top. Just those few days. So you can just drag a box. Also make sure that you in Face Select. So just press three on the keyboard and then you just select those faces. Now let's expand that selection by pressing Control plus on the keyboard. So use the plus on the number line. So control numpad plus. You can also use minus to go back or decrease it or control plus we'll expand it. So just something like that. And that's the phases we're going to use to create our stem. With these faces selected, Let's duplicate them. So press shift D and that's going to duplicate those phases and then just press Escape to snap them back. So now we want to separate that from this model. So right-click, go to separate and select or choose selection. Now we can go back to object mode by pressing Tab. And now you'll see that you have a second model in the outliner and that's basically the stem part. We separate it. So let's just rename this. I'm going to call this stem. And yes, and now we can start to extrude our stem with a stem selected press Tab to go into edit mode. Select everything by pressing a on the keyboard. Make sure you in face select mode by pressing three. Now we're going to extrude it. So press E to extrude and then just make sure you extruding It's straight up. So if it doesn't snap to the z axis, you can just press Z on the keyboard. So let's make it maybe that's maybe a little bit higher than it's going to G and Z that down. We can also scale it inside. Only want to scale it on the x and y and not on the z-axis. So to do that with that stem selected, press S and Shift Z, and that will only then scale it on x and y. So maybe something like that. Let's go back into edit mode and let's add a few loop cuts. So I'm going to press Control R. And then she can know Javier and click once, and then right-click to center that. And now we can increase the number of loop cuts. You're on the side, so I'm gonna make this maybe about five, that should be fine. And then what we can also do is maybe let's select some of these top faces, maybe like that. I'm just gonna go around and select all of these phases. I just want to scale it down a bit so it looks a bit better. Scale this down. And for this I'm going to enable proportional editing as well. So scale it down. Maybe. Let's just decrease this a little bit. Maybe until we have something that looks like that. We can also scale it up again and move it down. Don't worry too much about that for now. And then we can also set the pivot to the center of this stems are right-click on it. Set origin to geometry. So maybe let's just take some of these edge loops and scale them down. For this, I'm going to disable proportional editing Br2 to go into edge select mode and then just Alt, click on one of these to select that edge loop. And then just press S on the keyboard and you can scale it down. So maybe that scale this one down a little bit. Maybe just something like that. Alright, so next we're going to create all mature or bones to actually control the shape of the stem. Let's focus on the stems. So just select the stem and then press forward slash the one next to your right shift. And that will just hide everything else and just focus on this one object in your scene. I'm going to look at this from the front by pressing this little ACCC on the side. And then I'm going to enable wireframe and also x-ray. Next, we want to create our armature or our bones. So I'm going to press Shift a and then we're gonna go to armature single bone. You can see it created this big single bonds. I'm going to scale it down. So just press S, scale it down. And then I'm going to move it up so it's kind of sitting at the bottom of our stem. So just press G and Z and just move it up so it's kinda sitting at the bottom of our stem. Just make sure just kinda move around it and make sure that the bone is kinda in the center of our stem. Cool. So now with the bone selected, I'm going to press tab and then I'm just going to select this top part of the bone. So just drag a box around that little severe. And now we're going to extrude to create more bones. So press E to extrude and then z to lock around the z-axis and click. Extrude Z, click, Extrude Z, click, and last one, extrude z and click. Make sure you have about 12345 bones in this armature that we are creating for the stem. So now we're gonna go back to object mode. So press Tab to go to object mode. And then with the bone selected, we're going to go into pose mode. So you can either use Control tab on the keyboard or you can use this drop-down here on the side and then just choose pose mode. Now we want to enable some IK or inverse kinematics. So let me show you. Everything will make sense once we've created it. So select this top bone that right at the top of your stem. Now with that bone selected, go to the pose menu, then go to Inverse Kinematics, and then select Add IK to bone. And now it's going to give you these two options and we're gonna go with two new empty object. Now that's going to automatically create an empty object for you, and it's just gonna make your life so much easier. Now let's go back to object mode. And now we're going to select this empty only, and I'm going to press G to move it around. If you have a look at the bones underneath that stem, you can see how that is kind of moving around if I just move this empty around, which makes it pretty cool. So press Escape to cancel that. And now we're going to parent our stem to the bones. Alright, so before we do that, let me just apply the scale of our stem cells. You can see if I bring up the item menu, you can see that this stem is not exactly 111 scale. Let's do that now. So select the stem, press Control a, and then just select scale to apply that. And you'll see that the scale is now set to 111. Alright, so press N to hide that again. And now what we need to do is we need to select the stem first and then just kinda zoom in here so you can see the bones as well. And then we're going to press Shift and click on the bones, and then right-click, go to parent. And then with automatic weights. Now, if we select this empty and we press G and move it around, you can see that our stem is moving around. So one thing you'll notice when I do this again, you'll see that the bottom of the stem as kinda rotating as well. And we don't really want this bottom part of the stem to rotate. So to fix that, Let's go back into our armature or the bones. And let's go back into pose mode. Now, make sure you select the top bone. We enabled the IK or the inverse kinematics. And then you're on this side panel, click on the one, this bone, that's his bone constraint properties. And you will see the chain length now this is the length of the inverse kinematic system. So currently it's on zero, which means it will automatically use all the bones, 12345. But we only want to set it sets using the for the first four from the top-down. And it's not going to use the first or the bone right at the bottom. So I'm going to increase this to four. So it's only using 1234. And now let's go back to object mode. And now if I move this empty around, you'll see that the bottom part of our stem is not really rotating. It's kinda moving a little bit, but not too much. And that's exactly what we want. Just press Escape. And now we can bring the pumpkin back by pressing forward slash on the keyboard again. Let's go back to Solid View. And now we can just click on this empty and kind of move this stem the way we want it. And then we can also add a subdivision surface to this stem object. So select the stem, go to your Modifiers, add modifier, subdivision surface, and maybe just increase this for the viewport so it looks a little better. And you can obviously play around until you have the perfect shape for the stem. Now just remember if you want to move it around, you can't just click on the stem and move it around. Because that's going to do this. Because we're not moving the bones and we're also not moving the empty around. To do or to move this around, you need to select the mesh, the bones, and the empty, so all three objects together. And now I can move it around. Just remember that when you are moving this stem around, something like that. Alright, I think that looks pretty cool. Go ahead and save your project. And in the next lesson, we're going to look at materials and texturing. See you there. 5. Lesson 4: Create materials for the pumpkin and stem using nodes: In this lesson, we're going to look at materials and textures for our pumpkin. So let's start by adding a material to the pumpkin body or the actual pumpkin. So just select the pumpkin and go to the shading tab right here at the top of the interface. And let me just wait for that to load. And now we can just kinda zoom in here to get a better view of our pumpkin. So make sure that pumpkin is selected and then click on New. And let's give this material and name. So just click at the top and let's call this pumpkin. Simple and easy. So first of all, let's give it a base color. So just click on base color and we're going to make this orange as we do. So find a nice orange. And yeah, that looks, that looks pretty cool. So now we can go down here and we can play with the roughness. So if it's very reflective, we can see a nice preview there. Also make sure that you are in material preview. So you can decide how shiny you want your pumpkin to be or not shiny. So I'm going to set mine at around 0.3, maybe. That looks alright. And then you can also play with the specular, kinda how bright those reflections or how dull they are. So maybe leave this at around 0.5 for now. Alright, now, there's only one more thing that I want to add to this. And that's a very subtle bump map just to kinda have some little bit of bumps on the pumpkin as well, because you will never find a natural pumpkin that's as smooth as this. So an easy way to do that is to use a noise texture. So I'm going to press shift a to create a new note. Just search and type in noise, selecting noise texture from the list. So I'm going to place this can be at the bottom. And I'm going to drag the color out, just let that go. And I'm going to type normal, and I'm going to select a normal map from the drop-down and just make sure that the color go into, this should go into the color from color to color. Alright? And then you can connect the normal to the normal input. Now something's going to happen in the viewport and you'll see it's going to look all crazy. And that's because this strength is way too high. So I'm gonna bring this down to about 0.1. And that already looks better. Now we want to make the noise smaller, so it, make it smaller. We need to increase the noise texture scale. So by default that's E15. So let's increase this to around 200. And now you can kinda start to, you'll start to see the noise on the pumpkin. So maybe let's increase that to 500, Maybe, just so that we get something like that. Now, we will probably render this in cycles. So this is just an EV preview. So it might look a little bit different in cycles. Just play around until you are happy with the scale of that noise. And obviously you can increase or decrease the strength as well. If you want it a little bit more visible, you can change it to point to maybe see, you can see that it's much more visible now. And let's change it back to 0.1. If it looks like it's not going away, it's not covering the whole object. You can also change the tangent space to object space. Sometimes it gives you better results at kinda depends on how your UVs and all of those things are setup. But because we started with a sphere, I'm not really going to go into UV unwrapping in this course. So kinda just find something that looks nice. And then we can move on to the material for the stem. So yeah, really, really basic materials setup. They are all the nodes. We just using the noise texture for the normal map or a bump map basically. And then we just using a base color, simple stuff like that. Later on when we look at the lighting, we can actually try and add some subsurface scattering to this. Subsurface scattering will actually allow the light that we're going to put inside the pumpkin to kinda make the outside of the pumpkin glow a little bit, almost as a see-through object, but not completely transparent so you can get that flow. So yeah, we'll play around with the subsurface value when we do our lighting. So next let's do the stem. So it's gonna be very similar things. So what we can actually do is we can copy or duplicate the pumpkin material and then just change it for the stem. So to do that, I'm going to click on these two little file icon, which is new material. And that's just going to create a copy. As you can see that. Now I can click on the stem and I'm going to sign the second pumpkin material to that. And then we're going to rename it. So just click here at the top and let's just call this stem. Alright, so now you can see we have two materials, pumpkin and stem. Now, before we change the base color of our stem, you can see it's got a little two next to the material. And that means it's actually using the same data as the other material as well. So can you just need to click on that to make it its own material? Now you can see that's looking a little bit better. So let me just go back to stem and delete that. And then we're going to assign the that one so we don't want that to next to it. That's the only thing you need to worry about. So if we change this to green, now, you will see that it's not going to change the pumpkin. Yeah. So you just want to make sure that it's not using the same material. All right, so we have our stem right there. And maybe let's just add some noise to that as well. So maybe let's increase this to 0.5. So we can kinda see how that looks. And maybe let's make the scale for this one a bit smaller. Maybe 200, maybe 500. Yeah, you can play around with the scale of the noise just to kinda see how that looks like. Alright, let's go back to our layout and it's changed over to the render preview. And just have a quick look around our model to see how it looks like. I think it's looking, looking pretty cool. You can obviously make some changes, add some more materials if you want to. But in the next lesson we're going to start adding the lights to our scene. So go ahead, save your project now, and I will see you in the next lesson. 6. Lesson 5: Lighting the scene: Hey, and welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to look at our lighting setup for the scene. So I think first of all, let's just create a flow. So I'm going to create a new plane. So press Shift a mesh plane and then just scale that up. Now, let's move the plane down so it's kinda underneath our pumpkins. I just pressed G and Z and you can hold Shift to just make sure you moving it just a bit at a time to kind of get it somewhere where the pumpkin is sitting on top of our floor. Now what we can do as well, we can create a curve at the back like a infinity curve. So select your plane, press Tab to go into edit mode, press two to select the edge at the back. Just make sure you select that edge. And then press E to extrude Z to go straight up, select this edge, press Control B to bevel. Pull that out. And then let's increase the segments to around 24. That should be fine. Then you can just click press Tab to go back into object mode. So you can obviously see these lines here. So just right-click, Shade Smooth. Alright, so now we have our backdrop. Let's start creating our first light. So for this, I'm going to go into a render preview and I'm going to set my render engine two cycles. Okay, so as you can see, we've got this gray background and that's the environment that we're currently using. So I'm going to click on this world setting year. And then for the strength of this gray color, just set that to zero for now. So let's create the light that's going to be inside of the pumpkin. So press Shift a go to light and then select point. I can see because our pumpkin is in the middle of the scene, it's automatically creating that light inside the pumpkin. So obviously, if your pumpkin is not in the middle of the world, just move the light until it is inside the pumpkin. So let's go back to render. And you can see now it's starting to look pretty cool already. Now with this point lights selected, I'm gonna go to the lighting properties here on the side. And let's increase this to around 200. I can kinda see that's creating some interesting shadows and things which are looking pretty nice. You can also change the color of the light if you want it to be more of a warm orange or more of a cold blue. I'm gonna go with a more of a warm orange tone, something like that. Alright, so let's just switch back to Solid View for now. What I wanna do next is create some backlighting. Because if I go back to render, you can see the pumpkin is very dark at the back and our camera will probably be somewhere at the front. So it's always nice to get some backlighting to just show those edges of your model. So let's go back to Solid View and I'm going to use a spotlight for this. You can use a point light, you can also use an area light. But as sometimes find that a spotlight works well for this, I'm going to press Shift a light and then spotlight. And let's move it up. So g, z, so we can kind of see where the spotlight is. I'm going to move it back. So GY, just move it back and maybe not this high up. So GZ bring it down a bit, right? And I'm just going to rotate it. So are an x and we're going to rotate it on the x-axis. So it's kinda shining towards the back of our pumpkin. We can probably move it down even further and then rotate it. So it's kind of more like that. So it's literally just kinda eating the back of the pumpkin. So now let's go into a RenderView again. And I can start to see those edges a little better. But let's increase the strength of that spotlights. Spotlights selected go to the light properties and it's increased to around 200 as well. See how that works. So already That's looking quite interesting. We can change the color of that as well. So maybe also like a dark or a warm orange, you can go with a cold blue as well. The contrast between the warm and cold always looks nice. But yeah, you can decide what color you want for that backlight. Alright, so next, for our wolf properties now, you can go in here and you can add an HDRI if you want to. You can obviously just click on Color, environment, texture, and then you can load a three-sixteenths HDRI if you want to. But for this example, I'm just going to use a solid color. So I'm going to click on this color and I'm just going to select a dark blue, something like that. And let's increase the strength to 0.2 and see what that does. Now you can see we get this interesting blue light coming from the back. And you can play with this. We can maybe make it a little bit darker, maybe 0.1 or 0.1. That's looking pretty, pretty nice. So you can play around with your lighting. You can add more light so you can take away some of the lights. It all depends on you. Alright, so let's quickly revisit the material for our pumpkin. Remember earlier I mentioned subsurface scattering, so I just quickly want to show you guys how that works with the pumpkin selected. Go back to your shading tab. I'm just going to switch over to the render preview so we can kinda see what's happening here. With the pumpkin selected. Make sure you're on the pumpkin material as well. And right here at the top of the principled BSD F shader, underneath the base color, you will see the subsurface value. Now, if we increase this number slightly, Let's put this on zero point. Let's start with 0.1 and press Enter. So immediately you can see that our pumpkin is looking a lot different. It's actually glowing from the inside out. So let's just maybe decrease this to 0.05. So we just want that slight glow to kinda come through there. You can see it nicely. So let me just enable denoising in the viewport so we can kinda see this a little better now you can see it's glowing really nicely. Just something to keep in mind when you are using this subsurface scattering. Subsurface scattering will increase render times with quite a lot. The problem is it's going to add a lot more noise. So it's going to take longer to get rid of those noisy artifacts or just more light bounces because the light is now actually traveling inside the mesh and it's kind of bouncing around inside. So it's got to calculate all those things. So it is really difficult for a renderer to calculate subsurface scattering. So you can use it. You don't have to use it. So it's all up to you. Now, if we go back to our scene, you can see that we've got a nice glowing pumpkin. I'm just going to leave this for a few seconds so we can see it a little bit better. Alright, now you can see it's looking pretty cool. We can maybe add one more light just to kinda show the stem a little better. So I'm just going to create a point light and move it up. And maybe move it slightly in front of the stem. And then let's drop the power of this light to maybe just like two or something. So we can just see the green color a little better. Alright, go ahead and save your project. Now, in the next lesson, we're going to look at adding a camera and rendering our final image. I'll see you there. 7. Lesson 6: Create a camera and render using the Cycles Renderer: Hey, and welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to look at rendering our final shot. So before we add a camera, I quickly just want to look at the floor plane. So I'm just going to select this flaw because we haven't really added a material to the floor. So I'm gonna go to Shading. Click on New. Let's just call this floor. For this one, I'm going to give it like a dark base color, maybe like a dark gray. And then I'm going to increase the metallic value, maybe all the way to one and maybe bring the roughness down to 0.2. So we have something that's nice and reflective. You can obviously play around with these settings to get the exact roughness as you want. Maybe that's a little bit too shiny. So maybe 0.5, maybe too much roughness, maybe point for somewhere in the middle. So play around with these values until you get a nice reflection. I think that just makes it look so much more. I don't know. Nicer. I suppose. So. Alright, so let's add a camera to our scene. So I'm going to go back into solid view and press Shift a select camera and then just move it out forward. So press G and Y, pull it to the front. And with the cameras selected, I'm going to press N to bring up the side menu and then make sure you're on the item tab. So for the rotation, I'm going to set the X to 90. And then for the y 0.4 z also zero. So that's just going to create a camera that's perfectly positioned to the front like that. So now we can go into the camera by clicking this icon here or pressing zero on your numpad. Now we can kinda move it around and see what we want. So maybe I'm going to move it back slightly, so just G and Y. And then on this camera tab, I'm going to increase the focal length. Currently it's using a 50 millimeter lens. So I'm going to increase this to around 80, maybe even more. Let's try 90, even 100. So it does actually change the way that your object looks like if you're using a long lens that zoomed in, or if you're using a wide angle lens with the camera close to your object. So experiment with these values for the focal length and the distance that your camera is from your object and see how that affects the overall look. So I'm quite happy with this. We can maybe move this slightly up so that the composition is a little better. Next one I want to do is I also want to add some depth of field to our cameras so only the front of the pumpkin is perfectly in focus, while the background and maybe the rest of the pumpkin is slightly out of focus. So really easy to do that. Click on the camera, go to the camera tab. And then we're going to enable depth of field here on the side. Now, you can choose your object year from the list and it will keep that object in focus. But I like to do it manually as well. So to do that, open the viewport display section under the camera and then just click this limits. And that's going to give you this line and it's going to show you the focus distance. So now I can play with this focus distance value here on the side. And you can see it's moving that crosshair around. So I'm going to place this right at the front of the pumpkin. So let me just zoom in slightly. And I'm going to praise, place it right about, right about there. So now we know that the focus will be right there. So I'm going to go into the camera, go into render view. And now we can set our f-stop to a lower value, maybe something like 1.5 and see how that looks. Maybe even a little bit less, maybe one. So remember, a smaller f-stop number will give you a shallower depth of field. Some more things will be out of focus. And then if you increase that number, a bigger f-stop number will give you a wider or a deeper depth of field. More things will then be in-focus. Just play around with this until you are happy with that. Look. One thing that you can also try is if you go to your render settings and you scroll all the way down to color management. So first of all, I'm going to change my view transform from full mic to standard just to give it a bit more contrast. Then what we can do here is we can lower the exposure. So I'm going to set this to minus two. And I can see we get all those extra details. So now we can maybe go into our world settings and increase this background, kinda environmental light. To 0.2. To maybe make that a little brighter. We can maybe also select the light inside and make that brighter as well. So maybe instead of 200, I'm going to increase this to 300 just to get a little bit of a brighter light there. And obviously you can change or play around with the material of the pumpkin so you can set the subsurface to zero to kinda get that. Look if you're going for something like that. Or we can maybe give it like a very subtle subsurface, 0.02. Maybe that will just give you a very, very subtle glow that's maybe a little bit too low. Maybe 0.05 almost feels too much. 0.04. That's nice. So just like a subtle glow. And let's see how that goes. Alright, so once you are happy with the overall look, let's save our project. And now we can do our final render. Let's go to our render settings and you can choose if you want to use your CPU or GPU. So if you have a GPU installed, set this to GPU, and also choose your render engine. So we are currently using cycles, which is good. And now we can just go to the render settings so you can set the noise threshold. So I usually take this off. I like to set the samples manually, but you can obviously use the noise samples if you prefer, or the noise threshold, threshold if you prefer. The samples, I'm going to set to 51 to four now so that you can go higher, you can go lower. This is kinda just for this test render. And then you can also choose if you want to denoise or not the noise. Usually if you using subsurface scattering, it's a good idea to maybe enable denoising because you will get a lot of bright pixels That's kinda noisy if you don't do noise when using subsurface scattering. It also depends on the amount of samples you using and all of that. So I'm going to just go with five-twelfths samples, de-noising on for now. And then you can obviously also set your resolution of the renders if you go to the second little icon just under the Render Settings, which is the properties. You can set the resolution. So I'm just going to render this 120 by 180 normal HD. If you want to do for K, you can simply just increase this 100%, 200%. That's gonna give you four K. Or you can just input the values and then bring this back to 100. All depends what you want to do. Once you are ready, I'm going to just save this one more time. And then you can click on Render and render image or press F2. And that's going to start the rendering process for this image. 8. Conclusion: Thanks for watching: Alright, and that's the end of this course. Thank you so much for enrolling and I really hope that you guys learned a lot during this mini-course. Please reach out if you have any questions or comments or suggestions. And I'll also make this project file available so you can download this project file opened in Blender and play around with it. Also, please share your renders with me. I would love to see what you guys and goals that will this one. So please upload your renders, share them with me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is one water such as add one louder, please share them. Keep well, have a great day and thanks a lot for watching. Goodbye.