Before starting with the actual organization, it's a good idea to prepare a material creation screen to be saved in your Blender preferences.
It is possible, in fact, to prepare a basic scene setup that includes the elements and the settings we need to do the job best.
In any case, just take this recipe with a grain of salt, that is, take it as more of a suggestion or as a starting point that you can eventually modify to better suit your needs.
Start Blender and in the upper menu (the Engine to use for rendering button), switch to Cycles Render.
We are now going to customize the Default screen:
- Split the 3D view into two horizontal rows. To do this, move the mouse cursor onto the lateral edge of the window. The cursor changes to a double arrow icon. Right-click on the edge, and from the little pop-up menu that appears, select Split Area (or click in the top-right corner of the window and move it).
- Change the upper window to a Node Editor window by selecting the item from the Editor Type button in the left corner of the bottom bar (or by putting the mouse cursor in the window and pressing the Shift + F3 keyboard shortcut).
- Select the default Cube in the scene if it is not selected already, and go to the Object modifier window under the Properties panel to the right of the screen. Assign a Subdivision Surface modifier to the Cube, which is now a Spheroid, and set the Subdivisions levels for both View and Render to
4. Check the Optimal Display item. - Set the Spheroid shading mode to Smooth by clicking on the appropriate button under the Shading subpanel in the Tools tab on the left.
- Move the Spheroid upward by 2 units on the z axis (press G, then press Z, enter digit 2, and finally, press Enter).
- Ensuring that the cursor is still at the center of the scene (if not, press Shift + C to center it), press Shift + A and navigate to Mesh | Plane to add a Plane.
- Press Tab to go to Edit Mode and scale the Plane four times bigger (press Tab, then press S, enter digit 4, and finally, press Enter). Exit Edit Mode.
- Split the bottom row into two parts, put the mouse cursor in the 3D window on the right, and press 0 in the numeric keypad of the keyboard to go to the Camera view. Then press T to close the Tool Shelf panel with the tabs on the left. Scroll the mouse wheel to fit the Camera view field into the window (or for a finer control, press Ctrl + the middle button of the mouse and move the mouse).
This screenshot shows where we are now:
The first steps of the Default screen customization for Cycles material creation
- In the Editor Type button in the left corner of the bottom bar of the left 3D window, select UV/Image Editor.
- Select the Spheroid, go to Edit Mode, and scale it to twice the current size (press Tab, then press S, enter digit 2, and finally, press Enter). Exit Edit Mode.
- Move the mouse to the Camera view and press Shift + F to enter Walk Navigation mode (a viewfinder appears to show the center of the camera field). By moving the mouse to pan and by pressing the W or the S key to go forward or backward, respectively, adjust the Camera view to fit the Spheroid better. Then press Enter or click to confirm, as shown in the following screenshot:
Centering the Camera view on the Spheroid
- Select the Plane. Click on New in the Node Editor toolbar to assign a new material (Material.001). Rename it
Planeand leave all the settings as they are. - Select the Spheroid and click on Use Nodes in the Material window under the Properties panel to the right of the screen or in the Node Editor toolbar.
- Put the mouse in the Node Editor window and scroll the wheel to zoom to the nodes.
- Under the Surface subpanel in the Material window, switch the Diffuse BSDF shader with a Mix Shader node. Then click on the first Shader slot to select a Diffuse BSDF shader and on the second slot for a Glossy BSDF shader (the two Shader slots I'm referring to are highlighted in the next screenshot).
- In the Node Editor window, adjust the position of the nodes to make them more readable, as shown in this screenshot:
Preparing a basic average material with the Diffuse and the Glossy components
- Set the Camera view mode to Rendered by clicking on the Viewport Shading button on the window toolbar and selecting the top item or by pressing Shift + Z with the mouse cursor inside the 3D view.
- Go to the Render window under the Properties panel on the right, and under the Sampling subpanel, set both Clamp Direct and Clamp Indirect to
1.00, and both Render and Preview to50samples. - Under the Light Paths subpanel, set Filter Glossy to
1.00. - Go to the Outliner window and select the Lamp item. Go to the Object data window under the Properties panel and click on the Use Nodes button under the Nodes subpanel. Increase the Strength value to
300.000.Now the output will look like what is shown in this screenshot:
Setting the Camera view to Rendered and increasing the Lamp strength
- Go back to the Render window under the Properties panel and set the Percentage scale for render resolution under Dimensions to
25%to have smaller but faster rendering. - Under the Performance subpanel, set Viewport BVH Type to Static BVH and check Use Spatial Splits, Cache BVH, and Persistent Images (these are probably not really useful for a simple Spheroid, but they are useful if you want to render a more complex object).
- Go to the World window and click on the Use Nodes button under the Surface subpanel. Click on the Color slot, set the RGB values to
0.100, and set the Strength value to0.100. - Set the Factor value for the Ambient Occlusion subpanel to
0.05but let it remain disabled. You can enable the Ambient Occlusion subpanel or not, depending on your preferences, but remember that it adds light to the rendered image. I would say that it's usually better not to have the Ambient Occlusion subpanel activated by default but enabled only if really needed. In this case, the very low value can compensate a bit for the darkened background of the World, which is shown in the following screenshot for your reference:
Preparing the optional Ambient Occlusion setting
Optionally, other things that you can do include scaling the floor Plane bigger. In the Outliner window, set the mode to Visible Layers and click on the arrow icon to the side of the Plane item to make it nonselectable. Substitute Lamp, the default Point item, with a different type (Sun or Spot) or with a mesh-light plane.
- Go back to the Material window. If you want to save this setting as the user default, press Ctrl + U (Save Startup File), or save the file with a meaningful name. Among the files provided with this module, you will find this file by the name of
9931OS_02_interface.blend. The 3D view now looks like what is shown in the following screenshot:
The final overall look of the customization
We set a very low World global illumination, keeping its color within the gray scale in order not to affect the color of the material. The floor plane is meant to have light bouncing on the shadowed parts of the object, and this can eventually be helped by the low Ambient Occlusion subpanel as well.
We prepared the Rendered view port as a Camera view to get better feedback for the final rendered image, which will show at 25 percent of the established size in the UV/Image Editor window on the bottom-left side of the screen.
By setting the Clamp values to 1.00, we reduced the fireflies produced by the glossy shader, and by increasing the render and preview samples to 50, we reduced the noise, at the same time keeping the rendering times reasonable, even with a not-very-powerful workstation.
The Viewport BVH Type is set to Static BVH, and the Use Spatial Splits, Cache BVH, and Persistent Images options are useful to reduce the calculation time for the bounding volume hierarchy of the mesh, which Cycles has to calculate every time it starts rendering. Anyway, these options are useful only if the mesh doesn't get any internal modification between renderings.
From now on, every time we start Blender, the layout and the settings we just saved as default will be seen first.
But maybe we don't want to have this Cycles material interface every time we start, and we prefer to have it only as an option to be used if needed. Actually, in the previous steps, we modified the Default screen, but it's also possible to create new screens while keeping the original screen available. Here is the way to do this:
- Start Blender with the factory settings (click on the File menu on the top main header and navigate to Load Factory Setting) and look at the top of the screen, in the main header on the side of the Blender Render button. There are two more buttons labeled Default and Scene.
- By clicking on the Default button, we can set a different interface layout (there are already nine, each of which is studied for a different task, and their names are perfectly explicative). Clicking on Scene shows just the current scene.
- By clicking on the + icon on the side of the Default button, we add a new screen layout named
Default.001. Rename itMaterials. - Then click on the + icon on the side of the Scene button, and by choosing the Full Copy item, add a new scene to the Scene.001 file. Rename the file as something like
Cycles_Materials. This new scene is a full copy of the default scene, coexisting but independent.
At this point, we can start with all the instructions already seen in the How to do it section of this recipe: switching to Cycles Render, splitting the 3D window, assigning the Subdivision Surface modifier to the default Cube, and so on.
When done, just click on the screens button, switch back to Default, and then save the user preferences (Ctrl + U). Now our material creation interface is saved as a screen option in a different scene. Every time we need to access it, it's enough to select the layout Materials from the screens button.