06.08 Blender Rendering Basics
Rendering in Blender
Rendering creates a finished 2D image from your 3D scene. A basic render requires a camera, visible objects, lighting, and render settings. Start with these tutorials to learn how to position the camera, preview your scene, choose a render engine, and create and save a finished image.
Eevee and Cycles
Blender comes with two render engines installed, the real-time renderer Eevee and the light transport renderer Cycles. Eevee will render much faster than Cycles with the down side of not having true light bounces. Cycles can produce stunning renders but the processing can take much longer than Eevee. For many simple projects, Eevee is the preferred way for speed unless your project needs some of the advanced rendering capabilities of Cycles.
Lighting in Blender
Lighting controls the visibility, form, shadows, reflections, and mood of a 3D scene. Blender includes Point, Spot, Sun, and Area lights, each of which behaves differently. Start with simple lighting and adjust the position, direction, size, and power of your lights while viewing the scene in Rendered View.
Backgrounds and Environment Lighting
The environment surrounding your model can contribute both a visible background and realistic illumination. These tutorials demonstrate techniques for creating studio-style backgrounds and using HDRI environment images to provide natural lighting and reflections.
Add Lights in Blender
The default scene in Blender starts with a point light, a cube and a camera. Lights available in Blender include point, spot, sun, and area.
Point Light - Blender
The Point Light has adjustments for color, power, diffuse, specular, volume, and radius. All of the attributes of a light are able to be keyframed and animated.
- Color - Changes the color cast of the light
- Power - starts with 1000 W and can increase a lot for large scenes. Light “falls off” or decreases rapidly as it is moved away from its target so often lights need more power to properly illuminate a scene
Spot Light - Blender
Sun Light - Blender
- Covers the whole scene and can indicate weather and time of day
- Can add a photo sphere or an HDRI image for more detail in reflections and shadows in a render
Area Light - Blender
- rectangular light to give flat illumination over a specific area
Rendering Animation
Animation rendering creates a sequence of rendered frames rather than a single image. Before rendering an animation, set the frame range, resolution, output location, file format, and render engine. For longer animations, rendering an image sequence can help prevent losing an entire render if the process is interrupted.