Final Render of a basic room in blender |
In Blender, we use rendering to complete the creation of our 3D scenes and objects. It is used to showcase the scene with all applied textures, materials and lighting, in order to give it the realistic appearance we aim for. We used this process to complete work with the highest standard possible.
In this tutorial, we will be focusing on the actual rendering of the scene. To begin, I will create a room scene, and ensure that the lighting is correctly added, as well as the materials and textures to each object. I will provide a walk-through on how I go about creating this room scene.
Step 1: Making the Tabletop
My scene will mostly be made up of planes, which can be added by pressing shift + A. The plane is located in the ‘Mesh’ dropdown. For this tutorial, I started with a table, and scaled it (S) by 2. Then lift the table on the 'Z' axis, by pressing the 'G' key, then 'Z', then type '2.5'. This will lift the plane higher and give room for the table legs.
Added Plane |
Extruded Tabletop |
Step 2: Making the Table Legs
Once we have scaled the plane, go into edit mode (tab) and ensure that the 'Face select' is on (located on the bar at the bottom of the screen). Once you're sure it's on, I would advise using Isometric view by pressing 5, then pres Ctrl+7 to view the bottom of your object, then click subdivide (located on the left in edit mode) three or four times, depending on how wide you want the tables legs to be.Subdivided plane, with corners selected |
Once you have finished subdividing the bottom of your table-top, press shift + right-click each corner face. You can then extrude (E) these faces and in doing so, create your table legs.
Extruded table legs |
Step 3: Making the Table Cloth
You can then add a table cloth over the top of the table. In order to do this we must simply add another plane, and scale it up. For this tutorial, I scaled mine by 3. Then grab it (G), and bring it up over the table. You can do this by pulling it up by the blue arrow on screen also.Cloth plane added |
Edit Mode Menu |
Cloth Physics |
Once this is done, select the 'Play Animation' button at the bottom of your screen (or use Alt + A). You should see the table cloth you had previously created drop onto the table and take the appearance of a realistic piece of fabric.
'Play Animation' - Middle-Right play button |
To fix this, simply select the cloth and select the 'Smooth' button underneath the 'Shading' dropdown on the left hand side of the screen.
Shading Settings |
Realistic, 'Smooth' cloth |
Step 4: Making the Floor
Once the physics have been applied to the table cloth and table, you can move onto making the actual room. This requires only three planes, each scaled up to represent the walls and the floor.Added Floor |
Scaled Floor |
Step 5: Making and Moving the Walls
Once you've scaled the floor, you need to add two more planes for the walls. Again, add a plane from the 'Mesh' menu. Rotate it on the 'X' axis ('R', 'X') by 90 degrees. Then proceed to move the plane along the 'Y' axis by 10. It should appear as follows.First wall moved |
It should appear as follows:
First wall scaled |
It should appear as follows:
Second wall moved |
Then proceed to scale the wall on the 'Y' axis, by 10. Again, you will see that this will make the plane as long as the floor. Make this wall the same height as the other by scaling it on the 'Z' axis, just as you had done before, and move it up on the 'Z' axis by 5.
It should look like this:
All walls added |
Step 6: Adding Materials and Textures
Once you've finished the room, you will probably want to add materials and textures. To do this, you must select each object and add a material to each. This can be done in the materials tab on the right hand side of the screen, as shown below:Materials tab highlighted |
Texture Tab highlighted |
In this tab, select the 'New' button. This will give the object a material. Materials have to be added to an object in order to use textures to make the object appear more realistic.
After the material has been added, proceed to the Textures tab, which is directly to the right of the materials tab. Then select the 'New' button, and use the 'Open' selection under the 'Image' dropdown to open whichever texture you wish to use from your computer. Do this for each object.
If you were to select the 'Rendered' view now, you would see the room with all it's textures and materials added to each object, however, you may notice that each object may an unrealistic shine to it - depending on where your lamp placement is. If you want to get rid of this and produce a more realistic scene, simply select an object, go onto your 'Materials' tab, and turn the 'Intensity' under 'Specular' down to zero. This reduces the shine of the objects in your scene. You will need to do this for each object.
Specular in Materials Tab |
Step 7: Lighting
Before you complete your final render, you may want to change or alter the lighting in the scene. For this tutorial, I used a 'Sun' light, which is a light that does not originate from a certain point, but simply from the sky in Blender. It acts as general sunlight, and can create shadows, which is the reason I did not create a roof on the scene.
Sun Light |
Step 8: Final Render
Finally, we can render our scene. To render the scene, press 'F12' on your keyboard. This will give you a rendered view through the camera on your scene. If the render is not centering at the point in which you want it to, you can move your camera around on the 'X', 'Y' and 'Z' axis'.
Camera selected and moved |