Beginner Blender Tutorial - Full Course

this is blender open-source 3D software

that can be used to make animations

visual effects game assets or

practically anything 3D and best of all

it's 100% free and it always will be if

you've never used it before but you want

to learn it well then you're in the

right place this is a tutorial for

complete beginners I've been using

blender for 20 years so I'm going to

show you how to use all of its core

features and by the end you'll finish

with not only the confidence to start

your own projects but with your very own

dut animation and I know this looks

complex but I promise you it's

achievable for a complete beginner and I

say that with confidence because many

already have this is actually the fourth

version of this tutorial I made the

first dut tutorial back in 2016 and I've

been remaking it every few years to keep

up with blender's development in that

time millions of people just like

yourself have gone from having never

used 3D to successfully making their own

Donuts one arst even snuck his into a

little film called everything everywhere

all at once very clever so if you're

ready to take your first steps in 3D hit

the Subscribe button and let's begin

first go to blender.org download or just

click the link in the description then

obviously you got to hit the big

download button once downloaded on

Windows double click it and then just go

through the install steps but if you're

on a Mac just drag it into the

applications folder then just find the

blender shortcut and open it then once

it's open open just click anywhere off

the splash screen to close it and

welcome to the wonderful world of 3D

first tip do not get overwhelmed if you

go clicking around you might find lots

of buttons and some of them with very

scary names and it can all get very

overwhelming very quickly thing you need

to know is blender can do a lot of

things which means it has a lot of tools

but you don't need to know every tool in

order to do what you want to do if

you're familiar with the 8020 rule

there's really only 20% of blender

features that you end up using 80% of

the time and that's what I'm planning to

teach you in this tutorial Series so

stay with me and you should be fine

we'll start making the donut in the next

video in this one we're just going to

look at the interface and I'm going to

show you some of the basic navigation so

for starters this view this window right

here is your 3D viewport and it's where

you'll spend probably 90% of your time

because it is the 3D World so you can

see that we have three objects here

we've got a camera we've got a cube and

we've got a lamp and when we click on it

you can see it's selected because it has

the yellow outline so let's delete the

default cube of course and replace it

with something else so we could do that

by going up to the add menu up here or

by remembering the hot key which is

shift a so shift a for add so usually

the one you're looking for is underneath

mesh so these are called your Primitives

and it's what you use to start something

when you're looking to uh make an object

like if you're going to make a chair you

might start with a cylinder as the chair

leg and then build out from there but

the one I'm sure you're all very curious

you want to click it it's the monkey so

let's just click the monkey why does

blender have a monkey well fun fact

every 3D software has its own little

random complex object because it's

useful to test things like shaders or

complexities of scenes so 3ds Max has

the Utah teapot Houdini has the toy and

I think Pig's head uh blenda has the

monkey and it's actually called the

suzan monkey head which you can see in

the top left there named after the

rangang from the film Jay and Silent Bob

Strikes Back random piece of trivia so

let's get a better look at it and to

that we need to orbit which you can do

by on your mouse there your scroll wheel

that is called your middle Mouse button

if you push that in and then drag around

that is now orbiting now for my laptop

users you've just panicked cuz you

realize you don't have a mouse how are

you going to orbit around first of all

probably good idea to get a Mouse for 3D

work it will come in handy um but in a

pinch you can get by without it just by

up here in the top right hand corner

this little gray Circle anywhere in the

gray section if you just left click drag

on that that will do the exact same

thing or if you want you can go to edit

preferences and then underneath input

there's emulate 3 button Mouse and that

means that if you hold down alt and then

left click drag that will do the exact

same thing also whilst you are in user

preferences you might want to go to

interface face and you've got resolution

scale if you're on a 4k monitor you

might find that your menus and buttons

are really small and you kind of have to

like squint in to see it so personally I

like to keep my 4k monitor around about

1.5 but since this is a tutorial I make

it nice and big so you can see what I'm

doing okay so that's orbiting around

with the middle Mouse button if we want

to zoom in we can do that just by

scrolling in and out we could also do it

by going up to the magnifying glass tool

there and then just left click dragging

and then moving the uh mouse back and

forth that does the same thing or you

could hold down control and then middle

Mouse button and that will do a smooth

Zoom as well okay so one thing you might

notice looking at this is that it's not

very pretty right it's just kind of got

this flat Bland gray lighting over

everything and that's because this state

right now is called viewport shading and

it's kind of a lightweight optimized way

to view the scene just as you're

building it but if you want to create a

final pretty image that's called r ring

and you can actually switch into

rendered mode by going up here into the

top right hand corner you can see we're

currently in the viewport shading mode

if we go to across you should see render

View mode so if we click that your

computer might stall for a quick second

whilst it loads it in but you can see

it's now different we have directional

light we have shadow cast across the

monkey so it's now currently being lit

by this lamp up here so if I wanted to

uh you know zoom in on that lamp lamp

there and just kind of like move it

around you can see it's kind of hard to

focus on like it's always exactly not in

the right View and that's because we are

centered on our monkey right now we need

to change the focus we need to pan to

something else so we could do that one

of two ways one if you're on a laptop

you could use a little move tool there

that will do that or everyone else shift

middle Mouse click drag that will do the

same thing so middle Mouse is for

orbiting shift middle Mouse is for pan

to change your view to something else

okay so I want to move my light because

it's uh it's too Moody I want to be able

to see the monkey's face there so to

move an object you could do it one of

two ways one you could go over to the

left hand corner here and you've got the

move tool when you click that you can

see that the selected object the lamp

has this uh this Gizmo it's called with

these axes on it and if I just clicked

and dragged on any of those arrows there

you can see I can move it along any of

those axes I could also just click on

that uh white circle there and that will

just freehand drag it um depending on my

view but it's kind of tedious every time

you want to move something you have to

like go to that tool and then find the

arrows and yada yada so actually most

people in blender prefer to use the hot

keys so we just keep it in the default

selection State here and instead

remember the hot key which is G for grab

now I've just tapped the key and you'll

notice as I mve my cursor that it's now

attached to my cursor it's not my cursor

isn't even actually close to it in fact

my cursor could be on the other side of

the screen and I could tap G and it will

move it and at first this is kind of

awkward you're like why is it working

this way but once you get used to it you

realize it's actually handy because you

don't have to spend all this time like

navigating your cursor to something just

so that you can move it your cursor

could be over here and then just tap it

and you're moving it so whilst you're in

this move state if you want to cancel a

movement you can do it one of two ways

you could just hit Escape or you could

rightclick then if you want to confirm a

movement like say I want to move my lamp

here and I like the movement I could

just do a single left click so again if

I want to cancel something just right

click if I want to confirm the movement

left click but let's say I wanted to

move it along an axis like you know I

like these arrows here and I want to be

able to move it on just a specific axis

well I can do that whilst I'm in that

grab State as well so after I have hit

the g key to grab it I can then tap the

letter of the axes that I want to move

it on so if you don't know in the real

world and in the 3D software there are

three axis cuz there's three dimensions

there's the x axis which I can move it

by hitting the X key the y axis to move

it back and forth along the Y AIS with

the y key or the Zed axis to move it up

and down on the Zed axis so you can

remember those uh those letters the X Y

and Zed or the method that I actually

prefer to use is whilst you're in that g

state if you just hold down the middle

Mouse button and then pull out you can

see you get this like Gray Line that

pulls out from the center and then if

you just drag out and move around it

will snap it to the nearest axis which

again is maybe an odd way to work but

it's actually really handy because it

means you don't have to think of the the

letter and locate it on your keyboard I

can just tap G to move it and then

middle Mouse drag out and then just find

that exact axis that I'm looking for and

so it's very fast to just quickly move

the lamp exactly where I want it by the

way if you're finding it hard to

remember all of the keyboard shortcuts

that I've mentioned I've actually put

together a PDF a cheat sheet of

blender's most common hotkeys and you

can download that by clicking the link

in the description so you could print it

out or you could just have it on a

separate monitor while you work also if

you are from another 3D software package

you might notice that blenders hotkeys

are different than what you are used to

so if you actually go to preferences

just for those people that are from

other softwares if you change the key

map to Industry compatible you'll find

that these shortcuts are probably more

in line with what you remember from

other software

I'll also put a link to a cheat sheet

that is just for the industry compatible

keymaps that somebody else put together

I've got nothing to do with it but I'll

put that link there so you can check it

out as well for the rest of this

tutorial series I'm going to use

blender's hotkeys just keep that in mind

now let's say as I am moving around here

I'm like oh this looks really good I've

got some nice Rembrant lighting across

the monkey's face I want to take a photo

I want to take a nice pretty image of

this and post it on socials for clout

right well I could take a screenshot

shot of it but that would be silly cuz

it's got all these lines all over it's

all noisy right we don't like it the way

you take a photo a pretty image in

letter is to do a render so you could do

that one or two ways by going up to

render and hitting render image or

remembering the hot key which says next

to it

F12 so when you do that a little window

will pop up it will use your CPU or GPU

depending on which renderer you've got

active and it will render out a pretty

image and from here you could go image

and then save as and that'll save it as

PNG or whatever wherever you want to

save it but you might notice looking at

this that this is actually a different

view than what we have here right so

here I've got a nice view of the

monkey's face but up there was a

different View and the reason for that

is when you do a render it's not

rendering from The View that you're

looking at currently it's always going

to render from the point of view of the

camera so this is our camera over here

and it's looking from this angle and we

can actually look through the camera by

just clicking the little camera icon

there or by remembering the hotkey which

is number pad Z

zero so how do we move the camera well

blender is a little awkward maybe a

little different to other software

packages but you're supposed to like hit

G to move it and then like middle Mouse

to zoom in and out and then if you want

to like move it along an axis I guess g

and then X you could do that but

actually what a lot of users prefer

especially those from other software

packages is if you've got your camera

selected which by the way I haven't

mentioned this but up here this is your

outliner it's kind of an inventory of

every item that you've got in your scene

okay so with the camera there selected

if I hit n n is to bring up the

properties n for properties for whatever

reason um and then go to view there's a

little box there that just says lock to

camera to view so now with that active

if I just use the same keyboard

shortcuts as before middle Mouse button

to orbit around shift middle Mouse to

drag it you can see that the camera is

moving with it so essentially the view I

can set it up exactly as I want then hit

n again and then I can disable that and

then now as I pull out you can see the

camera will stay exactly where it was

and I could do a lovely pretty render

but this is too simple if we post this

on the internet people are bound to make

fun of us imagine that well we could

give it some color right so with our

monkey head selected we can go over to

here to the properties so this

properties section is where you might

spend the other I don't know another

eight five to 8% I don't know getting

too exact there you might spend another

5% of your time in this section but it's

where all of the properties for things

are in blender so for example you've got

uh like the render properties like the

size of the image that you're saving

something as is defined there and some

of these properties will stay here um no

matter what is selected but others are

selection dependent so you can see

actually if I click the camera there you

can see I get a little camera tab at the

bottom there but if I select my monkey

you'll see the camera tab disappears but

instead I have some other ones that

appear so one that we might want to

change is underneath material and this

will enable us to add a

material change the color to something

else essentially so underneath here

where it's got new I'm just going to hit

new and then you've got a bunch of

options very conf o i subsurface again

don't worry about it we'll get to all of

that later on the one that defines the

color is is the base color so if I do a

single left click on that white box

there I can then change this color to

whatever I want I could uh make it an

odd creepy skin toned monkey head right

like that and do a rendom okay so hey

all right it's better but still it's too

simple I think people will think we

haven't put enough effort into this uh

Masterpiece so let's add another object

let's give the monkey a hat so if we

want to add another object how do we do

it well we could go to the add menu like

I mentioned before or the hotkey shift

a so what sort of hat do we want to add

we could do a boxy hat uh let's do a

party hat with a cone so once we've

added that object you can see it's just

plopped it straight in the center

intersecting our monkey so we need to

move it can move it and we could grab it

with the G key so it's now moving it

just on our cursor there I don't want to

move it just freehand though cuz I like

the position but I just want to move it

up so I'm going to hit Zed to move it

along the Zed axis right I like it there

so once I like the placement I'm just

going to do a single left click okay

great but too big oh so see need to

learn another tool which is scale so we

could go to the scale tool there and

then we get this familiar um little axes

there but again most people prefer to

remember the hotkey which for scale is

just s so s to scale so resizing that

okay that's pretty good let's move it

down again so G and Zed okay all right

but yeah let's say we want to make it a

little taller okay so we could scale it

along just the Z axis so s and then Zed

whoops s z there we go and it's now

making it a tall party hat scale it down

there we go ha look at that be a very

Bland party if it's gray though so let's

give it another material an exciting

color a vibrant uh

aqua color why not give that a render by

hitting F12 okay camera is in the wrong

position so let's go to camera view mode

with number pad zero I'm going to select

my camera and rather than dabbling with

that little thing I had before I'm going

to hit G and then middle Mouse just tap

it once as I said it's a little awkward

blend is um the way it handles with the

camera but anyway just uh move that out

and then uh I got to rotate it done all

right so I'm going to rotate so with the

camera selected tap r then middle Mouse

and it's now kind of like free hand

rotating around so I'll just uh move it

up slightly there we go okay this is

this is just a full around session so

don't worry if you're making mistakes

we'll get to actual practical building

stuff in the next part I'm just trying

to find ways to throw in these like

fundamental tools rotate right the

monkey's head is just he needs to look

dead on at the camera and currently he's

off ah what an excuse to use the rotate

tool so you could enable the rotate tool

right The Familiar axes there you could

click and rotate it around like that

again most people prefer to remember the

hotkey which is R to rotate right so

it's now just freehand rotating on my

cursor remember the uh the axis as I

mentioned before can be used for any

mode so uh the x axis will rotate it

back and forth the Y AIS tilt it or Zed

there we go to turn it towards the

camera just a little bit right and there

you go F12 and we've done it let's save

it let's upload it to Art station and

then just wait for the recruiters

essentially all right let's start a new

scene so that we can get ready for part

two where we're going to actually start

building our dut and learning some of

the more core features of blender now we

know how blender functions let's start

building that dut so as before let's uh

well first of all just to repeat make

sure you are working with a new scene

completely new scene don't want any

remaining monkey heads lying around

let's begin fresh slate and let's delete

our default Cube just with the delete

key and let's replace it with a new

object you might remember the hot key

for that is shift a and as I mentioned

before you usually want what is

underneath mesh CU these are your

Primitives so we want to start with

something that most resembles what it is

we're building you if it was a house you

might start with a cube if it was a far

as you might start with a cylinder in

our case we want the donut shaped one

although mathematicians call it a Taurus

for some reason so let's add that now if

I zoom in by scrolling up we can see we

have something resembling a doughnut

looks like a pretty weak looking

doughnut you know very flimsy looks like

the the doughnut before it's cooked when

they just drop it into the vat and it's

just this little wispy thing um so

immediately after you do some actions in

blender you have options to change it

and the options are hidden down here in

the bottom left hand corner you see a

little box and if you click that box you

see options and look we can change the

dimensions of our Taurus now something

to note is that these options in blender

only appear immediately after you have

done that action if you do another

action like say deselect your Taurus by

mistake it's gone right because blender

has assumed you have moved on you've

accepted the state of your donut and

this is the one you want right now if

you haven't done anything drastic or

changed this object in some severe way

you can temporarily bring it back by

hitting F9 I never actually remember

that hotkey I just remember that

immediately after I have uh added an

object if I want to tweak it now's my

chance before I move on to something

else okay so we could change you know

the size of it here we can also change

the resolution I'll use the term

resolution Loosely um to uh to make it

higher or lower Fidelity and a mistake

that a lot of beginners make and I say

this because this was the exact mistake

I made way back in 2003 when I started

learning blender is they go well I need

a a realistic looking donut so I guess I

need to go really high resolution I

remember my first project one of my

first projects was for a high school

film project and I wanted to have a

closeup of a face didn't realize faces

were going to be difficult but but I

went really high poly and then it was

just an absolute nightmare to work with

so the problem the reason you don't want

this is that for startis things that a

high poly are very slow to render and

they're very hard to work with if you

want to tweak the shape of it but also

as you learn and you grow with 3D you'll

discover that it is a lot easier to add

resolution to something later on but is

very difficult to take it away if you've

already built it into it and you don't

need it so long way to say what we

actually want is to have as as few Poes

these are called poy uh as you can get

away with so I'm going to go with 32

major and 12 minor and don't worry that

it looks all Jagged because we will fix

that in a moment now the major and minor

this is really up to you but I find that

something that looks uh looks kind of

chunky like a fat dut just looks really

delicious so I'm going with something

around about this size okay and once I'm

happy with this once I'm ready to click

off I click off the options are gone and

this is it this is the dut that I am now

working with so how do we make this look

higher resolution less Jagged well one

way is to use smooth shading so if you

rightclick with your object selected go

to shade

smooth and look at that this is

immediately better without getting too

technical this is kind of a fakery it's

sort of like the Shader is telling the

renderer that this is a really high poly

dense mesh when it really isn't it's

just basically kind of like averaging

out uh V uh faces and anyway it's very

technical but basically means it's not

going to add anything to your render

time but it's going to look smoother and

so this is generally what you want for

something that is smooth and and organic

looking like we want if you were

rendering like architectural or like

hard surfaces like later on we're going

to put this on a counter then the object

would obviously want to be flat but in

our case we're just going to use shade

smooth but you might notice that looking

at this especially if you go side on

that you've got this sort of uh Jagged

shape around here right so the

silhouette is really breaking that

illusion that this is a high poly or a

smooth looking donut but thankfully

rather than adding all of that complex

density into the mesh itself and then

making it hard to remove later on there

is another way through modifiers so if

we go over here to our properties right

this very confusing lots of option

looking properties click on the rent and

this is the section called modifiers and

this is one of those uh object

dependent uh thing so if you've got your

camera selected you won't see it so it's

only when you've got actual meshes that

you might see uh this uh this modifier

here so it's much easier to explain if

we just add one so up here add modify

and you got a range of options here that

can do a whole number of things the one

that we're looking for is underneath

generate and it is called subdivision

surface and it is a really common

modifier that you use all the time in

fact it's so common it's actually you

can just immediately add it to any

object just by hitting control one but

don't do that cuz we've already got it

so there now some of you might have just

discovered that your donut has

disappeared if that is the case you need

to go to edit preferences and then

underneath viewport where it's got

subdivision at the very bottom disable

GPU subdivision that will then make the

subdivision perform on your CPU instead

instead of your GPU which which is maybe

non-existent or not performing whatever

um but disable that and it should appear

but if it's already working for you

don't disable it keep it going CU GPU

will be faster so what exactly is this

doing well it's a lot easier to explain

if we look at the shade flat mode

because we're not being uh tricked by

the the smooth shading there um if I set

this levels viewport to zero this is our

original mesh this is before we add the

subsurface essentially when we increase

this you can see that it is adding

resolution to our mesh and the more I

increase this viewport levels here uh

the finer and finer that detail becomes

so to explain it because this is such a

very very common uh modifier it's kind

of important to understand how it's

working you can see that uh this is uh

these squares here these are called

Faces by the way and for each one of

these faces here as I add a level you

can see it's becoming four faces right

and then now now if I zoomed in on this

one one face here if I do another level

that's now become four faces and then if

I zoom in again it's now become four

faces so it's exponentially adding

detail and you might also know that it

is smoothing it out as well like this

Jagged Edge that we've got here you can

see now becomes smoother so to quickly

visualize that if I just draw like

imagine you've got like a 90° uh corner

right like this if you add a Subs surf

modifier what it's going to do is it's

going to add uh a point here right

because this is uh the extra detail it's

also going to take that point there and

it's going to average it out it's going

to average it out between these points

and it's going to create another one

there and another one there so you go

then from having that really hard corner

there to having something that looks a

lot smoother so it's going to take a

point and it's also going to uh change

it to make it look smoother generally

speaking so there we go um so now as I

increase this you can see it's getting

uh smoother and smoother now the reason

there are two options here you've got

levels viewport and levels render so

reminder this gray area that we operate

in is called our viewport the render is

the pretty version so as an example um

you can see if I just turned it off for

the viewport it looks very Jagged but

then for my render if I increase that to

three if I do my render which you could

go up there F uh and render image or

remember the hotkey F12 you can see that

that Don note is now smooth but I go

back and you can see it's Jagged so the

viewport you want to generally keep it

lightweight and then the render time

that's where you want to get uh a really

nice looking pretty image so you want to

often have two different levels um in

our case though I don't really think we

need to go beyond one even for our final

pretty image um because this with uh

shade smoothing turned on is good enough

and we're going to be adding more to the

scene later on so we don't want to make

it too complex so this is actually

pretty good okay so we have a perfect

dut and that's the problem it's too

perfect you could spend decades trying

to develop a machine in the real world

that make it that made a donut this

perfect and you never would this is so

mathematically precise that the eye will

always see this as looking fake so

that's actually a problem you learn

pretty quickly in 3D that things that

are too perfect just look fake so you

have to spend time making things look

misshapen and adding variation there

like you see in the real world because

your eye expects to see it

so how do we do that how do we make this

doughnut look a little more lumpy and

interesting I do that by changing the

mesh itself so this mode that we are in

right now where we can uh you know click

on different objects is called object

mode and I know that because in the top

leftand corner you can see we are in

object mode but if I click the drop down

you can see I get a number of other

options here and these options again

will change depending on the object

you've got selected if I've got a lamp

my little light there select did you can

see I've only got object mode my camera

I've only got object mode but a mesh

will give you extra options here so

let's enter into edit mode

ooh right now you can see our mesh our

sorry our object has become something

that looks weird it's got a bunch of uh

little points on it with lines and very

technical well that's because this is

actually what the mesh is made up of

these little points here which you can

click on just by selecting are called

your for vertices the singular term is

called vertex I never say that I like to

just call all of them vertices

regardless whether it's one or two just

because you always get some comments

that go um actually it's called vertex

if it is singular anyway so these are

called your vertices and if you have two

of them joined by a line that is called

an edge and if you have four of them

forming uh a face then it's called a

face

so with these I can quickly change the

shape of my object by using the same hot

Keys as before and if I want to move

this then I would simply tap G right and

you can see it's now attached to my

cursor and then if I want to confirm its

movement I just do a single left click

and there it is now if I go back into

object

mode like that you can see that my mesh

has changed okay and by the way the hot

key for jumping in and out of object and

edit mode is Just Tab okay so you can

see it's just toggling between those two

modes because it's so common that you

want to just quickly change things that

it's just uh easily accessible by that

now this is okay right but you can see

it's like it's got like some artifacting

it's like it's not the greatest lump

right so how do we make it look a little

more uh natural well I mean you could

you know you move one drag it out Okay

click and then I move oh the next one

next to it right I'll move that out and

then I'll move this one out a little bit

and then and then I move this one and

it's like okay well now I've got the

thing but it took me like five actions

ridiculous right no one wants to do that

no one's got time for that thankfully

there is a tool in blunder uh just for

this and it's called proportional

editing and you can enable it up there

in your toolbar so if you enable that

now if I hit G and I move it out you

will see I get a little ring around my

cursor there and that is now changing uh

the mesh around it

now a lot of people in my previous

tutorials were like I don't see what's

what's going on you have to have

something selected first and then when

you hit G you will see uh that uh that

little circle of influence okay now this

circle of influence if I scroll down

sorry if I scroll up you can see it's

shrinking its circle of influence and if

I scroll down it is expanding its

influence so it's only going to affect

what is in that uh that ring there okay

if you are on uh yeah if you don't have

a mouse with a scroll wheel you can also

change the influence by using page up

and page down and if you don't have page

up or page down because you're on a Mac

keyboard then what you would have to do

is go to keymap and then change your

page up and page down to something else

just so that you could get around that

but guys you got to get a mouse get a

mouse with a scroll wheel I think the I

don't know 50 cents or just in the

nearest landfill somewhere get a mouse

cuz it's going to make uh your life in

3D a lot easier okay so with this I can

now uh make quick work of uh of lumpy

shapes okay so I just drag that out okay

I've got a little lumpy shape there

maybe I go down here and I pull this up

just by hitting G moving it up okay so

already this is looking a little more

natural right cuz even if we were making

a stylized world for a Pixar movie or

something like that you can't have just

a a a spherical looking donut sorry

spherical r s looking circular donut cuz

it just your eye will see it as fake so

very quickly I'm able to add a little

bit of variation to the dut um just all

around it just a little bit over here

and you can see that I am uh just

changing my circle of influence

depending on what size of a a lump I

want to make so if I just want to make

like a little bit that sticks out I can

make a small circle just by scrolling up

like that um you just want to do that

until you get something that

looks a a little more natural I might

want to make the the inner part as well

maybe just drag that in with a smaller

Circle and that's pretty good let's just

have a look from the top I might

actually just drag that out make it a

little bit more like

that but there you go that's pretty good

for a donut it's still kind of simple

it's not too detailed um but it's got

just enough variation in it that uh it's

more interesting to look at oh one more

thing forgot to mention go back into do

edit mode with tab um Donuts when

they're sitting in the uh little vat

thing right uh they're only like half

submerged so then they have to be

flipped uh but it means that the bit

that's nearest to the surface is getting

less heat so essentially what I'm saying

is the bit that's around the the dut the

the circumference of it is usually a

little bit flatter so Donuts aren't like

perfectly round all the way around they

usually a little bit flatter so what I

want to do is I want to select these

vertices along here and then I want to

shrink them now I could go around one by

one like this which is actually what I

used to do when I was uh learning

blender pre YouTube days and there was

uh no tutorials what I would I would do

this if I wanted to select this silly

because there's a a a a function a tool

for that and it is Edge select so if you

hold down alt on your keyboard and then

do a single left click on not the points

but on the edge right this little line

here you can see it's selected all the

way around so it's anything that's

connected along that line is now

selected so if I want to shrink this

right what would I do well I mean yeah

you could like move it around right we

want to shrink it we want to change the

scale of it so we would change we would

use the hotkey S for scale so s and I'm

going to scale that in and I actually

don't want proportional editing so I'm

going to turn that off and now scale in

and just make it a little bit flatter

and there you go see it just feels a

little bit more natural doesn't it looks

a little bit closer to what a doughnut

looks like and by the way don't worry if

yours doesn't look exactly like this

like your lump is a little bit off like

some people get a little bit too

precious with the g2 I got to match

exactly everything I do like I'm just

working on the fly as well so just make

what you think looks good maybe you

think this is not misshapen enough and

you want to add more go for it because

it might actually turn out better than

what mine is now before we move to the

next part um how to save how to save

blender very very easy you just go save

as and you just get one file it's called

blend um very literal file extension

really pushing the limits of what a file

extension can be that's almost a word

blender anyway um do blend and that's it

and then next time you open it up it's

exactly like it it's not like zbrush

where you got like four or five

different ways to save a project or an

object or a tool or a hate zbrush okay

um that's how you save now also finally

I will say uh if you need help because I

know if you if you're stuck and then you

leave a a YouTube comment you might not

get a reply uh if you want immediate

help I've got a Discord so I'll put the

link uh below so there's like a little

channel in there where you can just ask

for specific uh donut help so if you're

having issues uh feel free to jump into

that and also guys don't beat yourself

up like 3D is definitely a uh has like a

steepish learning curve so you're in

that that steep slope right now and it's

it's really common like a lot of this

stuff is very foreign 3D is very unique

it's very different to a lot of 2D tools

um but don't give up like it's it's

definitely achievable to learn and

self-learn at home you don't have to go

to school you don't have to pay for a

tutor um it's really easy to uh to get

help online nowadays so do make use of

that Discord um post uh comments as well

in the YouTube comment if you want to um

but I hope hope you stay with it so if

you're ready to jump to the next part

after you've saved your blend file go

ahead click here and I will see you

there did you guys know that blender 4.0

had a change that makes it more

realistic by default or that there's a

new technology that is going to expand

the uses for 3D

exponentially well you would if you were

on my free newsletter called this week

in 3D it's an email from me once a week

with three to five things that I found

interesting that week from the world of

3D so sometimes I share a new tool that

I found a remarkable tutorial a new

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affects the industry and sometimes I

just give my controversial opinions on

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will stay up toate on the world of 3D

it's always free and it's always written

by me now on to the tutorial welcome

back to the donut show where we make sad

little Donuts that we cannot eat this is

where we finished up at the end of part

one we've got our nice looking donut and

now we're going to make that ice ing

which looks complex but is actually

fairly simple now as I mentioned before

if you want to add an object you go

shift a right and then you start with

something that resembles what you're

trying to create but we already have

something that resembles the exact shape

we want to create it's the donut because

we want the icing around the dut so

let's just reuse this information so we

can do that by duplicating the object um

and if you don't know the hotkey for it

you could just go object and then you'd

find it uh here where it says shift d so

shift d

now when you hit that you are in a

placement State essentially like it's

duplicated and it's now saying where do

you want to place it now in our case and

actually often you don't actually want

to change its placement you want to

duplicate it exactly where it was so you

can cancel the movement by hitting

Escape or right clicking now when you do

that it looks like it's canceled the

duplication but you can see in your

outliner it has duplicated it you've got

two objects but um it's just in the

exact same place which is what we want

so first thing first um we need to name

them or else we could get very confused

very easily so you can name an object by

just double clicking it in the outliner

and then just typing in the object the

other way you can name something I'll

just show you the second way uh if you

select the

taurus1 that's your icing object if

you're in the 3D view where your cursor

sorry is over the 3D view Port if you

hit F2 that's another very quick way

that you can uh name something without

having to go out up to the outliner to

find your object so with our icing

object selected let's go into edit mode

by hitting tab so we want the icing on

the top which means this bottom half of

our mesh here is redundant don't need it

so we want to delete it so if we just

dragged over the bottom here you can see

it looks like we've selected the bottom

half of our donut but if you were to

move around you would see oh we haven't

actually it's only selected annoyingly

uh what is facing the camera where

there's a mesh it's not gone through the

mesh a lot of users find this annoying I

agree sometimes it's seems like that

would be the more default one that would

make more sense but anyway don't want to

argue um so if you want to select

through a mesh you can go up to here in

your your top navigation toggle x-ray if

you turn that on it's going to enable

you to see through the mesh and now when

I drag over it you can see that I have

uh selected all through the mesh as I

move around it by the way you might find

it like when you're in this state it's

kind of hard to select like it's easy to

kind of accidentally select what is

above it and depending on what you've

got at your end that might have happened

um already so another way to easily just

look directly on the side on of your uh

donut is to just click one of these um

like in your Gizmo here instead of just

dragging around just do a single click

on either the green one or the red one

the x or the Y and now we're in that

state you can see it's it's flattened it

so it's put you in orthographic mode

which actually you can toggle to at any

time just over there which just makes it

easier to just do a single all the way

through the mesh um select all right

okay all right so we want to delete that

so just hit the delete key you get an

extra option here of what do you want to

delete edges faces you want the vertices

that's everything and now we have if we

go back to uh object mode and then let's

turn off toggle x-ray as well and you

can see it's uh it's working we got half

the the dut on top of itself but as you

move around you can see you got some

flickering now this flickering happens

and it's actually a very common it's

actually a good warning sign to you as

an artist because it means you've got uh

faces on top of faces and the 3D

software doesn't know which face it

wants to render right so it's like

sometimes saying it's the the front

phase no the back phase the front phase

and there's no understanding sometimes

you can actually spot it in TV shows and

like VFX or like lowbudget stuff you can

see something flickering in the

background and I'm like ooh there it is

Z fighting um that's what it's called Z

Z fighting or Zed fighting if you're not

American so what we want to do is we

want to give a thickness to our icing so

we can do that with a solidifier

modifier so adding another modifier make

sure you've got your icing selected not

your donut and then here where you've

got add modifier we're going to go

generate solidify okay now it's made it

worse it's uh it's actually added a

thickness to our uh mesh there but it's

actually done it the the wrong way so

it's with the normals yeah what is it

it's trying to put the uh the extra bit

inside the donut so we can change that

by just changing the offset here in the

solidifier settings just drag that all

the way to one some of you might have

actually found that it was correct

before just depending on which way your

normals were if that's the case keep it

at minus one but everyone else keep it

at one we just want to make sure it's

actually outside okay um I also let's

just increase the thickness a little bit

too let's go here

0.25 that looks pretty good and uh great

we've got what looks like a yarma on our

donut a perfectly straight edge little

hat for our donut so let's make this

look more like icing so the edge is wavy

all the way around so to do this this is

where we get into the fancy oo finger

magic um cuz you're typing lots of keys

anyway um

go into edit mode and we can see

straight away that we can't see uh the

mesh and that's because the solidify

modify is obstructing our view so these

little boxes here as I mentioned before

like this is to hide it from viewport um

but if you want to just hide it from

your edit mode which is the state that

we are in right now the box next to it

is the one that you uh uncheck which

means in object mode when you're tabbed

in object mode you can still see it but

edit mode it's uh whoops it's

temporarily hidden for you so if I was

to select one of these points here and

move it down you can see that uh it's

it's working but it would be again a lot

of effort to go round and round and do

these one by one so we want to use that

uh old familiar proportional falloff

tool again so proportional editing on

and now as I move it down let's just uh

let's just lower the slide away down

here and then let's pull this down okay

now we'll find issues if we move to the

side here we can see the first issue

we've discovered is is that this is

separating from our mesh here and that's

not what icing does when it dribbles

down it follows the shape of the donut

all the way down so what we want to do

is snap oops undo it a number of times

snap the uh snap the vertices to our

donut underneath it right so for that we

need to turn on snapping up here okay

now there are a number of ways to snap

in blender the default way is increment

which just means the uh like the grid

floor there like if you were to just

like move it around you can see it's

just snapping to the grid floor not

helpful but we want to snap it to the

face and now with face snapping enabled

if we move this down we can see let's

just look here that the bottom bit is

snapping to the face but as you might

have seen the top bits the rest of uh

essentially what is inside of our circle

of influence with this proportional

editing that's not being a affected only

the little point that we had selected

was affected so that's not what we want

either normally that would be enough but

in this particular case we want to also

snap individual elements too and let's

go face project now when we pull this

down you should see that these are also

no longer clipping through the dut but

still we have issues why is that well it

is actually working correctly we can see

these are not going through the mesh so

why does it look like it is the reason

for that is that there's actually just

not enough information here so if we go

side on you can see right like we've got

this point uh here and then we've got

another Point down here and then we've

got this long stretch uh in between

right so that means that this part of

the Donut oh gosh that goes that goes

around like that is just not there's

nothing to snap it to essentially so

what we need to do to fix this is just

add more geometry so these little

vertices here we need more of those

vertices so we can do that by actually

using the subdivision surface modifier

because although it is a modifier you

can apply the modifier and the modifier

currently is adding geometry so let's

just apply it so to apply it we just

click this little drop down here next to

the modifier and then go apply now if we

I mean nothing should have changed from

this view because the same information

is being displayed but in edit mode you

should now see exponentially more faces

cuz here where there was uh you know one

face before you can see there's now a

lot more right four 4X okay 4X um okay

so now if we pull down we should see it

is snapping and if we go into this mode

you can see that it's now conforming to

the mesh in a much more uh snug way cuz

there's information there for it to use

now this shading artifact here that we

can see this this don't worry about that

we'll fix that in just a moment but uh I

need to show cuz I've shown you like

four things that we need to enable for

this to work I got to show you one more

uh because if I pull down and if I

scroll up you'll see something okay if I

was to click we get this horrible uh

problem here and I've done this tutorial

enough and enough people have hit this

issue that I need to call it out

specifically because it seems to be a

big point that a lot of people just

don't know where to go from um what's

happened is if we use a uh this uh

what's it called the the the the circle

of influence for our proportional

editing if that is so high it's actually

high enough to reach the mesh on the

other side of the donut and then because

we've got snapping it's now projecting

that snapping it to the front which is

creating this like something that's a

nightmare to fix I me in fact easy to to

start from scratch than to try to fix

that so if we want sorry there's a lot

of noise uh to fix this we need to hide

the part of the mesh that we don't want

to be uh influenced by our uh

proportional tool right so to do that

there is an easy way to do it uh we can

actually do it very precisely so if with

this middle bit of our donut here if I

just hold down alt and then do a left

click as I mentioned before that selects

the ring okay and we could you know we

could do that all the way up but

actually there's a little uh I don't

know if it's an Easter egg it's kind of

a cool tool that not people know not

many people know about Control Plus H

that will enable the select more tool

and if you use control+ contrl minus

goes the other way you can see that it's

expanding out so Control Plus will just

like select the next verticy along a

chain roughly speaking um and you can

see we can very quickly select all the

parts of the mesh that we don't need

right very cool by the way if Control

Plus doesn't work for you cuz you're on

a laptop or something else select more

less you can also do it here anyways to

hide this part of the mesh it's h h for

hide so when you're in this state it

looks as though it's been deleted it's

very sometimes you don't know where part

of your mesh and then you forgot that

you've got hide turned on um if parts of

your mesh are hidden and you want to

bring it back it's alt H so H to hide

and then alt H to bring it back or if

you can't remember it for whatever

reason you can also find it okay it's

underneath mesh there we go mesh uh

reveal h hidden or hide selected okay so

that's the other way but you can get my

keyboard shortcut that it's in the link

it's free just use that and then you

won't forget a lot of these handy

shortcuts all right so now finally after

all that after four different ways of

and problems to explain we can now take

part of this mesh and drag it down and

it will work correctly haha so now we

just make we get to now finally be an

artist and go like what sort of uh you

know Edge or you know what sort of icing

do I want to make this look like so what

I'm doing here by the way is I'm I'm

hitting G to pull it down and then I'm

just middle click single middle click

and then because my cursor is closest to

the Zed axis it's now snapping it to the

Zed axis so that's why I mentioned

before that it's uh it's really handy

you don't have to think of the letter

and type it in you just go in the

general direction you want to go and

then just tap the middle click of the uh

which is your your scroll wheel right

middle middle click it's such a weird uh

button that you have to call it out it's

the scroll wheel button because like no

other application seems to use it

besides scrolling but blender is like no

we're going to use it for like 90% of

the operations is going to be middle

click um but anyways I as you can see

I'm not paying particularly too much

attention to it but I'm just making a

wavy looking shape around it um you

might also want to make some bits that

go the opposite direction right and then

maybe pull so you've got like big shapes

as well as medium shapes and some small

shapes big medium small it's the uh it's

the recipe for appealing design big

medium and small details but uh I

digress by the way I should mention if

you're stuck don't feel bad cuz there

was certainly a lot of uh a lot of

finickiness going on with this dut here

and uh it's yeah it's a we're definitely

in the Steep part of that curve at the

moment uh do make use of my Discord if

you are stuck I created it literally so

that people could get instantaneous help

I don't have any other benefit for it so

it's there so that you can find help

link is in the description and there's a

donut help chat room where you can post

screenshots of your problem and then

people can help each other out so do

make use of that now our shading issue

here this darkened Edge is actually

going to fix itself by fixing another

issue so it's a two birds one solution

kind of problem uh this 90° edge here

for this icing not ideal uh everybody

knows that a real icing would create

like a rounded Edge there right so we

can fix that just by adding another

subsurf modifier because you might

remember I mentioned like yes if you've

got three vertices it'll create like

another verticy here and another verticy

here but it'll also like round it out

it'll pull this one back so you end up

with a rounded corner so right here in

your modifier stack we're going to go

add modify generate subdivision surface

now the order of these does matter okay

you want your solidifier at the top and

the subdivision after it so blender

Works top to bottom and it's important

in this way because you want the

Extrusion to happen first and then in

order to round that edge it happens has

to happen as a secondary step so

solidify on top subdivision underneath

now whilst we're here and we're looking

at the uh the closeup nice little

profile of this edge of this icing

another issue to call it you can see

it's got this uh this shape that goes

around yes so far so good but then it

goes up and it's like M it would be

better if it went around and then tucked

in and touch the edge of it cuz that

would look more like real liquid wood so

we can solve that by just changing one

of the settings in the solidify modify

it's not one of those things that you

would figure out or know where it is

it's just over time you learn where some

of these settings are but essentially

here the edge data so we want to change

the edge data to say that uh before you

do the solidify step add a crease on the

inner part right here if we increase

this all the way to one it now creates a

sharpened Edge just on that inner part

there so the rest of it is a smoothed

Edge but the middle one there's a crease

so it's making a sharp edge there and it

just gives it just a little bit more

realism just looks a little bit closer

to what you would imagine real icing

would do okay now for the cool bit all

right so if you look at reference of

donuts right yes you've got these little

wavy bits but where the the icing is

really liquidy it'll often break off

from this uh wave here and it'll create

a trail that goes down uh underneath the

donut right it just sort of drips all

the way down whoops bump the microphone

so we can do that um but not what we the

way we were doing it before if we just

took one of these points and then like

dragged it all the way down like that

there wouldn't be enough information

there right you can see you just get

this like stretched look and it doesn't

look great okay

so essentially we need to give it more

information and we couldn't just do it

by like adding more and more Subdivision

Services we need to actually like break

this shape here and create a new shape

that goes down so we need to extrude so

if I select this verticy and then the

one next up by holding down shift I

don't think I mentioned it but yeah if

you want to select two things at once

it's shift select um anyways so if we

select two vertices like that we want to

extrude it downward by hitting e so when

you tap e it's similar to G and that

you're in a placement State now saying

where do you want to place this so I'm

going to move it down to yeah like about

there where I want the trail to stop and

I'm just going to do click left click

and it's now placed it there now if I

it's hard to see it but if I just switch

to y-frame you can see what it's doing

so it's created this breakaway shape

here an entirely new face um that's

completely separate to what we've got

there

currently and what this means is if we

go to object mode you can see it's it's

not just like continuing this form here

it's pulled it Down Right which is uh

exactly what we want and in fact I want

it to go even further than that so I'm

going to select those two vertices and

I'm going to pull it down again um and

then I'll do it again and the reason

I've done this 1 two 3 is that this

detail here is important so that it

conforms to the shape of the dut because

if there's not enough you're going to

have that clipping issue that I showed

you earlier so that's pretty good and

now we're going to do it again

originally in my earli

version versions of the donut I only did

like one of these but then I noticed

that that in the render the final render

it's often the most interesting part of

the dut so now I'm thinking yeah just do

it all the way around the dut just uh

add the bit that looks cool add more of

that so here so wherever there's

essentially like a big dip is what I'm

looking for like where the the liquid

would sort of build up and then like the

surface tension there would be just too

much and then it would break away

and it would go

down down underneath like that and we'll

do another one here why

not like that and down and down and

that's pretty good ha lovely so that

concludes finally this this heavy part

of the tutorial so if you ready to watch

the next part I hope you're not giving

up you can click there on the screen and

I'll see you there make sure you hit sub

subscribe as well if you haven't uh a

large number of you don't but if you

want to see more Blended

tutorials that's what you need to do

self-promotion right there thanks guys

see you in the next part congrats you

didn't give up you made it to part four

you clicked on the next part of the

video there's always like less viewers

each uh video as you go down so you're

here well done thumbs up um as you can

tell by the title of this video we're

going to learn about sculpting but first

I should call out uh if you have a

problem with your mesh now those

problems can be Amplified the further

you go along so it helps to do a

technical check now to make sure you

don't have any problems before we move

along so to look for it go into edit

mode um and first of all by the way if

you can't see that middle party of mesh

it's because you remember we temporarily

hit it so you can bring it back by

hitting alt H and that will uh bring

back the rest of the mesh and then we're

looking for issues with the mesh like

right here so this is a really common

problem following this tutorial because

when you're projecting parts of the mesh

if it was like side onto the camera it

will project it that way and then you

can have like overlapping parts of the

mesh so that creates this artifact here

which will be exaggerated when we add

more detail to it so we just want to

drag that back so turn on uh snapping

and I'll keep proportional turned off

and then I'm just going to move this

back over here just to move each of

these points back um another very common

problem is you might have parts that

have separated uh from your mesh now you

can quickly fix this if you just like

selected the point and then t h sorry

hit G to move it when you're in that

state it's also snapping it to the mesh

now you could do that all the way along

like select tap G then click select tap

G then click but that's anybody's got

time for that let's make blend to do the

work for us so there's a tool that's

just designed for this and it's called

the shrink wrap modifier so over to our

trusty modifier stack we're going to add

yet another modifier so add modifier

it's not under generate it's under

deform which we haven't accessed before

new modifiers oo the one we're looking

for is shrink wrap and first of all

hasn't done anything because uh it's for

it needs to know what the target is what

is the mesh that we're shrink wrapping

our um mesh to so with this little

eyedropper tool you can see when you've

clicked it my curs has changed to an ey

dropper and it now if I hover over

objects I got the name of it so I want

to click on the object that is the donut

and now it's snapped to the donut and

made it worse why Andrew would you make

us do that remember the order of your

modifier stack matters so the reason

this happened is because we've done it

after the solidy so it works top to

bottom we want the strink wrap to happen

before any of the Extrusion happens so

now that it's there it's correct and

this is what it looks like before and

this is after and it's subtle right and

you'll probably see this across your

mesh like little subtle changes where

maybe it just separated off the mesh it

which wasn't quite a perfect alignment

but this will just correct that so great

we don't need this here now we can just

apply it cuz it was just a once-off

operation and now all our mesh should be

perfectly flat and assuming you haven't

got any other issues going on uh again

make sure you use my Discord if you do

have issues and you need someone to help

um make use of the community so use that

and post your problem and I'm sure

people can help out all right so we want

to do some sculpting now why do we want

to sculpt well because if you look at

reference photos of um donuts with icing

on them you'll see that icing is

obviously a liquid and liquid does weird

things one of the weird things that it

does is that it will pull in certain

areas it's not like a uniform amount all

the way on it so the most obvious being

like at the end of this Trail here there

would be more that would accumulate at

the end there and I think the reason for

it is that because it's a viscous fluid

once it runs out of enough fluid there's

not enough to kind of push it forward

but there's enough for it to build up so

you would have a buildup here on each of

these ends but you would also have

buildups all along the edge and you can

see it in reference photos like here

we've got this like clear um was it like

a glaze and basically the areas there

where it looks whiter that's a thickened

area so we essentially want to replicate

that across our donut so we can't do

that currently like if you go into edit

mode we don't have any mesh to work with

cuz the Extrusion the thickened part is

happening via this modifier so we need

to make the modifier real so again we're

just going to apply it drop down apply

now in edit mode we have that part of

the mesh to work with so um we could if

you wanted to come in here and like

select the points that you want to add

you know a bulge to and then very

carefully come in and tap G and then oh

I've got snapping turned on turn that

off uh pull this out right and go like

that and go yep there's a little bulge

there but that's very tedious to First

select a point then tap key to move it

it's it's very tedious so that's really

like you just need to use another tool

to do the job so edit mode is one tool

and it's it's it's good for like very

precise things when you need to get

precise things but for more like organic

shapes more freehand stuff that's where

sculpting comes in So at the top here

we've just been flipping between object

and edit mode but the one underneath it

is sculpt mode so when we go into that

mode you'll see that we have on the left

hand side all of these tools that appear

and and I mean this isn't a sculpting

like tutorial really um we're just

really going to scratch the surface but

they do different things um different

sculpting things like let's just use the

default tool here can't really see much

happening let's just turn up the

strength and the size of it like it just

pulls out that part of it and even that

quick little one stroke imagine if you

had to select each of those points and

pull them out one by like that's why

this tool is the appropriate tool for

this kind of job right cuz it's a very

quick quickly can enable us to add lots

of complex shape very cool so uh the

tool that we're looking for is actually

it's this one the inflate brush which is

just uh conveniently the eye hotkey

inflate by the way uh if you want to

change the size of brushes in uh blender

I mean you've got these ones here you've

also got the strength slider here but

there is a hot key uh just to change the

size of the brush with f so F to change

the the size of the brush um and you

just pull pull out with your cursor to

make it bigger and then pull in to uh

reduce it and then do a single left

click to confirm you can also change the

strength with shift F so shift F pull

out click and then shift F pull in click

um anyways so if I was to uh draw on

this you can see that I'm inflating that

edge I can also inflate here but you

very quickly realize like look at that

look at that what is that right the eye

is going to see that um it's a pro tip

your eye is uh like if you're going low

res don't go low res for things that are

round because your eye is very quickly

going to spot uh low poly things

actually just last night I was playing

uh Spider-Man the Miles Morales one and

uh there was like this coffee cup that

was on a table and then you walk and it

looks fine like as a a background asset

but then part of it the mission you had

to go up and read something on the table

and you had to get close to this coffee

top uh coffee cup and it was like eight

vertices it just looked like a almost

looked like a nut on a wheel of a car

right just like that Jagged so anyways

what I'm saying is this is a rounded

form so we need more information we need

more detail uh to sculpt on the reason

this is Jagged and the reason there's

not enough detail here is that just even

though we have a sub surf modifier a

subdivision modifier um it's applying it

after we do the sculpt mode so when

you're in sculpt mode it's still just

using your uh your raw mesh here and

then it does this as a secondary step so

if we want to sculpt into this detail we

need to apply this so um I actually I'm

going to use more than one I'm going to

use two CU I want to have even more

detail so um importantly by the way if

you're applying a subdivision modify

even though you've got two levels here

it will always use just the viewport so

your render amount here could be

whatever but when you hit apply it's

just going to apply whatever is in the

viewport so I'm going to go two levels

and hit apply now look at this who

we have 16 times the detail because we

had uh level one which would be 4X a 4X

uh multiply and then 4X of 4X 16 so we

have 16 times the vertices to play with

so now when we go into sculpt mode look

at it now when we sculpt look at that so

much more room to work with um and much

more fun so now that I'm in that state

I'm going to just do little circles with

this brush

on each of these points here and the

reason I'm doing like little circles

like this is that uh by default the

stroke state is H what is it space um

you can switch it to airbrush if you

want and then you can just click and

hold it there but I find that to

actually be like harder to control so I

just keep it in space mode and then just

do like little circles and then that

enables you to just kind of continue add

adding more pressure as you move your

mouse so a little circle like that and

there you go very quickly already we

have a more

interesting uh looking shape across it

so another brush another tool I guess

you call is it a brush or I think these

technically are called brushes but

anyways another one that you use all the

time is grab um and conveniently it's

the hotkey G and what this does is just

like pushing clay with your finger it's

like it's really cool and the reason I'm

doing this is I'm actually just uh EX

exaggerating uh the design um because

that is what makes appealing design it's

exaggerating uh the addition and

subtraction that you see in a in a shape

even though in the real world you might

not see this like tapered thing like

that um because it's got this bulbous

end you want to draw more attention to

that kind of globule at the end there um

and to do that yeah if you just make

this a little bit tapered using this

tool it can do that and we get to learn

about a new tool and blender which is

the whole point of this tutorial so yeah

all right pull this around pull this

around just click and dragging click and

drag I could change the shape size of

the brush with f and um you've got more

time than me so maybe make this better

than what I'm doing really quickly but

just get you know generally a shape like

that and it should look a little nicer

okay so now let's do that uh raised Edge

all the way around the rim of this now

in previous version of this tutorial I

said just use the inflate brush and then

just like draw across it the problem

with this is that this is so imprecise

and you can accidentally like draw over

another bit and then you look at it side

on and you get these like noticeable

like divots across the donut and it's

not very uh it's very hard to do cuz you

keep like accidentally clicking off it

and then on it and you get this like

Jagged like dig dig dig dig dig it's not

very appealing the point is uh so let's

go back we can learn about another tool

it's a it's another excuse to learn

about another tool and that tool is

called The Mask tool so it's actually in

the list here but I never remember what

it is it's just hit M M for mask and

it's this one and what this enables you

to do is uh if you just draw on it you

get this gray uh uh shape right and then

when you're using another tool like say

you switch to the inflate brush now and

if you draw over this let me just

increase this yeah if you drew over this

you can see it's applying an inflation

to everything except the area that is

dark um and that's how you can create

like you know a skin lesion on a zombie

or something like that um so a mask is

very useful in sculpting used a lot and

we're going to use it in just this case

what we're going to do is mask out just

this area along the rim there and then

we're going to apply a constant inflate

value to just the area that we've masked

so first use the mask tool mask and it

doesn't really make sense to use like a

half opaque mask so we're going to set

the strength all the way to one and then

I'll use a brush size about here so

essentially where do I want the

inflation like do I want this much

inflation on the rim no probably

something about here and then I'm just

going to paint

a darkened value all the way across it I

just want to make sure that it's you

know fairly even doesn't have to be

completely perfect but fairly even

across it and I obviously don't want it

to be in this part because that you know

the liquid has flowed all the way down

and it's broken the trail and it's gone

down there so I don't want any raised

area there um and again I apologize if

this was like tedious but it's a it's

it's a way to learn blend a piece by

piece okay hey hey speaking of which um

I

forgot with the uh sculpt Tools in

blender for whatever reason it has

assumed by default that you might want

to sculpt on the other side of your mesh

so you can see I've got this smear here

um and that's because somewhere I was

painting over here I went through the

mesh and it painted on the other side of

the mesh over there very annoying so um

I can undo it it's just easier than like

repainting that whole thing and what you

want to do with your MK tool is

underneath brush set it to front faces

only and that means when you paint it

should mean that as you draw uh it will

it okay it could still happen just be

careful uh but it should happen less it

shouldn't happen like on the opposite

side of the same mesh anyways it should

happen less um by the way I didn't call

it out cuz it's not essential but if you

do ever want to isolate uh and only see

the selected object uh forward slash is

the isolation mode uh so forward slash

on the number pad or the actual normal

keyboard will pull you in and out of

that state anyway so now with the mousk

brush with front faces only enabled uh I

can paint along it and uh and it should

it should happen less

essentially all right um I don't know

what to say but this doesn't take long

once you've uh once you've set it

up and assuming you've got the strength

of one by the way you don't want to have

areas with like half opaque right cuz we

want to have a constant value across it

as we inflate it and we should get a

nice raised Edge that goes all the way

along the

donut okay great just clean it up if you

got any areas that look a little untiy a

little

unkempt

um yep awesome all right so as I

mentioned the mask will uh actually mask

out the area um so you can't paint on it

we obviously want to only paint on the

area that we mask so we want to invert

it by just hitting control I same hotkey

as Photoshop Etc and then obviously if

we went to the inflate brush and then we

just painted like yes we're only now

painting onto that area but it also

doesn't solve our problem of like

different values across it so we want to

apply a uniform inflation on just these

areas so there is a tool in the sculpt

tools

called where is it mesh

filter so I will be honest it's probably

the laziest implementation of a tool in

blender like mesh filters are not really

well documented you kind of have to just

learn how they work but unlike all these

other brushes here the way this one

works is it's applying a uniform value

to the entire mesh so it doesn't

actually matter where you click on the

mesh um it's going to apply it and it's

applying what is in the filter types

listed here so if I just click this is

the other thing I have to learn if I

drag to the right I'm inflating if I

drag to the left I'm deflating and sort

of subtracting the opposite direction um

you just kind of have to learn that

that's how this specific tool Works my

theory is by the way to go on a rent

zbrush's user experience and interface

is so Arcane so badly hodg Podge

together from ideas over the last two

decades they never had any thought in

the process they just lumped it all in

there and blender sculpting tools

competes with that so they're like hey

yeah the uh filter tools yeah they're

not the easiest to understand but at

least we're not

zbrush that's my uh that's my theory

it's my working Theory I'm going with

but anyways point is is now that we're

in this you could see we're applying a

uniform value to everything hoay for us

um I might also I'm going to set the

strength of this to 0.1 and that just

means that as I move the cursor it's

applying less of a value for the for the

movement so I can use smaller movements

the other thing though is this is a

little like it almost looks if we go

into object mode it looks like a tube

almost around the edge of it it's not

very nice um it basically the edge that

we've got here is too hard so we can

smooth out that edge by using mask

smooth mask okay now if we use the

inflate just towards to the right a

little

bit I'm just going to go with that let's

go object mode and see how that

looks that's pretty good I might

actually go just a little bit more just

exaggerate it slightly

more there we go great so yeah that's

roughly it now there's a little bit of

artifact in there cuz the the way the

mask works is it's kind of that

Feathering thing it's not very exact and

it's kind of got some values in between

it so we can smooth that out in scul

mode by first of all just clearing the

mask and then using the smooth tool um

um by default it's too high so just turn

it down and I'm just going to smooth

that edge and that'll just sort of clear

up some of this artifacting it's a

little too high for whatever reason the

smooth tool which also you can access at

any point when you're in sculpt mode

just by holding down shift and it'll

temporarily uh invoke the smooth tool

and uh it'll use the value that is on

the smooth tool so you'll be in this

mode and then you hold down shift and

it'll actually not bring use this value

but the value that's on the smooth tool

um again zbrush is the competitor so

some things are a little weird here

anyways um so it's a little too high

just turn it down and now we've got a

nice value and I'm just smoothing this

out to just clear up some of the

artifacting all the

way

around the

mesh B boop

boop and that's it lovely hey

if you've made it this far 3D is in the

cards it's for you because uh we've done

some fairly complex things so if you're

a beginner and you're just getting

started in blender congrats um because

it is a steep learning curve but you

have learned some very complex modeling

and uh some sculpting so congrats you've

made it this far why not continue on the

series click here to see the next video

and I will see you in that part this is

where we finished at the end of the last

part um and we are ready for some

materials before we continue do a check

over though because I looked inside my

dut and I saw

this which shouldn't be here obviously

so make sure you don't have any hidden

meshes that should definitely not be

there you've only got your camera you

donut you're icing and your light okay

okay so materials let's do some

materials

if we jumped into our render mode that

little uh button that I showed you on

the first part that takes you into

rendered View mode you can see we've got

a lamp and it's lighting our dut in a

very depressing cold gray so let's give

it a material down here the little

material Tab and then we're going to hit

new so just like before the one thing

we're going to change is the color let's

make it a nice pink color and that looks

pretty good the other value that you

typically want to change um for a lot of

objects is the roughness value so you

can see the further I go all the way to

the left hand side the more it becomes a

mirror so all the way at zero is

basically a mirror um and then all the

way to the right is your like most

porous object uh like a brick or

something like that basically something

that looks like it doesn't have a

reflection although everything does um

the roughness is uh is just merely

dissipating that reflection everywhere

so it appears as though it doesn't but

anyways so we're going to go with like a

point yeah three something like that

it's pretty good and then for the base

of our donut we're going to give it uh

another material and let's go with a

nice orangey yellow which we will change

later on so it won't matter anyway um

but that's good great look at us we've

got a dut by the way we'll add some

subsurface SSS later on uh to make this

look a little bit more milky but for now

this is good now we want to put our dut

onto a marble countertop so first of all

we need that countertop as a separate

object so shift a and the one we're

looking for is again under mesh and

we're going to go with a plane so a

plane is just a square um that's

literally made up of four vertices it's

the simplest object but the most

versatile that you use it all over the

place and I'm going to make this look a

little bit bigger so let's just scale

that out with s and then click okay so

we want to make our donut rest onto the

countertop so if I selected my donut

base and moved it up well there's a

problem right we need to have both of

these move together so if you want to

have one object basically attached to

another object while still being its own

separate object um you parent it so the

way we parent it is first of all you

select the object that you want to

follow the other object so the child um

and then you select the parent so

holding down shift I'm going to now

click on the donut base and then to

parent it's contrl p okay or again if at

any time you don't know what it is just

hit F3 for search and then we can just

type in parent now by the way with uh

with parent you get a number of options

here uh the one you actually want is

keep transform if you just do object it

means if you've ever moved the object

like off its base or whatever like that

it'll then like clear its position so

it's actually not the one you want most

of the time so it's keep transform now

that I've done that if you've done it in

the correct order you should be able to

select the base and then move it and the

icing should go with it if it doesn't it

means it's probably parented the other

way so again make sure the the object

you want to follow the other one is

selected first and then the parent is

selected last okay so now I'm going to

move that up along it Z axis so G and

then just a middle tap and pull it up

till it's resting on my counter haha

lovely now don't worry about this

looking like cartoonishly bad in terms

of realism I'm going to show you um a

button later on which is just going to

make this look phenomenally realistic um

that's going to be in some later Parts

uh but for now this is fine just whilst

we work and uh piece the scene together

so for our countertop here we need to

give it a new material and then

underneath the base color you can select

not just a color by clicking the the

color but the Little Dot next to it that

little yellow thing doesn't look like a

button it is if you click that you get

this uh this pop up or pop down in this

point uh which uh just gives you a

number of options and the one that we're

looking for is image texture so

essentially it's replacing that input

from a flat color to an image texture

property and it's now black and it's

asking you what image texture so we need

an image texture now we could go to uh

just Google images and just find any old

marble texture download that uh the

problem usually with uh textures on the

web is that what most people call A

texture is not ideal for 3D most

textures are good for websites but for

3D we need extra information to tell the

3D software how the material property

looks like how does it reflect light uh

what are the bumps look like across the

surface and all that information is

never available on these sites so to

find those texts you have to go to a

separate dedicated website and the

website that I recommend is polygon and

the reason I recommend it is because

it's mine it's my website it's why I

recommend

it uh no I started 8 years ago because I

was uh pretty dissatisfied with the

quality of the texture websites that

were available at the time so I use my

YouTube money to invest in a team and

some high-tech equipment we went out

into the world and we scan stuff to a

very high quality standard and over the

years we've grown it to include uh

models and hdris as well and obviously a

lot of this stuff is paid um but we also

have a free range and obviously we're

going to be using a free Texture for

this part so this is the free Texture

this is the one we're going to use and

first of all although it is free you do

need to sign up for an account so you

can just sign up with Google that's

usually the easiest one it's a couple of

onboarding questions uh I would like to

actually know how you uh you know are

you a professional are you a student

that's kind of interesting to me to know

that and then when you get to here you

just going to say continue with free

account but pal through that and and if

you click the link in the description

again this is the marble and we just

want to hit download and you'll see in

the bottom right hand corner it's

downloading it is a large size but this

because it's 8K and we've got maps at

like 16bit depth um to get all of that

accurate information there but once it

is finished it'll just appear in your

downloads then you just unzip the zip

file as you would normally and then

finally you should see some glorious

high resolution images and ones with

extra information like roughness very

very subtle but we'll come through when

we do the render so back into blender

where we've got that image texture we're

going to click on open then navigate to

where you unzipped it and then just

click on the one that's ends uh with C

in the name and then just hit open and

here it is okay and it looks great up

close only problem is of course look at

that reflection so Bland so fake and as

I mentioned before fake is the enemy and

you need to uh squash it by just adding

variant so that's where our roughness

map is going to come in and while we

could try to add it in here this section

on the right hand side it's actually not

where you do most of your material work

because this is kind of like a simp

simplified dumb down version it doesn't

really it's it gets a little bit

complicated when you try and add too

many things to it cuz there's like too

many menus and drop downs and all that

kind of stuff so instead if you go to

your shading tab at the top of the

screen there this will change the layout

of the screen to something completely

different we haven't seen before and

lots of Windows actually too many I

never actually need this one on the

right hand side so where you just Mouse

over where you've got the divider and

then just right click and then say join

areas and then you want to join it to

the left to close it and then I'll do

the same here cuz I've never needed

those on the left hand side so I've just

got my view at the top here and then

this one here and the Reason by the way

this looks different um than what we had

before is because this is the material

preview but you can change it back to

what we had before by clicking that so

material preview by the way it's the

same it's it's a rendered mode but it's

using uh lights a Different Light setup

basically just an hdri which is like a

fake kind of light and reflection map

just so that you could can quickly

preview materials and really you could

use either or um they both kind of show

the material but yeah let's use this one

okay but the bit that we're looking for

is here so this section here is your

node setup and it's actually an exact

duplicate of what we did over here

because this on the right hand side is

the simplified version if you're just

doing like a quick change you might want

to use this but over here this is what's

actually happening to it underneath the

hood right so you can see as I change

this on the right hand side that is also

changing that so they are linked so the

way nodes work is basically a left to

right function so we start over here

with our image texture it goes into our

Shader which is the material for uh this

plane and then it comes out into a

material output and that's what is fed

into the final uh Shader so essentially

we could put we could do anything like

for example and this is one of the value

of nodes is between these two nodes we

could add another note like for example

I could hit shift a to add again same

hotkey works everywhere and then I could

add in like a hue saturation value node

and then I could change the Hue of my

marble to look blue right or or

something else um so that's the power of

nose and you could just keep going

adding in adjustments and everything you

want um so nodes very very flexible um

they do look daunting because they get

all these like you know squid looking

lines going everywhere um but it's very

very convenient very customizable okay

but we want to add something to our

roughness so that we don't have a flat

uh single value roughness which is what

that is currently we want to use that

map that we just downloaded so uh one

you could hit shift a and then add an

image text this way but actually we

could also just drag out from that input

there and then just do a release and

it'll now say what do you want to add in

this input and we could type in image

texture color and then hit uh enter Then

here go to that same place that we

unzipped it and then we're looking for

the one with roughness in the name so

roughness in the name and then hit open

okay so this is better right you can

kind of see we've got some detail there

but it doesn't look quite right

something is not going right um it's

because when you add an image texture um

blunder doesn't really know what type of

information it is yet and by default

it's looking at the color information

though even though there isn't really

color there so instead we need to tell

blender this is a special map and we're

just looking at the values right so

essentially the color space here we need

to change it from s RGB where it's a

standard photo color to instead nonc

color data or just non-color I guess

they've changed it um but now you can

see that looks correct right so look at

all that we got scratches we got smudges

it's infinitely more realistic uh than

what we had

previously so beyond that though we

could also add in little tiny bumps okay

so bumps are in a place you would not

expect there's not a bump value here

it's actually under normal so normal you

hear that word a lot in 3D it just

basically means the face which direction

is the face pointing right so if this is

your face of the plane you're pointing

this way that's the normal right but you

can change the normal information to

kind of tweak it to pretend like there

is detail in that okay essentially we

can plug in a specialized map called a

normal map okay so we're going to drag

out from that normal map and then

release and then image text that's the

last used thing that's the what we want

I'm just going to click color then drop

and then hit open go to that same folder

and then this is the one the purple one

it's the weirdest looking map you always

know you're looking at a uh a CG texture

map directory cuz it's the purple one

and it's got nrm in the name for normal

and hit open and just like before it's

not going to be correct because it it

thinks this is a color image texture

just like for photos so we need to

change it again to non-color data and

now you would think that would fix it

but no it looks even worse what did we

do the problem is is we need to convert

this image texture into something this

can read so we need to put another node

in between here so the node is found

under shift a a for add then Vector

normal map so click and then just drop

it here so it highlights between it and

then just drop it and it will now

finally be correct and if I go full

screen with control space I didn't

mention that before but yeah control

space and then you can uh Go full screen

and you can see we've got very subtle

little little chips and divots across

the texture along with those smudges and

uh it just looks way more believable

means you don't have to worry about this

part of your scene it's just going to

work and you're going to get all that

detail for free and um just makes life a

little bit easier but it is a lot of

work like what you've just made is a PBR

Shader and yeah it's it's a lot of work

all those little Maps and everything and

having to know which setting is which um

but it is a very common thing to learn

so that's why I wanted to include it in

here um if I could plug my own website

again though I will say we did hear you

cuz a lot of people say that so we

actually made an addon called the

polygon add-on which I'll actually show

you how to install later on cuz that is

actually important for 3D cuz you use a

lot of add-ons but to plug it very

quickly it actually does all of that

without you having to leave blender so

it'll download the text for you there we

go see it's uh downloading it's actually

faster through the add-on and then once

you've got it you just hit apply and

then it will do all of that node work

for you in the background and it'll just

apply it to the mesh for you um so you

don't have to do all that all the time

and in fact most people I think if

you're working on Big scenes you're

using libraries uh you're using add-ons

like this so you don't have to do it all

manually all the time but it is

important to know the process so that's

why I wanted to show it but anyway right

this was our material and we are happy

with it well done let's go back to the

layout tab and now we're going to do one

more thing so you see our dut base here

let's just isolate this doughnut for one

moment here by hitting forward slash

which I mentioned uh previously okay

when you're in a forward this is isolate

mode which means it's literally turning

off everything including the lamp which

is why it's dark but if you turn on

material preview then you get this so

this is okay uh but if you look at real

reference

of donuts you'll see that it's typically

whiter around the middle and the reason

for that is as I mentioned before the

way it Cooks right it's only like half

submerged and then it's flipped and it

means that the bits that are closest to

the surface are cooked less so there's

usually like a whiter part around the

rim and I mean really this is just an

excuse to show you another part of

blender which is texture paint so at the

top there click the texture paint Tab

and again let's go into isolate mode

with our donut there um why are we not

seeing okay there we go so what texture

paint uh does it lets you paint directly

onto your mesh but if we try doing it

you can see nothing's happening and it

does give you a warning at the body

missing textures detected so to paint

you're painting into an image and the

image doesn't exist yet so we have to

give it one so go to the material Tab

and then here where we got base color we

set it up as yellow but we're actually

just going to overwrite it now so click

that little yellow Dot do again and then

say image texture so now it's black

doesn't have an image so and instead of

clicking open we're going to click new

so we're going to be creating a brand

new image and let's call this donut base

we could make this higher res if we want

but don't this is more than enough for a

donut base that's fine and uh this will

just save us time the color this will

just fill the uh it'll fill the the the

image for us with a flat color so we're

just going to go for something pretty

similar to what we had before a nice

yellowy color like that and by the way

make sure you're all the way bright

otherwise your donut is uh is going to

be a little bit dark so yeah there we go

all right and then hit okay and once

we've done that you should I mean it

should be over there on the left hand

side but if it doesn't pop up you can

just select it from the drop down donut

base and there we go so now we're in

this state look what I can do ooh feny

so I don't know why I said it like that

um but we can paint directly onto our

mesh so to understand this because it's

kind of weird you can also paint

directly over here and you might be

thinking like well how does it know like

how do I know which part over here is

actually going to be painted over onto

the dut there you might not care but

it's uh it's actually good to understand

how it works so basically this mesh here

it has to be unwrapped over onto this

left hand side here because that's the

only way to uh have a 2d texture 2D flat

image be applied to a mesh is to to

unwrap it in some way I mean there's

projection I'm not getting into that uh

to unwrap it and unwrapping is

essentially like there's a meme actually

that that explains it um but if you have

like a chocolate right that is wrapped

in some tin foil if you flatten it out

that is essentially UV unwrapping there

are are little places in that wrapping

where there had to be a cut right and

then that cut was wrapped around the

object that's what UV unwrapping is so

the reason this works for us is because

the cuts are actually already in place

for default objects so this Taurus is

already perfectly UV unrapped so we

don't have to do anything I did want to

mention it though because it's important

to understand UV unwrapping anyways so

we could actually paint directly on here

as I mentioned white is a little bit too

extreme though so I'm going to click

that and choose a color first of all I'm

going to select the ey dropper and then

not click over here cuz that's got

shading information I'm going to click

on the left hand side so we get the

exact color and then I'm going to make

it closer to White so not fully white

cuz that'll be too far but closer to to

White and I'm also going to change the

strength of my

brush uh yeah I'll make it about halfway

and then now I can do paints across it

and this will enable you to get a much

more natural feel um because you'll have

just like in fact I might even go a

little bit softer and that way you can

kind of just paint across it and this is

very forgiving because we've got icing

that's going to go over the top of it um

but that's good we don't want it to be

too

too extreme let's just make it I might

go the other way make this a little bit

more saturated anyways that's basically

all we need to do we just want to just

dab our toes into the field of uh

texture painting I would say texture

painting by the way it's one of the

weaker areas of blender it's actually

due for an update at some point in the

future um but it doesn't do like you

can't paint into like the uh the height

information or the roughness information

at the same time like you can with

substance painter but it's it's got

basic function it

now importantly this is an image but

it's not saved into your blend file it

still needs to be manually saved so see

at the top left hand corner there it's

got image with a star if you see that

star it means you've got changes that

haven't been saved so we need to go

image and then save and specify where

are we going to put our image because if

we don't do this uh we're going to lose

it so it has to be saved somewhere so

I'm just going to save it yeah anywhere

it has to be saved somewhere because it

will not be saved as part of the blend

fob very important to know that

otherwise you can lose texture paint

work that you've done but there we go so

now to bring back everything remember if

it looks like where's the rest of my

scene gone see the top leftand Corner

local means it's isolated mode so that

means you just have to hit forward slash

again and it brings back everything and

there we are so that's the extent of uh

this part of the tutorial as I mentioned

the uh some of you might be wondering

when are we going to make that that

lovely uh subsurface scattering we're

going to do that in the future after we

do the sprinkles cuz it's too hard to

see at this point so there we go guys

join me in the next part and I'll see

you there the time has finally come to

decorate our delicious looking donut

with some sprinkles so the feature we

need for that is called geometry nodes

and you can access it by going to the

top of your screen if you don't see it

just middle Mouse drag across and you'll

see the tab geometry notes o so it's

adjusted your screen layout don't get

disorientated your donot is still there

this screen on the left here it's called

the spreadsheet never needed it touch on

would never will um so we can just close

that right click join areas and then

just collapse it into it okay so with

your icing selected click the new button

so welcome to the world of geometry

nodes so geometry nodes is actually a

modifier so when we hit new there we've

added in a modifier called geometry

nodes and what the modifier is doing is

whatever we want it to okay so what this

this section down here is this is a node

based system and it looks familiar right

you got boxes with little lines and it's

the exact same type of system that was

used in our materials right but it's a

completely different system okay so the

same nodes will not be referenced um

between the completely different systems

so the way this works is our mesh that

we've got here of our icing is what is

being represented on the left left hand

side with your input it's then taking

that mesh and it's feeding it all the

way to the right and it's going to spit

out whatever is in your group output So

currently nothing has changed because

there's nothing between those points but

if I was for example don't follow me but

just as an example if I was to add a set

position node drop this in here and then

change the position of the icing along

the Zed axis you can see it's raised it

okay now the mesh if I go into edit mode

is still there the mesh has not changed

so we're not actually moving the object

this is just happening after the fact

via a modifier okay now obviously this

would be a rather pointless use for

geometry nodes to move it because you

could just move it um but as an example

let's say I don't know you had a scene

where lots of objects some of them are

raised some of them are not and you

wanted to quickly change them what you

could do with geometry nodes in this

case you could actually expose this

offset value by dragging it to the left

over here and when you do that you can

see it's now appeared over here in our

modifier stack what that means is

whenever I'm in another part of B of

blend let's say I'm like building stuff

and I'm like oh yeah I need to quickly

you know change the uh the height of

that icing I've got it there whenever I

need to so essentially this system

enables you to build your own tool that

does something that you want it to do in

a really flexible way so it's really

powerful um and before geometry nodes I

mean blender was kind of limited and

what you can do but I'll throw some

examples here but in the last 2 years

since it's uh been in Blendon people

have done some wild stuff with it um and

most of this stuff really was just not

possible in blender before without doing

custom scripting so it's really opened

up the doors so it is a very different

system like it's a different way of

working um than you know just Hands-On

in 3D but it's a really flexible really

valuable um system so any time spent

learning geometry nodes I think is time

well spent so we want to do sprinkles

and to do that we need to first of all

scatter some points onto our mesh so to

do that hit shift a a for ADD and then

we're looking for Point distribute

points on faces okay and then it's just

put uh sorry it's just going to put you

in a placement State and if you just

Mouse over that line there till it

lights up if you click it's going to

automatically connect it for you and now

you can see we've got points on our

icing and our density value great but

you might notice the icing has actually

disappeared ooh now the reason for that

is we've told it okay give us take that

icing object and convert it into points

and then just give us the points back

okay so what we need to do is say yes we

want the points but we also want the

original mesh so we can do that by

adding in a node that you use all the

time which is shift a geometry join

geometry so you'll find this node in

probably any geometry noes tutorial very

versatile so drop it in here after the

points and you'll notice this input here

is a different shape so normally inputs

are circles or you know triangles or

whatnot this one is a long an elongated

shape to signify that it can accept

multiple inputs so un like these where

you can only accept one this can accept

many so what we need to do is take the

output of our original mesh and then

feed it over to Here and Now now we have

both the original mesh and we have our

points and they're being combined

together and then put into our output

okay very cool awesome all right so if

we were to give this a render right now

you would actually see nothing because

these points don't physically exist they

just exist in the 3D space if we want

them to show up in the render we have to

tell it what do you want to render them

as so for that we need to add an object

to be our sprinkle so your sprinkle

could be whatever you want uh we're

actually going to make two different

types of sprinkles in this uh donut

Series so we're going to start though

with a very simple one just a round ball

so uh just like you would add another

object normally shift a and then go mesh

and then go UV sphere now this sphere is

going to be referenced for every single

sprinkle okay so we want to go uh as low

res as we can get away with uh so I'm

going to go with a 12 segments and then

eight Rings if you're on a really slow

computer and you think this is really

going to suffer later on um you could go

even lower but I don't want to go too

low cuz otherwise we're going to see

that Jagged Edge cuz it's a rounded form

so I don't want to go too much lower

than that uh but I do want to adjust the

scale because obviously this needs to be

a tiny little sprinkle so let's go Point

01 okay awesome all right now with our

icing selected again you'll notice by

the way that if you click another object

you don't see your nose because it's

only going to show you the active

objects geometry noes so if you want the

nodes to just be there no matter what if

you click the pin button there that

means no matter what is selected it's

only going to be showing you this

objects uh the one that we pinned uh

geometry noes okay all right so to

reference we need to reference that

little sphere that we've just created in

our geometry node system and you can do

it very easily just by dragging down

from your outline up here just dragging

it down into your geometry nodes and

dropping it okay so now let's just

create some room here make a little bit

of

space okay and what I need to do is add

another node to reference this object

and the node is shift a instances

instances on points the top one okay and

then I want to drop it in here between

distribute points on faces and my join

geometry so drop it in right there till

it lights up now the points have

disappeared because we're now saying

replace those points with whatever is in

that instance input so I'm going to take

my geometry from my object info and drag

it into the instance and look at that we

have got our spheres appearing all over

it and if I increase the density we've

got sprinkles and if I do a render it

will actually display doesn't look very

good hey but it does work which is the

uh the main thing right now okay so uh

first things first you'll notice that as

we increase the density first problem is

that uh they're crowding each other they

are straight up overlapping each other

with no respect for its fellow sprinkle

right cuz it's just a random

distribution so we can change that by

going here in our distribute points on

faces change it from random dist dist

distribution to Pon disc distribution

Pon what a name um so it's changed uh

but that's just cuz it's changed your

density Max so just increase it again um

with this passon dis uh distribution you

get this extra value here distance Min

so now if we can uh set a low value we

can start to delete it's it's almost

like each one of those points now is

going to have a little radius around it

and if it detects a point within that

radius it's going to delete it so um we

just need to increase it slowly very

very slowly until we can't see them

intersecting anymore um to about there

honestly I if you go too high like if

you really wanted to make sure they

weren't touching you go really high but

it starts to look like too evenly spaced

you know like yeah it's it's not

actually registering the other objects

it's like it's just doing this little

radius thing which just happens to be

perfect for a ball-shaped object but

it's not like an advanced like it's

going to try to fill in all the gaps for

you um so yeah it just kind of I usually

set it to like a little bit of clipping

is okay but I don't want there to be uh

too much um but let's go yeah some I

don't know something like that we'll

actually adjust this later on I'm just

doing it just for this this point all

right a much bigger problem if I hit

control tab to go full screen here if I

look at uh at my mesh I've got sprinkles

everywhere and in fact I've actually got

sprinkles underneath the icing and

that's not good because it's actually

going to put that in the render even

though you won't see it your computer is

going to use resources to render little

individual balls underneath the icing

which is not what we want obviously so

going back here what we need to do to

fix this is we need to do weight

painting okay it's not texture painting

it's a special thing called weight

painting So with your icing selected if

you go from your object mode you'll see

one there called weight paint now your

mesh will become blue and weight paint

is actually referenced in multiple parts

of blender like if you're doing rigging

and animation you would use weight

painting a lot during the rigging step

to assign values to certain bones

essentially what it's doing is it's

allowing you to paint a value between

zero and one onto any part of the mesh

and then reference that however you want

so we can then reference that weight

paint mask in our geometry nodes and use

this almost as well exactly as a mask

for our uh

sprinkles so if we just do uh just do

some paint right here on it you'll see

that we have some colors right now these

colors aren't going to appear in the

render it's just for you to visualize

those values uh the blue value means a

zero a value of zero and the red value

is a zero of one I believe actually in

maybe not the next version of blender

but maybe the version I don't know but

they're planning to change the colors of

this so depending on the value on how

late watching this you are your colors

might be different here but it should be

the same essentially you should have a

brush of one um and you should be able

to paint from zero which would give a

blue value in this case to a value of

one so whatever is one whatever is red

is where our sprinkles will go but

you'll notice that this is not having

any effect okay so we need to reference

it now that weight paint that we just

did is actually if we go to our data tab

here it's actually a Vertex group okay

so that's where that paint went so you

could actually create multiple weight

paint types just by like creating them

here um but we've just created one and

it's added one here for us so we can

give it a name by double clicking it and

let's Call it spring Le mosque okay in

fact it's a is it a mosque it's more of

a density sprinkle density I guess cuz

it's not a mking out anyway all right

sprinkle density um okay and where I

want to reference this in my geometry

node stack is in the distribute points

on faces there is one value here called

density factor which we got when we use

the Press on dis thing and this is just

a value of 0 to one very convenient so

if I drag out from here and then release

I can add in a new node and it'll just

automatically connect it and the node

that you're looking for is called the

named attribute don't feel bad if you're

like well how would I know that it's

called the named attribute because it's

called vertex groups over here you think

like okay I'm going to type in vertex

groups but it's an attribute but it's

one of many attributes and geometry

nodes can do many things so it's just

called the named attribute so anyways

all right so underneath name we're just

going to click that box you'll get a pop

up or pop down and you're looking for

sprinkle density and there it is haha so

now going back into weight paint mode we

can act like an artist and put the

sprinkles wherever we want sprinkles on

our donut which is really cool um so

sprinkles are typically they're like on

a plate and then the wet dut with icing

on it is just like dabbed onto it so you

get like a heavy amount of sprinkles

right on the top like that and then less

around the sides um and then I usually

do like a few like dabs like

this just for some variance and then

also if you hold down control that will

do a so the the weight that's being

painted is one but if I hold down

control it's going to do a negative

value and I can adjust my strength there

as well and I can just do some negative

uh paints across it maybe a couple here

as

well and I'm trying to deliberately make

it look choppy because I find that if

you make it look too like uniform then

it just looks very boring and artificial

um because the real world would have

more sprinkles collecting in certain

areas than others right maybe it's just

like wetter on that part right so more

would stick to it um or more force was

put on that part of the plate as the dut

was dabbed into it right you just kind

of have to think of this stuff because

uh in the digital world it's far too

easy to make something that looks um

predictable and boring and we don't want

that but there we go something like that

um and you could obviously finesse it

and make it better than what it is but

that's uh that's what we got uh you'll

notice each of these spheres have a very

Jagged looking shape and that's because

the sphere itself down here oh I don't

think I mentioned this if you want to

quickly Zoom to an object without having

to find it and pan around number pad

period key probably should have

mentioned that before um but we've only

haven't really needed it cuz we have not

work with that many objects but that'll

Focus to that object if you're on a

laptop by by the way if you hold down

the tilder key that'll bring up this

section here and then you've got view

selected right there so tilder is that

key underneath your uh Escape key but

anyways so this is what our sphere looks

like so right click shade smooth and now

all those sprinkles have a shade smooth

haha very nice all right now let me just

show you a quick uh little issue that

you might run into if you were to uh

duplicate your donut and uh create two

and then on the second D donut you're

like hey I want to have some spice in my

scene I don't want to have the exact

same count of sprinkles across both

Donuts let's give a different value to

this one over here well you can see that

they are now sharing the same value

because this node group here is being

linked across both objects um but if you

wanted I mean you could like you know

make it its own single object so they're

not linked but if you wanted everything

else to to remain the same so that let's

say you you know change the sprinkle at

some point that's preserved across it

but that one value you want to be

different across multiple objects you

can expose it so just like what I did at

the start if I drag out from the value I

want to expose and then I put it up to

here in my group input the empty slot if

I just release it it's now disappeared

the values disappeared from here and

it's now appeared in my modifier stack

over here and now I can put in a

different value so this has now got a

value of 2,000 and this one is 500 so

essentially by dragging it out and

exposing it it it's essentially removing

the value from this uh node setup and

saying this is its own separate thing

which is independent per object um and

it has a two birds uh one stone kind of

effect that it makes it more accessible

so in a completely different part of

blender I'm working on my scene and I'm

just very quickly giving different

sprinkle amounts to different Donuts

right like a mad man right no one can

stop me um but yeah very cool and uh

that's now exposed oh the other thing we

probably want to do though with that uh

this group input here is I want to give

it a different name because density Max

you know not really that useful I can

call it sprinkle density right so now

it's like a fully customized little node

group that I could drop on any object I

could be building a car in the future

and I'm like it it needs sprinkles and I

can just drop this on and I've got a

Sprinkle density value for my car right

so you can see how geometry nodes you

can build something really customized

for what you want and then it's just

readily accessible um every time you

need to use it awesome now one issue

that I will show you with this and

actually it's not specific to Geometry

nose but this entire time for all these

videos we've been building a dut which

is too big so if you hit n in your

properties oh that's the polygon thing

uh you can see the size the dimensions

of your dut is 1.2x 1.2 M which uh for

Americans oh actually yeah yeah you can

change it you could change your units to

the wacky Imperial one yeah 4T right

okay um which is way too big okay now

why does it matter right because like

okay if you're looking at this how are

you to actually know that this is 1.2 M

rather than the regular size zut it

doesn't actually matter yet but when we

get to like rendering with depth of

field or maybe you want to import other

objects from other scenes having a value

that is actually true to the object will

save you so much time and it'll also

make it so that your camera settings Etc

are actually correct so that bit is uh

is very important so essentially we

should resize this and really a real

donut is about 12 CM which is exactly

one10 of what we've got right here so if

we select everything in the entire scene

which you can do by just hitting a a for

everything I don't know a for all yeah

that makes more sense okay uh then if we

hit s to scale okay we're now in a scale

oh actually okay well now it's going to

scale it and the plane is going to be

off the ground hm okay all right well

let's not let's not scale the lamp and

the the camera so everything else

selecting the donut the lamp sorry the

dut the plane and the sphere then s and

then I want to scale it by exactly 10%

now how could I do that if you look in

the top leftand Corner you've got uh the

values there and if I if I went to 0.1

then it would be exactly a tenth of what

it was but how can I get it exactly at

0.1 well uh two things one if you hold

down control when you're moving any

value in blender it'll move it in

increments which in this case is point1

but you can also actually just type in

the exact value you want 0.1 and hit

enter and now if we look at the size of

our donut Click N Hit N uh you can see

it's .12 m or centimeters you know

anyway um and that's great but there is

a problem uh what you might notice I

mean there's not a problem now but when

you change the scale or the rotation of

an object actually it's uh it's not it's

only changed its uh what do you call it

it's local scale it hasn't actually

applied it on a global level yet so the

sprinkle here and the donut have

actually got a like pretend value this

scale is set at 0 2 and it's almost like

it's saying to the scene that's not its

real scale it's just been faked to be

that size yet it needs to be applied if

you want to like confirm really that

this is the true scale rotation of the

thing and you do that by selecting the

things and then hitting contrl a and

then applying

scale okay so now we've done that we can

see something's changed so our donut

here with the sprinkles has now

massively changed its uh density count

and the reason for this is that if we go

geometry nodes again let's zoom in here

let's look at it with

this this density this sprinkle density

is actually not the count of sprinkles

at all it's the density in relation to

the whole scene and the way I think of

it is like um uh okay it's a weird

visualization but if you've got a car

and it's driving along a highway right a

certain amount of bugs are going to hit

the windshield okay but and the bugs

could be defined by here but the smaller

the object is right you could have the

same amount of bugs going across the

highway but if it was like a tiny

Matchbox car there's going to be very

few bugs that's going to hit it okay so

the density is kind of like the density

of the world and now that we've made the

object smaller there's only three

sprinkles left there's only three bugs

that's hit the windshield of our of our

donnut here so this value now needs to

be much bigger in fact it needs to be

exactly like if it was 6,000 before it

needs to be yeah 60,000 now

um but the problem is is that it's not

just a value here the distance Min value

has also changed because this is also

based on a real world value so this now

needs to be really small so let's try

01 and that's actually pretty good I

think there's a little bit of overlap

but that's roughly kind of what we want

and let's see if I can increase this

yeah so if I want this density to be

really dense yeah I would have to

increase it to a crazy number

now something I like to do personally

this isn't you have to do this but you

notice how like this number is really

large and if I want to increase or lower

my sprinkle value and I'm in a different

part of blender if I'm just dragging

this value it's having no effect because

the the range like the scale of it is

just so large so what I actually do is I

set it to a value that I think makes

sense which in this case is 200 and then

whatever the value was before it was uh

200,000 right I do a math value inside

of my geometry node setup between here

and here I do a math calculation to

multiply that by the value that it needs

to be almost as like a scale adjustment

so you can do it with just one node

shift a utilities math math and just

drop it in here now the math I I said I

want to multiply it so I need to change

it from add to a multiply and math is

the most versatile of any uh

node you can do all sorts of stuff but

multiply so multiply and it was 200,000

before so if I want this value 200 then

I just

add uh 1,000 yes that's correct okay so

now I can very quickly change the scale

of the sprinkles across the donut

without having to like manually type in

the value I can just move it back and

forth um and there you go so that's it

so we've uh we've changed the scale of

it to what it should be um we've got a

correct uh density sorry we've got a

correct sprinkle setup looking good um

in the next part we are going to be

adding long sprinkles to our donut

because this round one is okay and

originally was just going to go around

to try and keep it simple but there's

also I don't know the long sprinkles

just look way nicer um but you do have

to do uh some different rotation math

and stuff so we're going to do that in a

whole second video so click here on the

screen to learn all about that and

random colors so I will see you in that

part we've got round sprinkles why not

long sprinkles it'll be more interesting

and it'll enable us to uh learn some new

techniques about blender which is what

this whole series is about so first

things first we need to uh model those

sprinkles so let's move to the left here

and uh we want to add an object we

haven't mentioned it before but when you

add an object it's going to put it at

your 3D cursor and your 3D cursor is

that thing that weird little thing

little Crosshair at the bottom there

that's your 3D cursor and uh yeah I

don't know blunder has a 3D cursor maybe

other applications don't it's going to

put it there and if you don't want it

there you can move that 3D cursor

somewhere else by hitting shift and

right clicking and you can see it's now

moved it and actually attached it to the

plane which is where we would want it if

you don't have a mouse do get a mouse

but in the interim you can also use the

the cursor tool and that'll do uh the

same thing all right so we're adding

long sprinkles so obviously the object

that we want to add is shift a mesh it's

the cylinder okay too big by default so

let's change click this little thing

bring this up change the radius all the

way to its lowest and the depth all the

way to its lowest as well and the

vertices that's the uh like the

resolution right oh we'll fix that in a

sec um the resolution it' be way too

high at 32 to be scattered on an object

so let's set this to 12 and that'll be

just enough it won't look Jagged and

it'll look smooth okay great now I'm

going to move this up just so it's above

the plane Zed okay now this problem that

you have if you go in too far it

disappears the reason for that is that

uh blender has a clipping start value

and because we're working at such a

small small scale we've got sprinkle

sized things now um it's too small and

it's clipping it out so if you hit n and

go to your view tab the clip start value

there it's 1 cm by default drag it all

the way to the left and it's now a

millimeter and it will have fixed that I

don't know why it's not the default like

maybe somebody can tell me why is that

not the default value maybe there's a

reason but to me that would make sense

cuz then you never have this problem I

don't know any disadvantages so anyway

we've got uh the base of a Sprinkle need

to make it long so tab into edit mode s

scale it Zed along the Zed axis to

elongate it and now now we've got the

rough length of a Sprinkle but how long

is a Sprinkle there's no actual answer

to that if you look at reference they

are all over the place the government

evidently never stepped in and said like

we're going to regulate it this is the

the length of a Sprinkle this is the

size of a spr I mean it's it's it's the

wild west out there they're doing crazy

things so uh what that means as artists

is we get to pick whatever is most

visually pleasing

and I like the ones which are more

readable and to show you what I mean if

we pull up two right this one on the

left is like large sprinkles right very

like bold and then one on the right here

is like long thin wispy ones that look

like theyd get stuck in your teeth and

if we zoom out on this and then zoom out

on this you can see that the ones on the

right tend to kind of like the colors

and everything just kind of blur

together and it just looks like a donut

whereas the on the left the sprinkles

are still readable so that's what we

mean by readable and that's the one I

like the most so we're going to go with

some uh larger looking long sprinkles

but you can see that the sizes there's

no standard size because I think it's

actually like it's from a Piping Bag at

least if you make them at home but you

can just pipe out icing and then when it

dries you just smash it up and it

becomes sprinkles um but yeah they they

just come out at any odd size so we got

long ones we got medium ones we got

short ones and we've even got some curvy

looking ones right these little like

just slightly bsh looking ones so we're

going to model small medium large and a

bsh looking one and then we're going to

scatter that across the object so back

in blender this is going to be yeah

let's this this will be the the short

one uh okay but the end speaking of

which this end bit here uh it's a very

sharp edge and even if we hit uh shade

smooth it's not going to solve we want

that like a rounded form to it not this

horrible Blobby looking shape um because

the reference again you can see oh it's

another it's a different reference now

is uh is a rounded shape all right so to

create that rounded form we're going to

create a bevel and so I want you to go

into face select mode okay which you can

do by that so this is the faces right

this is the edges if you go to Edge

select mode and then this is the the

face there so select the bottom and the

top face like that and then we're going

to add a bevel which will immediately

become clear when you do it contrl B and

now that we're in this state as we pull

out we can change the the amount of the

bevel and this is uh you can see it's

it's like yeah it's just adding a 45

degree angle on that that corner there

but if you scroll up it's going to add

another level to it and if you scroll up

again it's going to add another level to

that so we can very quickly create a

rounded Edge to the sprinkle uh you

don't want to go too too much higher

because again this is going to be

scattered all over the donut you don't

want to go too high poly so that'll do

so that's a simple bevel operation and

it's very common when you're modeling so

yeah contrl B is how you do that all

right so look at that we've got one

sprinkle so now we will need to create

three more so this is the small so let's

go shift d and then X to just move it

along the xaxis this is going to be the

medium one so edit mode and I'm going to

go into toggle y frame and verticy

select mode and now selecting the top

part of the sprinkle hit g z and I'm

going to move oops if you got

proportional editing turn that off gz

move that

up okay that'll be the medium one yep

and now shift d x move it along this is

going to be the long one so edit mode

and again G Zed move it up and this is

going to be the long sprinkle I don't go

too long maybe that long okay and then I

want to make a bent sprinkle it's

slightly like curved so shift d x move

it across and now with this one if I was

to try to like curve this out there's

not enough information here like if I

move that it's just a straight edge

there so if I want to make it curved I

got to have more geometry there so like

we've done in the past controlr is how

you create a loop cut so when you do

that it says where do you want to put it

I want more than one though so I'm going

to scroll up till I get

yeah just a bunch of Loops until I get

what looks like square faces on those

points somewhere around that I don't

want to go too high poly yeah like that

what is that uh that's in the bottom

left hand corner eight eight Cuts Okay

click and then it's saying where do you

want to place it right click to cancel

the movement so it places it right in

the center and

now there we go okay now we've got this

one over here that is just long and

straight but low poly and this one same

shape but High poly

so to add a uh Bend to it in previous

tutorials I actually went into like edit

mode and we did like proportional

editing and it was just complicated and

it actually didn't look great I've

learned actually there's a modifier

that'll do it very simply go to your

modifier stack add modifier uh you could

find it inside here uh or you could

search for it but it's the simple deform

uh modifier so add that and by default

it is wrong so change it from twist to

bend and look at that that we've got our

sprinkle ha and you can very easily

whoops change the amount from a little

curve to a large curve and I think

somewhere around the 30° Mark you will

notice though that it's it's like it's

bent more at this angle and that's

because it's bending it according to the

origin point so you see these little

dots you might have wondered what they

are in blender that's called your origin

point and it's used for a lot of things

like if you rotate an object you can see

it's rotating from the the point of that

origin Point um like physics a bunch of

things use the origin point the best way

to think of it is like the center of

mass for the object so generally

speaking as a rule of thumb you want it

to be in the center of the object and

you can do it very quickly you select

multiple objects you want to clear it uh

origin Point shift select all of them

and then right click and then say set

origin origin to geometry and now you

can see it's put it in the middle and

now our curve is actually based on the

uh starting in the middle which is what

we want so yay for us now I need to

apply this or else the next part it'll

go wonky so apply your simple to form so

that it's actually uh yeah uh realized

onto the uh onto the mesh okay so going

to your outliner you can see we've we

started from humble beginnings but we've

now got too much going on and it's it's

all starting to get a little bit chaotic

so the way you organize things in your

outline and in blender generally uh is

uh you can group things together um by

creating collections so by default we've

actually got one collection already just

called collection but we can create new

collections by this little button in the

top right hand corner to create new

collection um and I want to create it

outside of our I mean I don't actually

know if we need like I don't know why it

creates a collection for you for no I

mean you could just it's in the scene

collection anyways I don't know if we

actually need that one um so we created

a new collection just by hitting that

and we can double click it to rename it

to be whatever it is we want so I'm

going to call this

sprinkles okay um and because we have

two types of sprinkles we have the

sphere round sprinkle and then we have

these long sprinkles I'm going to create

two other um collections within this

collection so hitting new again you can

see it's placed it underneath it and I'm

going to call this one round and then

clicking sprinkles again I'll add

another collection and this one I will

call long oh wait sorry this one long

there we go Okay so to move something to

a collection you can do it one of two

ways one you can select the uh the

sphere which is the round remember it's

this little guy over here the little

tiny round sprinkle you can just drag

that into the uh that collection and you

can see it's now moved it there the

other way is in your 3D viewport if you

select all of the objects that you want

to move to a new collection hit M and it

brings up this and you just say move to

the sprinkles long sub collection there

we go and now they're all moved there

and now this one here if you wanted to

give this a name you could um we got the

camera we got the light we got the plane

yeah you know what let's move our donut

our donut and our icing let's move that

to a new collection as well so M and we

can actually create a new collection

from the move uh options as well so I'm

going to go new and let's call this do

let's say Donuts cuz we're going to

duplicate and make more Donuts in the

future so Donuts okay great so now this

one here has got the camera the light

and the plane so I'm going to do what I

sometimes do with a scene is just call

this one EnV which is for environment

since this is a tutorial I'll actually

just type it out I'm not going to be

lazy environment Okay so we've got some

organization in our scene so that as we

add and grow our scene it's not going to

get too uh crazy all right so it's also

good that we've created collections

because we can now use that to scatter

across the geometry notes so with our uh

donut here so the icing and the donut

we're going to create a duplicate and uh

this is is going to be the variant with

the long sprinkles so shift d and then

hit X to move it along the uh x axis so

let's just place next to it and then

clicking your

icing you can see we've got the modifier

stack that we've uh we created the

geometry nodes on and if we were to

start tweaking this and make this look

like long sprinkles it would apply to

this one over here because we can see

that little number next to it and that

number if you hover over it I think we

mentioned it before but displays the

number of users sharing this data so any

change you make to this is going to be

reflected on that one um so if we click

the two button it's now independent so

we'll now have two different versions so

the one on the left the one that the

original one let's call that round

sprinkles and the one on the right let's

call that one long brain fart for a

second there long sprinkles okay and now

with that object selected let's go back

to the geometry nodes tab

okay all right so make sure you're

looking at the right object make sure

it's the the one with long sprinkles in

the name and if we were to start editing

here we would have one we we would have

made one big mistake and it would it's

because this is actually not the long

sprinkles node setup we click the pin

button remember that the pin means it's

always going to be there even if it's

another object with a different geometry

node setup so remember yeah it's a

common mistake you always do it you

forget you've got pin on and then you

start changing things and it does the

wrong one so make sure you're looking at

the one that has long sprinkles in the

name okay so the bit the bit that

obviously matters the most is this this

bit where it goes into our instance on

points node and we've currently got it

connected to a sphere so I mean you

could change that to another object but

that won't help us because we've got

more than one object we want to scatter

four different objects across it so we

can delete that and instead just drag

from your outliner don't just if if you

click on it um oh yeah yeah if you click

off it it's just going to disappear so

make sure you don't do it you've clicked

the icing but you need to click and drag

into your node setup and now it's got a

collection info node rather than object

info node drag that into your instance

input and nothing happened it has

actually happened but it's off center in

a weird place why is it doing that it's

because of the way 3D software handles

data it's now doing it on its like

Global or local position not relative to

anyway it doesn't matter all what you

need to do is check three boxes whenever

you use collections to scatter separate

reset children now it's on the mesh

correctly and then it's you can see it's

actually using all four of them on each

point so then you click pick instance

and now it's going to use one of those

not all four of them

together okay so it's good it's uh it's

using it but what's going on well the

reason this one was easier with its

round sprinkles is that the rotation of

the objects didn't matter because it was

round now that we have long sprinkles

you can see the rotation matters and

it's currently screwed up so how do we

fix that the first way well yeah there's

a number of things you need to do to

make it work correctly you you'll see is

uh we want to take the rotation of the

face so the face of this these mesh here

we want it to affect the objects right

so so we take the output of our

distribute points on faces the rotation

of that and drag it into the rotation

input of the instances and now you can

see it's having some effect it's still

not right but that is because these

sprinkles are currently just pointed

upwards so it thinks okay well you want

to point them all outwards anyways to

fix that I mean you could fix it a

number you could actually fix it in

Geometry no this is simpler so if we

just rotate those sprinkles along the x

axis so RX right and then we just want

to lie them down flat so essentially 90°

you could type in 90° or holding down

control we'll move it in 5 degree

increments okay so 90 and then do a

single click okay so why has that not

worked well it's because as I mentioned

before when you're scaling or rotating

things it's not actually saved to the

object so to apply it you have to go

control a and then say rotation now that

we've done that it's worked correctly

all right so and you can see what I said

by you need to do a lot to make it work

correctly um the rotation is working but

it's not doing what you would expect and

that's because geometry nodes are so

flexible you have to tell it exactly

what you want to do we want actually

random rotation so around each of the

points we don't want to each have the

exact same rotation we need to randomize

it so for that if you want to tweak the

rotation on anything between this point

here on this uh dotted Blue Line let's

just move that out the way uh we need to

add shift a utilities rotation rotate

not Ula Oiler that yes I know they went

with the weird pronunciation I think it

was a Frenchman right could be German

doesn't matter same same right just to

annoy all the Europeans um anyways

rotate Oiler and we're just going to

drop it on that line till it lines up

okay so nothing's happened currently but

with this we could change the rotation

of our sprinkles up here but you'll

notice that as you rotate it's kind of

weird it's not the rotation that you

would expect for each point it's the

relative to the actual object as a whole

right which just means we need to change

from object to local and now as you move

it around you can see we're able to

rotate those sprinkles but again it's

not changing the RO like randomizing it

it's giving a solid value so to

randomize it if we drag out of the

rotate by input and then type in Rand

random it'll bring up uh this and we're

looking for random value click and now

we get this

ooh so this node looks kind of scary

right it's got a whole bunch of

different values in it and it says

vector and it's very very foreign it's

actually easy to understand it from a

float uh point of view with with the

random value if it's in a float State

it's going to generate a value from zero

to one on each point so if you've got

like 10 points one of them is going to

be like point 015 one's going to be like

.92 and one's you know whatever when

it's in Vector State it's the exact same

thing you've got Min and you've got Max

but there are three values and the

reason for that is that there are three

axes there's the x axis there is the y

axis and there's the Zed axis and same

here right so you're able to Define what

type of rotation on each axis so if we

set both uh by the way if you want to

change multiple values at once in

blender um you can just click and drag

down and then you can uh change all of

them so we set all of them to

zero and uh now you could see this

bottom one is going to be the Zed

because it's XY Z it doesn't tell you

like I don't know CU it's Vector math I

guess it's there's other areas of

plender it's anyway but this this is the

Zed axis if we increase this one you can

see that's the main one that we want to

change right cuz that's the one that

makes uh the most difference now you

might also know looking at this you

probably thinking like okay well we need

to rotate it by 360° so we would set

this to 360 but you can see they're more

than rotating fully already so what

value is this exactly this is radians oh

just to get real so radians degrees

actually like I had to ask chat gbt

before I recorded this what's the

difference radians are more mathematical

and easier for mathematical equations uh

it's uh it's the

circumference of part no 2 pi is the

circumference look obviously I don't

know um but what I'm trying to tell you

is it's you just need double pi to to

make it 360° which is

actually tow to make it really

complicated it's to so double Pi so Pi

is uh

3142 to is double that and uh anyways

you get the idea so you can type in to

and it'll actually give you the correct

value so that's 36 60° rotation um we

also want it cuz you can see this is the

other axes like the the middle one

spinning around so we also want it on

that one cuz we've got a curved one so

let's make that towel and then this top

one is the X which is actually going to

make it like wonky like so these will be

like seesing up so if you increase that

that's where it gets crazy and you don't

really want to use that um you do want a

little bit though because it it would

make sense if they're sprinkles they're

not going to be complet completely flat

you're going to have some variance where

like some bit has absorbed into the

icing at a different angle than another

but just not too much essentially or

else it starts to look like uh like

little marshmallows or whatever all over

it um but guys that's roughly it that's

the hard work that was I mean I know

that was very technical but it was

really it was just two notes rotate

Oiler set it to local and then this

random value and we're changing that to

rotated and we did it we got nice

looking rotation now one thing we do

have to change

is the distance Min so because these

longer sprinkles obviously are bigger

then the distance Min has to change as

well so we can change that to something

that makes sense let's go

04 H that might have actually been

pretty perfect let's try

three three's got a little bit oh

actually you know what the other thing I

again looking at reference I like those

big chunky looking sprinkles so I want

these to be bigger so we could you know

alter the scale of the actual sprinkles

but we're working with geometry nodes

and we've actually got a scale value

right here so we could change it here

just as easily so the scale dragging

down and again there's not just one

value there's three axes so XY Z so drag

down on all

1.5 is going to give us some nice big

chunky looking sprinkles and now this

distance value needs to be a lot bigger

so let's go

06 that's actually pretty good I I'm

getting pretty good at nailing it Z no

no no I was right before there's always

going to be some overlap right you're

not going to be able to stop it because

it's it's not look doing object like

collisions it's nothing like that it's a

very simple again it's doing a point and

then it's creating a radius around it

and if you do the correct amount which

for this is probably something like this

then it looks way too predictable and

boring which we don't want so uh 06

looks pretty good for me with a scale of

1.5 for these and that is it um I was

going to put in the uh random color in

this part of the tutorial but I think

we've gone over already so join me in

the next part and we will finally add

some color to our sprinkles and make

this look nice so join me in the next

part this is the part where we start

making our Donuts look sexy so uh we're

going to be coloring our sprinkles

finally so it doesn't look so depressing

um and then also getting into rendering

to start making this actually look

pleasing with Shadows and Light and

everything else so first of all the

sprinkles now as you probably know you

could come in here and you could select

a Sprinkle and then go all right I'm

going to make a a red sprinkle and then

I'm going to don't do this by the way

I'm just showing you uh make this uh

Aqua sprinkle and then a blue sprinkle

right and this does work does exactly

what you would expect the problem with

this though is that for one the color is

locked to that specific sprinkle so this

curved sprinkle

is always red okay and the short

sprinkle is always white the other issue

is that this is not easy to change the

distribution of those colors like if I'm

an artist I'm looking this I'm like

that's kind of boring because all the

colors is like 25% blue 25% white 25 you

know I want to have maybe 80% One uh

dominant color and then a few splashes

of complimentary colors I can't do that

so there is a much much easier way um so

first let me just clear all of these and

I'm going to create one new material I'm

going to call it sprinkles and I'll

actually show you how to quickly apply

uh the same material to multiple objects

at the same time um because we haven't

done that yet so let me I'm going to

grab my round sprinkle which is

currently still over there by itself

I'll just bring it over here so it's

part of the family there we go all right

so I've got uh I've got one object with

the the material that I want to apply

them all to uh what I need to do is

shift select all the objects that I want

to have that material and then lastly

shift select again the object that has

the material I want to apply them to and

then and you know that cuz it's it's uh

highlighted yellow okay then hit contrl

L this brings up the link or transfer

menu and we want to link the

materials and now you can see our

material has a five next to it because

five material sorry five objects are

sharing this material and that's it and

now obviously because they're linked it

means if I make a change over here um

they're all going to be reflected great

now we're going to do something fancy so

let's go to the shading tab which gives

us access to our uh notes oh dear where

have I all right let's go back trying to

get to that sprinkle okay to our uh

notes now I want to introduce you to a

little friend called shift a input the

object info node a very weird little uh

weird little node that just does some

useful things when you might need it so

you see it pop up in a few tutorials um

there's a bunch of stuff here that it

can do the most useful one for us in

this instance is the random input drop

that into your base color and let's see

what happens so we've got some gray

values and it's easier to see actually

when you look at the donuts so what this

has done is it has assigned a value a

random value for each individual

sprinkle between zero and 1 one so

because that's then being transferred to

color information it means that for

example this sprinkle might have got a

value of like

0.023 right the robot spat that out uh

and then this one this whitish looking

one maybe this was

0.89 or something like that okay so it's

just transferred those values into color

information which is just blacks to

whites not very useful right now but we

can use that those those num num in a

I'll just show you okay shift a we're

going to go converter color ramp

probably I mean I might have used this

node more than any other node in blender

before it's like so versatile used for

so many things so drop it in here

between the object info and the

principal and uh currently it is exactly

the same because it's just the it's

transferring that data into a gradient

value of the exact same Shades but we

can change

this to any color that we want and look

at that so you can very quickly see this

is exactly how we're going to create

sprinkles of different colors um now one

thing you'll note looking at this is

that every single sprinkle is a

different shade like no two sprinkles

have the same color right now because

this is a gradient and that's not how it

works in the real world because the

sprinkles come out of you know one

constant icing bag right or a machine

with the same food diet so basically all

the blue ones would have the exact shade

of blue and all the

orange ones would have the exact shade

orange so we need to change this from

linear to constant and now if I slide

this across look at that we are

influencing what percentage now is

orange or blue and this is really cool

cuz it means you get to work like an

artist and just create a really nice

appealing looking donut very very

quickly so I'm going to go with like a

light blue over here and then I'm going

to create a new color just by hitting

the plus button and then let's give this

a purple like that and I'll make this

one pink actually same shade as our

donut why not you'll note by the way

that I'm not going like full saturation

um and that's deliberate because you

learn in art that yeah like saturation

and color is quite uh aggressive it's

quite noisy and uh quite attention

grabbing and so if you use too much of

it it can be exhausting so I I tend to

keep it at like

08 um okay and then I'll also go over

here and I'm going to make this white

let's go oh whoop no not like that white

and I'm going to create another one next

to it and this one I'm going to make

yellow okay so just by sliding this

around I could say like less white more

yellow less yellow more white and then I

can go yeah more blue it's just a really

simple easy way to create the exact um

the exact look you're going for awesome

now something uh you don't have to do

this next part but it's so easy why not

I was looking looking on uh Pinterest on

like uh like aesthetically pleasing

Donuts like trying to make this uh look

really cool and uh and I saw like

metallic sprinkles and I was like hm

that's an interesting idea what if I

made these white and yellow ones

metallic and then they would look silver

and gold so there is a slider in your

principled bsdf technical name that just

means it's the Shader that does

everything um and it's the metallic

Shader look at that so if I slide this

all the way to one all my sprinkles are

now metallic and if I slide all the way

to zero then they are non- metallic and

that's actually how you should use this

slider all materials in the real world

are either uh non-metallic also known as

dialectric materials so that would be

most of the sprinkles um and then some

objects are metallic entirely metallic

um there are technically a few rare

materials on Earth that have some blend

between it but as a rule you should not

have a value that is between Zer and one

it should be either zero or one any

anyway so what we can do with this

because we've got this color ramp

information here is I can actually uh

just convert like I can make a color

ramp that is just black and white that

just shows which sprinkle is metallic

and which one isn't so um if I duplicate

this and here's a pro tip if you use

control shift d it will duplicate it but

it will retain its connection so just

saves you I don't know one second uh and

now I'm going to connect that into my

metallic input now currently this is

wrong because this information is uh

it's just using yeah it's like color so

we need to be black and white so this

one here because this is going to

represent my dialectric colors I'm going

to set this to Black so it is non-metal

and then this I can delete and this I

can delete because on the leftand side

of it it's all black sorry so it's all

uh non-metals and then over here these

two the uh the silver and the gold

they're going to be metal so actually I

can delete the gold and now that's doing

exactly what it should so we've now got

dialectric metals and metals and the

reason it doesn't look like metal by the

way is cuz your roughness is here so if

you set it all the way down you can see

it starts to look a lot closer to a

metallic

sprinkle um and by the way you can get

the exact like position you can go like

7 and then

here7 type it in and then that way it's

definitely uh correct for whatever

reason of M this has to be a bug this is

something weird about it but there's one

sprinkle on my Donuts probably not on

yours but it's like it's it's it's

purple up here but then it crept over

into the metallic category down here

which shouldn't be possible but

evidentally it's just on my I've never

seen it before but one of them has

actually snuck over doesn't matter it's

a what it can be the rare purple uh

metallic One um all right but I don't

want the uh these other ones to be uh

shiny at least that shiny so I'm going

to again duplicate this control shift d

and with this if I plug this into my

roughness input just like before these

black and white values will decide what

is the roughness of the metallic and non

non-metallics so this one here um I want

this to be essentially the opposite of

what it is almost entirely black a

little bit so there's a little bit of

roughness to it like that and then this

one over here I want this to be a lot

more diffuse not entirely diffuse like

somewhat of a blend cuz if you look at

reference which you should be modeling

off reference there is uh some shininess

to them so yeah but that is it so you

can see very quickly we have created

some very aesthetically pleasing donuts

and have fun with it guys like create a

cool looking doughnut um you can use

whatever color combinations you want I

really do like it when people experiment

and not just follow a tutorial down do a

te but like venture out there and you

know do do interesting things so try

different color combinations try

different icing colors um and you could

make something that looks uh looks

really cool but that's almost it for our

donut it's pretty well done which means

we can now finally talk about rendering

so as a recap of uh of part one if you

hit F12 that's going to put you into the

rendered State our camera is really far

away from the donut so actually let's

first fix that if you go to your camera

view you just by clicking that little

icon there or by hitting number pad uh

zero that'll take you there as well um

this is the camera view we're really far

away I mentioned in the start that uh if

you use uh this key this button view

lock camera to view that'll let you like

grab it and move it around but there is

actually another way I didn't want to

introduce you to too many uh keyboard

shortcuts at the start but if you hit

with the camera selected shift Tia key

that will put you in fly mode uh the

other way to do that by the way is to

just go uh view navigation fly

navigation there if you don't have that

key so anyway in this mode it's now it's

almost like you're playing a video game

so like it's just I'm playing a

firstperson shooter looking around my

scene w is mve forward just like in a

video game uh a is strafe left D is

strafe right and S is back so w ASD just

like a video game um I can also go up by

hitting e and then down by hitting q and

if it's too sensitive like if the

movement is like you know crazy fast uh

the scroll wheel also decides how uh far

oh goodness there it is okay how far the

movement is so scroll down if it's going

too quickly for you um but yeah I can

now place place the camera wherever it

is I want and then when it's there I

just click single left click and now

it's there and by the way that mode is

uh called fly navigation and it works

also not just from the camera view but

anywhere in blender if you ever want to

just like you know move around you can

do uh use that fly mode so shift til the

key for that all right so we do a render

we get something that looks hideous why

is that well for starters it's not a

very

the scene has just got one light in it

but the primary reason and by the way uh

the yes that's the render View mode but

also if you go to rendered view shading

up there this is the exact replica of

that but just in the viewport okay now

the primary reason this looks bad is

because of the renderer okay so

blender's default render engine if you

go to your render properties is called

EV now EV is fast but it is not accurate

if you are familiar with with games most

of you probably are um EV is basically a

game engine so it's designed to be

really fast probably not 60 frames per

second but really really fast um and

it's a in terms of uh the renderer types

there's usually actually you call them

like real time is what this type is and

that is a rasterized uh render engine

and then you have Ray traced or path

traced engin sometimes called offline

renderers um which are a lot more

accurate but much slower so this is good

if you don't really care about

realism uh like maybe I'm making a title

effect for a TV you know thing whatever

or you're on a really tight deadline you

just want to get something out fast you

can use EV um now you can make it look

better than what we have like for

example I think the because we're using

like really small sizes for our donut

you want to increase your Cube size and

then your lamp the bias there you go you

set that all the way to zero um and now

it's more appropriate for this size

we've got Shadows but it's still not

great um we don't for example have

shadows on any of our sprinkles um

because it's just too fine a detail and

the shadow itself it's just like a

blurry mess so this is it's just a

fakery um and it's just like what's

going on uh with video games I will

briefly mention also that blunder 4.1

which is what this is here it's in Alpha

State at the time of this recording I've

been using uh 4.0 for the this whole

recording but this is 4.1 and it is a

it's EV but it's completely re written

and it is better right so the Shadows

are better um there is actually even

some bounce lighting happening but it's

kind of like a fake bounce lighting and

it's definitely better but it's still

not

great so that is the limitation it's

fast but it is not great um and that's

what you get with rasterized real time

um engines so there is another render

engine to go to your render engine

settings and click the drop down ignore

workbench that's for like um just like B

basically rendering your viewport really

for technical stuff um Cycles so those

are the two main engines of of blender

you got cycles and you've got EV Cycles

is uh what's known as an offline

renderer or a path traced also known as

R Tred engine now uh this looks way

better than what we had before you'll

notice for example that all of our

sprinkles have shadows by the way

apologies if my recording gets a little

choppy it's because it's uh using the

CPU anyway um you can see it's uh it's

got proper Shadows on things uh there's

actually bounce lighting right that's

like coming off this uh this table here

and it's going underneath the dut um so

it's like it's shooting around inside

here and it's shooting back and it's

going over here which is exactly what

happens in the real world and it's

really important for realism to get that

uh bounce I mean any room any

architecture you basically have to use

Cycles um to do it because uh that's how

you get proper lighting like in the real

world but you get all this for free at

the cost of speed so you'll notice as I

move around whilst my recording goes

choppy that it starts grainy and then it

kind of refines itself and if you look

in the top leftand Corner you've got

something that says samples so uh as you

leave it uh rendering longer it's

rendering more samples essentially it's

just like the computer's just chewing

through it that's I mean it there's

technical ways to explain it but that's

the simplest way to think of it and

it'll get get clearer as uh the longer

you leave it now there is actually two

ways to calculate this one is to use

your CPU which is what it's on by

default another is to use your GPU which

is gray out by default so let's fix that

go to edit preferences and then go to

system and you can see at the top there

Cycles Render devices so try switching

to one of these tabs and see what you

get if you have a device like myself uh

that is a GPU that is supported um then

you can render on that and it'll be way

faster so just as an FYI Cuda is Nidia

and it's for like cards like I think

1080 backwards so like 90s 800s I think

they used cter Optics was around uh the

2,000 series um further on so Optics is

the one that you use if you're using a

ninia card today uh hip is for AMD cards

and then you got one API and I think

actually on Apple devices you'll have a

metal option but see what you have and

then see if you can render with that

because that with GPU on now it'll uh

going back to this it might actually the

first time you use your GPU it will say

I think at the top left hand corner um

doing this for the first time it'll do

some pass it'll be really slow it might

take like 2 minutes but then after

you've done that every time you open

blender you should never need to do it

again so it might be slow the first time

you activate it but it'll um it should

be faster now this is way faster than

what we had before like you can see how

quickly it's uh it's clearing through

those samples um it's basically real

time um it's uh in fact actually so that

noise that I mentioned right it's still

there but when you render and also in

your viewport you can use a denoiser so

it's uh it's actually not that new it's

like 3 four years old I think we started

using Aid noises um Nvidia released

their one for Optics um and since then

Intel have come out with one and and it

basically takes that noisy image it uses

some of the information from the 3D

renderer to clear it out whilst

preserving the detail so if you can

actually turn it on in the viewport by

hitting the D noise one if you've got a

Nvidia card it'll be way better if you

don't it'll have to use the Intel D noer

which is a lot slower um but you can see

the noise is practically gone right so

this is almost real time um which is

really really cool now obviously not all

of you are as lucky right I've got 439

90 s um I started though on a Pentium 3

I think back in 2003 um and I mean look

they made a Toy Story on computers that

you couldn't even sell today because

they would be just garbage maybe you

could for like nostalgic anyways the

point is is that everybody when they

start 3D is using a device which is

crappy don't let it limit you or don't

think oh I can't use 3D until I get a

better

computer a graphics card is definitely

one of the best investments you can make

if you're thinking like I want to do

this as a career this is definitely for

me I'm really enjoying this um it's

definitely a good investment because you

will be able to uh produce more renders

throughout the day faster um but it is

not essential you can get by with just a

CPU it just means that when you do your

render your final render instead of it

being you know done in an hour you might

have to leave it overnight um in the

past when I started with blender I was

making crappy renders at like 600 by 400

100 resolution and I was rendering for

over a week just to do a really crappy

basic animation so don't let it Hind to

you it's it's totally normal that you'll

have a bad computer um if it's for you

in the future definitely worth investing

in um in a card that is fast also if you

want to know which card to buy uh

blender actually put together an open

Benchmark uh so if you go to open data.

blender.org or click the link in the

description you can see it's showing you

all of the the people that have done

this benchmark what have their devices

been and what are the times that you can

expect so you can see actually mine is

at the bottom it's the uh 3090 uh but

it's I've got four of them so it's it's

obviously churning through it faster the

fastest is I mean basically it's going

to be the top card or like the go-to

Nvidia is just crushing it um I think uh

where is the AMD they used to be on I

think amd's made a made a mention there

you've also got CPUs on this side but

essentially I mean just by the top like

gaming card usually that's the one um

but do go here check it out if you want

all right so we're going to be using

cycles for the rest of this tutorial um

and we'll really dive into it in the

next part but I just want to quickly um

my lamp is way way away so let's just

bring that in closer just so that we can

see things and you can actually clear

the rotation of an object to make it

appear at the the center of your 3D

scene by tapping alt G okay so now hey

look that's actually kind of cool um I'm

gonna move uh my lamp over to here just

check my recordings yeah my recording's

not being affected um and I'll just now

reduce the strength of this because it's

obviously now way closer but look at

that like look at the shadow that we get

um coming off this donut um it's like

properly taped it's not like some fakery

so it's like tight here and then it's

like really uh faded at the end there

that kind of stuff is really difficult

to do with a um a a rasterized real-time

engine like EV uh and you also get like

all of this proper like look at the

Shadows on the sprinkles the reflections

is actually true it's not like guessing

and fakery um yes it's a type of fakery

but it's it's much more accurate um

anyways I I like Cycles I'm I'm A Cycles

guy um I think most people actually are

the first version of Eevee was not that

great Eevee next in 4.1 might be better

we'll see U but yeah the first version

of Eevee was not really that great now

one thing you might notice looking at

your dut I'm going to make one one big

tweet to this is that it kind of feels

hard like the don't doesn't give this

kind of like soft feeling to it and the

reason for that is the material so by

default all materials are yeah kind of

like hard materials but fleshy objects

like humans as well as food have

subsurface scattering so I'll throw some

reference photos here um but you can see

this is my hand I had uh light coming in

like as I was eating breakfast and I can

see the light is actually going through

my fingers right so that's light that is

uh like yeah it's a mushy fleshy object

so it's passing through it a scattering

amongst all the other atoms in the

finger and it's uh the light is going

through to the other side you also see

it um in a lot of food so took these

photos at a party yes I am that guy uh

but you can see that's how you get light

that goes uh to the opposite sides uh my

daughter was eating a banana and uh I

was like look at that banana look at

that subsurface scattering right there

so donuts and icing have that and we can

do that we can add that sorry by going

to the materials and then down here

you've got subsurface okay so here uh

the the biggest one to turn it on and

just like metallic apparently this is a

by the way a new setup for 4.0 but just

like metallic it's supposed to be a

weight of either zero or one all right

now when you do one it suddenly turned

blue and you're like what the hell

happened there that's because the radius

this uh radius is uh it's this is your

XY Z but also it's your r G and your B

in this case and these values are

different because it's designed for skin

by default so this is a great setup if

you've got skin with blood inside but we

don't so click drag down and then just

set these values to one all right so now

it's closer to the material still looks

weird and that's cuz the scale of this

is wrong it's saying that the thickness

of the object is 5 cm but this icing is

not that so let's make this

01 and now you can see it looks a lot

closer it's still a little dark CU I

think it's uh it's not 1 cm thick so

let's go

0.5 and now we can see it's pretty close

to its original

material the biggest difference is if I

just zoom right in here let's set it to

what it was before see how it's hard it

almost feels like uh it just feels like

concrete right but then you set this to

one and look at that the the shadow just

starts to feel a little softer and you

get this bleed effect where kind of like

the shadow gets a like an edge to the

shadow where it gets a little more

saturated and Pinker um and that's

subsurface scattering you don't have to

tell it how to do that it just does it

so you set the weight to one these to

one and then you just set your scale to

whatever it is you want um and I'm also

going to do it for my sprinkles so I'm

just going to click on one of my

sprinkles

and yeah right in here for the

subsurface I'll just do the same thing

set the weight as one these radiuses to

one and then I'll use a really low value

here like let's go 0 Z

two and now you can see because these

sprinkles are yeah it's like icing right

it's just the exact same thing um yeah

we want some of the light to pass

through it and we don't actually have to

bother setting up that um that color

ramp system for the metal because Metals

automatically that Shader when you set

it to one it means it's going to cancel

any subsurface scattering that would

have appeared there so we don't have to

bother with it the subsurface is not

going to happen on Metals um but you can

see it starts to feel a lot softer a lot

um I don't know more pleasing more

delicious looking like real food because

that's really one of the telltale signs

of food is a subsurface scattering

awesome so in the next part we're going

to start really building out the scene

what I want to do though at the end of

this video I want to give you some

homework and that is to try to model

this plate now we're going to do it

actually in the next part but it's

simple enough and it's actually possible

to use all the tools that I've mentioned

in this uh this series so far to model

this yourself now the reason I I'm

trying to give this as homework is that

once this tutorial finishes that's how

it's going to be you're going to have to

try to solve problems on the fly so it

definitely helps solidify learning if

you can try to apply it um by yourself

so have a go it doesn't matter if you

get stuck or you fail at it terribly

because you can just click the next part

and see how it's done but have a go at

it now um because then you'll start to

you you'll just retain the information a

lot better anyways go ahead click here

and uh and see how we build the rest of

the scene and build that plate do you

guys know that in 20122 a blender was

downloaded 17 million times crazy number

it's not the total number of users

because some people are downloading

every release in the year and then

others are using a release from years

prior but the best guess of blender's

total user size is about 10 million 10

million blender users

but I now have to follow with some

rather sad news only about 3600 of them

are actually contributing to the Blended

Development Fund that means and this is

the scary bit if you were to fill the

Yankee Stadium with 46,000 blender users

only about 17 of them would be

contributors now not only is this not a

great look for the open-source world but

it means that blender is going to be

developed slower than paid software like

I mentioned previously that the texture

painting features of blender are rather

limited and old well they've wanted to

build proper PBR texture painting for

years but they lack the funds to hire a

full-time developer the same applies to

the broken fire and fluid Simulator the

video sequence editor the list goes on

and we could have all of these

improvements today if we only had the

funds so last month I was at the blunder

Institute speaking to Franchesco City

and he asked for my help to bring

awareness to the

so I'm asking you right now that's right

right now donate if you're enjoying this

series and you like blender then please

pause this video right now and take 2

minutes to sign up and pick a plan not

only do you get to be one of the cool

177 people in the stadium that's

donating but you'll know that the

Amazing Story of blender gets to

continue because of you and if you do

join the development fun because of this

video then please comment below with #

jooin blender so that I can tally up how

much of an impact this little PSA and

the series has had as a whole so with

that out of the way let's get on to the

tutorial so how' you go with your

homework did you take a stab at creating

the plate did you do it or did you wait

for me to show you the answer hope you

did uh if you didn't you're only

cheating yourself as the teachers say um

but no seriously give it a shot if you

haven't already I do think it helps you

uh helps you to learn but if you don't

want to can't stop you uh but I'll show

you now how I created this plate so

first of all um I load in the image

reference first um and I haven't shown

you how to do that yet so I'll show you

now if you go to the top of the screen

until the cursor changes on that line

there just right click and then say

vertical split and then I now get two

duplicate Windows this second window I

can now make any other window type so

the one I'm looking for is image editor

now go image and open so this is the

image we're going to use it's one from

polygon because it's actually one of our

models it's a real ceramic plate that we

photos scanned turned into a model but I

thought it's also just a really nice

simple modeling exercise for beginners

so why not model off of that okay so

shift a because you got to start with

something now a lot of you probably

started with a cylinder um and that's a

fine way to go about it but I know from

experience that the cylinder's got a top

face on it that we don't need and then

the normals have to be flipped and you

have to deal with the Siz and I find

it's actually just easier to start with

a circle and then build out from that so

the circle settings we obviously want to

turn the radius down to be yeah just I

mean I think a plate is roughly the size

of like two donut widths anyway like

roughly 24 30 cm whatever so anyway a

radius of around uh 12 CM now the

vertices that's the resolution of your

mesh right now you might remember when

we did the dut when we added the tourus

I said it's good to start with a low

poly mesh to begin with because it's

easier to add detail than it is to try

to take it away later and that's true

and it's good advice for like organic

flowy shapes but in this case I know

that looking at the reference it's got

bevels like tight bevels here and here

and it's going to be a lot easier to

control that if I just use the bevel

tool as we model rather than trying to

use a subsurf modifier later which is

all to say that the resolution of the

circle that we start with I actually

want to be the final representation so

essentially this needs to be as round

and high resolution as it needs to be

until so that I won't see any jaggedness

in the final model so I actually went

with 100 vertices which is quite High

poly but we have got the camera really

close to it so I think it makes sense

okay so in edit mode make sure you're

invery select mode I've done recording

so many times I can't remember when I've

uh actually taught something or not but

you can swap in and out of these modes

by the way by hitting uh the one two and

three key so one for vertices two for

Edge and then three for face select okay

so with verticy select I'm going to

start by creating this lip that goes up

so e and then Zed to lock it on the Zed

axis to about there I mean we don't have

measurements but that looks like it

could be plausible and I think it's on a

slight angle very slight so I'm going to

scale out just by hitting s all right

now for this next part of the lip I'm

going to hit e to extrude extrude again

but I don't want to uh move it anywhere

I want to do it exactly where it is but

then scale it out out so right click and

then s to scale out all right and it's a

good idea also to just zoom out and see

in proportion to the plate is that lip

about the right size I think it is

that's pretty good and now I'm going to

do another lip on the other side just

going up so e z to about there that's

pretty good and then s to scale out as

well okay awesome now uh when you add in

a circle it doesn't come with a face by

default so if we go into wireframe mode

which also uh you can swap sorry not

that mode y-frame mode you can swap in

and out of these modes at the top here

by holding down the Zed key so solid

View and YF frame I usually just quickly

flip in between those um like that all

right so if I hold down alt and click on

this line you can see there's no face in

the middle because wherever there is a

face is there should be like this orange

tint so when I alt click here I don't

see the orange tint which means I need

to have a face so F to create a face now

we need some bevels okay so we need a

bevel that goes here another one that

goes here and another one that goes here

so we did that when we uh added the

sprinkle and the hotkey for it is contrl

B but I don't want to just create like

the same uh bevel here and then do

another one here and then another one

here I can do them all at the same time

so if I hit alt and shift and then

clicked on these lines if I did control

B now I would get a bevel everywhere but

the problem is is that I'm also getting

the bevel on the lines that are going uh

this way right like uh these lines which

is not what I want but it doesn't know

that I don't want them there because

those are edges that are also selected

right this uh this line that goes like

that so what you need to use is just a

different tool so instead of verticy

Select mode I'm going to use Edge select

mode and now when I hit uh alt click on

that line and then shift alt click on

this line it's only selecting those

edges and not the edges in between which

means now when I do control B to create

that bevel I'm getting the bevel just

where I want it on those three uh three

edges all right now the tightness of

that it's pretty tight but does need to

be a little bit higher poly so I'm just

mousing sorry scrolling up on my uh on

my mouse to about there that's good and

now solid view great pretty good all

right getting there now we got a paper

thin plate we don't want that so for

thickness I'm hoping most of you got

this right but it's our old Trust D

modifier the solidify modifier that we

used previously it's too thick by

default um I think I went with

04 like that all right and then because

I want to do a bevel on this edge here I

can't do it unless this solidify

modifier is applied so drop down and

then hit apply and now in edit mode I've

got both of those edges so again holding

down alt and shift alt click on those

two edges and now I'm going to do

another bevel right here contrl + B and

pull it out now you'll see that it it

reaches a point where they start to

overlap and that's not good I don't want

that I want it to be I do actually want

it to be a complete round form like

really like essentially that but you can

see I can't really get it exactly right

where they just like meeting in the

middle so there's actually when you're

in certain States in blender you'll see

at the bottom of your screen along uh

let me just do this along this line here

you can see you've got a number of uh

shortcuts it lists and one of them says

C for clamp overlap and currently it's

listed as off so if I oh dear let's guel

that if I uh when I hit control B whilst

I'm in this state if I hit C it will

turn clamp overlap on which means it

will only bevel until the point that the

edges touch and then it will stop and

that is exactly what I want so I'll just

click to confirm and now we have a

plate but when you're modeling something

like this it's very common if you're

doing like extrusions and then you're

canceling the Extrusion and you're

scaling out you can end up with vertices

on top of vertices and in fact when we

did that bevel clamping thing I think

what it's done is it's got two edges and

they've now merged the vertices in the

middle but they the um it's sharing the

same space so whenever you've got two

vertices in exactly the same space you

can have like artifacting that will

occur later on so after I model

something like this I just go into edit

mode I select everything by hitting a

and then I want to find all of those

vertices that are uh accidentally in the

wrong place and then hit M and then I

want to say merge by distance and now

you can see on the bottom of my screen

look at that it merged 300 vertices I've

modeled this plate a few times sometimes

it it deleted like 400 vertices usually

it deletes 100 um evidently when I was

uh yeah doing the Extrusion and then

canceling it I think I maybe did it a

few times so we had like three rings

essentially in the exact same place so

that's why you do that step because if

we didn't then you would have that and

you wouldn't know until you see

artifacts later on all right but that's

it we now have a wonderful looking plate

and we can uh close that oh yeah I

should show you how to close the the

window um so when you are closing

something you can go here on this Edge

and you can right click and then say

join areas the other way is if you go to

the top right hand corner of the screen

you get this little like targeting

cursor and then if you click and drag

left or right that will also merge it's

just that's how you used to create

Windows in blender you can also drag out

from it and that will split the view um

that's it's kind of an old habit of mine

but most people just prefer to like

until the cursor changes right click and

then say that but I still do that

sometimes and then I forget I'm doing a

tutorial and I have to explain it all

right so the plate um we want to make it

smooth so right click shade smooth and

the reason we have flickering right here

is the top of our plate is uh

overlapping with the countertop so we

just need to move this up slightly so

that it's not doing that and if you

actually go underneath your countertop

this is usually a very easy way to

quickly make it so that um it's touching

you just have a little bit of overlap

and then um yeah then it it looks

plausible awesome we have our plate um

now if I move out here you can see this

this big giant arrow thing this is our

camera and it's just too big the

visualization of it is so big that I've

got lines in the way and I just I don't

like it um it's actually a pretty good

scale for a normal scene which is you

know usually tens or hundreds of meters

but we're so small that this camera is

just too big so in the camera tab go to

viewport display and then just turn down

the size right um and I'll go for yeah

like 10% of what it was to about a

0.1 okay great so what we want to do now

is start laying out the scene so first

and foremost I'm going to go into

looking through my camera view and I

want to get the camera placement right

so hitting shift tilter key to put me

into uh fly View and then just scrolling

down so that you get really small

movements not that small to scroll up a

little bit all right and then I'm using

q and E to just change the height of the

camera to be roughly where I want it all

right so I'm going to have a stack of

donuts so I'm going to have like one

here one here one here so um I'm just

making room for that essentially I

shouldn't use this annotation tool it's

uh it's being replaced in blender like

the new grease pencil is going to be

pretty amazing um but anyway it's the

old old annotation tool so uh yeah let's

start stacking some donuts so selecting

the base donut and then shift selecting

the icing I'm going to duplicate that by

shift d and then moving it up along the

Zed axis until they start to touch now

there is actually some new snapping

Tools in blender that is uh pretty handy

but from experience having tried it for

this there's so many like little little

pieces of sprinkle and everything that

you're going to have overlapping anyway

because Donuts are quite spongy so they

would be you know it would be plausible

that it would be like kind of squishing

the sprinkle so it's okay to have some

clipping so something like that is okay

now I'm going to do another donut so

shift d again move it up along the Zed

axis uh to about there and I want to

make it an interesting stack not just

like a straight stack so I'll move these

around so that we've got kind of a like

an S shape like that all right duplicate

these again so this is going to be a

stack of

four like so and then this one I'll pull

back this way rotate that go

down all right and pull it back a little

bit okay lovely now looking from the

camera you can see a pattern that has

emerged um so you can see this is the

same as this is the same as this and the

eye is very good at detecting pattern so

that's going to be a very big uh deal

breaker for the viewer they're going to

notice that and it's just going to make

the picture look worse so with each

donut selected one by one I'm going to

hit R and then tap Zed and that's going

to just rotate along the Zed axis but

you can see if I just tap Zed that that

that uh axis that I I put it on a little

bit like just tilted it it's now uh like

reverse the Tilt because I'm rotating

along the Zed but what you can do is you

can rotate it along its original axis by

not tapping Zed once but twice okay and

you can see that the line has now

changed a little bit cuz that's putting

us now into the local Z axis so the

original uh rotation of that donut it's

the Z axis on that one not the scene one

so yeah that's the way I will do it um

and I just want to rotate it until I get

a different pattern so now I've got

these little wavy shapes that's good now

this one I'm going to tap r and then Zed

and Z again so it's the uh the local

axes that's pretty good and then this

one I'll do the same thing r z z and

just move it a little bit that way

all right and now it's a lot less

predictable cool and now the same thing

for this one so I'm going to do a stack

of three so four and then three on this

one so shift d

Zed and just coming in here this isn't

hard this is just um it's just a little

finicky right um it would be good

actually if you could use motion sorry

not motion like a simulation Blended

does have rigid body tools but it's a

and if we had more uh funding from some

people we could improve it because the

rigid body tools are pretty janky they

don't work well for small objects and

it's very fiddly to set up but I've seen

other tools plugins that people have

made for like Unreal Engine where

placing objects is actually a simulation

so you just draw across the plane and

you could have like donuts just spawn in

and like tumble on each other um and it

just means that you don't have a lot of

this finicky uh hand placing of stuff

but for probably for a simple like this

I would probably hand place the donuts

anyway because you can finesse it a lot

better than you would in a a simulation

anyway um all right so just like before

making it trying to yeah try and make it

look interesting as interesting as I can

move this one closer that's pretty good

and then so that we don't have the

repeating shapes r z

z like that and that's pretty good

actually uh this one it's a little bit

further okay move that a little bit more

all right there we

go uh oh did I not

hit hang on did I Z okay I thought maybe

I didn't uh tap Zed twice but evidently

I did it's just it's got this weird gap

which I kind have to close now

okay sorry if you can hear traffic I am

right next to a road I thought hey I

need an office why don't I get an office

right next to a busy road with

boss but I'll be moving out of here soon

planning to move country if I can I

won't say where I moving to no I'm

planning to move uh to the United States

actually looking to get a Visa because

uh I want to move to La La it's where

all the other YouTubers are and uh I

don't know every time I go there I come

back with like a bunch of ideas and yeah

so I'm moving if I can still waiting for

a visa to be approved but uh we'll we'll

see all right so I'm just making small

adjustments here and there all right and

the final dut that I will create take

this uh I'll just take this bottom one

shift d and I'm going to make a dut

which is going to be um like rotated to

the camera a little bit so yeah let's

move on one axis said here and it's just

going to be like this because this is a

much more readable shape that tells you

exactly what it is because I mean this

these Stacks could make you believe that

maybe it's baked Eagles or like little

mini cakes or something like that so

having this one rotated towards the

camera makes it very clear that these

are

donuts awesome all right cool now uh it

wasn't supposed to be that we have round

sprinkles on this side and then long

sprinkles on this side uh that's just

because we were duplicating shapes but

because we've done this with geometry

nodes it's really simple to just swap it

out to be something else so this one

here I actually just want it to be the

long sprinkles so in your geometry no

drop down click long sprinkles and there

we go just just swapped it out and now I

can mix it up a bit I can say this one

here I want to have round sprinkles uh

this one at the bottom I don't want to

have any sprinkles so it's just a bare

donut cuz those do exist right uh this

one I I'll say round sprinkles on there

and then I'll make this one long

sprinkles yeah and then maybe this one

I'll delete it as well so we get like

two plain ones that's pretty good and

there's a big gap here I don't know why

how did that happen what did I do wrong

evidently I made a big

gap by the way here's a tip if you

double so if you just hit R you're in

like like tilt mode but if you tap

double r so you tap r twice it's now in

track ball rotation mode which depending

on your view can be what you want so I

just go there double tap r and I just

rotate it towards the camera a little

bit and pull it

down maybe that's what I did maybe I

lowered the bottom donuts and then the

top ones didn't go with

it if you wanted to you could actually

parent the donuts to each other so that

when you rotate or move one on the

bottom then it moves the one on the top

but I don't think it's really necessary

and it can be a little bit hard to work

with as well so yeah oh they're now

touching I got to move

apart yeah something like

that awesome now the countertop I'm

going to scale this out until the edges

of the countertop like this Edge that is

here and then this Edge that are here I

just outside of the frame because our

camera I mean we are going to add a a

camera animation so that it goes down

but we're not going to be like doing a

360 pan of the dut so we're not going to

be able to see the rest of the scene so

we don't need a kitchen countertop that

stretches all out this way uh it's just

a waste of resources um so we're just

going to literally just stop at the

edges of where the camera can see I used

to think when I was starting 3D that

that's like lazy but now I'm like no

that's like how you use your resources

properly otherwise you end up doing

stuff that nobody ever sees um which is

actually a pretty common problem in the

industry um people over engineer models

and things just in case the camera needs

to be close and it never does and then

yeah anyway now I do want a backsplash

for this so I'm just going to duplicate

the bottom plane here so shift d pull it

out uh to you know roughly there and

then I'm going to hit R and then X so

I'm rotating it along the x axis and

then just holding down control to snap

it to the nearest 5° increment and in

the top left hand corner of my screen

I'm just looking for 90 and there it is

so I do a single click I'll move this up

like so and now we have a backsplash and

the final thing we'll do before moving

on to the next tutorial is create some

different doughnut colors now you could

actually do the same thing as we did uh

for the sprinkles and create that random

through color ramp option for this the

trouble I found with doing it for the

dut icing things is that you can

sometimes just end up with a bad batch

where you've got like a string of like

yellow donuts and you can't change it

because there's no sample option for the

the random thing so I find it's better

if you haven't got enough objects to

instead just manually set up the colors

um and it also just allows you allows

you to finesse it as as more of an

artist so a long way to say we're going

to create different materials for each

of the different icings so the one

that's already there we'll just call it

pink

icing and now um so I definitely want

that one to be pink which means these

ones that are directly behind it I

definitely want to be a different color

so I'm going to click the little uh

number to make it a single user and I'll

call this one blue icing and then the

color I'm going to make it a kind of an

aqua is color let's go into material

select there we go this one here I'm

going to make it a yellow icing so

clicking the little number next to it

there we go yellow

icing and then about there that's that's

good and then this one at the top I'm

going to make it chocolate icing click

the little

number chocolate icing let's go

Brown yeah yeah it's like how saturated

how warm is chocolate I mean I guess you

could have like a really desaturated

chocolate that's just very dark but I

think it's the more saturated it's kind

of looks like milk chocolate like the

kind of delicious not the really super

dark stuff which I do actually like as

an adult hatte it as a kid but now I

don't know normal chocolate is just way

too sweet uh okay that now the top one H

I'll make that one pink yeah that's fine

and then this one I'll just make it blue

icing and then this one I'll make it

yellow icing oh wait now I've got the

yeah it's blue and blue and yellow and

yellow that's not good so this bottom

one no the middle one yeah middle one

I'll make it chocolate bottom one I'll

make it blue just trying to get like a

nice ah now I've got pink and pink next

to each other h H all right maybe this

one will be yellow as well that's it's

too yellow all right maybe the bottom

one can be

pink there we go that's better all right

so I don't have any

like it now looks more natural looks

which is just more random I guess no

less random cuz I'm like manually

finessing it myself so it's less random

but it looks uh more random in a way

anyway finally before we move on let's

start labeling our objects so first of

all I want to make sure that my plane

sorry my plate is in inside of my

environment collection so I will now

call this plate this bottom one I will

call it uh yeah let's call it counter

and then this back one I'll call it the

backsplash

backsplash

awesome we have done it oh we do need to

give a material to our plate as well

can't just have it as a default material

orse it'll look terrible so new material

and the first thing I want to do is

adjust the roughness and make it look

kind of yeah shiny like the ceramic

plate let me just load that up actually

one more time there we go use that as my

reference so it's somewhat shiny and

then also I want to give a subsurface

because ceramic does actually have a

little bit of that um that creamy bleed

through of the light so I'll turn my

weight up to one radius all set to one

and then the scale

001 so a very small amount of subsurface

scattering um and it'll just help it a

little bit the color I'll also turn down

it to make it a little bit not so white

and then I'll make it slightly yellow a

little bit yellowy creamy color just

like over there if you want also you can

buy the plate it's just not a free model

but it will add realism to your scene if

you want to have a plate that is

actually real and photos scanned and

it's got all these little speckled

little things and divots across it if

you want it is optional all right so

that is it guys join me in the next part

and we're going to get into lighting

I'll see you there and then go God said

let there

be light which is the topic for this

tutorial now we want to create the look

of a like a morning kitchen countertop

like you just woke up in the morning the

sunlight's coming in and it's warm and

it's inviting so we want to have some

sunlight coming in uh from the left now

we could take our default lamp here and

turn it into a sunlamp and then try to

angle it like that but the reason that

this looks so terrible is that one of

the key components of natural light is

not just the sunlight but the Skylight

around it getting that uh the right

shades of blue and white and the

gradient as it goes towards the horizon

and that's actually quite difficult uh

to do but thankfully there's a

relatively newest feature in blender

which we can use so rather than uh using

any lamp at all I'm going to delete the

lamps so there is no light in my scene

whatsoever and instead go to my world uh

tab here here and then where we've got

color I'm going to click the little

yellow Dot and then select Sky texture

and what this is added is uh besides

just the sky texture it's also added in

a sunlamp so if I rotate around we

should see look at that real sunlight

coming across it now it is very hot by

default so if you go to your render

settings underneath color management at

the very bottom here you've got an

exposure slider which you use actually

quite a lot um you can see see the

lighting has stayed the same um and it

doesn't have to reender anything this is

purely just adjusting yeah the sensor

essentially on your camera and if you

hold down control uh I usually just snap

it to a minus two now back to the sky

settings so what this is uh yeah

essentially it's created the exact look

of the sky a real sunlamp that little

Sun disc over there and everything will

change depending on what you set like

the elevation right if you set it to be

like uh really low in in the sky well

that's like Morning Line you can see

it's it's uh changed everything to be

like a warm look right so we got like

really warm light over everything and if

you change it to be like noon like the

sunlight is coming directly above it you

can see it's a lot colder and that's

because uh as the sunlight goes lower in

the sky it's now passing through more of

the atmosphere so it's like decaying the

light and you get um yeah you get like

an orangey look but as it goes more

vertical then it's a lot more clearer

and cleaner anyway it's a very cool

setting that is uh relatively relatively

and blender um but yeah so I'm actually

going to leave it at the default at

around

15° um the one thing I will change

though is the sun size so you get like

really um yeah like clean hard Shadows

from the Sun and this sun size here the

reason for this very weird measurement

0.545 de is because it's actually the

real Sun size in relation to the Earth

but there are reasons for changing that

because if the sun goes through a cloud

then obviously the cloud is now lighting

up and it's creating more of a dispersed

look so from the look of the camera I

usually just adjust this to be like a

two or a three and it just makes the Sun

a little bit softer around the edges um

and a little nicer at least according to

me awesome so looks better but now we

have another problem which is that the

Skylight is just bleeding in um from

from all directions right because

obviously it would so we need to create

an enclosure around it to obviously act

as an indoor space and just before we do

that though whilst I Was preparing for

this tutorial I noticed that the donuts

are a little close to my backsplash here

and that matters because uh we're going

to use depth of field later to make

things that behind it are like out of

focus but we can't really do that if

it's too close to the backsplash so I'm

just going to increase the distance

there and also just scale it up a little

bit because um now that it's in the

background

um yeah otherwise you'll see like the

corners actually appear in the render

which we which we don't want so just

make that a little bit bigger move it up

okay that's pretty good so essentially

yeah you just want to have like one two

3ish plate widths I think will do it uh

but yeah something like that and I also

now just want to make sure ah just

fiddling around with this now but yeah

this has got to be positioned exactly on

the plate as

well awesome okay so that enclosure

obviously to create that enclosure we

are going to be adding in a cube so

shift a mesh Cube and I want to scale

this down because although it is like a

kitchen right nothing outside of the

frame is going to be in the shot so

making it bigger than it needs to be is

just going to add to the render times

because then light has to bounce around

those things and yeah not good so um

yeah something scaled about that I don't

know something like that now uh really

what I want it to do is just like that

corner

here I want it to be locked to this

point like I want to move it to that

point and previously in blender this was

a really fiddly process I would have to

tap G and then Zed move along that and

then try and time it here and then hit

tap G and then Y and move it and it

would never be exactly correct it would

always just be slightly off well now

there is a new feature in blender

literally that came in this release 4.0

that has changed the game so there was a

bunch of uh snapping impr improvements

so I will show you them now so it's

actually easy to understand if you just

go into YF frame mode so if I tap G so

I'm moving my Cube uh if you hit B it

now enters you into a new state called

snapping mode so the first thing it's

asking you is uh what is the origin of

the the object that you're moving that

you want to be the snapping point so

essentially as I Mouse over this you can

see the cursor is changing when it's a

circle that means it's it's uh going to

snap to that face if it is a Crosshair

that's that edge if it's a triangle

that's the middle point of the edge

which is sometimes useful and if it's a

square then that's a verticy so this is

on the object that is selected right now

okay so I obviously want that corner

verticy so I'm just going to do a single

click there now after I've clicked you

can see I'm able to select whichever

point in the rest of the scene I want to

snap it to so just like again it's a

square when it's verticy so when I'm on

these faces here uh right there I'll do

a single click and there we go so you

can see it's perfectly aligned it uh

with the bottom of that uh that

backsplash there now it is it is a

little weird I'll I'll be honest like

maybe it's more weird because I've been

using blender for so long maybe

beginners find it a little bit easier

but yeah like the fact that you're in a

move State then you're hitting B and you

you you will be moving it but it's in a

snapping mode rather than a a placement

mode it is little weird and also just to

make it even more complicated you can

hold down alt at any point and then

middle Mouse to uh drag around cuz

sometimes you want to snap like that

point uh but then you need to select a

point underneath an object so you can

hold down alt middle Mouse and then uh

find that point and snap it to that so

that's even weirder but I'm very glad

it's in there CU it is great but it is

just like takes a little bit to wrap

your head around um but I will continue

using it actually so in face select mode

in edit mode um you can see this is too

high up so I can just uh I mean I could

try and place it like this or I could

hit B and then go this point to that

point same here g b this point to that

point yeah it's pretty pretty useful I

mean it doesn't have to be this exact I

mean this is just stuff that's outside

of the frame but uh but anyways all

right and I'll move this out so I do

need to create a little bit of space

here cu the camera needs to sit here

obviously um so there needs to be a bit

of space there but if I move inside you

should see some flickering yay for

flickering the flickering is because uh

obviously the cube comes with six faces

but we've already got two planes right

here and we don't really need those

planes we could actually map a marble

texture to the cube but then you have to

deal with UV unwrapping and all that

stuff I find it's actually easier

sometimes to just work with planes um

and use that instead so instead with the

cube here I'm just going to remove the

two faces that I don't need so the back

face and then this bottom face so

selecting those two and then hit X which

is another way to delete and not

vertices that's what we've been doing

currently instead hit faces so it's just

deleting those faces so now you should

see you have um yeah just kind of like

an open box four sides and then the back

and the bottom um are open and now what

I need is an opening on the left hand

side to be that window so to do that I'm

going to cut into it so that I get a

little bit of Gap um here on the left

hand side to be like the gap between the

uh the wall and the window and then

another Gap here between um yeah the

bottom of the countertop and you know so

I'm going to yeah inser and for that

tool it's I so I for inset and it's now

kind of like it's it's shrinking that

face into itself um and you're just like

choosing its scale essentially I'll hold

down shift to get a more precise uh

movement and yeah about there that's

pretty good and now I just delete that

face so again X and then faces awesome

so we should now see this which in

rended View mode whoops rended View mode

should hopefully look

okay yeah not bad um now this window

frame here really is just acting like

like the control for the light so if I

want I can much more precisely place

this like I don't want that much light

coming in um you know creating all that

light on this side of the the wall there

I can also say maybe I need more space

here so that I've got a little bit of

Darkness so I could put some things uh

in the background without them falling

into light and then this bottom face

here sorry this bottom Edge this is

going to control where the light starts

in the scene right so if it's like all

the way down here then it's uh yeah

anyways you get the idea just sort of

shaping the light awesome and now with

the camera selected I'll just move this

down a little bit angle it

up there we go

Al I mean you can also just do this in

um uh fly mode shift till the key but I

like hitting the uh R tool and then just

selecting the axes and I can just tilt

the camera exactly where I want it

awesome so much better we've we've

controlled the Skylight so the Skylight

is no longer coming in but we have

uncontrolled Lighting in the sense that

this wall here that's over here that is

supposed to represent the rest of the

kitchen is hitting and receiving all of

that sunlight and it's just filling in

all of this space uh on the right hand

side and that's not good because we want

shadow shadow is actually a good thing

it helps reveal form a lot of new

artists like they get scared of Shadow

they're try and like fill everything in

and light everything you do want shadow

shadow is a good thing so all this

uncontrolled space is not good so

essentially we need to do um just like

what you would do in the real world and

that's to create a uh like what a

photographer do they make like a a black

fill card right and that's just to

essentially uh stop B sliding um from

hitting this object so it's a good

excuse to learn about a new feature so

with the cube selected if I go to the

materials and then hit new uh we're

going to keep the white material for

everything else right White Walls but

then I can add another material right

underneath this one by hitting the plus

button then adding another material and

I'll call this one black wall and I

actually will change the Shader from

principled to a much simpler uh diffuse

it's just easier than like easier for

Cycles to calculate than a full

principled one and then this I'll just

change the color to be really dark

almost black all right and now in edit

mode I'm going to go face select and I'm

going to select that one wall that I

want to have uh the black wall material

to and then here I select it from the

material list black wall and then hit

assign and importantly you won't see the

assigned select these buttons they'll

only appear when you're in edit mode so

if you don't see it it's because you're

not in edit mode so in edit mode um

select the face then you'll see it and

hit assign and now look at that we have

much more control and in fact because

this light uh this uh sunlight is

hitting this uh this wall and it's

currently dark this color here now

becomes almost like the control for how

much fill light I want on the right hand

side of the donuts so the brighter it

goes the more fill light I get um yeah

just a very simple way to control that

lighting a bit better awesome that's

looking pretty good the other thing I'm

going to do is uh I'm going to adjust

the sun intensity so there's a separate

uh measurement here just for intensity

now you could like you could drop the

intensity of um the whole Sky texture as

well but when you do that it also drops

the sky texture right um and so I found

was like for a while when the feature

came out I was like trying to it was

very hard to control um but I realized

like if you keep the strength at one but

then you re reduce the sun intensity um

you could like for example reduce the

sun intensity like by a lot and then

increase your uh exposure and then it's

like the sunlight is there but it's a

lot softer right it's not like so

overbearing um but essentially what I

want to do I'm going to set this sun

intensity to 05 so it's half of its

brightness but the sky texture has full

brightness so it's just a little um yeah

a little less hot

essentially awesome now two things I

will show you before we close this

tutorial um which can be useful to know

one is how to import a model okay cuz

although as a beginner it's good to

understand modeling tools and know how

to build things uh when you start

building scenes it's very common

professional artists in studios to just

make use of model libraries because

there is so much you need to model and

basically fill in to create a realistic

believable scene it's just too much for

one artist to do so it's very common to

make use of model

libraries so what I want want you to do

is click the link in the description and

you will find this model the wood

utensils which we're going to put in the

background is a free model and it's

available in multiple softwares the one

we're looking for is the blender file so

hit download on that and then just like

before unzip the file that you receive

and inside it you should see a bunch of

textures and then one do blend file then

we're going to go to file you would

think import but actually this is for um

external file extensions like not blend

files if you want to import a blend file

it's actually the append option okay so

now we select that dot blend file double

click it and now we're actually reading

the blend file we're reading the

information inside that blend file and

it's saying what do you want to import

do you want to import just a single

object from that blend file do you want

to import uh you know a texture or a

material perhaps but in a lot of cases

if it's just a blend file that contains

like one model it's often going to be in

a collection a single collection so go

into collection and then just click the

one that's there and then hit append and

now even though there is multiple

objects as part of this um it's just

brought in all of them and it's put it

into a collection already utensils jar

001 so now I'm just going to move this

into the back of my scene and that's it

so that's how to import data from one

blend file into another it's going a

little slow for me I'm going to move

that there we go so I just want it yeah

somewhere in the background like that

the other thing I want to show you how

to do is how to install an add-on

because although you might think that's

kind of like an advanced user thing you

will very quickly realize that a lot of

workflows rely on add-ons so add-ons are

very powerful and there's a lot of them

out there and it's not actually clear

how to install add-ons to beginners so I

thought I would include that so

obviously we're going to use the uh the

polygon add-on I mentioned this uh this

earlier it just lets you like download

and import objects with uh with one

click and there's a bunch of free models

in here as well so you can actually get

started with those and and do some

interesting things click the link in the

description this will take you to the

download page and you're just looking to

download that great so you can see it's

uh downloaded a single zip file and

importantly you do not want to unzip

that zip file and the reason is is that

blender installs add-ons from the zip

file that is unextracted so to install

an add-on you go to edit preferences

add-ons and then at the top click on

install then locate where you downloaded

the zip file just that there and then

you just hit install and now if it's

correct if it's like found and located

uh an add-on inside that zip file it

should then automatically take you to

the name of that add-on uh in the search

so you just have it there and then to

enable it you just do a single click to

check it and it's now enabled now

obviously every atom will have a

different way of accessing it but

commonly they are in the sidebar which

is exactly where the polygon one is so

you'll see the tab here they might

actually be changing the sidebar at some

point in the future but but now this is

uh anyway how it is um so then just go

login via browser it's going to take you

to the website it'll say login confirmed

return back to the add-on uh and you can

type in free and you can see um a whole

bunch of different assets there so

actually one that I will uh import if I

go to my models section and then go to

vegetation there's a bunch of different

plants here um there's like four free

ones I believe so you can use one of

those I'm going to be using a paid one

just this uh Spider one I thought looked

quite nice nice but yeah you can access

one of these uh these free ones if you

want to and there we go awesome so this

is our render we are nearing the Finish

Line I can feel it we're getting close

so join me in the next part we're going

to dive into the composition and then

animation and then the final render so

click here and I'll see you there we are

on the home stretch well done for

sticking with the series it's uh it's a

lot of work a lot to uh retain but uh

well done for sticking with it now a

couple of things before we jump into

compositing the fun compositing stuff um

I noticed a couple of things that I

could tweak to the lighting just to

improve it and it's important we do it

now because what we're going to do next

relies on the lighting being uh correct

so um the first is I noticed that the

the light rotation it would be a little

bit better if I rotated it so it's

almost like a 90° like completely side

onto the donuts um so that's pretty

simple change the other one I noticed is

that I'm getting this like kind of ugly

bounce light coming off this uh both the

plate and the table so to fix that I can

just move right go into edit mode Edge

select mode select the edge of this

window and then if I just drag it you'll

see that the light just disappears off

the front there and now I have

controlled the light now the other thing

speaking of control I noticed looking at

this wall like I was trying to tweak it

and just try to improve it but this is

like a

huge uh source of light right and so if

you look on our donut it's not very

controlled right I could either if I if

I want to fill in this space I could

increase the brightness of that wall but

you can see it just it throws light just

everywhere and I don't really have any

control over it so change my mind let's

not use that as a fill Source let's just

drop the value to zero so there is now

no light coming off of that wall it is a

black void um which is actually pretty I

mean that's like a photographer holding

up a black uh fill card next to her face

uh and

instead excuse

me okay quick break there had to get a

drink of water

instead I'm going to add in a lamp Okay

so I'm going to shift right Mouse click

so that I drop it on the ground here in

front uh sorry to the side and then I'm

going to go shift a and I'm going to add

in not a point lamp not a sun but an

area lamp Okay so this is this is what

it looks like it's just it looks like a

plane right flat Square thing and it

casts it in the direction of that Arrow

so I want to rotate it along the Y AIS

just holding down control and in the top

left you can see we get a 90° angle so

that's what I'm looking for and then the

size of this I want to drop the size in

the setting there okay so I just can go

really small actually and now if I pull

in close with rendered View mode we

should see a lot more

control over where that fill light goes

all right so I can pull it in nice and

close right now that's obviously way too

bright so I'll just now dial that

back like so and I can now pull it

forward so that I get the fill light

exactly where I want but that's you know

that's 3D right you try out an idea

you're like okay that could work and

then you look at and you're like uh

maybe not you know I'll try a different

one um but yeah so I'm just going to

give it a bit of a yellowy tint and

that's better awesome okay so now we can

do some compositing first of all what is

it well the compositor is a way to add

effects to the final render so that

could be everything from a simple color

grade to like really stylized uh renders

so in our case we're going to use it to

add glare to better emulate a camera

that's really the purpose for this

tutorial so at the top of your screen

click on the compositor tab so this will

arrange your screen again disor to you

for a moment um but yeah wouldn't you

believe it it's another node screen so

click use nodes at the top there for

whatever reason they always appear off

your screen um at least in my case maybe

it it appears on yours but if you middle

Mouse up or just scroll down you should

be able to see it or you can just hit

the home key as well and that'll bring

it into Focus so it's actually pretty

similar to like geometry nodes in that

on the left hand side this is your

original like what you've started with

your original render and then on the

right hand side um it's going to be your

final output like that's what's uh going

to be saved to an image and then in

between here you can put whatever it is

you want you could put um a a color

grade you could do some post-processing

glare and shine and things like that um

but before we can see anything because

normally you would see your result here

we can't for two reasons the first is we

haven't done a render okay it's not

enough to just look in like rendered

View mode here right this is just like a

temporary view whilst we're moving

around we have to do a proper render by

hitting F12 but if we did one right now

we would have we'd be waiting a while

because the maximum samples is 4,000

which is maybe it's like probably pretty

good for like film animation production

quality but it's Overkill and especially

for um for this like we're just doing

some test renders so let's set it to 100

samples and that'll do it way faster so

now let's hit F12 on that there we go so

that came through for me 7 seconds again

I got 4 309s it'll probably be a little

slower if you're on a laptop but yeah

just you know be patient it'll it'll

come through now go to the compositing

tab and we still can't see it because we

need to add a viewer node um and connect

it to this um and you can do that just

by holding down control shift and then

left clicking on your render layer and

now we have a viewer note and in the

background we have our render so some

people find it like a little weird to

have the render in the background you

can move it around just by holding down

alt and then middle Mouse button and

then middle Mouse button will move your

nodes around so alt middle Mouse button

for the background and then uh middle

Mouse for the nodes anyways as a very

quick example let's do a simple color

adjustment so adjustment color balance

right drop this in here now the if you

just dropped it into your viewer node

then this would be just what is going to

be shown in the background here but it

wouldn't be saved in your render until

it went through your composite uh node

but for just this quick effect it's uh

it's good enough so this is a um graders

know exactly what this is but it's for

uh on the left- hand side your your

blacks right uh your midtones is in the

middle and the rightand side is your

highlights so if I wanted to make uh you

know I don't know like a cooler midtone

and then like a warmer highlight right

and then I don't know something for the

blacks like make it more green I don't

know just make something horrible you

could do it here you could make simple

color adjustments you could do it there

and your your original render hasn't

change this is just a postprocessing

step but actually on the note of making

things look uh more contrasted and

Punchy I wouldn't actually bother with

the color balance node we used to but uh

now blender has some pretty good color

management so I'm going to hit control X

on that to just remove it but retain its

connection and then if you go down in

your render settings to color management

uh there is um a look uh drop down here

so if you set this to uh high contrast

that's exactly a the same as like what

we were doing there like trying to like

increase the highlights or reduce the

midtones it's a very common thing to try

and make something look punchier and

these looks will do that but do it

really well um a lot of people make the

assumption that this is like you

shouldn't use these or it's going to

like mess with the colors in some way

and like other applications

um a lot of uh like art apps they just

you know you you use one of their

contrast settings and it just starts

like clipping highlights and things but

this was designed by Troy sabotka who

understands color science and color

management so it's a proper S curve you

won't have any clipping going on um so I

use this all the time usually the one I

go for is a medium high contrast look um

and it just makes a really nice looking

result by the way just a quick mention

in 4.0 this version of blender we

switched the view transform through to

AG X which creates more realistic uh

looking images because previously it was

on filmic and it looked like this and

you can see the difference is

agx has it just looks more real um but

the reason for that is that filmi was uh

and actually the same with Aces right

now the the film like the the one the

academy all the people in VFX shoes and

everything it's got this same problem

but when uh you've got color the more

exposed a color is it should actually

start to desaturate atate but what Aces

and what filmi was doing is that it was

making that color more and more

saturated so that's why these bright

colors here are just starting to get

ugly right but agx fixes that and it

starts to behave more like film where it

desaturates those colors um as it

exposes for it so very cool um and I'm

glad that they've got that while I'm

here as well I'm just going to increase

the exposure a bit um it's going to blow

it out a little anyway we'll fix it a

bit with the lighting uh later but

anyways okay back to the compositor

so one thing that I often use a

compositor for is for uh what you see in

the real world which is glare right if

you've got a shiny metallic object a

bumper or something like that you want

to have that that Starburst right coming

off it because that's what you see in

the real world you see it both with your

eyes like if you squinted something in

the distance you'll see like uh yeah

like this kind of like star burst around

like a street light at night that's

actually because of the eyelashes on

your eye but on a camera it's for a

different reason it's because of the

optical elements it's kind of like

refracting around itself and it's

creating this uh Starburst look I don't

understand it fully but I know that it's

an artifact which has artistic use as

well um so we are going to add it it is

a little fiddly I'll be honest like

other software they just have a button

and it just like adds the bloom and the

glare and stuff we we have to do this

for now so shift a we probably could if

more people donated to blender right we

could have stuff like this but anyways

so not to guil you all

filter

glare okay and that was shift a by the

way same hotkey works everywhere um and

drop this in Okay so we've got little

Starburst we've only got four which is

not ideal we want as many as we can get

really so drag it up to 16 that's better

now uh there's two values here you

really want to change the first is the

threshold that'll decide how much of the

image is affected like as I drag this up

in value it means only the real bright

stuff is going to be affected if you

draged it really low then like

everything is going to give off a star

burst and it's not going to be uh what

you want and the other one is the mix

value so if you drag it all the way to

one then it's going to be just the just

the effect by itself if you drag it all

the way to minus one it's going to be

the original render so if you wanted a

nice blend between it you could go like

a minus .9 or something and then you've

got the star burst over the top of the

original render but if you want to blend

this with something else I find it best

to actually drag it the mix all the way

to one so that we're just looking at the

effect by itself um I can then also let

me just quickly adjust the threshold so

that I'm only getting it in the really

bright places yep that's good and

then um I can blend it with another

effect that I want so I'm going to hit

uh control shift d and that's going to

duplicate it but it's going to keep it

connected to my render layer here and

then this one I'm going to make the fog

glow

because looking at reference it's not

just the starburst but it's also got a

uh like a glare like this glow blurry

glow coming off it so the fog glow is

that look right it's just that um and

let's increase the size I think and

let's set the quality to high do we need

high quality yeah I think it looks

better all right all right so first to

blend this all together with the the

render layer what we want to do is uh

just like you would do in Photoshop if

you would use a like a blend mode you

would set the blend to screen or add we

can do that by blending with shift a

color mix mix color Okay so this we're

going to drag in both of our glare

effects and then instead of mix we're

going to set it to add so that will just

basically ignore the black values and it

will just take the white values and

combine them on the top of each other

all right now the way blender works

unlike Photoshop where it's like top to

bottom in this case it's bottom input up

so this Factor value will will Define

how bright the bottom input is okay it's

a little weird I guess in that respect

but so this is the strength of that

bottom input um yeah so when you're

blending something and you want to

control it you just put it into the

bottom input so the streaks it's like

it's way too heavy so I just want to go

to like a 0 2 or something like that

really really subtle even lower goodness

it's yeah it's really heavy this stre I

don't know why it is so bright but I

never want it as bright as it is um okay

and now to blend it with the original

render for my final trick I duplicate

that drop it in

here um and put this into the bottom

input and I'll connect this to my

viewer um and then let's set this to a

one by the way so the composite maybe I

explain anyway the composite is going to

be what's saved into your render the

viewer is just going to be what is

displayed in your your background here

so if you don't have something connected

into the composite it's not going to be

saved when you do uh the render okay but

that's pretty good so that's how we've

got a very quick glare effect over

everything it's a little heavy I might

just drop it back a bit um because we

want it to be just like just enough that

you can see it um but not crazy by the

way if you uh want to zoom in in your

backdrop you can hit uh V will shrink

the size of it and ALT V will zoom in

they really need a better one I I agree

I agree with that um it's uh yeah it

definitely could be better I think

there's oh you can control it like that

okay so if you hit your viewer node

you've got these little uh okay you can

do it like that as well but yeah V and

all V it's like a keyboard shortcut from

the old days of blender and anyways all

right um doll back I don't want to go

too heavy like the thing with

postprocessing when you're doing stuff

in the compositor is you can like you

just get like uh distracted you just get

like um like hypnotized by the effect

and it's so common to to have a render

that a beginner has done that's actually

pretty solid but then they have just

really hammed up the post-processing

effect so don't do that don't get overly

obsessed with it because um it's almost

certainly Overkill you just need to dial

it back to like less than you're

comfortable with and then it's probably

right um because whilst you're adding it

you get really excited um anyways that's

what I found myself the other thing I'll

show you is uh if we just bring up this

bottom window I don't know why dope

sheet is the selected one makes no sense

for the uh compositing layout but if you

click the little drop down in the top

left change it to 3D viewport and now in

rendered mode click the little drop down

next to it and you should see at the

bottom you've got options for compositor

H so let's click always and what you'll

see is that the compositing effects

what's happening up here is now being

composed live over the top of your your

viewport and this is a very new feature

I think it's actually 4.0 is when it was

officially um added in um but it's it's

huge cuz it means you can do and preview

your effects whilst you're looking

around your scene so you could like look

at this like hey I can see the exact

amount of that glare that's coming off

it um you could do you know you can do

crazy stuff in the compositing and it'll

it'll show through like as an example

there's a new uh

kahara uh filter that looks like this

kind of like painterly style um and you

can uh yeah you you can preview it like

live in the 3D view it's like I feel

like I'm looking at a painting right now

right it's really crazy um that they you

can do this real time so I'm I'm really

glad it's finally in there cuz it's been

uh been talked about for like a year I

think was when it was first previewed um

so it's really cool that it's finally in

here so one thing I will use it for

actually is to check that the threshold

that I've set for the the fog and the

streaks is actually correct I'm going to

look through the let's go the streaks I

think streaks is pretty it's a bit slow

but uh anyways let's pull in

here um and let's just take a look I

might have to add in a little bit okay

there we go I have to add in a little

bit of the original render so I can

actually see but I just want to make

sure that it's mostly coming through on

the metallic objects so I might actually

try increasing so you can see as it's

like all the way at zero you're just

getting everything is going to get star

beams but then as I increase it slowly

slowly slowly it starts to disappear and

then the only thing that's really

getting it is those metallic objects

um and that's generally the look that I

want to go for so the okay so I went for

a much higher amount threshold um for

that anyways um you could have a

different amount for the the glow but I

think it's generally one and the same

effect so I think they should have the

same threshold so I'm actually going to

uh just Mouse over this and hit contrl C

and then Mouse over this and hit contrl

V so that's how you can uh copy values

let me just preview that yeah the fog

glow looks pretty good oh it's on high

that's why it's going to be a little bit

slow if you set it to medium I think

it'd be a little bit more interactive um

but anyways the GPU compositing I'll say

is is very new um as I mentioned it's

it's this release and it actually for

4.0 the actual final render like when

you hit render and it creates the 2D

image um it's actually still going to be

using the CPU apparently in 4.1 maybe

4.2 it will change and it'll be fully

GPU at that point but until then you

will have like slightly longer render

times just because of the compositor

because the compositor is famously has

been famously slow and blender for years

it's only just now that it's uh it's

being improved so we're not really going

to do a lot with a composit like I

really generally think you don't want to

go Overkill um you can just add too many

like bells and whistles to the

compositor um but really like if you

want to do like drastic changes you

should try to do it in the scene unless

you're doing something crazy like

spiderverse in which case it's all

stylized right um but try to do it in

the scene because um yeah I don't know I

I feel like it can be more of like a

crutch you tend to like lean towards

like I'll fix it in the compositor I'll

improve it in the compositor and it

doesn't one thing you might want to add

is underneath uh where is it transform

lens Distortion okay if you add in this

node this can replicate an effect that

is actually in all cameras as well and

that's lens Distortion all right so you

can see uh it actually makes more sense

to actually see it on the 2D image um so

I'll put that in the background there um

but basically basically where the edges

of a uh a shot it's like if you take a

photo with your iPhone on like a w it's

most visible on like wider lenses but

the uh straight vertical things start to

look bent um and it's just it's Barrel

Distortion and there's no way to get

around it unless you use a pinhole

camera that it's it's kind of an

interesting thing but it's all because

of the Optics of the lens that bends the

the objects like that um so anyways it

is in all objects uh it does though

because it's a like a post effect it

does kind of blow so it's like

manipulating those pixels so it means

those pixels aren't going to be as sharp

so I generally don't like it for that

reason um but if you wanted to you could

add this just keep it really low like a

0.1 amount with fit so that it doesn't

get that uh you know TV screen look on

the edges and then the other thing you

could add is a little bit of chromatic

aberration um I'll show you just uh yeah

this is what that does so you can see

this is where it turned up a lot you can

see the edges of the objects right it

has this kind of uh the red and the cyan

and the red and the yellow it like

towards the edges of it it gets this um

yeah this kind of separation of the

colors and that is again a naturally

occurring thing that happens with

cameras because of the Optics um and the

cheaper the Optics the cheaper the lens

the more likely it's to happen um but it

is there I try not to use it because it

can be very overused and very like I it

just makes it look cheap like hey this

person just discovered there's the

chromatic apparation but if you are

going to use it go really low really low

like because actually this you have to

think of the story of the shot and

someone has like framed this shot

beautifully got beautiful sunlight right

this is a professional professional has

taken this photograph of the donuts on

the counter they're not going to be

using a cheap lens so although there

might be some chromatic aberration it'll

be very very uh minimal um but if you

want that um you know what I I'll keep

it in yeah why not we'll keep it in

um but yeah that's basically what I'm

going to do for this so this is my final

node setup if you'd like to copy it have

ADD it the final thing I'll mention as

well is if you want to disable your

compositor like say you're doing some

renders and you don't you just want to

see it without out the postprocessing

effects on top of it um rather than

having to come in here and then like you

know reconnect and disconnect a bunch of

nodes um instead if you just go to your

what's that the output property settings

way at the bottom you've got post post

processing so if you just uncheck

compositing that means you're only going

to be seeing the original render um and

then check it again and it's going to be

uh kicking in whatever is uh in your

compositing settings but that's it for

this video click here to watch the next

part and I will see you there it's time

to learn about animation or more

specifically key frame animation because

character animation with its Rigs and

bones and things is its own entire

separate Beast we're not going to get

into we're just going to do a very

simple camera camera move specifically

we want the camera to start above the

donuts and then fall down to reveal the

final plate uh at the end right it's an

excuse to learn about key framing well

the basics of Animation is really simple

if you go to the bottom of your screen

if you're in layout uh layout at the

layout layout at the top uh we can drag

up on this divider here and you can see

we've got a timeline which if I click

and drag across is currently doing

nothing because there is no animation so

if we pull out right I'm just going to

do a really simple animation to show you

you don't have to follow this because

this is a different animation what we're

going to do it animation is really

simple you select the object that you

want to apply a key frame to and then

you hit I I for insert key frame and you

get this like scary looking menu

apparently they're going to change this

eventually but for now you would place a

key frame on what it is you're planning

to animate so in this case it's the

location right so I want to move the

camera location then I change my frame

count to be the frame I want it to end

at then I move the object how I want it

to move right there and then I add

another key frame I and then say

location and now as I play it back which

I can do by hitting spacebar you can see

that the camera is moving haha look at

us right a very simple camera move now I

don't actually want that though so I'm

going to delete those key frames um and

what we want is we want what I showed

you at the start we want our camera to

start uh up here right rotated pointing

down this way and then we want it to

move in an arc uh in this direction

terrible Arrow um pointed this way right

now you could do this you could move the

camera up there you could then rotate it

to point it down and then do a key frame

for the location rotation and then do

another one over here but it would be

very difficult to control that movement

and really this is a rather simple

movement if we have a pivot object if we

have something here and then we parent

that camera to that object and then we

just rotate that object it's a lot

easier so what we need to add is uh

first of all I want to think what do I

want to be the center of it what do I

want to be where do I want that pivot

object so I think you know somewhere

roughly in the middle of these Donuts so

right here I'm going to hold down shift

and then right click and that's going to

put my 3D cursor um right where I've put

it and now to add an object shift a and

I'm looking for empty so empty I mean if

you're familiar with other creative

tools you probably already know but it's

just something it's uh similar to a null

object in After Effects Etc it's just

something that's going to be in the 3D

viewport that won't be rendered okay a

number of options here it doesn't matter

which one you choose you can go plain

axes uh and then if you went to the

options here the data you could change

the display here to uh what we saw um

before but this is just like a different

display um object right depending on

what you're looking for I think the

sphere is actually the most useful it's

way too big currently so I'm going to

change the size to be something about

that and there we go okay so now what we

need to do is we want to parent our

camera to this new empty object so

select the camera first then shift

select that new empty that we've just

created and then I'm going to hit contrl

p and then set parent object keep

transform just like what we did um with

the icing and the donut so now you

should see if you select that empty and

as I rotate it around the camera will

rotate with it and if you look through

the camera with numpad zero and then

just double tap r you can see that I can

track ball rotate around it um and you

can see this is like way more flexible

for what we want we want the camera to

be focused on one point and then we just

want to move the camera around that

point um and you can do some really nice

fast camera moves here if you wanted to

do something snazzy in our case we're

going to do a nice simple slow movement

so first of all this angle this look

that we've got right here is where we

want the final reveal to be so this is

where I want the end point the End Key

frame of my animation to be so you can

make your animation as long as you want

I think about 160 frames is about right

for this sort of uh the the speed of

this animation so on frame 160 there you

can see it's also mentioned there I'm

going to with my empty selected not my

camera I'm going to hit I and then not

select location like I did before but

rotation cuz we're going to be just just

rotating that Pivot Point not changing

its um its position so rotation then I'm

going to go to the first frame which I

could do by clicking and dragging or

shift left Arrow will jump you to the

first uh frame or you can click these

little um I don't know what you call

that button jump to end point um you can

do that as well and now that I'm here

I'm going to rotate this along not the

Tilt axis which it is by default but the

x axis aha right so now you can see we

are doing that exact move we want and

then the top left hand corner you can

see the exact number of degrees um and

I'm going to go with exactly Min - 90 so

if you hold down control you can see

it's snapping to uh minus 90 and then

I'm going to click okay now before I

change my frame if I was to change the

frame um you can see it's just snapped

me back to where I were so always

remember you have to create a key frame

if you've changed its movement without

saving it or without putting in a new

key frame so back up to here minus 90

and I'm going to hit I and then say

rotation okay and now we should see if

we hit space while to

play a very very simple

animation okay now we can tweak this

though we can improve this because you

can see that for one it's a little

awkward that the camera starts in a

completely stationary stop position then

it ramps up and then it slows down

towards the end it's a little bit of a

weird camera move what I want instead is

I want it to start I already want it to

be moving moving right like almost like

it's from another shot that's kind of

faded into this one I want it to start

moving and then to much more slowly fad

it out than it is currently cuz you can

see it just kind of like drops down here

and then the camera just stops and it's

a little too sudden and while you could

change the key frames here like you can

do some very simple uh handle type

changes this view this layout view is

not the best place to do this so instead

if you go to the animation tab at the

top there you can see it's again it's

rearranged all your screen

um this over here is just another 3D

view over here is the camera uh the

camera view but at the bottom here you

can see we've changed from the timeline

which is what we had before and it's

changed to a dope sheet so a dope sheet

is just going to show you more

information um about the key frames so

for example you can see that the X

rotation has a DOT over here and a DOT

over here but the Y and the Zed um has a

different look it's got a continuous

line across it and that's to show you

that this hasn't changed the the Y and

the Zed has no information that's uh

changed from the start to the end so we

don't actually need these key frames so

I only need the X rotation so I'm going

to select the Y and the Zed and I'm just

going to delete them just by hitting the

delete key so we've now just got one

channel that the animation is happening

on right but we can't really change it

we can't make it so this starts faster

and then this slows down from this view

instead we need to change to a different

view so in the top leftand Corner click

this and we're going to change the

window type to be graph editor okay so

the graph editor looks like this I'm

going to use middle mouse to a pan

around here and you can see we've now

got a line right with some handles on it

which is a lot easier to understand but

it's hard to get it all in the view so

you could hit the home key and that will

automatically reorient everything um to

position it in the view or if you hold

down control and middle Mouse button

this enables you to just moving around

just drag in around control middle Mouse

button will change the uh the axis Zoom

as well as the Y right up and down like

that um which is just a really handy way

to quickly Orient yourself around so

control middle Mouse to change this and

then you can uh middle Mouse to pan to a

different area Okay so again making sure

I'm looking at the X rotation there

right and if we look you should see the

problem that we have right we have the

start of the animation it's a very slow

curve that's going up it picks up speed

in the middle uh and then it ends here

and the end is a little abrupt

considering uh the amount of movement

that it has so really we want um this

line instead to look a little bit closer

to this line right or even I mean that

was kind of a bad line pull it rather

like that okay that's the kind of look

that we want so with our starting key

frame here I'm going to use the same

hotkey that you use everywhere uh and

that's R um to just get that angle to

look a lot closer to what I want don't

go too far up if you go like vertical

you'll see that the start is like so

abrupt it's almost like it's like

skipping down or something so I don't

want it to be that far I'm going to

rotate a little bit out like that so

there's a little bit of a harsh movement

but not too harsh if you know what I

mean there we go something like that and

then for this end bit you can see it

ends rather suddenly maybe you disagree

but I found when I looked at the

animation it was rather sudden so this

final Endo here I'm going to scale It

Out by hitting s so again same hotkeys

work all across blender which is very

nice awesome so now if I play it back

you should see it moves rather fast at

the beginning and then slowly tapers out

towards the end to a nice soft Landing

which is really cool and that's pretty

well yeah that's a pretty good

animation now we could stop here but the

other thing we could do to get a little

bit more Motion in it is we could have

the camera start closer to the donuts

and then pull out as it goes further

away I hate that this keeps uh

interrupting I'm gonna hide that okay

there we go select my Pivot there we go

so uh essentially we could have it so

that it starts like the camera starts

right about here and then it pulls out

and then as it pulls out it goes a

little bit further away and like ends

back here so have a think about how you

would do that how would you have the

camera start closer to the pivot point

right now you might think well okay we

could animate the camera pulling in

closer but that would be overly

complicated we can just use the same

pivot point but we can scale it because

you can see if I hit s look at that the

camera goes closer and if I pull it out

you can see the camera moves further

away so what I want to do is I want to

go to the uh the final endpoint here the

frame 160 which by the way you can jump

to an existing key frame just by using

the up and down arrows so if I go up you

can see it's uh that key frame or down

it uh takes me to to the front so I want

to go here and I want to create uh a key

frame just for the scale information so

here cuz this is the end view that I

want so I'm going to hit I and then say

not rotation but scale so now I'm going

to go to the front of the animation and

I'm going to scale it in to get a nice

closeup of the donuts right there and

then I'm going to add another key frame

I and then scale so you should now see

in your graph editor that's what it's

called um you should see your rotation

information and then your scale

information now you'll know that the

scale is like like where is the scale

information it's here but it's so small

like the amount of uh variance here it's

so small that it it's just not readable

and the reason for that is that it's

trying to combine two different data

types into one view right because

rotation is happening on a you can see

here it's a oh I just wrote over the top

of it it's Z de and then down here

you've got -90 so this is a Min - 90

right but then up here we've got scale

that's happening between a zero range

and a one range which is right next to

it okay so one you could just hide your

rotation or you can click on normalize

and normalize will uh put everything

between a zero to one range but just

know that when you're in this range if

you try to move a key frame to be a

different value like you took your scale

and then you moved it down when you

confirm it it'll snap back to where it

was and that's because with normalize on

it'll always put everything between Z to

one so don't do it if you're planning to

change a value of something normalize um

but otherwise it's uh it's okay to use

for changing the handles like in this

case but I'm going to hide my rotation

anyway cuz it's just going to get in the

way um and instead you can see that x y

and Zed all have information in them

because of course we're not scaling it

on any particular ax

it's across all three axes at once

because it's like a yeah it's the

uniform value of

scale so um again I could do the same

thing here I could rotate this I don't

want there to be too much of a

difference like it's actually pretty

good by default like the scale isn't as

noticeable that it slowly ramps up um

and it's good to have like a kind of a

softer movement as it pulls away but I

do want to change it a little bit I'm

going to select these final end points

I'll scale that out a little bit as well

just so that's a little softer as it

scales

out and that is pretty good

folks now you'll note as I play through

this that in the top leftand corner of

the screen you've got FPS which stands

for frames per second if you play video

games you're already well familiar with

that term uh and you can see as we play

through it it can't really make up its

mind it's like 24 no 25 26 24 it's I

think it's just a readout glitch in in

blunder it's actually a constant 24

frames per second by default but for

whatever reason it's kind of like

fluctuating between them anyway point is

is you can change that amount by going

to your output settings over here and

then underneath format you've got frame

rate now for whatever reason blunder

chose 24 frames per second which is

really only used for feature film

everyone else for like TV or YouTube

it's 30 frames per second you can also

uh go 60 frames per second if you wanted

to really pay for longer render times

because it means things uh have to be

you have to render like twice as many

frames but it means things are buttery

smooth you won't actually see it right

now because I'm recording this tutorial

at 30 frames per second anyways really

the the options that most people choose

are 24 for Cinema and feature films 30

if you're a normal person and you're

making things for internet or YouTube or

anything and then 60 if it's for like 3D

content or something that has to be

really really smooth anyways we're going

to set it to 30 cuz that is the more

standard frame rate for for most things

I know people like to argue but yes 30

is in my opinion a much more reasonable

uh frame rate for most things and the

final thing you'll note um as we play

through this is that it gets to frame

160 and then it just kind of pauses for

a bit until it gets to frame 250 and

then it Loops back and that is because

uh the end frame is set to 250 so if we

set this to 160 instead which is what

our animation ends at you can see it

will now play through and it'll get to

the end and then it will loop back to

the start and also if you want to like

reset this this uh this view in your

timeline you can hit the home key and

that'll like expand it out a little bit

um and there you go so that is basically

our final animation you can tweak it you

can make it look a little bit more

polished than what I have here CU When

I'm recording a tutorial I can only do

so much before people get bored um but

that's that's pretty good it's not bad

so we are nearing the end go ahead click

here to join me in what might be the

final part uh where we're going to do

rendering and forming that uh that final

animation so click there and I will see

you there we've got the donuts we've got

the animation now it's time to do our

final lovely

render so we are rendering using the

Cycles rendering engine which to jog

your memory from the uh rendering video

the way it works is turning off D noise

is it starts with a very noisy image

with a low sample cam and then over time

you can see in the top left there it

throws more samples at it and it refines

that image to be uh cleaner and cleaner

essentially so if we were to set this uh

maximum sample count to a really

absurdly low value like say 10 samples

you could see it renders very quickly

right it's done almost instantaneously

but it's so noisy that you can't see any

of the detail now there is the magical D

noise function which we will be using

however that is not

it it does solve a lot it's definitely

definitely helpful but it's not perfect

especially for animations because on

each frame the sample variation um even

though it's set to be stable um there

will be variances frameo frame so if

you're using a low sample count this Aid

noiser it will do its best but it'll

still have like splotchy patterns that

will appear and you can actually notice

it if you go looking for it um like the

other day I was watching one of uh Mr

BEAST's videos and there was like an

anim in it and I was looking at it and I

saw like all this splotchy stuff like in

on the sides and I was like oh damn that

team must be on like a really tight

deadline CU they did not have time to

render out uh the proper the proper

samples um but anyways so I did a few

tests for this exact scene here um you

can see this is with 20 samples you zoom

into the background there you can see

splotchiness it's um especially

noticeable in out of focus areas which

I'll show you how to do that out of

focusness soon um but you can see it's

very splotchy and you wouldn't ever want

to use it 50 starts to look a little

more stable but still the splotchiness

is very noticeable you don't want that

100 this is where it's starting to look

usable but still not great I wouldn't

consider that good 300 samples is where

I consider the uh the bare minimum for a

scene like this but ideally you would be

able to go up to 500 samples which is

where a lot of that splotchiness is so

negligible that you don't really notice

it and if you have time or you don't

mind rendering you know overnight or

something like that or maybe a couple of

overnights a thousand samples will get

you an even cleaner looking result so

for my Max sample amount I'm going to go

with 500 and by the way there is

viewport and there is render and these

settings are identical um I was tweaking

viewport before because I was showing

you uh in the viewport but obviously

it's what's in the render settings which

is going to be saved into your final uh

animation there is also noise threshold

also know know as adaptive sampling and

the way this works is it will try to

look at the image and determine which

areas are already clean enough and then

which areas need more samples like dark

areas where there's not enough light or

something and it'll throw more samples

specifically into that area and it's

very efficient and I would love to use

it unfortunately it doesn't play well

with the denoiser with the denoiser it

can create splotchy areas which are not

good obviously so if you're using the

denoiser which let's face it is probably

99% of the time then you can't really

use the noise Threshold at least as far

as I've seen I haven't seen it work uh

reliably enough so uncheck noise

threshold samples I went with 500 try to

go yeah if you're on a laptop maybe 300

but try to go uh up from there and

you'll get a nice clean result there's

also time limit I almost never use this

but this just puts like a cap on each

frame so if I don't know the samples was

going to take the image like 25 seconds

to render if you set your your time

limit to be 20 seconds it would just

stop at whatever uh sample count 20

seconds gives it and then it would move

on to the next frame but as I said I

almost never use it I just want to use

the exact sample count awesome now you

might remember previously um that when

you want to do a render you go render

render image or you hit F12 and then

this will kick off a single still render

and then from here if I wanted to save

this image I would go image save as well

what we want to do is we want to render

a a sequence like a you know as every

single frame um and so to do that we

want to use not just render but render

animation and when you do that it will

use and it will save the file for you in

whatever you put in the output settings

over here so if we bring this out over

here uh you can see your resolutions

defined up there you got your frame rate

yada yada the output one here so this is

the folder where it's going to save the

file too and then your file format I'll

just move this up um this is a really

important one now you would think that

because we want to create a video file

right that you could upload to Instagram

or YouTube or whatever that you would

want to use one of these movie settings

maybe an AVI or an FFM Peg or something

like that but you would not you would be

wrong but it's a common uh mistake a lot

of beginners make the reason you don't

want to ever ever render a scene

directly into this format is that if if

at any point during the uh rendering

process your computer was to crash or

let's face it Windows was to do another

update overnight and you can never

figure out when it's going to do it and

it just does it randomly and you anyways

uh if it was to do that you would lose

everything everything that you have

rendered has just vanished because it

will not have created any file that you

can actually read so instead you always

render to still images okay so you want

every single one of these frames to

create a PNG and then put it into the

output folder there which you will then

later take that sequence of 300 PNG

images let's say or it's 60 in this case

um and then put that into another

process which I'll show you to uh to

create that final video file so PNG is

actually pretty good for most cases uh

if you want to go a slightly higher

quality you could use Tiff if you really

know what you're doing you could use

open exr but the problem with that is

that it will not use uh it won't embed

like a display uh transform in it so

it'll save it into linear format

technical jargon just to say it's going

to look terrible if you don't know what

you're doing with it so generally

speaking uh PNG or or Tiff is the one

you want never JP the compression on

that is terrible unless you just you

know throwing a still image up on

Facebook or something uh but PNG or Tiff

that's fine and the color depth uh you

could go eight or 16 bits 16 bits will

give you a lot more range but it will be

larger files um unless you're planning

to do color grading and something like

after effects or nule something I

wouldn't bother with 16 bit8 should be

fine so you set your output folder to be

something that makes sense I usually

just create a folder called uh frames uh

and then within here I just create

another subfolder I call it like one um

just because you almost always need to

render multiple times U but anyways you

you you create a subfolder there called

one um and then yeah I just kick off uh

the render by going render animation but

before you do that it is a good idea to

check your scene to make sure that you

haven't got any mistakes because you're

going to be rendering and usually you're

rendering overnight or maybe a sequence

of days

and you don't want to have to go through

the whole process of rendering only to

bring it up and then go like oh crap I

forgot to turn on that layer or I forgot

to fix that problem or I didn't notice

this before I did the render and then

you have to do the whole thing all over

again so here's a checklist first in

solid View mode click this little drop

down next to your viewport overlays and

then go face orientation now what this

is showing you is which faces are facing

the correct direction so the face is the

solid part of the mesh and it's like

paper thin right but there is a correct

direction and there is a wrong direction

so the correct direction is the

direction that the the camera and the

Shader expects to see and it can render

correctly if it's showing you the

opposite side of the face it means that

the shading is likely to get screwed up

so if you see anything in your scene

that is red it means that it is facing

the wrong direction okay so in this case

it thought that the kitchen should be

rendered outside right because it was a

cube that started with so it puts the

faces outside it cuz it wouldn't know

that we want to render inside it so in

this case if you have a red face like

this you select it select everything on

the mesh just by tapping a and then you

want to hit shift n okay now that should

fix it if it doesn't because on the case

you want to have it facing uh inwards

like in this case uh this little

recalculate normals box here if you

click that you can then click the check

boox that says inside or a hotkey for it

is control shift n and that will do a

recalculation uh inside anyways long

story short you just want to make sure

that everything you see is blue if

you've got anything a Sprinkle or you

know a donut or a plate or anything like

that just make sure everything is

showing up as blue um because that's

very important all right so now that's

done I can turn that off the other thing

that you want to check is that you

haven't got any Rogue uh objects that

will be showing up in the render that

you don't want to be there like for

example this weird looking little UFO

thing right these little sprinkles that

are just hovering off into space here so

that is because we've got some sprinkles

which are being referenced on our

geometry node stack but we don't want

these individual ones which are being

referenced to appear in the render so on

the sprinkles collection I'm just going

to uncheck this little camera icon and

that means it's viewable in the viewport

but it's not going to appear in the

render this will not affect the objects

over here when it's referenced in a

geometry node system it's just going to

treat that as its own separate thing and

it's not going to uh hide it from the

render but it just means that these five

little reference sprinkles will be

invisible in the render the other thing

that you want to check is to look at

your intersections okay because looking

at my donut look at that wow I've got a

massive intersection and this would be

noticeable because the camera is now

moving and it is above it right so you

don't want to have uh intersections so

I'm actually going to use this as an

excuse to uh slightly reorient um my

donuts and create a much more appealing

looking stack cuz I was experimenting

before I hit the record button and I

thought if I just create you know both

of these Stacks so they're kind of like

leaning on each other then I rotate them

a little bit like this then I take this

donut I could move it out rotate

that something like

this there we go right and then oh

yeah I'll rotate this a little bit more

it's a leaning tower of donuts

I'll move that out a little

bit but really with this many objects on

top of each other you're bound to have

something that looks a little funky so

just look at it from different angles I

mean the most important one is the

camera right making sure that it is uh

sensible but because we've got a moving

camera it kind of has to look good from

multiple angles um the other thing I

noticed also is uh it would look a lot

better if I could see the top of this

donut here so I noticed if I select this

stack and I rotate it like this almost

like it's on the edge of that plate

there like the lip and it's kind of

leaning this way it looks a lot nicer

yeah see now I can see the top of that

donut and uh yeah just feels a lot nicer

might actually rotate a little bit

further and then I'll move it

up rotate this

one and I'll pull that in a little

bit and that's pretty good that's not

bad

all right there so that's a lot more

interesting and I've also corrected a

lot of the intersections there but you

know as I mentioned before guys this is

a tutorial and I can't fix everything

whilst I'm uh running the tutorial so uh

have a look at your scene and have a

look at you know the plate is there a

doughnut which is hovering above the

plate like it is here make sure that

it's not or at least make sure that it

is not in a place that's noticeable um

because that will not be good and you'll

be un I mean I actually finished the

final animation sequence uh for this

tutorial and then notic right at the end

uh that one of the donuts was like this

and I just didn't notice it right until

I did uh after the uh the render

sequence was complete and actually a

cooworker of mine was also working on

the scene helping render some uh extra

sequences and he didn't notice it either

and we're both like damn how did we miss

that cuz you just don't go looking for

it so I'm calling it out now cuz I'm

sure a lot of you watching I've got

intersections and uh it's good to try to

fix it now another one to check for is

your lighting and your exposure ranges

so first thing I know is that looking at

this is this is good it's putting a lot

of the attention on the duts which is

great but this uh everything here in the

background is just it's so dark it's

almost hard to see and it feels a little

bit too moody right it's almost like a

rembrand uh painting or something like

that I want it to feel a little lighter

a little bit more uh friendly so on the

roof here on the ceiling of my kitchen

I'm going to shift and then right click

to put my 3D cursor there and then right

at that point I'm going to add in an

area lamp and I'm just going to move it

down slightly just to make sure it's not

clipping through the surface um and then

yeah let's go look in this so this is

what it is with it off and then if I

just increase this you can see it's just

adding a little bit of fill light to the

whole scene to just feel a little bit

lighter um and a little less uh yeah

extreme in its light choice but yeah

that looks pretty good now by the way

this power value there's something

called the inverse Square law that

applies to all lights in the real world

and in 3D software it just means that if

something is double like twice as close

to something it means it's going to be

four times as bright so what this means

is that I've just added in a an area

lamp right at the top of my ceiling but

that's because this is just the size of

the box that I've got if yours is a

little bit uh shorter than this right

then when you placed it then this lamp

and this lamp energy that we've just

defined here as you know 10 wats is

going to be a lot brighter so don't copy

the values that I'm putting here have a

look at your scene and try to evaluate

and go is it bright enough is it too

bright do I feel that this fill light is

too overpowering right or is it

underpowering just evaluate and try to

do it um as fairly as you can and

something that I recommend um and this I

do uh a lot of the time for a lot of

final renders is underneath your color

management if you go to view transform

change it from agx to false color H now

this obviously you never want to do for

a final render but this is revealing to

you what is the exposure range of

different parts of the image kind of

like if you're using a camera and it's

got like a zebra thing to like show you

which parts are clipping this is like

that but it's like to an advanced level

essentially it's showing you I mean I'll

put this up from the blender

documentation but it's showing you what

is the the exposure range of which parts

of the image and there's no like right

or wrong here but generally speaking you

want to have a nice range because then

it's showing there are parts that are in

light and then there are parts that are

in Shadows and there is a range there so

that you can reveal the form there are

exceptions to it but generally that's

the idea now in my case I want to make

sure that um really there's very few

areas that are in the red or the white

the white means there is actually no

information there because it has clipped

so that is not good it's okay for a few

areas right where there's a few

highlights but generally speaking you

don't want too much now in my case I

think it's a little bit too high so I'm

just dialing it back and just so that I

get most of you know the part of the dut

where it's hitting the light um it's

mostly in the orange to Yellow range

with a very small amounts of um yeah red

or white coming through so once I'm

happy with that make sure you change it

back to agx otherwise you'll be

rendering to false color and that will

look horrible a few other aesthetic

choices I noticed that the pink was a a

little bit too hot the saturation does

make a difference so I'm just going to

dial it back to around about a 6 value I

also noticed that this yellow color was

a little bit too close to mustard so I'm

just going to tweak the Hue here just to

make it a little bit more exciting kind

of like a banana yellow right and a

little bit brighter as well just a

little bit more cheerful the blue I'm

going to make a little closer to an aqua

which is a little more funky a little I

don't know more interesting at least to

me uh the base color oh yeah this one

here so I decided after looking at this

and evaluating it I'm like I should just

go with the white icing like what I had

in my uh my final render so just

creating a new material call it white

icing right um and also for the doughnut

I noticed I forgot to put subsurface

scattering on the doughnut itself um

because dut although it's bread right

it's not going to have as much

subsurface scattering as the icing but

it will have some right so I'm going to

give it a weight of one uh radius make

sure that's always set to one and then

this value here let's go

01 um like that which I think is

actually more than the icing that we

gave it but anyways it works because

it's kind of doughy um we can kind of

get away maybe maybe we having second

thoughts right now uh yeah we got Point

01 why not make it look a little bit

more stylized and uh cartoonish the

other thing that I can see looking at

this is that this part here right with

these ball sprinkles on it is it's very

like high frequency detail which is just

like a technical term to mean like small

detail artists always invent terms just

to sound uh smarter than they are but it

looks high frequency right and it's a

little too high frequency it's good to

have some small detail but not that

small it's just uh it's kind of gritty

and it's kind of like it's sticking out

like a sore thumb to me so what I'm

going to do is go to my geometry nose

setup just for my round sprinkles here

um and by the way also make sure you

you're looking at the correct one not

long sprinkles uncheck that little pin

if you've got it like I did um and then

I'm going to change the round sprinkles

scale dragging down to

1.5 so it's a lot bigger which means I

can use a different distance Min

value

02 and whilst I'm here um I'm also going

to change the distance value for the

long sprinkles cuz I noticed it was

feeling a little too even the

distribution of these which generally

means that with this PR on dis

distribution it's using the distance to

make sure they're all perfectly evenly

spaced and it's a little bit it's it's

too big essentially so I'm going to set

this to 0.4 instead which means you will

have some overlaps and some clipping but

if we use a lower count here in our

setup like 80 for example or even lower

right it should feel a lot more natural

right it doesn't look like like before

it was like 200 um when it was uh you

know this was 06 and now it's like 30

but it still almost feels like the same

as what it was before because that

distance when you lower it you're

getting more sprinkles in there even

though it's a lower sprinkle density

anyways technical uh also lower this one

cuz that's just too many so let's go

like 50 for that um and that's pretty

good you can also experiment like I

tried changing the different um um like

whether this one has long sprinkles or

whether this one at the top has round

you can play around with these I went uh

I think the bottom one I gave long this

one I'm going to turn it off so none no

sprinkles on that one and just try and

get a nice you know feel for it really

you're just trying to go for something

that looks a little balanced in its

detail so you don't have too much

repetition um across it so I'm trying to

get a nice breakup of like round long

nun nun round you know Etc the other

thing since we're talking about detail

is looking at this right this is small

detail this is small detail these shapes

here right this is large detail Okay so

we've got large and we've got this small

detail we don't have any medium detail

um and it's good to have a variance

across the scene just I don't know it's

one of the design rules it just helps

things feel a little bit more

aesthetically pleasing so uh something I

I saw when I was looking on Pinterest

many years ago uh for one of the old

Donut series was like uh you can put

bigger sprinkles like a few big chunky

sprinkles on it and uh it just adds

variance to it and it just makes it look

a lot more appealing so for that I'm you

could do it using geometry nodes but I

just do it by hand placing like three

sprinkles so on this donut here shift

right clicking on this part of the donut

uh I'll go into uh here we go solid View

mode and then shift a and then I'm going

to add in a UV sphere default settings

are okay just going to scale it

down like that right so this is the size

of the sprinkle quite big you could

imagine it almost as like a gumball or

something um it's probably not big

enough to be a gumball but you know what

I mean like something big right make

sure you're using shade smooth and for

the

material um sorry if this is like

getting to in the weeds but a lot of

people when they're following tutorials

they like to know the exact settings

that I used so I'm trying to show them

all um whilst not taking too long um but

yeah we go so I go for like a aqua

color yeah like that and then I want to

turn the roughness like all the way down

like that cool and now I just need to

duplicate that sprinkle so duplicate

here uh I'll pull it out and I'm just

going to go with three you could go for

more but I'm just going to go with three

and I'm only going to put it on this dut

I'm not going to bother with the others

I'm going to say this is the special one

this is the one that we want your eye to

be drawn to so this is the one with a

little bit more detail than the others

I'm sorry if I'm doing a horrible

zigzaggy job of I could do snapping but

I'm like ah it's just too much work to

do the snapping functions for this so

I'm going to select those three shift

select the icing contrl p and then go

keep transform there we go so now

they're all attached to that just in

case I move the donut it's uh it's

correctly uh done the final thing I

think I changed was the world settings

underneath the air and dust for our Sky

texture I just DED it back to around

about A7

just a little bit cooler in the lighting

right as I might remember I told you if

you go all the way there it's like the

sky just becomes like blue um and if

it's too far up then it becomes yellow

and orange or whatever like kind of too

decayed but you know like a 7ish it'll

just look it just feels a little cleaner

um in comparison to what it was awesome

now we're F we're almost there I promise

you we're almost there the one thing

that you probably do want to know how to

add is depth of field it adds a lot

because every single camera in the real

world has depth of field except for

pinhole cameras interestingly because

there is no Optics in a pinhole camera

so it can have like infinite depth of

field supposedly um anyways the uh the

depth of field settings is underneath

your camera okay so select your camera

then click on the data here and then

depth of field right at the bottom so

check that box and everything will

become blurry because it doesn't have a

focus object yet so click the little

eyedropper tool

and then just click on this icing this

uh Pink dut icing right in the the front

here and there you go so that is depth

of field used to be really difficult to

do in blender um I started like you know

20 years ago and it was this horrible

like motion blow thing you had to do for

the camera to like rotate it anyway it's

it's it's just a checkbox now it's it's

fascinating anyways uh the f- stop if

you're unfamiliar with cameras the lower

the f- stop the shallow of that depth of

field so you can see very little of this

image is actually in Focus so it's

actually good for like Miniatures um but

if you want more of the scene to be in

Focus like you want more of this donut

stack to be seen I would go with an f-

stop somewhere between six or eight um

you know something around the range I

think I went with eight for my final one

or maybe it was six can't remember

anyways but you can see the stuff in the

background there is now out of focus and

it puts the attention where it should be

right on those donuts in the middle

there and the other thing that I always

forget to enable is motion blur so

underneath your render settings here uh

you just need to check motion blur and I

actually find the default setting is

usually fine it's a little smooth like

it's a a little bit too blurry sometimes

so you might want to drop it to like 04

or something but I don't know it should

be defined with a default it usually

looks okay so are we ready to render our

final animation well I actually thought

yes so that little jump cut that you saw

there was me going yep let's render that

animation and then I rendered it out and

then I came back and I went wait a

minute I've made some errors B now can

you tell what they are I will give you a

clue right here right here right here

we're missing those three little balls

that we created little sprinkles and

then also look in the background here

mysteriously dark almost as if the areal

lamp that we added is not there so I'll

first of all say it's very common to do

this you think that you're finally ready

like yeah everything looks good kick off

the final uh animation I've I've

sometimes waited like over a week for a

whole animation to finish and then I

come back and then I open it up and then

I go oh no I forgot to turn off that

layer I forgot to turn on that layer I

forgot you know actually a technique

that Pixar uses um I learned at one of

the uh sigraph presentations they did

they said they render the first frame

the middle frame and the end frame of

every shot before they do the full

animation uh sequence uh because that

usually reveals any problems um in the

animation which they can then uh correct

so I should have done that but didn't um

anyways what was my mistake well when we

uh disabled this sprinkles collection

right we disabled it from appearing in

the render that's fine but when we

created these objects I didn't check

what was the active collection so when

you add a new object it adds it to

whatever is the selected collection this

little one with a little uh box around

it so obviously it put it inside of that

collection so these spheres should not

be inside the sprinkles so I'm going to

drag it out into a dut uh collection

which is where it should be and then

this area lamp as well that's the reason

that the uh the background is dark um is

cuz that was inside the sprinkle so it

was hidden from the rendler as well so

now putting that into the environment

that now should look a lot better so do

a test render just by hitting F12 see

how that looks first what I should have

done I mean even just doing one render

could have revealed this problem it's

that obvious um but do a test render

check look we've got the balls appearing

The Fill light is now in the background

and the other thing I noticed and this

is because it's the next day that I'm

recording this um when you look at

something with fresh eyes you often

notice different things so I thought

that this exposure looked pretty good

but then now having a look at it um the

next day I can see that it's a little

Overexposed okay so if you look uh at

the false color this is what it looks

like and there's just too much orange

there so essentially I'm going to drop

this back to be so it's like mostly

yellow across the uh the front of these

Donuts here well not mostly yellow but

more yellow than what there was uh

before there's not really an exact way

to sort of uh pinpoint it but I could

just tell it's a little overe exposed so

I'm just dialing it back to be a little

more reasonable again your exposure

ranges might be different depending on

you know how close your Donuts are to

the window or something but look at it

with your own eyes and if it looks wrong

when you're using this exposure range

use a different value tweak it and try

to make it um look accurate cuz actually

I was on Discord this morning looking at

some of your renders join the Discord if

you're not on there um and I was like

okay a lot of people also have

Overexposed uh renders so I should bring

that up anyway we are now finally ready

to do a render so again I am using no

noise threshold 500 samples probably get

that up to a th000 if you want it to be

non- jittery D noise open image D noise

and then I'm outputting it to tiffs just

RGB we don't need alpha 8 bit and then

I'm just putting it into a folder which

because I made a mistake uh I'm going to

put it into another F actually made two

mistakes rended it twice um I'll put it

into uh three right that's why I put

them in subfolders anyways now that I'm

ready I'm going to go render render

animation and this is now kicking it off

I can now leave it walk away and it will

just start as it finishes uh rendering

it'll just start dumping it into the

folder and there you go so you can see

it's uh it's rendered three frames so

we've got three images here once it's

finished we should have 160 Tiff files

inside this folder which you will have

to watch the final part of this tutorial

to learn how to take that sequence and

form a video file that you can use and

send Etc so click here to watch the fin

fin part of this tutorial series well

you made it the end of the series you've

watched 14 videos so uh before I show

you how to turn the image sequence into

a final video I do want to say

congratulations because um everyone says

they want to learn new skills and very

few people actually want to put in the

time so if you're watching this you have

clearly put in the time so I mean that

truly well done now if you are able to

go from this series and then go off and

create and get what you want out of

plender then fantastic uh but what I've

learned over the years is that there is

a percentage of people who want more

they want to know what tutorials to

watch next to level up their career so I

am in the process of creating a blender

course for beginners M special so this

is going to be for you guys essentially

people who finish this course and then

they want more they want to know uh how

do they do other parts of blender Beyond

just a donut so it's not available yet

but I'm looking to release it in early

2024 if I can um so if you want to be

notified when it is available uh click

the link in the description and you can

join a separate email list just for this

course to be notified once it uh is

available it's not going to be free it

is going to be a paid course um but it

is uh yeah for people who really want to

take this seriously and make a career

out of it that is for you so with that

out of the way now on to the tutorial if

you followed the last part directly you

should find inside this

folder 160 Tiff files which are you know

you can open them individually and look

at the images but if you want to create

a video then this is what you do if

you're using this as part of another

video project um then you might be using

software like premere I know that's not

all of you but I'll just quickly show

you for those who want to use Premiere

instead you just click on the first

image and then check image sequence uh

that'll import it and then just drag

that into a new sequence and there you

go and then you can just import uh sorry

export that as you would anything in

Premiere or edit it Etc but if you want

to use blender if you want to go with

the free route there is actually a video

editor inside of blender now you can

access it from uh inside here um but I

actually find it easier and better to

just create a new blender instance so

for that I go file new and then you can

go General but actually if you go video

editing um then that will just set it up

for you ready to go and it'll just say a

bunch of time this isn't like a special

version of blender or anything when you

choose this like if you want to use you

know the standard blender layout or

whatever it's still there it's just it's

created this video like this screen

layout and everything is already

configured and ready to go for you

anyways so down here this is your video

editor this is the sequencer as it's

called and then up here is going to show

you the video that it's uh displaying so

the first thing we need to do is load in

that image sequence so shift a hotkey

works all over blender choose image

sequence navigate to that folder where

you have uh all of these Tiff files and

unlike Premier where you select the

first one and then import that this one

you need to select all of them so the

hot key is just a to select everything

hot Keys work everywhere across blender

and then go add image strip aha now you

can see we've got this strip at the

bottom here and if we hit the space bar

we should see at the top the uh image

sequence playing awesome now it looks a

little slow and you you'll see actually

in the top left hand corner it's playing

at 24 frames a second and that's because

although we set it up as 30 frames a

second we just rendered that into the uh

image sequence doesn't know what the

frame rate is the only reason we did

that was so that when you're playing the

animation in the viewport it's actually

at the correct speed but to set it up

here uh you set your frame rate here

from uh 24 to 30 and now if you play it

you'll see it's going at 30 frames a

second it's a little faster it's a

little smoother and uh it looks good

great now you can see it just kind of

ends right just goes into like blank

nothing and we don't want that I want to

really hold on this end frame because

this is the important frame where all

the donuts are revealed at the end there

and it's really easy to extend the last

frame you just click on the end of that

strip at the bottom there till it lights

up white and then you can either click

and drag out or hit the hotkey g um to

grab and we can just move it all the way

to the end so 250 that's what the uh the

final like the frame range here is right

if you want it to be longer or shorter

you can change it there but I'm going to

keep it at 250 so that means now it gets

to the end and then it just holds here

and let you soak it in soak in those uh

those donuts um cool and this is fine

you could export this but I also just

want to have a nice fade out at the end

because why not just learn about

something in the video sequence editor

um to do that I'm going to go shift a

and then add add in a color and the

color is already set up as black so

that's fine so I'm just dragging it over

the end here and you can see it just

jumps to the color cuz that's now over

the top of that other strip so it's it's

reading top to bottom so it's black is

over the top and uh instead of it being

a jump cut to black we obviously want to

fade it so to do that just click that

that uh strip there and then say shift a

and then say fade fade in and you'll see

it's uh it's hard to read here from this

cuz it's got like black at the bottom

but there is a actually can I do

that uh I'm using the same hotkey

control middle Mouse Button as when

we're using the graph editor but you can

see there is like a slight uh like a

little ramp up like that and it's just

showing you it's fading in um but there

you go that's the fade in uh effect

there and what that is doing is it's

just created um a key frame animation

for this opacity slider to just do a

very quick uh fade in there

um but there you go so now that's it

that's what we want this is what we want

to form into a video file which we could

upload to Youtube or Instagram or

whatever so to create that here in your

output settings you want to again choose

a folder that you want to save it to I

usually save it inside of the folder

with the frames and I just call it video

and then say

accept now because we uh set this up as

a new video editor file it's

automatically set the file format for us

as

ffmpeg video and this is actually the

most flexible I've never needed Avi jpeg

or raw it just creates those ginormous

gigabyte files that you can never do

anything with anyway so ffmpeg is the

one you want because it's got the most

options um and go underneath encoding

and this is where you'll find all of

your video settings um for encoding so

the container that is your like think of

it as the file extens I right so if it's

a mo file that would be quick time if it

is a MKV file that annoying format that

Premier can't read and it's supposed to

be better than MP4s but nothing can read

it except VLC anyways you that would be

Metro metosa metosa is the the one webm

that's like a format that is becoming

more common online you could use that

anyways we're going to use MP4 so that's

MPEG 4 uh cuz that's the most common one

that most people need video codak we're

going to leave it at the default F sorry

h264 is

fine now uh you're if you're used to

like all these settings of bit rates and

all that you can go into that just by

setting like constant bit rate and you

can change all this but I usually just

choose one of the uh think of these as

like presets right so high quality is

probably good enough for most people if

you want to go even higher quality

perceptually lossless will mean it's

almost the highest quality possible so

there's no loss uh lossless would put it

at no loss at all so it's like the

highest quality I don't think you ever

need that like perceptually lossless is

probably fine for like more than every

case you would need right so

perceptually lossless and that's it um

oh audio we don't have any audio if you

wanted to you could add in sound here if

you wanted to we don't have audio so I'm

going to set the audio codec to no audio

I don't think it makes a difference to

the output but anyway and uh that's it

so now what do you do to export this the

same as before it's render animation and

what this does is it just chews through

those frames in the sequence and you can

see at the bottom there how fast it's

going and it's going to fade out Boop

and that's it so the reason it did that

by the way is like cuz like how would it

know like not to render from the camera

cuz we just said render animation it's

because in your oh where is it way at

the bottom there on my face we've got

postprocessing and it's set to sequencer

right and if it detects anything in your

sequencer if it detects anything in this

strip here it will then render this

instead of what is in the camera so

that's how it knows to use those frames

instead of render anyways all to say

look we have our

video playing nicely holds oh soak it up

look at them Donuts Fade Out T so well

done you did it congratulations you made

it to the end of the series if you want

a challenge ooh why not create some

doughnut variations you could change the

color of the icing and then model some

star-shaped sprinkles and then you've

got a patriotic donut scene M you could

use the polygon add-on to import some of

our free candles and then some Moonlight

for a moody candle light dut scene you

could experiment with some different

marble textures there's a lot there you

could make the sprinkles gold you could

add in some whiskey glasses a serving

board for a high class expensive donnut

looking scene you could decorate it with

fruits and palm tree models for a

tropical themed dut scene or you could

add in some pumpkins change the colors

around and you've got a fall themed dut

scene there's a lot that you could do so

have a stab have a go at it and try to

elevate this and make the dut scene your

own cuz that's where the real learning

comes in otherwise thank you so much for

watching and I will see you in a future

video

[Applause]

[Music]