If you missed any of the tutorials you can view them on the links below:

Create a High Rise Building

Create a Realistic Kitchen

I hope you enjoyed the series! Next month’s topic will be announced at the start of next week.

Now when it comes to rendering interiors, the Blender internal engine unfortunately falls a bit short. Global illumination is crucial to achieving realism and that’s something that Blender currently lacks. So for this tutorial, we will be exporting the scene to an external renderer called LuxRender.

If you are new to external renderers, don’t worry! The first 8 minutes is a complete Introduction to External Rendering, which answers the most common questions beginners have.

This 43 minute tutorial will teach you:

• How to install LuxRender and render your first scene
• The benefits of using external renderers over Blender’s internal renderer
• 3 different environment settings and their use
• How to apply materials to multiple objects at once
• How to pause a render
• How to use lightgroups to adjust lighting in real time
• How to enable real world camera settings in LuxRender
• How to add bloom and glare to a finished render

Watch the tutorial

Note: This tutorial is Part 2. Click here to watch Part 1.

Chapter marks

Bored? If you know what you’re doing, feel free to skip ahead!

• 0:28 – Introduction to External Renderers
• 8:33 – How to Install LuxRender
• 10:26  – Rendering your first scene in LuxRender
• 18:07 – Kitchen Tutorial start
• 19:36 – Adding the materials
• 28:44 – Setting up the Lighting and environment
• 36:10 – Adding bloom, glare and playing with LightGroups

>>Download the finished .blend – 16mb<<

Note: The LuxRender script may not be able to locate the floor and bench textures. If so, unpack the textures from the .blend and tell the script to use a directory on your hard drive.

Congratulations on completing the architecture tutorial series! I hope you’ve taken something from it. As usual I’m looking forward to seeing your results

Need some Inspiration?

• 20 Architectural renders that break the mold
• 35 Stunning Interior Renders
• Wicked bachelor pad – The Devoto House (who will be the first to make this in Blender?)
• Slick collection of real life architecture

Further Reading:

• Is freelancing in ArchiViz still worth it?
• Making of Bathroom in House N (3ds Max)
• Making of Bedroom White & Wood (3ds Max)
• Making of Uro House (AutoCAD)
• Making of Kuma, Art Museum of Estonia – Must see! Stunning.

In this tutorial you will learn how to model:

• Bench top
• Cupboard Doors
• Kitchen Sink
• Boiling Pot
• Chopping Board
• Stack of plates
• Modern Mixing Bowl
• Serrated Bread Knife
• A commercial spring water outlet

This 46 minute tutorial is jam packed with modeling tips and techniques that will help you to create an interior of your own.

To play along at home you may wish to save this reference image to your hard drive.

Note: This tutorial uses a recent Blender 2.5 build from Graphicall.org

>>Download the finished .blend – 616kb<<

Stay tuned for next week, as Part 2 shows you how to render this scene in LuxRender!

Last week I showed you how to model a high rise building and this week we will be applying materials, lighting and compositing to produce a final image that we can send to the (imaginary) client.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• A clever trick to make outdoor lighting more realistic
• Ensure lighting passes through glass
• An easy glowing lighting setup

This tutorial uses Blender 2.5 Alpha 2

Watch the Tutorial

(or Click here to view Part 1 first)

>>DOWNLOAD THE FINISHED .BLEND<<

That concludes the two part tutorial series! Now go forth and create cities

As always I’m keen to see whatever you guys produce from this tutorial, so don’t be shy to drop a link in the comment section below!

[update] Featured Community Pics

Here are the best renders from the Blender Guru community after following this tutorial:

• Weird Architecture by Manu
• Destruction by Matt
• Late Afternoon by Bryan Vivas
• Epic city by Kewl Luser
• Apartment Complex by Scotchtapeworm

Drop a link in the comments below to submit your own!

To kick things off I thought we’d jump straight in the deep end and learn how to create one of the most complex models there is, a high rise apartment block.

Because apartment blocks have multiple floors it’s easy to assume that it requires multiple amounts of work. However that really isn’t the case.

In this tutorial I will show you how to use arrays and mirrors in a way that will considerably cut down your modelling times.

In this tutorial you will learn how to:

• Use multiple arrays and mirrors effectively to cut down on your modelling time
• Create complex designs using basic shapes and loop cuts
• Follow a reference image to create a replica

This tutorial uses Blender 2.5 Alpha 2

Watch the tutorial:

>>Download the finished .blend<<

Here is a link to the reference image I used: Flickr (taken by Irene Kane).

Check back here next week for Part 2!

If you missed any of the tutorials you can view them on the links below:

A message from the author:

This is an effect frequently seen by those who live in hotter climates. Heat distortion occurs when the ground becomes so hot that the rising heat waves distort your view and perception.

In this tutorial you will learn how to:

• Distort your scene without the need for ray tracing
• Create a procedural heat wave texture
• Make the effect increase over longer distances
• Use the defocus node to simulate noisy out of focus

This tutorial is an adaptation of the idea presented in Matt Ebb’s displace node tutorial.

The finished result:

Close up:

Before starting a project it’s important to saturate yourself with as much reference material as you can, so you can see how the effect appears in the real world.

Photo: Matt Audet

Photo: Ken Koller

Photo: Michael Gwyther-Jones

You may wish to watch these stock footage clips as well:

• Nevada Desert Heat waves
• Heat in Arizona
• Heat waves in Dubai
• Powerlines in Nevada

Ready to create the effect yourself?

Bring the heat!

To play along at home, download the starting .blend file.

Setting up the scene

1. Start by adding a plane and placing it directly in-front of the camera. Rotate the plane so that it complete blocks the view of the camera.

Later we will apply a texture to this plane that we will use to apply a distortion map. When it moves past the camera, the texture we apply will distort the view behind it.

2. First we need to increase the height of the plane so that it moves past the camera. Scale the plane along the Z-Axis till it’s x4 as tall (Press, S, Z, 4, Enter)

3. Position the plane so that the top of it is covering the camera.

4. Move to frame 250 and positing the plane so that the bottom of the plane is covering the camera.

5. With the plane still selected, switch to the graph editor.

In the graph editor you should see a curved line for the Z Location line (blue line).

This curved line creates a problem as it makes the plane move at a non consistent speed (starting slow then speeding up, then slowing down again). To fix this we need to make the curve line straight.

7. With the blue curve selected, hit H and in the popup menu select Vector.

The curve should now be straight:

This will move the plane at a consistent speed throughout the animation.

If you have done everything right, pressing Alt+A now will look like this:

The faster the plane moves, the more rapid the heat distortion will look.

9. With the plane selected, add a new material.

10. Leave all the options as default, but check Shadeless and uncheck Traceable so that the plane doesn’t cast a shadow.

11. Switch to the texture panel, and add a new texture.

12. Leave the default texture slot to Clouds, but change the size to 0.10 and the depth to 1.

13. Because we have scaled the plane vertically we need to increase the mapping size Y to 4 to ensure the texture doesn’t stretch.

14. Change the texture color to black.

Distorting the scene

With the basic scene setup we can now move onto the scene distortion.

15. With the plane selected, move it to a separate layer with nothing else on it. I have used layer 4.

16. In the render options, press the + button to add a new render layer.

17. Rename the Render Layer to ‘Heat Distortion’ and select the layer you moved the plane to.

18. Switch to the compositor (Shift+Right Arrow).

19. Add a new render layer (Add>Input>Render Layer), from the layer drop down list select Heat Distortion.

21. Add a displace node (Add>Distort>Displace). Connect the scene render layer to the image input and the Heat Distortion render layer to the Vector input. Set the X and Y value to 10.

This displacement node has now warped the scene with the cloud texture:

The only problem is that the entire image has been warped regardless of the distance from the camera.

In real life heat distortion builds up over longer distances. To simulate this effect we will setup a node array to distort the image relative to the Z depth pass.

Increasing the distortion over long distances

22. Add a Map Value node (Add>Vector>Map Value) and connect it to the Z-depth output. This will allow us to edit the Z-depth pass. Set the Offset to -7.00 and the size to 0.020 (these measurements will vary according to your scene). Connect the output to a viewer node to see the results.

You should have a result like this:

The darker the area, the less that area will be distorted.

23. Connect the output from the Map Value node to a ColorRamp node (Add>Converter>ColorRamp)

This will remove unwanted artifacts by converting the Z-Depth to an easy to read B&W output.

24. Add a Mix Node (Add>Color>Mix) and connect the output from the scene render layer, and the displace output into the mix node inputs.

25. Connect the output from the ColorRamp into the Fac input. This will use the Z-depth pass as a mask for the two inputs.

The scene now becomes more and more distorted the further objects are from the camera.

Creating a noisy depth of field effect

26. Add a defocus node and connect the image input to the mix output. Connect the Z input to the Z output of the scene render layer.

27. Check Use Z-Buffer so that the defocus node uses the Z-input. The fStop will define how shallow to make the depth of field. I have set mine to 10. To create a noisy depth of field effect, leave Preview checked. The lower the number of samples, the more grainy the effect looks.

Creating a Mirage

This step is optional depending on your scene, but you can create a mirage effect by adding a plane with a mirror material, or simply by raising your objects off the ground. I chose the later:

The finished animation:

Close up:

>>Download the finished .blend<<

Anyway, it took me a while to get the technique nailed down, but I think I’ve finally worked out an easy way to create and animate a lightning storm within Blender.

During this tutorial you will discover how to:

• Quickly model a detailed lightning bolt
• Make an object disintegrate
• Create light flashes
• Add glow and glare effects in the compositor

To play along at home, download the starter file.

Watch the tutorial:

[Note: This tutorial uses Blender 2.5 Alpha. You can download it here]

>>Download the finished .blend<<

Reference image used: ¡Rayos!

Lightning reference videos:

• Lightning Storm #1 Live Lightning Crashes
• National Geographic Special
• Lightning Strikes Qantas Plane
• Townsville lightning strike
• Up close strike

Do you have any real life lightning stories? A near miss? Post it below! I’d be interested to hear them!

In this tutorial you will discover how to:

• Create realistic rain for animations or stills
• Add water droplets to the camera lens
• Drastically reduce your render times with simple rain materials
• Create a glowing sky

To play along at home, download the starter .blend file.

Watch the tutorial:

[Note: This tutorial uses Blender 2.5 Alpha. You can download it here]

>>DOWNLOAD THE FINISHED .BLEND<<

Download the textures used:

• Splatter Texture
• Sky Texture

Need some inspiration?

Watch these youtube videos for some creative uses of rain:

• Polar
• Rain town
• AVP
• Dramatic Epic Rain Scene

Last week we covered how to create puddles, but this week things are getting a little bit chillier… snow.

Being from Australia, I must admit that snow has never been my strong point. The most contact I’ve had with snow was from ski holiday in New Zealand about five years ago, but those memories are getting pretty vague let me tell you! So for this subject I’ve had to rely entirely on reference photos. Hopefully the result will please those of you in colder climates!

I’ve experimented with various methods for making the snow clump together naturally and glisten in the sunlight, and this is my workable solution.

In the tutorial you will learn how to create:

• A realistic snow material
• Snow tire tracks
• Footprints in the snow
• Icicles
• A snow roof texture

To play along at home, download the starter .blend.

Featured User Submissions

• Winter War by Antti

(to submit your image, post a link in the comments below)