Blender 2.5 Lighting and Rendering

Blender 3D is a popular, open source modeling and animation package. It is used for game design, architectural visualization, character design, animation, and still images. However, creating believable lighting and texturing is difficult in any 3D program.

This step-by-step tutorial aims to familiarize you with Blender's new interface and basic features as well as take a look at what it takes to produce a believable scene using lighting, texturing, compositing, and rendering.

What you will learn from this book:
- Establish a well-tested and efficient workflow to constantly produce high-quality work
- Apply both ray-traced and approximated ambient occlusion to your scene
- Configure settings found with Blender's materials to create, duplicate, and add special effects such as transparency and reflections to your materials
- Separate your scene into layers to light the scene using a complex light rig
- Simulate light "bending" with 3D lighting techniques
- Set up the basic material and then add textures
- Look at many different materials with varying properties such as plastic, metal, glass, wood, brick, marble, and concrete

If you are a Blender user and you want to improve the quality of your renders, this book is for you. You need to have experience in Blender and know your way around the Blender interface. You may be a professional or freelancer or hobbyist willing to increase the quality of your portfolio and interested in adding perfection to your renders.