16 Blender Tips That Made Me Pro

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Honestly this is probably the first "pro tips" video I've seen where the tips aren't all super basic. Really good video!

Using one image and separating the rgb is such a good way to add more details with less work and less data. I wish I would've thought of that earlier.

This video was great!! I've watched many Blender tutorials even though I'm quite familiar with the program, and you are the only one to mention the double sun technique that's quite common professionally but rarely seen in tutorials, and I also learned quite a bit about render settings, great job!

Blew my mind with the color channel fits all setup, great stuff!!!

This was really good. I especially like the tip about the thin glass shader, but all were great tips.

One of the best 3D tips videos I've ever seen, quick, advanced and very insightful, great stuff!

This video is a fricken gem. I thought about using color channels like that before, but I had no idea it could work so well! Bonus is that you can use it on any material, no extra maps needed if you don't have them.

Some comments: 1) If you make the sun have a bigger angular diameter, this is something that only happens through clouds or mist, so also reduce the sun power. If the idea is to make the sun more interesting, I suggest adding something in front of it to cast shadows into the scene; trees, street lights, curtains, and so on. 2) Using sun lamps instead of Nishita sun, you can separate sun & sky into different Light Groups. I also separate interior lights of different purposes into different light groups. Downside is you have to tweak the values and color for the sun lamps to match sun from Nishita Sun & Sky. This allows far greater flexibility in post compared to having to re-render. 3) I have no idea why anyone would desaturate Nishita Sun & Sky, these two components have vastly different tonalities you want to keep, especially that warm low sun and/or very blue overcast (if white balanced for an indoor shot). 4) Don't say "use 3600K lights", it's better to lookup the luminaire and what practices are used in the region. Here typical indoor "warm lighting" starts at 2700K which is a bit on the warm side compared to other places, up to 3000K. 2500K also exist but are typically found to be too warm. Used in bedrooms and living rooms. 3000K-3400K (kitchens) for more balanced warmth, and 3600K-4000K (kitchens, bathrooms) for more "neutral" colors, even if those temperatures are still warmer than actual neutral (daylight) of around 5500K-6500K. Upper limit should be 4000K-5000K, and have limited use like garages. I'm even staying away from daylight balanced lights in offices (which is what I do); they may be "more realistic" but I prefer "more pleasing". Yes, 2700K will obviously tint the image "horrifically", that's why you should render out a "white patch", measure its color, and put the RGB values into CM curves RGB white point. Or in post, but I prefer seeing the result directly in preview. I'll use a slightly desaturated version as I prefer to keep some warmth in there. This will neutralize this "horrific" color cast from the light, but at the same time shift the outside Nishita Sun & Sky more towards cooler tones. There is nothing "wrong" with choosing to neutralize all color cast. It may absolutely be what you're going for, and you may think it improves the image quality. But it has nothing to do with "realism". This sterile look in interior renderings is just something I'm not a big fan of personally. I definitely prefer warm and inviting colors possibly in combination with blue hour exterior to really contrast those colors. But hey, I have a photographer background, so I have my biases for sure 😄 5) Use lens shift where appropriate. But also don't overdo it. Looking down from 2nd floor or even higher to the 1st floor will look super wacky relying on lens shift. If the tilt gets extreme, it's better to rely on actual tilt than lens shift. For top down views, don't forget you can get away with some horizontal lens shift too - to avoid that pesky wall showing up in contour only. 6) On area lamp shapes. Be aware of what the spread function do; it reduces to zero rather than some customizeable level, which means at some angle it will fade to black. It may be better to use two lamps and instance those around as a collection; one strong and focused one and another weaker but unfocused, and/or in combination with strength controls for camera/single glossy rays to control aliasing stepping. Unless barn doors are used, the strong translucent surface will be visible from "anywhere" even if the light is focused. I'm really not a fan on how spread is implemented in Blender, or how easily sampled tube lights are still missing. But hey, at least there's been some progress, so... 7) For "thin glass", approach is good enough, although I use power 5 add 0.05 which is remarkably close to fresnel 1.55. The important part here is to not use fresnel unless you know how to deal with backfacing IORs. What should be mentioned is where to use thin glass. For windows I typically use just a big plane in the wall I cover up with window frames and call it a day. There are cases when you do want solid glass panes, and I sometimes use them on office divisors (if I can see the edge somewhere - typically on the doors) and always on glass railings (where I can always see the edge). If you need refraction roughness on "thin glass", you can use refraction instead of transparency using geometry/incoming as the normal. This will make the glass opaque though, so you'll need to add the fake fresnel shadow trick separately. If more realistic glass is needed, use the glass shader instead or a manually setup glass, and use path guiding to help the shadows instead of relying on tricks. Faking it is something I do pretty much all the time, but it's good advice to be aware of the limitations. Your problem with fresnel comes from not using 1/IOR and IOR using geometry/backfacing to switch between them. But yeah, faking it using layer weight -> curve/power add makes no visual difference, and no customer would ever comment on it. But faking it on solid geometry isn't always that easy, especially if you can see the edge. Glass panes are in real life never 100% aligned to each other. So I often assign some random color per pane (i.e. using snapped collapsed UV) and run it through a very weak normal map set to object space. I do the same to floor tiles and wooden floor boards etc. 8) Separate RGB. Actually I use heaps of derivatives; Separate RGB/R,G,B, Separate HSV/H,S,V, and Separate HSL/S,L (Hue is same as in HSV, S and L are different). Then also Log HSV(SV), Log HSV(VS), Log HSL(SL), and Log HSL(LS). Depending on contained range, the Logs will have to be normalized to new usable ranges, or even scrapped. So I use similar techniques A LOT. However, this has nothing to do with reality, at all, even if it's very convenient and memory effective. Nothing suggests the quality of polish (roughness) or bump/normals or specular levels are related to the materials albedo value. They may provide adequate and interesting variation doing magic to the output compared to not using them, but are completely unrealistic in most cases. 9) For clamping, I always deactivate this by setting them both to 0, at least initially. Denoiser can handle fireflies much better now. If fireflies can't be handled by tweaking something else that might be out of whack, then I might start fiddling around with clamping. 10) Well I render on CPU professionally (office spaces, so not to the same level of quality required), so no optix for me 😄

I literally refer to a different part of this video every day for blender work. I really appreciate you putting this together!!!

This is one of the best tips videos I've ever seen. Absolutely amazing.

The clear glass tip is amazing! I've tried multiple techniques and none came out the way I wanted until this. Everything in here is useful.

never seen this glass setting. I love it, thank you!

This just became my favourite Blender Tutorial/Top Tips. Really insightful!!

Wow. I've been blendering for a while but still discovered a ton of new information in this video. Thanks for sharing!

These tips are amazing, nice small tricks that improve and remove a lot of that dead computer image issue.

man you have no idea how good are these tips. The one for the glass is amazing

Precious as always. Thanks for sharing your work and your secrets! Your works are always wonderful!

I've seen dozens of "architectural glass" shaders over the years and nobody ever truly explains exactly what is going on and what makes one better than the other. I prefer the ones that do everything via the light path node so I don't have to remember to go into every glass object and and uncheck ray visibility options.

Wow, phenomenal video, the ammount of information is insane, all useful !