Original subtitles

The final step for the scene is of course to create some materials, set some colors and

create a beautiful lighting that would elevate this kind of stylized scene.

And I've prepared a color palette for you that we can load up in the image editor and pick colors right from there.

You can go right here into the corner until the cursor changes to the cross and then drag up

to create another window and we can click here and switch this to image editor.

And now only thing is to click open and navigate to the file. You can find the file in the description.

Just download it somewhere and load it up here in the image editor. And now we can freely zoom in and out.

So these are the colors I've picked from the project when I was preparing it.

But I want to stop for a while and before we actually start creating the materials and setting these colors

I want to talk about this a little bit because simply by repeating what I do on the screen

you won't learn as much as if we dive a little deeper and

I explain the thoughts behind my process and the process behind setting the colors for the scene and finding the right lighting is

never linear.

So even though I can structure these lessons in a linear way

so you get the desired result in the end, my process before that when I'm preparing the scene is never linear.

You know, there's always some trial and error phase and

that's what I want to talk about right now. And when you're thinking about colors, one thing is

actual colors that you set in your materials and the other things are

perceived colors where the brain bias is actually taken into account.

So sometimes when you look at some object and you know that the object is red,

you know, your brain perceives it as red.

But under different light conditions, the real color that you're seeing is actually a little bit different.

But it's hard sometimes to overcome that bias. And when you're creating a realistic scene,

you know, and you know that there is an object that's red,

you just set the color to red and then you move on and create some

realistic

environment lighting and realistic lights and you'll get your realistic result.

But here when you're creating an illustration that serves

some particular purpose and you have some idea about

how the colors should look and this might have something to do with the brand you are creating illustration for,

where you need to match certain look and feel, it's not enough just to pick colors and then move to light.

So I always go back and forth with these two.

So basically I start by setting some basic colors that I think that would look good and then proceed with some lighting setup and

go back to those colors and adjust them. And of course in all of this environment color plays a huge role too.

So there are several places that I go and

tweak the settings for the lights and colors and then go back to the other ones and

adjust them as well until I get the result that I want. So as a first step, we can use these colors from the palette and

apply them as they are.

So let's hold Z and switch to the material preview and we can start creating the materials.

So let's select the ground object and I will switch to the material tab here, create a new material. Let's call this ground and

let's click the color.

Let's click the eyedropper tool and pick the ground color from the palette and

additionally, I want to adjust the roughness of this.

So let's set the roughness all the way to 1. Then we can select the grass object, create a new material. Let's call this grass and

again, we'll pick the color from the palette and

here I want to go 1 for the roughness as well and

here we can apply the same material to this object as well.

And now we can select one of these cubes in the tree. Let's create a new material. Let's call this tree and

let's pick the color from the palette and I want this yellow color here near the grass.

So let's pick that one.

This will give the scene a little bit of that autumn or late summer feel and I want to apply same material to the bush

here. So let's apply that one as well. And here we can modify the roughness to something like 0.7.

I want this to have a little bit of the reflection and

we can now proceed and select one of these rocks, create a new material. Let's call this rock and

let's pick the color from the palette and

we can set the same material for the pathway as well. So

let's pick the rock and for these tiles

like this, but the bridge I want it to be a little bit brighter. So let's select the bridge

and let's create the rock material. Let's call this rock 2 and

let's pick the lighter rock color from the palette here and

this will give us that nice contrast between those tiles and the bridge and we can give some darker material

to this bottom of the railing. So let's pick the rock here and we can now move on and create other materials.

So here I want to create a wood material. That'll be a little bit red.

So let's create a new material. Let's call this wood

and

let's pick the color from the palette and at first I didn't have this as a red color

but while adjusting the lighting and the colors in the scene

I've ended up with this kind of color for these wooden bars and that I ended up applying them to the trees as well.

It doesn't have to be realistic and these colors complemented nicely.

So I wanted to keep that restricted palette and use them for the tree as well.

So let's just do that and apply the same color here. It will look interesting and

again, this will further bring the scene away from the realism and more into the stylized illustration.

And now we can select the top of the railing,

create a new material.

Let's call this wood 2.

So basically this will be some kind of painted wood

that's on the bridge there and we can pick the blue color here from the palette and now we can select the lamp and

I want to give a little bit of the metallic feel here. So let's create a new material.

Let's call this metal and let's pick the metal color here and we want to bring the metallic

value all the way up and set the roughness to 0.7

so it's not that shiny and apply the same material to the bench here, to those curves and

let's pick the bench itself and let's choose that wood color here and

the last thing are these grass strains. So let's apply the same

yellow material there as well and

we can now create a water material. So let's create the water.

And

let's pick the color and

apply that one. And here we want to go 0.1 on a roughness. We want this to be a little bit more shiny.

We want that water reflections there on the displacement to be visible.

But I won't give this any transmission or any like realistic attributes.

This will be plain color material with some reflections. So no transmission, no translucency whatsoever.

And one last thing to do is to select the background and create the background material.

Let's pick the color there.

And these are the colors and

by themselves, they already look quite good. And if you inspect them, there is some nice complementary color palette playing here.

You have that lime green with the violet. These two colors always play together

very nicely and create really playful and vibrant combination.

And the rest of the colors just complete

the color circle. You can see the color basically from every spectrum.

You have the blues, the yellows here. So the goal here was to create really colorful

composition. And now we can proceed with some lighting.

So first of all, let's go to the render settings here. And while still in the Eevee render settings,

we will enable ambient occlusion for those cavities and a little bit of the bloom and

screen space reflections that will already make this very nice. And now we'll add some lights.

So let's go here and switch the scene lights and scene world. This will make the scene very dark.

But we can create one other material that will help to light up the scene a little bit.

Let's emission light on those lamp posts. So let's select one of them,

go to the material settings and create a new material slot.

Let's tab in. And if you don't have that ring selected, go to the face select by pressing 3,

alt click here to select the loop and assign this new material. We can now tab out.

And let's create a new material there. Let's switch these to emission.

And let's set the strength to something like 20. So it's really strong. And we can click the color

and pick the color from the palette down here for some of the yellow light. And now we can go on and

create some actual lights. I want the lighting to be very simple. I really want this color

to pop out. You can see I've ramped up the roughness for these materials. So there is

not much of a reflection going on. We really want those colors to shine, to pop out. And we want

this to have almost like a flat feel to it. So I will use some light that will shine from the top

and actually throw really soft light around all of the scene. And I will use area light for that.

So press shift A, create a new light and let's click area light. And we'll bring this up. So

let's press G, then Z and move this up something like 13. So it's really high up.

And now we can set the size of the light here to 5. So it's really large and switch the shape

to disk. So this will give that really consistent and dispersed light all over the scene. And we can

ramp up the color to something like 1000. And now you see what I'm talking about. This is almost

like a game like really flat game like feel like you could see on the Super Mario or something like

that. And I really like this so far. But it looks a little bit bleak, like the colors aren't going

through as much as I wanted. So we can try to tone the scene with a little bit of that light.

So let's pick some color. And we can try searching for some warm light. And you can already see how

the colors change when you choose something a little bit warmer. And this will blend them a

little bit together. It's still a little bit bleak, but that has more to do with the exposure and the

intensity of the lights rather than the color itself. So I think I really like something like

this. And now the second thing I like to do when I set this main light that will define the color,

I like to go and blend it more together with some environment light. So if you switch to the world

settings here, and pick some color, I always go a little bit blue and violet, I think it can

complement those warm lights very nicely. So let's pick something like that. And we can go a little

bit more on the value here. And you will see how this fills the shadows with the violet light a

little bit more, and how it blends it all together, but doesn't distort the lights that much. Because

if you have a really strong warm light coming from the top, that will basically override that color

on those objects. So you will end up with those nice blended shadows there. And now if I'm not

satisfied with the colors, I can always go back to the materials and modify them. Or I can go and

modify the light itself. So it's always this balancing act between picking the right environment

color, picking the right color for the lights and their intensity, and then tweaking the colors of

the materials to get the result you really want. And there's a fourth thing that comes into play.

And that's overall contrast and exposure. Maybe as you already know, you can go to the render settings,

scroll down and find the color management options here. And if you switch the contrast look to

something like medium high contrast, or even high contrast, this will change the look of your scene

quite a lot. And I want to go for high contrast, because I really want this to be vibrant. I really

want those colors to shine. And you can already see how this higher contrast helps with that.

And we can now play with the exposure and bring it up. So we have a little bit more of the brightness

and more of this color vibrance in the scene. So let's go all the way up to 1.5. And this is what

I was talking about. Like you can see right now the vibrant colors, the strong green and these

yellows. And all those four things I was talking about play together really nicely to get this

result. So this is my process basically. Now I would maybe go back into the materials, try to modify a

little bit that hue and saturation on some of the objects to get the palette that I really want.

Or maybe I could go to the world settings. So this is the place where you really start to play with

your light settings and your materials. And basically you can, and I strongly encourage you

to create multiple versions of the file and try different versions of lighting and materials to

really get the best possible result that you can get. So as you can see this is not a linear thing.

It's very easy to create a lesson in a way that you pick colors for the materials and then adjust

the lighting as I say. But here I want to encourage you to experiment, to try this yourself.

And this will of course help you in the next episodes to better understand my decision making

behind those colors and those lights. Because there we won't have as much time to go over all

of the lighting and material decision choice. But I really hope this experimentation will help you

to better understand those steps and make better decisions on your own. And there's one last thing

I'd like to do right now and that's to create another light. And I want some of the backlight

to create a little bit more of those reflections. I think the water could benefit from some reflections.

So let's now just select this light right here and we'll duplicate it. I will press shift d then enter.

And now I will hold period on the keyboard to switch to the 3d cursor or you can do it right

here. And then press r x and rotate 45 degrees minus. So it goes in the opposite direction.

And now r z to rotate on the z-axis 45 degrees again and confirm. And we can additionally bring

it down on z. So this is purely optional. Whatever works better for you. You can see how those

reflections change on the water there. So something like this. And I want to set the

color to white. So let's go to the object data properties. Click the color and we'll reduce the

hue, the saturation and leave the value all the way to one. So white light. I don't want to mix

the colors anymore. I'm really satisfied with the colors how they look right now. I just want to

introduce some of those reflections and a little bit of the gradient on the background as well.

A little bit of those reflections on the trees and on the water as well. So yeah just play with

the position of this light on the z-axis. So you get something you really like. And now just to be

sure that you're getting the result you were promised. You can go on and pick the colors that

I've introduced here in this palette. So I will just finish up using this palette here. And first

I'll go to the world properties and pick the environment color from here. You can see this is a

little bit brighter that I actually end up with. And it didn't really look that much different.

But in the end sometimes a little bit of the lightness can make all the change in the scene.

So really it's a very iterative process where you go over the settings over and over again till you

end up with something you like. And now I will switch the color of this main light as well.

So let me pick the color from the palette as well. That will be this one here. Okay so this is our

scene now. Now we can press ctrl b to limit the rendering for the camera view only. And let's go

to the render settings and let's switch this to cycles. And I will switch this to GPU. Enable

adaptive sampling. That's a really great new feature in Blender 2.9 to really do more samples

only in places where you need to. And I will increase these samples to 512. And now we have

this great new tab with denoising. We can enable viewport denoising. If you have the RTX card you

can pick optics image denoise. That will give you instantaneous real-time rendering. So let's hold

z and do a render preview right now. And this is what we end up with. You can see it's a little

bit different than with the Eevee. And I think it's mostly due to that bloom activated there. So

if you go to the Eevee and disable bloom it will not be so bright there. And now let's go back to

the cycles and render preview. So we end up with really strong and vibrant color, beautiful

contrast, nice color palette. And the only thing left to do right now is to enable render denoising

as well and switch to something you like. You can switch to optics if you have RTX card. I really

recommend OpenImageDenoise. That's CPU based AI denoiser from Intel. It gives great results

in my opinion. So I most of the time use that one. And one last option I want to modify here

is in the performance tab. If you're rendering using GPU I strongly recommend to increase the

size of the tiles. Now we can switch to the rendering tab and hit that f12 and wait for the result.

Okay so this is your finished scene. Nice colorful vibrant stylized illustration. I really hope that

you like it and you enjoyed this episode. This serves mostly as a getting up to speed episode

where we went through all of these techniques that I use very often in my scenes. Whether these are

some of these mesh modeling tools or modifiers. So you should be now really prepared for what's

coming up. There's plenty. So congratulations on finishing this one and see you on the next episode.