Original subtitles

Blocking Out the Scene and Setting Up the Lighting

We've got this going on here and this is looking great.

I'll add in a staircase using that Archipack add-on.

If I go to Create, Archipack, Stairs.

I want a U staircase, so this adds into my scene.

I'll hit G to move it over

and let's scale this up a bit so it fits in our scene a bit better.

If we go back down to the Archipack tab here,

I can turn off the panels on it

to make some adjustments to its width and height

so that it matches our scene better.

I want this leading up to the top deck there.

I see this is clipping through the floor so I'll pull this up there.

I'll give it a bit of thickness to it, not much,

but that is looking good to me.

Let me pull that up a hair more there.

If you tried to walk up this staircase, you wouldn't be able to go anywhere

because there's no hole to get us up to the top here. If you'd walk through here, you'd bang your head.

Let's use a Boolean to cut out a little hole here.

I will add a Mesh, Cube,

and then go to its Object Properties, down to Viewport Display,

and check it to Wire, so we can see what we're doing here on this side.

I'll go to the Modifiers tab on the roof,

add a Boolean modifier,

and for our object, I'll select that Cube we added here.

I can scale this up.

Let me turn off Proportional edit mode.

If I pull this up, we'll cut a hole through our ceiling.

If I go to top-down view, I want to line this up

to where that staircase is coming up through the scene.

We don't need it over everything.

I also want to add a bit of imperfection to it

so that it's not looking so neat and regular.

We add a bit of intrigue to the staircase.

I'll add a loop cut to this side,

grab this edge and drag it along so that we have this curve to it almost.

Maybe if we hit Ctrl + B to bevel it, we can add a bit of a bend to it almost as if it's a rounded staircase.

Maybe do it to this edge too,

bring this edge in a bit here and then bevel it.

Now we have this bit of a curve to it.

I'll turn off this Viewpoint for now

because, in Render mode, that will block our scene

but looks great.

We've got this nice little cut there for our staircase.

I'll add in some background elements to get things started.

With our A.N.T landscape,

we can quickly add in some Landscape elements.

For this one, I'll use dunes because this is a beach environment.

The default is fine for now since this is a background element.

You can notice it clips into infinity, so if it's doing that,

I'll go to my Camera

and for clipping, I'll set this to something crazy high like 99,000.

That's fine.

With this Landscape selected, let's call it Dune.

I'll add this to a new collection and call it BG Elements.

We can hit Alt + D to make some link duplicates, rotate and scale them up so they fit the background of our scene.

You won’t be able to tell the difference that this is the same object,

it'll look like a natural part of the scene.

Scaling these down in different ways and moving them around

makes it look different enough

that it is believable as a different element in your scene.

We've got some dune mountains in the distance, which looks great.

Our background is accounted for,

we got our foreground with the sand accounted for.

Let me turn that back on.

We'll have waves coming in, but I'll focus on that a bit later.

Let's add these stairs to our mid-ground section

and delete this Archipack.

We've got all this selected here and so let's add a deck here.

To do that, I'll bring back the Bezier curve.

Let's duplicate and pull it up here.

I'll pull it above so it's looking at the top

and I'll call this Handrail Top.

For this one, I'll keep it as a curve object. Since I have it as a curve, I have the option to go down to Geometry

under this curve Object Data Properties tab,

and if you go down to Bevel, you can give it some beveling.

If I go to Profile and turn up the Depth,

it's adding some thickness to this.

Now we got this as some real geometry, like a handrail around our top deck.

There are many presets.

You can modify this curve thing here to adjust itself too

but for this one, let's call it Support Loops

and that will look good.

We got this interesting little thing.

If the resolution looks weird, it's only at 4,

let's turn it up to 20, so we get a bit more detail with that.

Now, this is hovering in the air,

so I'll duplicate that Bezier curve handle,

pull it up here to the top of this

and we will call this the Handrail Glass object.

We will have a glassy element here

and I'll convert this one right off the bat to a Mesh

and then pull it down a bit to see what it's doing in Edit mode. That's what we're looking at here.

Let's add some subdivisions to this.

Between these, I'll add some subdivisions.

Over here, we will add some subdivisions as well.

On this last side, we'll add some more subdivisions

which will be the last part of the blocking out we'll need to do.

Then, we'll get into more detailing and stuff in the next section.

For this one, instead of filling it, I'll pull this up here

so it's underneath our handrail and then hit E to extrude,

Z to constrain that motion on the Z axis and pull it down.

Now, we've got this filled in

and it looks cool if you look at the rendered side here.

That looks great.

I'll shade that smooth again, and turn its Auto Smooth to 30.

Now we've some great elements here, let's add this to Midground_buildings. I'll delete this point light for now

and then add our Handrail into our Midground_buildings.

For me, one of the most important parts of any render is the lighting.

I spend the most amount of time tweaking this

even throughout the entire process.

Once I block things and I have such things to work with,

I'll switch over to Render mode

with Cycles and Denoise turned on with OptiX denoising selected,

I tend to use that.

Also, in the object Output Properties tab,

you can select it, so it renders what we see through the camera.

If I switch to Render mode, you see nothing for now,

but if I go down to my World Properties and check Environment Texture,

I can bring in an HDRI.

I've sourced an HDRI from HDRI Haven.

It's a great site with a bunch of free-to-use HDRIs.

I'll specifically use this night one that will look nice

and give me an initial color palette to start off with for my scene.

It will take a second to load up into Blender and now we have it there. If I pull this up here,

I can change this bottom timeline to a Shader Editor,

and switch from Object to World,

we now have our HDRI plug into the background of our scene.

If I zoom out here, it wraps our entire scene.

I don't like how it's positioned here

and since we enabled that Node Wrangler add-on initially,

I can select this image of our HDRI and then hit Ctrl + T

to add a mapping and a texture coordinate node

clicked into our texture conveniently here.

You can change the Z rotation of this, so it spins it around

to change where that light comes from.

I'll look where that primary lighting source is on this HDRI

which appears to be this sunset that we're seeing right here.

That's the brightest portion.

I want this to the right of our scene reflecting across our building.

We're giving nice shadows casting

across our columns and into this interior part here.

I'll turn off the brightness a bit in the strength,

maybe down a hair. Again, I'll swap out this background.

The HDRI is a good starting point to get an initial splash of color and light,

and a bit of variety across our surface to work with there.

That's a good start.

However, our shadows are very muted here.

Often, I'll add in a sunlamp for my renders here.

I'll go add a sunlamp in here,

pull this up and it's pointing down to start.

With sunlamps, it only matters where this arrow is pointing.

That's the directionality of our sun, so if I rotate this around,

you can now see we got some shadows coming in.

We're getting that nice shadow across our staircase and stuff here,

which looks great.

I'll go over the Object Data Properties for this light

and adjust these colors.

It's a bit bluish moonlight coming in a bit there

and maybe turn its strength down a hair now.

I'll add this to a new collection called Lighting.

For a bit of clarity for me as I'm scrolling through,

I'll change the color of this collection to yellow by right-clicking on that box you see there.

We'll add in all the additional lighting for our scene here.

This is a nice starter view of how our lighting setup will be.

Again, I'll come back to this throughout the whole process

to adjust things and refine stuff in my scene.

Now, I'll turn off the HDRI in the background.

I'll go to Render Properties, scroll down to Film,

and then check on Transparent.

Now, we have this checkered background which is completely transparent.

If we rendered this, it would be a transparent background.

We will use the images as planes to put something there,

but this is a nice starting point for us to work on our lighting.

Also, to start things off here,

your eye is not drawn anywhere in particular on the scene.

We don't have any textures or stuff going on our objects,

but I want to have that initial splash of lighting in our building here

to draw your eye into that section.

To do that, I'll have our lighting collection selected here so that this gets added automatically when I import it in.

Hit Shift + A, go to Light, and give us a Point light to work with.

I'll pull this up into our room,

scale it up over here by changing its radius to something like 1.5,

and give it a nice warm orange color, as if this is the color of a lamp

and crank its power up quite a bit.

Now you see this has added a nice focal element here.

Though there are no textures, we've some color splash from this light

and this will enhance once we add some lamps to our scenes.

I'll call this our Orange Splash Initial here,

so we've got that look.

I'll hit Alt + D to duplicate this and pull this over to this other side

because we will have some lights in this area.

Now, I'll unselect the Object Properties under Visibility, Glossy

because sometimes this will show up as a weird reflection in water

or in our glass that we won't like to have there.

This is looking nice initially too.

We've got a nice detail here for our scene already. If I turn off the Overlay, we get some nice depth.

We've got mountains and dunes in the distance

and this nice splash of color in our foreground.

This looks great, it's a good start with our lighting.

Now that you're more comfortable working in Blender

and starting to block out your scene,

we'll take it a few steps further in the next lesson.

We'll refine many details of our scene and make it something special.