In this tutorial where I’m going to show you how to present your 3D characters effectively, no matter the state of your model. Whether your character is a polished masterpiece or still a work in progress, these tips will help you showcase your work in a professional and appealing manner. Let's dive right in!
Even if your 3D model is rough and unfinished, presenting it in a high-quality render can make a world of difference. Imagine you’ve got a creature model that’s still in the rough stages. Instead of hiding it away, you can make it look polished and portfolio-ready with some clever rendering techniques. The key is in the presentation. By focusing on how you present your model, you can elevate its appearance and make it stand out.
First things first, let's simplify your model for rendering. We’ll use ZBrush's Decimation Master tool to decimate the model, this process reduces the polygon count without sacrificing too much detail, making it easier to work with in rendering software. This step is crucial so that your computer and render engine can handle it a bit better. Then we can continue by exporting the model as an FBX file. This format is widely used and easy to handle.
Once you have your FBX file ready, the next step is setting up the render in Blender. Import your FBX file into Blender and organize your workspace by creating collections and splitting the windows. Setting up your workspace efficiently is a huge advantage so you can work faster. Next, adjust the camera view and the viewport display. Here’s a neat tip: use the middle mouse button to drag and select hidden items in Blendre, you can do the same thing in ZBrush by holding Ctrl + Clicking and dragging from an empty space —it’s a real time-saver. Now, for the render settings: choose Blender Cycles, switch to GPU compute, and enable denoise for a smoother render. Don’t worry if you’re not a Blender expert; the concepts I’m sharing can be applied to other rendering software too.
Lighting is everything when it comes to rendering. It can make or break your presentation. Start by adjusting the world color settings to view your character without any environmental influences. Create an area light, which is incredibly versatile, and position it to illuminate your character. The way you scale and position this light can drastically alter the mood and effect of your render. Setting up a key light as the main and strongest light in the scene is essential to making the volumes of your character stand out and ultimately making it easier to define the additional lights (if needed).
Adding lights to enhance contrast and definition is another powerful technique. Use area lights positioned to mimic light panels from different directions. Each light should have a purpose—don’t just add lights for the sake of it. Adjust the size and intensity of these lights to refine the mood and look you are going for. The goal is to carefully consider the placement and purpose of each light to create, in this case, a simple yet effective presentation of a quick sketch.
Is not just about the areas that receive the light, shadows are ajust as important... Balancing the lights and shadow patterns to describe specific volumes and shapes of your character is crucial. Manipulate the size, power, and spread of your lights can help you create different effects like edge definition and contrast. Naming your lights based on their function and mood can also help keep your project organized.
When it comes to materials for presentation, I like to keep things simple. Just a brown colour and a bit of roughness to simulate a clay render which is a great way to show a WIP. To set up the material in Blender you can use the Node Wrangler if you have different texture maps. For instance, I like to have a bit of texture and subtle vatiations in the surface of the background/floor so it can still look interesting but not distracting from the main subject of the render.
A color ramp is a fantastic tool for adding contrast to your render. You can use the Color Ramp node like 'levels' in Photoshop between any image input node and the materials property. For instance you can use a grungy textures plugged into the roughness property of the background material (or even the character), and use the Ramp to control the contrast and brightness of the input image, resulting in a more specular or rougher surface.
As a 3D concept artist, having a library of assets can significantly speed up your workflow. I have a Blender file with a pre-set light setup and materials, which I can use to create different renders by simply changing the character and adjusting the lights. To create a template for your future projects, my suggestion is to spend some time organising and cleaning up the Blender file to make sure you have correct names for your lights and collections. Locking the camera and background objects is also a good idea so that you can produce consistent renders.
Before saving a new file as your 'tempalte' you can delete anything that you won't be using like the character itself (the materials you used in the character should still be available in the tempalte). That's it, you can load other models, tweak the lights and materials quickly and produce a new render!
Understanding the intentions behind using different lights is crucial. Use a large fill light to reduce contrast and flatten the overall appearance or a smaller and stronger source of light to increase contrast for more dramatic renders. These techniques and concepts I mentioned in the tutorial are applicable to the process of 'rendering' in general so you can replicate the same ideas and similar presentation render in different render engines.
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