Create your first renders with Blender

Would you like to give your communication a modern, elegant touch, but you're completely new to 3D and don't want to spend hours learning by watching videos on the internet?

No problem, this guide is here for you! Here, everything is explained in detail, click by click, from importing the 3D model to the final rendering.

No previous experience of 3D modelling or visualisation is required.

Model used in this tutorial:

Course of the article

1

2

3

4

Review of the Blender interface and of the base controls

Importing 3D files

Treatment of the 3D files and creating materials

Rendering

1

Review of the Blender Interface and of the base controls

Blender download

First of all, we're going to install Blender if it isn't already installed on your computer. It's a very powerful 3D modelling and visualisation software package, completely free and open source.

Download link :

https://www.blender.org/download/

Interface

Once Blender has been downloaded and installed, open a new project. You are now faced with this interface. There are lots of menus, but only three will be useful in our case:

Scene: Main window where you can see your model, turn the camera, preview your renderings...
Objects: List of objects in your scene. They are organised into collections.
Properties: All the properties of a selected object.

Base controls

The objects include a camera, a light and a cube. To test the commands, we're going to move this cube. Blender works a lot with shortcuts. The useful ones today are :

Move an object: G key
Rotate an object: R key
Change the size of an object: S key

However, as you move the cube around, you soon realise that its positioning is approximate. It moves in the plane of the camera.

Pressing the G key: The cube moves approximately

To move it along the desired X, Y or Z axis, simply press the key corresponding to the axis after pressing the move key.

In the image below, we have pressed the G key to move the cube and then the Z key to constrain its movement along the vertical Z axis. For more precise movement, press the Shift key simultaneously.

Any axis of movement is possible, but as this tutorial is aimed at beginners, we won't go into it here.

The useful camera commands are :

Rotate camera: Click wheel
Pan camera: Shift + wheel-click
Centre camera on a selected object: ‘.suppr’ numeric pad key

2

Importing 3D files

Exporting a CAD file

Blender works with mesh files. Before you can import your model, you must ensure that it is of mesh type.

What is a mesh file? There are two main families of 3D files:

Parametric files: These are the files used by engineers, and are infinitely precise. If we draw a parallel with images, it would be a vector image. The generic parametric file format is STEP. Each parametric 3D software package has its own file model: SLDPRT and SLDASM for Solidworks, F3D for Fusion360, WIRE for Alias, etc.

Mesh files: These are the files used by 3D printers, video games, etc. They approximate a 3D model using triangles or parallelograms with a certain resolution. To continue the parallel with images, it would be a bitmap image made up of pixels. The generic mesh file format is STL. This type of file only records model topology information. There are variants containing more information, such as the OBJ format, which contains colours and textures, and the FBX format, which also contains animations.

A paramertic CAD file in Fusion360 and the same model in mesh form in Blender

Importing into Blender

Before importing your file into Blender, check the default units for the scene. The default length unit is metres. This means that Blender will convert the dimensions of your model into metres.

For example, if you import a 3D model 300mm long from your CAD software, here its length will be 300...metres!

To avoid this problem, simply change the units of the scene so that they correspond to those of your 3D model, in this case in millimetres.

To import your file, click on File, then Import, then choose your file format. Here, we'll import an STL file.

Once the model has been imported, right-click on it and then click on ‘Shade smooth by angle’. This treatment will smoothen the surfaces that need smoothing while keeping the hard surfaces as they are.

3

Treatment of the 3D files and creating materials

Creating materials

Our model is now imported, but is a rather dull grey colour. We're now going to work on giving it some colour.

To see the colours, we'll switch to ‘Material Preview’ mode (icon at the top right of the scene). Next, we're going to create a new material for our object by going to the object properties, clicking on the ‘Material’ icon (icon of a ball with a pink and transparent grid at the bottom) and then on ‘New’.

We can see that our material contains a lot of parameters. Don't worry, we'll only need six in the vast majority of cases.

Base color: Base colour of the material
Metallic: from 0 to 1, 0 for cahouchouc for example, 1 for metals
Roughness: from 0 to 1, 0 for a mirror for example, 1 for rubber
Emission -> Color: Colour of the light emission
Emission -> Strength: Power of the light emission
Alpha: from 0 to 1, 0 = totally transparent, 1 = opaque

Examples of materials

Stainless steel

Base color : HEX 8B919E
Metallic : 1
Roughness : 0,1
Emission : HEX 000000
Emission strength : 0
Alpha : 1

Rubber

Base color : HEX 000000
Metallic : 0
Roughness : 1
Emission : HEX 000000
Emission strength : 0
Alpha : 1

Blue LED

Base color : HEX 0020E7
Metallic : 0
Roughness : 0,5
Emission : HEX 0020E7
Emission strength : 1
Alpha : 1

Assigning materials to model elements

We now know how to create different materials, but they still need to be in the right places. To do this, we're going to create the materials we need and then assign them to the corresponding geometry.

Here, we've created four simple materials for our example.

To select the geometry we are interested in, we will switch to ‘Edit’ mode. Top left: ‘Edit Mode’ (or ‘Tab’ key). On the right, you can choose to select mesh points, edges or faces. To see through the geometry, press Alt+Z.

To select part of the object, press L with the mouse cursor over the part to be selected. You can also select single faces by left-clicking. In the materials tab, click on the + then create a new material or select from the existing ones. Then click on assign.

Then simply associate each material with the corresponding geometry.

Decals

When we show our product, we often want our logo to be clearly visible. This is usually a 2D element such as a sticker or a painted surface.

For the logos, we're going to install a plugin. Click on Edit -> Preferences then search for ‘Import Export: Import Images as Planes’. Click on the corresponding tick.

To import a logo, click on ‘File -> Import -> Import images as Planes’ then select your logo.
Save your logos as .png files with a transparent background, otherwise you will have an opaque background.

Resize it and turn it to place it where you want it.

In our example, our logo is positioned inside the rim, so on a curved surface. To ensure that it fits the shape of the rim perfectly, we're going to use a ‘Modifier’ (spanner icon in the settings window) called ‘Shrinkwrap’.

This geometry modifier will take an object as a reference, in this case the rim, and then apply our image to it. To get good results, you need to position the image as close as possible to the desired position. Otherwise, this tool will not work properly.

This plating modifies the position of the mesh points of our object. However, our image contains only four mesh points by default. So we're going to subdivide it a few times (in Edit mode, right-click then Subdivide) until we get a satisfactory result. Finally, we're going to move our logo away from the reference object by a very small amount (0.001mm in our example) to prevent the objects from overlapping.

4

Rendering

Preparing the scene for renders

Now that your magnificent model is ready, we can get down to business. It's time to render! But be patient, there are still a few parameters to adjust first.

In the ‘Scene’ tab, change :

Render Engine: Cycles | This is the render engine that gives by far the best results, thanks to its ray-tracing rendering.
Device : GPU Compute | Your computer's GPU (graphics card) is much better suited to this type of task than the CPU (processor).
Sampling -> Viewport -> Max Samples: 10 | Sufficient to visualise the final appearance of your render, without consuming too many resources during editing.
Sampling -> Render -> Max Samples: 256 | Sufficient for the majority of fast renders and for rendering on less powerful computers. However, if you want to obtain a better quality rendering (better shadows, less grain...), it is preferable to increase this value to 1024, 2048 or even more.
Film: Transparent | Allows you to export renderings of your product with a transparent background. Very useful if you want to inlay it on different media!

In the ‘Output Properties’ tab, modify:

X and Y resolution: 3840x2160 for 4K renders, otherwise leave at 1920x1080. You can also create different formats to suit your needs.

In the ‘World’ tab, modify:

Surface -> Strength: 0 | Prevents the stage background from generating light. Here, we're going to place all the lights ourselves.

Setting up lights

To see the effects of the light, we're going to switch to ‘Render Preview’ mode (icon at the top right of the scene).

Click Shift + A then Add -> Light -> Area.

In its properties, change the parameters: Power, Shape, Size as you wish.

Modify your lights, move them around until you get a satisfactory result, neither too much nor too little exposure.

Lighting tip: Place at least 3 lights

One main light, above, fairly diffused, medium wattage ~20-50W
A secondary light in front, low wattage ~10-20W
A tertiary, behind, low wattage ~10-20W

This is just general advice, experiment and find the optimum settings for your scene. Don't hesitate to add lamps to highlight certain points of your model for maximum impact.

In our example, we have three ‘Area’ type lamps plus one ‘Spot’ type lamp.

Setting up the cameras

A camera is present in the scene when the project is created. If you have deleted it, simply click Shift + A to add an object and add a camera.

To control the camera, press the 0 key on your keyboard. If you want to reposition the camera, you'll need to tell Blender that you want to lock the camera to your current view. To do this, press N to see a window appear in the scene, then click on ‘View’ then ‘Lock-> Camera to View’.

The main parameters to set are :

Focal Length: Focal distance | Tip: Choose a value between 50 and 85mm for best results.
Depth of Field -> Distance | Adjust to focus on the area of interest. You can centre the focus point directly on the desired object or set it manually.
Depth of Field -> Aperture -> F-Stop | This is the distance from the focal plane up to which elements are in focus. Tip: Choose a value between 12 and 15 to give a slight blur on areas out of focus.

Experiment with the parameters to discover the style you prefer!

Create a camera for each angle of view so that you can keep them for future renderings, without having to start placing the cameras again if you decide to change an element of the model.

If the active camera doesn't change and remains stuck on your first camera, right-click on your new camera and then click on ‘Set Active Camera’.

Rendering

Click on the camera you want to activate for rendering, then right-click -> Set Active Camera.

Once you are happy with the presentation, click on Render -> Render Image.

A rendering window will open.

Once the calculation is complete, click on image -> Save As then save. (Don't forget to tick RGBA, the A stands for Alpha and contains the transparency information for your image).

Here are the bases. Good rendering !