For this week, I continued my work on my blender doughnut, exploring more of the features that the software provides. I first used the geometry nodes to add sprinkles on the icing surface of my doughnut. I did this by creating a cylinder mesh, downsizing and altering it's shape to resemble a single sprinkle. I then used this as the base object for my geometry nodes to copy all over the icing's surface. Tools such as the weight paint or the poission disk, allowed me to control the location and density of the sprinkles. I was even able to randomize the position of each sprinkle using the random node.
After I was satisfied with the doughnut's overall look , I then made of few more sprinkle shapes, inserted them as a group in the geometry nodes and the applied a randomized colour for all of them. This gave the sprinkles a more realistic look. As a last touch, I also added a few sprinkle balls by manually duplicating and placing spherical meshes around the doughnuts surface.
Sprinkle/Geometry Node Process
With the modelling and coloring finally completed, I experimented with blenders inbuilt animation mode, by making the doughnut rotate 360 degrees. I found this step easier than what came previously, as I had experience with using animation software such as After Effects for previous projects. Using key frames and the graph editor, I was able to animate the direction, speed and the number of times in which the doughnut made a full rotation. I also made sure the camera was perfectly aligned with the doughnut, capturing its best angle while making sure that it was the center of the frame.
Moving on, I learned the basics of lighting an object by using the key, fill and rim light sources to add depth to the object. I found the rim light, which was located at the back of the doughnut, especially as it helped the object not to blend into the background. I experimented with the each lights intensity and shadow effects until I was satisfied with the overall result.
Light experimentation
After I was finished with the lighting, I used the composition mode to alter the image as whole before I rendered the animation. Using nodes again, I added a blue background to the image, to help the doughnuts stand out more. I also singled out the doughnut's light reflection and placed a blur filter over them, allowing me to control the reflective qualities of the model. After applying a few more subtle effects in the composition mode, I retraced a few steps, altering any qualities of the doughnut that I wasn't fully satisfied with (such as the model's lighting or coloring).
Composition Workspace
Final Image Render
After making some final adjustments such as increasing the contrast of the image, I first tried rendering the animation using the cycles rendering engine. However, this took too much of my laptop's processing power, meaning that the render time would last for hours. Rendering in Eevee was much easier as it didn't need nearly as much time or processing power to render my animation. After waiting for 10 mins, I saved all of the individual PNG files of my rendered animation frames and brought them to Blenders video player. After combining all of them into one singular video and saving it as an MP4, I was finally finished with my first project in Blender.
Overall, despite how long it took for me to experiment with Blender's tools and features, I'm glad I did so as now I have a basic understanding of using the program as a whole, epically compared to what I knew 2 weeks ago. While I might use other programs to render my 3D environments, such as the Unreal Engine, I can defiantly see myself using Blender as a primary workspace for my final year project. My main goal now is to simply continue practicing how to use it, in conjunction with the grease pencil and other programs.
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