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Create Realistic Industrial Environments with Blender 3D and Eevee

Learn to build photo realistic industrial environments with Blender and Eevee in this tutorial course. Simple Blender 3D modeling techniques combined with robust procedural materials makes for a powerful creative experience!
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Photorealistic environments with Eevee? Believe it!


Welcome to the Realistic Industrial Environment with Blender course  made possible by Eevee!

Or - more accurately - made practical by Eevee. You may recognize this environment from the Backhoe assembly animation:


This environment was rendered with Eevee

While the backhoe was rendered with Cycles.
I first tried rendering the environment with Cycles as well...but I needed it to finish before my kids graduated college....Eevee came to the rescue!

In this course, learn how to create photorealistic environments with Eevee

The total runtime is 5 hours of video, broken into easy-to-digest lessons.

Simple modeling based on primitives

  • Great for beginners learning how to model in blender.
  • The hard surface models are very simple and based on primitive shapes; cubes and cylinders
  • Our models will maximize Eevee's realtime potential...so we're avoiding subdivision smoothing
  • The models will be low poly, but appear smooth (a best of both worlds situation!)

Simple yet competent models + robust materials

  • Our shading does most of the heavy lifting for this project
  • All materials are 100% procedural. (no UVs or image textures)
  • We'll use key procedural concepts, repeated and adjusted in useful ways

Plus, numerous tips and tricks:

  • Produce realistic quality with blender lights and light fixtures.
  • Eevee's indirect lighting provides an approximated global illumination component. Sure it's not as accurate as Cycles but it can get the job done in the right conditions! Darkly lit being one of those conditions. 
  • Volumetric Fog / Smoke does a lot for establishing spacial depth as well as introducing cinematic drama. Eevee's fast volume calculation is one of my favorite features.
  • Photorealistic post-processing techniques. We'll go over a few go-to compositing techniques that push a realistic render further into *photo* realism.

Complete workflow, 5 hours of video training

Related Training

Fundamentals of Shading Fundamentals of Texturing
Creating Simple Eevee Environments (part 1) Modeling Heavy Equipment (part 1)

Author

Kent Trammell

Awarded on completion:

100xp
4 Reviews
  • ☆☆☆☆☆
    Martin Aversa(cgtin) ·

    I was a non-believer in eevee's hability to look realistic. This course showed me wrong so good!

    Also, very smart ways to fill up an environment avoiding tedious work, as always

  • M
    ☆☆☆☆☆
    Magnality (Magnality) ·
    As a beginner (1-2 months intermittent dabbling haha) I was able to follow along successfully. This course covered so many crucial techniques which gave me way more confidence for future projects. Thankyou for putting this out there!
  • ☆☆☆☆☆
    jammingammon ·

    A nice, and straightforward introduction to building realistic environments. As always, Kent shows you how to get a great result without a great amount of effort.

    I learned a little bit at every stage, from basic modeling, to texturing, lighting, atmospheric effects, and compositing / rendering. Probably what stood out the most is the section on texturing, which is quite accessible even for those relatively inexperienced with textures. Through the use of fairly small node trees, Kent manages to create a few very convincing textures, which really sell the scene.

    I would highly recommend the course to intermediate users interested in learning about environment creation.

  • ☆☆☆☆☆
    Austin Farmer(austinfarmer786) ·

    I highly recommend everyone here on CG Cookie and anywhere else to check out this class. These lessons are perfect for learning how to create an entirely custom environment from scratch. I had never personally gone through a process like this, and it was really fun to learn throughout the entire process. This course is really in-depth, and it was a great step-by-step process overall. Kent made it feel really easy and accessible to build a highly realistic final design like this. 

    This entire process was really rewarding. Why? Because it's amazing to see in real-time how all of the pieces of the environment are built from a simple mesh and form into the final picture. The modeling portion helped me learn new techniques and reenforce tools I'm still trying to get a hold of. There's a lot of great practicing different extrusion/inset techniques that can create amazing objects like metal ducts, pipes, handrails, and more. The modular asset portion of the class is so cool because it's almost as if you're seeing pieces of a puzzle coming together to form a much larger picture--pieces of a puzzle that you built yourself with Kent's guidance, that is! I learned really important and useful snapping techniques that I've never seen before.

    I honestly can't believe that I was able to create something as visually stunning as this industrial environment. It was really fun learning because Kent is an expert at the craft and a great teacher. I definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to have an amazing outlet to practice modelling, shading, lighting, and creative design. Be sure to check it out!

Playlist: Horrific Habitation

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