Table Of Content3D Environment Design with
Blender
Enhance your modeling, texturing, and lighting skills to create
realistic 3D scenes
Abdelilah Hamdani
BIRMINGHAM—MUMBAI
3D Environment Design with Blender
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To my awesome mom and dad, for giving me the advantage and opportunity to succeed. To my two
best mentors, MJ Demarco and Jim Rohn, who opened my eyes, guided me, and are still guiding me
throughout my entrepreneurial journey.
– Abdelilah Hamdani
Foreword
In 2019, I found a course called Learn to Create Photorealistic Exterior Environments, by Abdelilah
Hamdani. That was one of the courses that changed my life. Back then, I didn’t know much about
Blender and from that course, I learned what was needed to create a good-looking photorealistic scene.
With 3D Environment Design with Blender, you will have a better experience than I had in 2019
because this book will take your learning process even further, showing step by step what you need
to do to make your scene realistic – for example, matching a Blender scene to a real-world scale and
how to make a photorealistic material. Those subjects are easily overlooked by beginners and even
more advanced 3D artists, making it difficult to realize why your scene doesn’t look good.
You will also take a dive into how to create UV mapping and nature assets (plants, flowers, and rocks)
and how to scatter them; landscapes, realistic rivers, procedural good-looking materials and how to
apply them; photorealistic lighting and rendering; and finally, compositing. In summary, everything
you need to create a complete and beautiful realistic scene.
Everything is explained in detail and whenever possible, examples from daily life are given to make
it even easier to understand some concepts.
Reading 3D Environment Design with Blender, you will have a complete journey from start to finish, very
well explained. You won’t get confused because the chapters have a connection, meaning everything
makes sense. You will just need to follow it through to the end and you will come out a better artist.
I can say that my first contact with Abdelilah Hamdani’s course back in 2019 changed my life because
today I make a living with Blender products – something I didn’t think would be possible. This book
could be your first step too, to help you start making a living with Blender.
Carlos Barreto
Creator of CEB Studio
Contributors
About the author
Abdelilah Hamdani is a photorealistic environment designer and 3D animator who is experienced in
producing 3D art in a professional environment. Projects he has worked on include the 2020 Kuwait
election and the US Gambian bridge construction. Abdelilah is also an online instructor who has
taught more than 25,000 students worldwide. He is the founder of Reality Fakers, a platform that
teaches 3D photorealism.
About the reviewer
Jarosław Dzedzej is an experienced 3D artist who has been using Blender since 2008. After graduating
from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, Poland, with a Master of Arts title in interior design, he
started using Blender as his main tool to visualize his own projects as well as commercial archviz
commissions. Diving deep into 3D art, this area of creativity became his main focus and passion. He
also shares his knowledge with the 3D community through video tutorials on the GarageFarm.NET
Academy channel on YouTube. He loves drawing with ink and digital painting. He shares a lot of his
creations on his social media (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Mastodon).
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
Part 1: Turn a Real Reference into a Realistic 3D
Scene in Blender
1
Most Common Modeling Mistakes That Prevent You from
Achieving Photorealism 3
Technical requirements 4 Adjusting the focal length 12
The importance of using a real-world Exporting the fSpy file 12
scale 4 Building our scene 14
Learning scale matching using fSpy 7 The importance of using the bevel
Downloading fSpy 10 modifier when modeling 16
Breaking down the fSpy tools 11 Summary 18
2
The Basics of Realistic Texturing in Blender 19
Technical requirements 19 The Normal map 27
Exploring the components for The Displacement map 30
achieving photorealistic texturing
Creating a realistic wood material
in Blender 20
using procedural texturing
The Base Color map 22 in Blender 32
The Roughness map 24 The Mix node 36
viii Table of Contents
Adding color to the wood texture using the Adding bumps to the surface of the
ColorRamp node 38 wood material 42
Adding wood reflection using the
Summary 43
Roughness map 40
3
Efficient Unwrapping and Texturing in Blender 45
Technical requirements 45 What is UV mapping? 49
Importing the wood material 45 Unwrapping the wood cabin 53
Texturing our wood cabin 47 Summary 64
4
Creating Realistic Natural Plants in Blender 65
Technical requirements 65 Creating the dry leaves 81
Modeling realistic natural ground 65 Texturing a realistic natural ground 81
Creating the plants and leaves 68 Using a particle system to scatter
Creating a green leaf 69 plants and leaves in our scene 84
Applying a Subdivision modifier to the leaf 73 Adding the second type of plants 90
Texturing the leaf 75
Summary 91
Creating the second type of plant 79
5
Achieve Photorealistic Lighting in Your Environment
with Blender 93
Technical requirements 94 Applying the Kelvin temperature scale to the
sun using the Blackbody node 100
Differences between the three render
Rendering our scene 103
engines of Blender 94
Adding a background to your render 105
Using the sun to emit realistic lighting 95
Using a Blender Sky Texture node to
The Kelvin scale 99
light our environment 110
Table of Contents ix
Lighting our wood cabin with lamp objects 114 How to set up an HDRI environment
background for our scene 116
Setting up realistic lighting using
HDRI maps 115 Summary 118
Part 2: Creating Realistic Landscapes in Blender
6
Creating Realistic Landscapes in Blender 121
Technical requirements 121 Using the Separate XYZ node 130
Enabling the A.N.T. landscapes Using the node wrangler to display nodes 133
add-on 121 Adding the Rocks texture to our mountain 134
Adding Sky Texture to lighten our world 136
Creating landscapes using the A.N.T
Rendering our mountain with the
add-on 123
Displacement map applied 136
Tweaking the shape of the landscape 124
Changing the shape of the mountain 137
Giving the landscape a real-scale measurement 126
Summary 143
Creating a realistic snowy mountain 127
7
Creating and Animating Realistic, Natural-Looking Water 145
Technical requirements 145 Animating the water flow 158
Creating a realistic, natural river 146 Creating a continuously looping animation 164
Creating a water material 146 Summary 164
Adding waves to the water’s surface 154
8
Creating Procedural Mud Material 165
Technical requirements 165 Creating water puddles for the mud material 169
Creating a realistic mud material Organizing the node setup using the
Frame node 170
using procedural texturing in Blender 166
Adding stones to the Mud material 172
Creating the mud material 167
Combining the stones with the puddles 175
