Making Candles In Blender 3

i'm going to show you how you can make beautiful candles like this this is a beginner's tutorial but a reasonable understanding of the interface is essential do check out the halloween competition that's running at the moment you can win an ssd from samsung check out the link in the description for more information on that and if you like what i do then do check out the links in the description and my playlist on this channel for more great content so i'm in blender 3.0 alpha but it's all exactly the same in 2.9 so i'll start off i'll delete the cube shift a to add go to mesh and add in a cylinder as you can imagine i think the default cylinder is just fine i'm going to press g z and one and press enter to move it on top of the floor i actually quite like the shape of the cylinder so it's going to be a nice thick candle that's melted now at this point i'd probably go straight into sculpt mode if it were me but many of you out there might want to know how to make it without sculpting so here we go into edit mode with tab interface mode with three it's face mode up here and edit mode up here select that top face and eye to inset so i had to inset and move your mouse from side to side and you'll create an inset like this so this is going to be kind of the lip of our candle i can then press e to extrude and then pull that inwards and i'll scale this inwards as well so s to scale to somewhere around there i to insert again just somewhere around here e to extrude and s to scale so really basic shape we've got this lip there and we've got this sort of waxy lump that you get in the middle of your candles now we can create a bit of variation with this if i select a couple of faces around the place something like this and press g to grab in the z i can kind of create some variation like that it's not bad but i think we can do better i'll undo that and i'll turn on proportional edit that means when i press g to grab i get this circle of influence as i call it i'll bring that down a bit and then constrain to the z-axis again and it creates a bit more of an organic look when i bring it up so somewhere out there looks okay i can select a couple as well and maybe press g to grab in the z and pull them down and that's not too bad having the center bit with a bit of variation isn't too bad it might be a bit too much so we can select this face loop by alt left clicking on one of the edges going across the face loop and press s then zed and we can then bring that down i'll undo that though because i'll turn proportional edit off before doing that so s then zed and bring that in so it's a bit flatter it's a bit of undulation but not too much okay so it's not too bad but it needs a bit more editing i would say i think going to edge mode with two i can alt left click to select some edge loops and then press ctrl b to bevel if i want a bit of smoothness between them so that one for example maybe this one and this one on the outside ctrl b to bevel i have to be careful here though because can you see just here i don't want them to overlap so that's about as far as i can go with that maybe this one in here control b to bevel and i can use my wheel as well if i want another cut and it's not looking too bad i think a subdivision surface modifier will smooth this out nicely so across the modifiers add modifier subdivision surface now it looks a bit strange at the moment that's because we've got a big end gone at the bottom so let's go back into edit mode we need a supporting loop for our bottom edge if you want to learn more about control loops and things like that then do check out my get good at blender series links in the description what i can do is in edge mode alt left click and ctrl b to bevel that bottom edge and you can see instantly it sorts it out i've got an extra cut in there as well which is helping it sort of tapers towards the top here as well so you can press ctrl r and create a supporting loop there if you want one okay back into object mode right click and shade smooth and we got this sort of candle here so that's a nice simple candle shape obviously i'm going to go into sculpt mode to do some extra editing but if you don't want that complication if you go into edit mode and maybe select this face loop here and then scale it up slightly somewhere around there maybe control r another loop up there and scale that in you can then create that sort of warped top such like this probably bring that down a bit gg to edge slide maybe this one as well gg create a bit more curve and that's probably a little bit better but you can experiment a lot with this and you can go in and maybe go to face mode with proportional edit on you can press g to grab and then change these scale them up a bit maybe this one scale it in a bit and then you get the idea of how you can kind of edit a candle shape however like i say i prefer to go into sculpt mode and do that by sculpting i'm going to cancel my subdivision surface modifier first before doing that because they don't work properly in scope mode so i'll close that down it goes all blocky but don't worry about that then we'll go across to sculpting now i'm using a display tablet for this the xp pen 24 which i really like and i'm really impressed with but any graphics tablet will do and you can't even do this with a mouse now if i just start sculpting it's okay it's kind of working but we haven't got much topology to work with if i go into edit mode those are all the faces that i'm editing when i'm sculpting so i'll go back to sculpt mode which the sculpting mode automatically puts me in just here and i want to remesh the remesh options are up here and the voxel size is the kind of all-important bit however if i come back to my object and press shift r that will actually show me the voxel size and therefore the face size that i'm going to when i remesh we want this fairly fine so we've got a nice lot of faces to play with and somewhere around point zero two looks pretty good so that's our new voxel size as you can see there point zero two roughly and we can press remesh here or we can press ctrl r so that's shift r to set the voxel size and control r to remesh you can see it goes all blocky like this i'll bring out my brushes so you can see them and come down to the bottom and we've got the mesh filters just there click on the mesh filters where it says inflate change that to smooth and then click and drag to smooth out your mesh and usually it gets to a certain point and suddenly changes so just watch out for that probably somewhere around here you can still see a tiny bit of blockiness maybe a little bit further just so we get rid of most of that sort of ribbing down there okay now we're ready to sculpt let's go back up to the top the draw brush is fine for this i think it's a great brush f to resize your brush shift f to change the strength and point five is the default i'll bring my brush down a little bit and control digs in like this and just painting normally adds to your mesh and you can have lots of fun with this holding down shift will smooth and we can smooth some of that sort of ribbing out i can make my brush nice and big with f and just smooth that out i'm trying to not touch the edges at the bottom if i keep doing that it goes really smooth and i don't actually want that that's why i'm going just around the middle to get rid of that lininess if that's a word okay back with a small brush again and let's start doing some sort of blobs and then some lines that go down like this and they can kind of drip a little bit like this smooth out if you need to and a little bit bigger with the blobs at the top and usually it kind of finds an area to sort of fall through like this and you can have it really thick at the bottom as well if you want as if the wax is collecting around there now every now and again you'll see these sort of lines emerge and that's where the mesh is being stretched i'll go to edit mode so you can see that you can see those faces there being stretched so if you stretch them absolutely lows let's go quite far down here that's about right a bit further and press tab you can see it's really being stretched and we're losing our detail so back into sculpt mode i can always press ctrl r to remesh and then if i go into edit mode you can see the effect that's had and that's what's so great about the remesh so back into sculpt mode and let's get sculpting so i'm going to act like this bits still high over here maybe a little bit of dripping down there but not too much now there are other brushes that are useful the inflate for example is quite a good one as well i like to just keep it simple with the draw and there already we're getting quite a nice looking candle remember to vary the size a bit so f to resize your brush shift to smooth out and every now and again ctrl r to do a remesh i'm trying to come exactly on the side here so it kind of keeps the floor level and make it nice and lumpy bumpy i'll just quickly go to my overlays and turn the statistics on and you can see i'm working with very few faces here so it's not a particularly detailed mesh that will certainly delight those that are only working on maybe a laptop or something like that and it's not really necessary to have that much detail for something like this that's so organic and so kind of liquidy leaving a space for the wick there i've got a few reference images that i'm looking at as well that's a good idea to have them on a different screen if you're able to or you can bring them into maybe something like a window up here and bring in a reference image if you change this across to the image editor and bring in an image that can help you with the style and shape that you need just creating a bit more wobbliness to some of these and i'm fairly happy with how that's looking now you might want to think where's the front and perhaps have a particular front and back so you can kind of see the flame coming out you can use the grab tool i'll make it nice and big and maybe bring up the back a little bit bring down the front here and this can therefore be our front just so i can see a bit more of the inside also if they're halloween candles you probably want quite a lot of distortion in your shape maybe something like this that looks pretty fun okay back to the draw just a little bit more variation in areas like this remember control will dig in really small brush there and there we go i quite like how that's looking one last remesh so ctrl r i'll just go into edit mode to show you my topology and what that looks like so we've got no stretchy bits because i've just done a remesh and i think that works nicely okay so let's go back to layout mode and just put in the wick so i'll shift right click to move my 3d cursor into the middle there shift a to add mesh and then cylinder again i can bring down the amount of vertices i can probably go to something like 16. there's just no need for that many not that it'll make too much difference to your rendering but it's sometimes just easier to work with for your vertices if you want to edit anything i'll scale that right down come into edit mode and and select that n face e to extrude and scale it in and i've still got proportional edit on remember and add a bit of variation so ctrl r to do a loop cut there scale that in i think i'll turn the proportion edit off now ctrl r to do a loop cut around there and scale that up a bit control b to bevel and you can kind of see i'm creating a an end to it maybe i'll bevel this one as well control b to bevel that remember to use your wheel for less or more cuts i'm going to select the top face so three to go to face mode select that top face into proportional edit again and r to rotate g to grab ester scale i think this i think the bottom is too thick so alt left click to select the face loop scale that down as well select this face loop i think that's too stretched now another loop cut in here that kind of looks like a wick i think a bit bigger at the end so select this face loop sorry into face mode select the face loop scale it up a little bit bring the circle of influence down somewhere around there how's that looking it's not too bad okay right click shade smooth and that works as a wick i think okay let's think about shading and lighting so across the shading tab this time first thing you'll want to think about probably is the actual flame i'll shift right click to move my 3d cursor there and for the flame i'm just going to use a single image i've created an image out of a photograph and you can get that for free and the link in the description on my gumroad you'll actually want to download it because then it will have the alpha channel and that's the transparent bit that you need in order to import it i'm going to go to edit preferences and add-ons and type in images and there's an option there import images as planes that's the add-on you must have enabled for this to be much easier so close that down now when i press shift a to add and then go to image i've got images as planes there find that file i've called it candle flame 2 and import images flames and there it is looking great move that into position so g to grab move it upwards and probably somewhere around there that's good now obviously from the side it's not going to look great and there's a simple trick to sort that out alt d to duplicate as an instance so whatever you change the first one will change with the duplicates and then rz30 so that has created a second one and rotated it slightly and you just press shift r and keep repeating that all the way around now we've got a candle flame like that which will actually work better than it looks at the moment i'm just going to select them all and put them into a collection so m to move to new collection new collection flame okay now with that texture i'll just bring this up a bit and brewing this across so there's my candle flame texture it's added it to the base color and it's put the alpha in as well and it's working nicely let's put the color into the emission now we're not seeing much of a result that's because material preview mode doesn't take into account any lighting so if we go across the rendered mode we still don't see much because we're in ev you can use ev for this and it will work if we go to render properties and turn on bloom that's probably the easiest way to do it and then you can just turn the emission strength up and it looks like a flame and it's kind of getting rid of the fact that it's a 2d image if i click away it sort of looks like a flame doesn't it's quite impressive really i'm just going to select them all again and move it right over my wick just there make sure it's in the right place that looks good also if you're using ev you'll want to put a light right on top of this so shift right click shift a to add and add light point light then come to the lighting options change it to a nice yellowy color for a candle and turn the wattage up it does depend on the size of your object this let's go to top view and put it right in the middle of our flame just there we've actually got a nice kind of flickering effect from the shadows of our plane which is sort of working in a weird way i think if i just turn this up to a thousand that should work quite nicely and we're looking pretty good if i turn the radius up that will overlap all those planes and therefore won't count them as shadows and that's working quite nicely now if you're using cycles you don't actually need the light because the emission material will actually work as a light in cycles let's just quickly change the wick to a black texture so new and just change this to black and then for our candle new give it a waxy color somewhere around there a bit more yellowy probably a little bit less roughness so it looks a bit more glossy so it's got that sort of waxy look and it needs a bit of see-throughness so subsurface scattering is the thing you want to use here let's turn that up to four for now and you can see that red glow that's coming through there maybe a little bit more and we're starting to look waxy i'll change this though give it a little bit more color and we're looking pretty good there it looks quite effective i'll just turn the overlays off and there's our candle not looking too bad okay so that's eevee let's just quickly go across to cycles and see how it looks in cycles the subsurface scattering is much more effective in cycles but it takes a lot longer to render i'll turn on the denoise that'll probably help and my gpu to speed things up a bit we have got our light here still which we don't need and that's just here the point light so i can turn that off and it's just using this emission texture now which again is a lot more effective there's another light in my scene if i turn my overlays on we've got this one as well if i turn that off that looks pretty good now let's click on our flame once again and i can bring the emission up here and once again i think that's looking quite effective let's change that to something crazy like a thousand oh there we go probably a bit too much there but you can now change these settings to your heart's content okay so that's making candles in blender hopefully this will help your halloween scenes for the competition thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Grant Abbitt

Views: 19,577

Keywords: understand, texture, paint, learn, blender, tutorials, 3d, art, graphics, game, material, guide, easy, painting, how to, gamedev, halloween, candles, flame, 3d graphics, animation, halloween animation, sculpt, spooky, learn blender, blender tutorial, blender beginner tutorial, blender 3d, blender 2.9 tutorial, subsurface scattering, blender 2.8

Id: 82HFg7nt91w

Length: 16min 43sec (1003 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021