Turn a 2D painting into 3D environment - Powerful BLENDER Techniques

hey everyone i'm a 2d artist i make digital paintings like this but using some basic 3d techniques i was able to take that painting and add this dimensional cinematic quality if you already have 2d skills this 3d stuff is surprisingly simple to do i'll be using blender which is free over at blender.org alright so while this is not a digital painting focus tutorial i did record my painting process and i need to point out a few important things i'm painting this scene kind of from a head-on view you know not a whole lot of perspective going on here that's done intentionally and you'll see why when we get to the 3d portion now you'll notice as i'm painting this ivy for example if you look at my layers window over on the right it's on its own layer and this is true for any element that goes in front of anything else like the awning right here that's on its own layer as well it's also key to the process to paint behind your elements so like i'm blocking in this chalkboard sign right here on a new layer but if you were to hide that chalkboard sign layer you would still see background art behind it this is important because later in 3d we're going to be adding real depth to this so when our 3d camera moves it'll partially reveal what's behind these objects so we need that artwork to exist also with this technique the more layers you have the more convincing the effect will be so if you look at my layers window now it's really starting to stack up again each layer contains its own object the other piece of advice i have with this technique is if your style is more painterly like mine you'll probably have to tighten up a little bit so you know i'm zooming into each object rendering them out also i've literally painted every brick in this scene i should also mention that i've painted this cafe as if it were entirely in shadow you'll see how this comes in handy a little later but anyway with the painting done now it's time to move on to the next step which is exporting these elements so my layers are very organized here with things clearly named and in groups the more you're organized the more it'll help with exporting so let's take a look at the chalkboard sign for example here's its layer right here and actually i've got the chalkboard sign separated into two layers the front and the back let's export the front layer first i'll make sure i have that layer selected then here in photoshop i'll push ctrl a to select the entire canvas and then ctrl c for copy then i'll go up to file new and photoshop has already set the dimensions to that of my chalkboard so i'll say okay there's my new canvas and ctrl v for paste there's my chalkboard and now i'll just trash the background layer so it becomes transparent and then here i'll just clean up any errant brush strokes looks like there was a little transparency in this area so i'll paint over that and just do what you need to do to finalize the element now even though i painted this scene at a pretty high resolution when you get down to these smaller objects they can be a bit low res so sometimes i'll go up to image size just bump up the resolution a bit and if i need to i'll apply a little bit of the unsharp mask filter being sure to tune the sliders specifically for this element with that done i'll go up to file save as select my textures folder and i'll be saving as a png file which saves transparency information and i'll call the file chalkboard front go ahead and press save i like to use the large file size hit ok and there's our first element okay so let's quickly do the back of the chalkboard close this file off get back to our main file select the layer we want control a control c file new hit okay control v for paste trash the background see if there's any stuff to clean up i don't think i need any more resolution on this one save as a png file i'll name it chalkboard back push save accept the large file format and element number two done it would be youtube suicide to show you that for every layer so i've got them all here and that about does it for the 2d side of things let's go ahead now and take the next step i'm firing up blender but before we dive headlong into the scene we need to get equipped with some basic functionality pressing middle mouse button will orbit the view like this shift middle mouse button will pan the camera left right up down and control middle mouse button will push in or pull out alright so with the cube selected push the tab key to enter edit mode this is where we can tweak the guts of the object currently everything is selected so push alt a to deselect all in edit mode there are three ways to interact with our object see these points those are vertices pushing the one key or clicking this button here will get you into vertex mode now i can select the vertices that make up this cube pushing the 2 key or clicking this button here will get you into edge mode edges are the lines that connect vertices and in edge mode i can select edges and pushing 3 or clicking this button here puts you in face mode faces are the actual polygons that make up your object to show you some quick interaction here i'll press 2 to get me into edge mode select an edge push s for scale and i can scale that edge clicking the mouse when i'm done push g for the grab or move tool and you can move that edge again clicking the mouse when you're done push three to get into face mode select a face and you get the idea all right we don't actually need this box so let's get rid of it pushing tab will get me back into object mode and with the box selected i'll push x to bring up the delete menu and press delete head on up here to edit preferences click on the add-ons tab go to the search field and type in images by default this import images as planes add-on is probably not enabled so make sure it's checked on then go to this box down here and make sure autosave is on and now you can exit out of this box alright we are now ready to reconstruct our painting in 3d so first i'll show you how to bring in our elements push shift a to bring up the add menu go down to image images as planes i'll head on over to my textures folder and i'll bring in my main building texture which is right there now over here make sure you click either shadeless or emit and under use alpha set it to pre-multiplied now go ahead and hit import images as planes and we have a plane sitting there which doesn't look all that impressive but if you click this button here to switch into rendered view we can see our painting is on that plane it's obviously really small so hit the s button for scale and i'll scale it up i think i actually want it a bit bigger so i'll zoom out a little bit keep scaling it up maybe something around here at this point this camera and this light are really getting in my way so i'll go up here and just hide them by clicking the corresponding eyeball icons allow me now to give you a quick taste of the power we have at our fingertips i'll select the plane tab into edit mode alt a to deselect now i'll push control or command r which allows me to add what blender calls loop cuts see that yellow line that's highlighting down the middle or i can make a vertical one by moving my mouse here let's make a horizontal one by clicking there when it's highlighted and now i can position this edge loop wherever i want it to be i'm going to put it here aligning with where the floor meets the wall clicking the mouse when i'm satisfied now i'll push 2 to make sure i'm in edge mode i'll select this bottom edge and i'm just going to orbit around here so you can appreciate this i'll push g for grab and i'll push x to restrain it to the x-axis and now i can pull that ground out orbit my view a little bit now with that same edge selected i'll press g and z to pull that ground up on the z-axis and you can kind of see what we're doing here my two-dimensional painting has some actual 3d depth to it now and this is just the beginning by the way i find this grid really annoying so to hide it go up here and click off floor i do want to keep this green and red line though that's the x and y axis blender keeps track of all three axes up here it live updates with your view and is a very handy reference i'm just going to tab back into object mode and gz move the whole thing up a little bit just so those two axes don't confuse my view all right tabbing back into edit mode let's work on that door i pushed ctrl r and i'm going to slide this edge loop right there ctrl r for a second edge loop slide it right there a third edge loop here and a fourth edge loop here okay push three to get into face mode select this face we just made now push e for extrude and x to extrude along the x-axis and i can add some depth to this door of course i want it to sit inward a little bit maybe like this orbiting around to preview the result i'll grab that same face now and press i for inset and i'll drag the mouse where i want it butting up against the blue door frame i'll extrude that face now so that the wooden door sits a little bit behind the door frame tabbing back into object mode here to preview the result i want to warn you about something here when you do these 90 degree extrusions you will start seeing this ugly smearing effect now there are ways to fix this that involve more advanced texturing i'm not going to do that but here's a quick fix in edge mode select one of the edges push ctrl b for bevel and drag the mouse to smooth out that extrusion a little bit go back into object mode and it's not a perfect fix but it's better with enough layers and the right camera move the audience probably will not notice this alright so i've put some edge loops in place here to outline this window and i'll go into face mode and select these three polygons now right click and say subdivide and i'll do that two more times actually we'll use this geometry to make a smooth curve i'll go into edge mode and i'll hold alt and click the middle edge this will select the entire loop now i'll push the o key or click this button right here to turn on proportional editing then i'll click this pull down and select sphere now when i move this i can scroll the mouse wheel to proportionally affect the nearby edges and this is how i can quickly model that facade all right it's time for a quick announcement today's video is sponsored by squarespace and i'm creating a website that i can't wait to show you first i browse through squarespace's beautiful professionally designed templates which you can preview for all kinds of devices i chose a template i liked and in just minutes i was down to editing and i was pretty impressed with the level of customization i mean you've even got animation options and you do this all in your web browser you don't need any apps or special updates ever you can create a slick looking blog like i'm doing here or set up a shop using the commerce platform so what is this website i'm making anyway well if you go to marcobuchiyt.squarespace.com you'll see a blog full of information about the tools i use in blender you know the little minute stuff that this tutorial doesn't get into and i'll keep this site current as i continue to make my videos i've put the link in the description and if you want to make a website with squarespace you can get 10 off at squarespace.com marcobuchi and use the code marcobuchi at checkout well i'm going to get back to building this website i hope to see you there too alright back to the tutorial i made a bit of a mistake in my exporting i don't want this upper area to be a part of this texture so back in photoshop i made the repairs just saved it right over the original texture and in blender i reloaded that texture and there we go okay i need to show you a common technical problem i want to add edge loops here for this column but blender won't let me that's because edge loops only work with four sided polygons and because of all the beveling and subdividing i've done i've disrupted that flow so i'll push k for the knife tool and this allows me to draw my own polygons vertex by vertex it snaps to existing edges which is handy so i'll just draw some polygons around this column and press enter when i'm done let's say you misplace a vertex and want to move it if i just push g it warps the texture instead push g twice and now you can slide it to where you want it and these are the tools i'm using to continue modeling drawing faces extruding insetting beveling loop cutting and adding the dimension i think should be in each part of each element you can check my squarespace site for more info on all those things sometimes i just want to move on to other elements so i'll tab out of edit mode and then using the same process as before import images as planes i'll bring in the awning this is a pretty easy element to deal with i'll tab into edit mode add a loop cut right where the plane changes here i'll select that face and drag it out into perspective i'll go to add a loop cut again but this time i'll scroll the mouse wheel to add multiple loop cuts then i'll select that edge and with proportional editing turned on i can add a little more definition to the awning then in object mode i'll scale it and move it where it needs to go okay it's starting to take shape i ran into this weird problem where sometimes my elements would disappear to fix that go down to this icon here and change the blend mode from alpha blend to alpha hashed and now it should be fine another tip for you i have my garden wall element here but it's kind of hard to see it push shift h and it will hide everything except the selected object also you can clean up your geometry by selecting faces you don't need pushing x and deleting faces and push alt h to bring back all the hidden objects here's another problem you'll probably run into i'm trying to model this crate but when i orbit my view the crate leaves the frame numpad period centers your view around the selected object now i can continue to work on this element and these are the tools i'm using to complete this process loop cutting selecting extruding beveling shaping positioning oh yeah and r is the shortcut for rotate i find that the iv layer really helps bring this scene together i gave it a couple subdivisions and then in vertex mode with proportional editing enabled i'm kind of pulling the vines in and out of depth to various degrees for example i like how it's snaking around that awning it really helps sell the 3d depth of this and remember that even individual objects can be composed of multiple layers here's how our chalkboard sign turned out and here's a look at the planter it's made of a front layer a flowers layer and a back layer i could select these three layers and hit shift d to duplicate make sure you move it far away from the original though or else it'll look like an obvious copy all right so check this out i painted a leaf just by itself and using the same modeling tools i'll give this a basic profile then i'll position and duplicate this leaf around the garden bed this kind of helps offset some of the flatter planes that the rest of those plants are comprised of and of course you can tweak the shape of individual ones so they don't all look like copies and i think that helps make the garden look more lush dimensional but still painterly alright let's do the same thing with a different type of leaf i'll give it some very basic dimension here and find a spot or two around the scene to distribute it again making sure i don't do too many copies because i don't want the audience to detect the repetition here's another little thing i assembled this chair out of multiple layers and i'll make a copy of it like i did with the planter a minute ago but now i'll press ctrl j this joins multiple objects into one object and now i can easily scale rotate and position this copy so i think this is coming along great but i'm missing something very important there should be a soft ambient occlusion under these objects now i did bake some of these into the wall texture for example here's some ambient occlusion from the trellis and here's the ambient occlusion from the ivy i left the occlusion off the sidewalk though i didn't want to predict ahead of time where in space the objects would go so here in photoshop i'm painting an occlusion layer this gets brought into blender using the same import procedure and then i can custom place the occlusion under every object that needs it so our project has now been fully reconstructed in 3d and i don't know about you but there's just something i find so appealing about this 2.5 d effect so alright what can you actually do with a project like this well you could put some character animation in here though i think i'll save that for a different tutorial instead let's set up a camera move and play with some lighting effects press numpad 0 to switch into camera view then go up to this view tab and click lock camera to view now we can move the camera using the same mouse and keyboard shortcuts under this icon here we can play with the dimensions of the frame alright i want to set up a path our camera can move on get out of camera view by pressing numpad 5 twice then i'll add what's called an empty objects are being added over here by the way where the 3d cursor is anyway i'm going to unhide the camera which pops into view right there then i'll select the camera push shift s and say selection to cursor and the camera jumps to that 3d cursor with the camera selected i'll shift select the empty push control p for parent and use this option here i'll call up the add menu again and make a curve path the path comes in at the 3d cursor and i'll throw it over here for now tabbing into edit mode to give it a bit of a profile alright select the empty box we made go to this icon here and add a follow path constraint click this blank box and select the path and our camera has now snapped to the path in the constraint box click on fixed position and use the offset slider to manipulate the camera okay add another empty i'll use this one here and this will control where the camera is pointing select the camera shift select the empty go up to object track track to constraint now when i go into camera view and move that offset slider you get this result so with the camera rig all set up i can now tweak that curve in edit mode until i get the movement that i want you can click in the top corner here and drag out a new window now these menus are in the way so hit t and n to hide them i'll set my left window into camera view and continue editing in the right window let's keyframe our camera for easy previewing select the empty box make sure the animation timeline right here is on frame 1 then in the constraints tab set the offset to 0 right click and say insert keyframe drag the frame counter all the way to the last frame for me that's frame 300 turn the offset all the way up right click and set another keyframe now we can just scroll the animation timeline and preview our camera move i want to animate this tracking empty too so i'll select it go to frame one press i and set a keyframe for location and then repeat that process to change where the camera is looking at any given point in the animation i also find it helps to select the camera and dial up this opacity slider anyway if you plan your camera move well the 3d depth we can squeeze out of a flat 2d painting is pretty impressive you just want to make sure you don't go for extreme angles or the illusion simply won't hold up alright as a final touch i want to show you something really cool we can do with lighting i went outside and shot this video of leaves blowing in the breeze and i'd like to add the effect of sunlight coming through those leaves and illuminating our cafe gonna quickly show you the principles behind setting this up i'll use the import images as planes and bring in my mov file using the shade list option here there's my plane and i'll move it up here so it can cast shadows below over here change the renderer from eevee to cycles then switch into rendered view okay pull up another window from the bottom and change this window to a shader editor now this looks scary but don't worry push shift a and bring in a color hue saturation node drag the node so it interrupts this connection and blender will insert it in the chain now just drag the saturation down to zero and our video is black and white push shift a again and add a converter color ramp node place it after the hue saturation and now we can adjust these two sliders to make this very high contrast alright this transparency node here should be plugged in at the bottom now select the shadeless node and push x to delete it and then finally when i plug the color from our color ramp into this factor input blender will interpret our movie as the white pixels being transparent and the black pixels being opaque the upshot is our light source is shining through the leaves so back now in our actual scene i did the same thing here's the plane with the leaves on it here's our light source yet the lighting effect is not happening that's because when i brought in these paintings with the shadeless or emit options those ignore blender's lights which makes sense because my paintings already had their own lighting so we need a little work around here go up to the outliner and collapse this folder that's our leaves object there but our entire scene is contained in that collection i'm going to right click that and say duplicate collection i'll just call it leaves pass might as well drag our leaves plane in there i'll hide the original pass and expand this down a bit alright let's start with the chalkboard again select the object go to the materials icon here push the plus button and then the new button this will become our light catching material now select the original material click this down arrow and say copy material then select our new material click the down arrow and say paste material now select the original material and disable it with this minus button drag out a new window set that window to shader editor and this is what our chalkboard sign shader looks like under the hood and we're gonna make a pretty simple alteration first grab the emission shader or shade list depending on which one you used and push x to delete it then shift a and make a diffuse shader click its color box and set it to pure white and then connect its output to this mix shader's bottom input and that's it now we have the transparency from our painting but with a diffuse material that reacts to blender's lights alright so go ahead and do that for every object when you're done you'll have a scene that looks grayish like this but position that light above our plane and we have some interactive dappled lighting very cool and phew it's now time to render all this stuff first click up here and enable this icon this toggles render ability i want to render our color pass first so i'll disable both visibility and render ability on the leaves pass and enable both of them on the color pass go down here and i'm going to render with cycles make sure my frame start and end points are correct go down here and select a file format to render to i'll render to numbered png files no compression pick a file location type in a file name and then go up to render render animation and take a coffee break now for the leaves pass first go ahead and swap the visibility and render ability go over to this world tab and change the strength value to zero this essentially isolates the light pattern created by the leaves and i've set my render settings and this is rendering so here's the result of our color pass and i mean this looks just fine this could totally pass as the finished shot but let's get back now to our dappled lighting pass i need to render out one more thing it's just the color pass but first i'll switch the renderer over to evie and play with the settings here to make the scene overall brighter and once i'm happy i'll render that out alright now in a new blender scene head back into the preferences window type in node and enable the node wrangler now hop on over to the compositing tab check this use nodes box and delete this one now i'll push shift a to add an image sequence and select my main color pass then i'll shift a again and add my exposure pass that i just rendered now i'll add this alpha over node this node combines two layers based on a third layer's input that third layer will be our leaves pass so i'll shift a to add that in too and when you do change this setting here to non-color alright to connect all this plug the alpha over node into our main composite input plug the main color pass into this slot and our exposure pass into this slot and ctrl shift click on the alpha over node to see what we're doing here and i'll just arrange my workspace quickly alright so once i plug our leaves pass into the factor node our dappled lighting starts to appear but we can make this sweeter i'll bring in a color balance node and connect it just after the exposure node now simply tweak these three controls to really bring out this effect and scrubbing through the timeline there we have it an animated sunlight effect in real 3d space that uses the pixels from my painting that to me is a slice of magic anyway we've done all this work let's now enjoy the full cinematic experience [Music] well that's all everyone thanks for watching i hope this inspires you to try this out it's tons of fun and subscribe to my channel for ongoing painting and 3d content check out my squarespace site for more about blender's tools until next time happy creating [Music]

Channel: Marco Bucci

Views: 625,817

Keywords: Marco Bucci tutorial, Blender modeling, low poly tutorial, 3D concept design, game concept art tutorial, fantasy backgrounds, 3D game environment, create game asset, visual effects tutorial, blender vfx Eevee Cycles, projection painting, 3D texturing, How to use Blender, Beginner Blender tutorial, how to paint backgrounds, digital painting tutorial, video game art, 2.5D environment, realtime rendering Eevee, Compositing tutorial, Blender sculpting, 3D model, movie vfx

Id: Ff0aobJRSNc

Length: 23min 53sec (1433 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 28 2020