Tutorial: Ghibli style procedural rocks in blender

hi i'm kristoff and today we're going to make a procedural rock shader in blender that looks like it has been hand painted i base these on rocks from the ghibli movies spirited away and tail from artsy and they use gouache and watercolors to give it a very dynamic texture and i hope i got pretty close using only notes i incorporated these rocks into this water scene and i hope you can find some use for them also so without further ado let's dive into blender and get started let's open a new scene let's delete the cube delete the camera and delete the light and we are going to add a plane and also a mesh uv sphere let's click on the uv sphere and go to object shades mood and let's dive into the shader editor let's create a new material we're going to replace the principled shader by an emission shader and let's call this rock shader let's go to our plane and let's apply the same rock shader the first thing we are going to add is a voronoi texture and let's plug the color into the color of the emission let's also add a mapping node and a texture coordinate node let's add a color ramp after the voronoi and this is going to provide us with our first layer of paint but as you can see this does not look like paint strokes because paint strokes has more softer edges and it also randomizes a bit between more soft and hard edges so to do this we're going to set the f1 on the voronoi to smooth f1 and as you can see we can switch between a soft and a hard edge but we want to randomize this a bit so let's add a noise texture let's add a color mix rgb plug the noise texture into the mix rgb and we're going to plug the mix into the smoothness set the color to white and we're also going to add a color ramp now this is going to be like a controller that controls the amount and we can also control a bit of the amount with the color ramp as well we're going to set the scale to 100 and detail to 50. and now we're also going to play around with the color ramp and i'm going to set it like this as you can see this gives us a bit of a texture to our edges and gives us more control you can get different effects by playing around with the scale as well if you want a more rough effect this looks more like wet paint or you can get a more grainy result i'm going to set it to 100 for now and i'm also going to play around with the randomness we can get a more square effect and i'm going to set it to 0.6 the next thing we are going to do is we are going to break up these hard lines and to do that we are going to modify the scale to do this we are also going to add a noise texture and a color mix rgb we're going to set the color to a full white plug the color into the mix node and the mix node into the scale again our mix node is going to be like a controller for the amount of distortion i'm going to set our noise to 2d our scale to 30 and the detail to 0.01 i want a very subtle effect so i'm going to set it to 0.95 at the mix shader and as you can see this breaks up all the hard lights you can get more crazy effects of course by playing around with the settings also on the scale but we're going to set it to 30 and 0.95 for now the next thing we are going to add is the second layer of detail let's add a another photonic texture we can just copy paste this one plugging the mapping into the vector we're also going to plug this mix node into the smoothness and we're going to set the scale to 27. to see the result we're going to mix this in with the other note so let's add a color mix rgb node and plug the color into the mix let's set it to soft light and let's set the mix to 0.5 and set randomness to 0.8 this gives us another layer of texturing just a very small and subtle effect as if we've added little paint dabs the next thing we are going to do is randomize this texture to do this we are going to add a object info and to randomize it once we can plug in the random node but let's take the location for now and plug it into the mapping location and now when we move around our sphere it just randomizes our texture so we get a new one each time so this will generate some unique rocks next up we are going to add some shadow and to do this i'm going to use a gradient texture to get some manual control over the shading we could also add a diffuse and then use the shader to rgb to use some lights for the shading but for now i'm going to show you this gradient method which i like because it gives you a manual control over the shadow so let's add a gradient texture we're gonna set it to linear which it already is let's add a mapping and texture coordinate node and then we're going to plug it into a mix rgb node let's plug this into our emission shader so we can see what we're doing and we are also going to plug our soft light into this mix node let's also add a color ramp after the mix node and currently our shadow is on the wrong side so let's rotate it by setting the y to 90. and now by controlling the color ramp and the mix node we can get some interesting shadows or highlights okay let's plug our original color ramp back into the emission shader and we are going to add a mix rgb node and plug our shadow into it and let's set it to multiply this gives us a custom shadow that we can control by using the color ramp and also by using the mix we can control how much texture we have at the edge of our shadow let's also add a color ramp for a highlight so add a color ramp let's plug our mix into this color ramp we're going to add another mix rgb after our multiply and we are going to plug this color ramp into the mix but instead of the color we're going to plug it into the alpha and let's set our color to red for now just to see what we're doing and by controlling the color wrap we can get a custom highlight with a color that we choose so let's set the color to white for now and so now we have a shadow and we also have a highlight that we can control now let's add some color to do this let's go to the color ramp that's connected to our soft light let's select the black and let's select a gray color for this one but we're going to make it slightly blue let's add another color this time we are going to make it more dark green and we can add a third color let's also make this a gray color let's make it a bit more brown or let's set it to blue we can now add a second color ramp and we are going to take the color of our small detailed voronoi and plug it into the color ramp let's add a mix rgb node and let's mix in this color ramp and let's set it to color and we are going to select a grayish blue and a green color to make the details pop a bit more we can play around with this soft light and let's set it to 0.55 for now this looks a bit off right now but we're going to add some watercolor effects that is really going to set it off let's select the notes after our color note and make some room we are going to add a musgrave and a mix rgb node plug in the musgrave oh and instead of plugging it into the color we are also going to plug it into the alpha so we can get a custom color let's select a purple for now and let's add a color ramp and by controlling the color ramp we can get a watercolor effect so let's move the black to right about here select the white and we're gonna set it to a slightly grayish color and then we are going to add a third color which is a darker gray and this is going to create this ring effect by setting our color ramp like this this looks like it's a smooth paint dot of watercolor that has dried out and we can make it a bit more jagged like playing around with the detail and the dimension of the musgrave and this gives it a more convincing watercolor effect let's add a second musgrave so let's copy paste the musgrave and the color ramp let's plug in a mix rgb node plug it into the alpha let's select a green this time we are going to set the scale to 3 or maybe even 2. and we are going to play around with our color ramp until we get a much larger spot let's choose a more cocky green and let's add another must grave and also plug it into a mix rgb node and let's set the scale to four this time we are going to choose a light blue let's play around with our shadow i'm going to set it to a slightly darker color and by controlling the mix we can get a bit of a softer edge let's also adjust the color ramp i think this is a bit too green so i'm maybe going to change the colors a bit just to see if i can get a different effect and let's also add a color to our highlight and we're going to set it to a more bluish color the last thing we are going to do is randomize our musgraves to do this we are going to add a mapping node and a texture coordinate node plug all of the must graves in and let's plug our location from the object info into our mapping location and this completely randomizes our rock and this is the basic effect that we want to achieve with our rock we can also angle our shadow by using the rotation tools and by using the mix we can also get a lot more texture into our shadow one trick you can do is actually use our highlight more as a moss effect by setting it to a green color one last thing i also want to show you is that by playing around with the scales of the voronoi you can get a vastly different effect i think there is a sweet spot by setting the smaller voronoi to a scale of seven and that concludes our shader so let's have a look at some different examples that i made with exactly the same shader we just made i just played around with the color with uh the different scales the different mixes and you can get some very interesting results i don't know if it gets exactly close to a ghibli movie but i do think it gets a very interesting result that can fit nicely in any blender npr project i'm quickly going to show you how to make this rock shape and how to add a line so let's take our sphere go to modifier set it to this place click on new for our texture and click on show texture in texture tab we're going to choose a voronoi reduce the size and we're gonna set distance metric to distance squared go back to our modifier properties set our coordinates to global and set strength to minus 0.5 we don't have enough geometry so also let's add a subdivision surface and move it to first and instead of setting it to a minus value let's set it to a positive value you can always go back to your texture in the texture properties and for instance you can make the size bigger and then reduce the strength to get different effects you can get some round shapes you can get some more jacket shapes by playing around with the strength and because we set the coordinates to global each time we move the rock we get a new individually unique rock as well let's now add a line around our rock to do this we go to our modifiers and select solidify in our solidify properties go to normals and set flip materials we're going to set to material offset 1 and then we are going to go to our material properties and we are going to add a new material so here add a material and set it to an emission we're going to set it to black for a black line and use black face culling we also want to set the shadow mode to none and then when we go back to our modifier properties we can control the thickness to get a different effect i'm going to set it to 0 point minus 0.01 and to get a softer line we can also use a more grayish line and that's it i'm going to share the source files of these examples and of the shader below i hope you liked it let me know what you think of the shader in the comment section please like and subscribe and see you next time

Channel: Kristof Dedene

Views: 129,746

Keywords: Ghibli, anime, blender, animation, cartoon, toon, 2D, 3D, water, blender3D, rocks, stone, watercolor, paint, handpainted, procedural

Id: FHeBI5tAGP0

Length: 27min 35sec (1655 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020