I'm trying to make a realistic render, but I'm having some troubles with lights and reflections  In this scene I have three lights around the object, the trouble is in the corners. I can't find why the reflection is not uniform across both parts of the meshes. Is the same object with two meshes, the entire object has the same material and I'm using the Blender Render (not cycles) and ambient occlusion. (Also applied "smooth" to the lateral faces)
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I frequently come to the problem of having a mesh with parts I would like to render smooth and "hard" edges connecting them.   How can I set the mesh to show the sharp edges but render everything else smooth?  In the example I would like the sides of the individual cylinders render smooth but the intersection between bottom and top to be sharp/flat
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I created a glass cone with black seams (the seams are a diffuse not transparent material).    When I shine light on it, the cone casts a solid shadow. Why is this?   I would like to have a (semi) transparent shadow cast from the glass and a full shadow from the seams.  Here is the link where you can (hopefully) download the blend file:
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I'm having some trouble while trying to render a scene; what happens is, when I render it in Cycles, everything in the picture is orange instead of its material. When I render it in Blender Render nothing shows up at all except for the sky background.  Orange room in Cycles:   When rendered in Internal Render:
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My environment and render settings all seem normal, and when I go into rendered mode(Shift+Z or preview mode dropdown menu) it looks fine and lights the scene normally, but when I do a test render of the final frame, the environment disappears and doesn't light the scene or show up in reflections. I thought it might be my compositing setup somehow, but it looks like that while it's still doing the initial render, and I tried just plugging the rendered image into the final image slot to test it and it still looks the same.  Screenshots:
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I have recently started using blender and one of the models I'm working on has dark shadows along edges. I started this model from scratch. I can't remember them being there when I first started the model, but I had trouble joining areas together and think I've pressed something I shouldn't have. However, there are so many options I'm not sure what I did.  Here is an image of what I mean   The one on the left has the shadow. As a test I started a new model, which is on the right in the image, and as you can see it doesn't have any shadows.  Also, occluded vertices partially show through the model. Occlusion doesn't work properly.   In orthogonal view small darkened triangles appear along the the edges.    I don't really want to start the model again from scratch so any ideas on how to remove this shadow would be great. Thanks.
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I have a model which you can see here (camera perspective).    In the second image, you can see how the render turned out.    I'm at my wit's end trying to figure our why it's not showing up in the render. If anyone needs more information, just ask and I'll get it to you. I've already checked the normals and they're not the cause.
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I am doing an animation. The images I have attached show 2 different render layer view node results.    Image one shows a cube on layer 1, and 2 icosphere on layer 2. I have layer 2 set to fast blur. I have to use transparent film and therefore I use the Alpha over nodes in composition.  Image two shows a cube and 1 icosphere. Image 1 should not be showing 2 icospheres, as the left most one is behind the cube.    Image 2 is from the same render result, and is correcting showing only 1 icosphere. However, that icosphere should be blurred as it is on layer 2. It seems for whatever reason I can not have both the correct composition effect and also have every object's visibility render correctly. I can only either have everything work fine, with no composition, or composition with every emission object showing through every other object in the scene.   I am aware that masks would solve this problem, but because of the complicated setup of object materials and particles, masking produces these very strange and suddenly appearing artifacts. Material Indexing also produces odd artifacts and does not consistently effect the appropriate materials.   This is also a new problem, I did not have this issue in the last blender version. So, material indexing is out, masking is out, object indexing is out.       I want to use the compositor to blur certain layers, but every emission object in the scene shows through. It shows through as though it was on x-ray, regardless if it is behind another or inside another object. The first image is an example of this, the left icosphere is behind the cube, and should not be visible. That is the problem. Why is it visible when it shouldn't be?
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Today my question might be a bit complex, but I hope that Blender has an easy solution for this. So, let's say I have a scene with several objects in it and I have a background. The background is image/video which has some objects on it. Some of them are supposed to be closer to camera than my 3D models. I have a representative 3D model made for those objects, but texturing it would be real complex. Instead what I inted to do is to use it as a culler - wherever the object is, render the background(cull the other objects). Is this possible to do? Also, a solution for both - Blender Internal and Blender Cycles is needed. Thanks! ;)
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So I'm part way through a fun small project, and I would like some advice about how to improve the glass material at the far end of the scene on the two doors.  In the ref photo the reflection is sharp, but you can also see inside the fridge or whatever it is.  I'm aware there's still a lot of things left to do in this scene, improve lighting, finish up materials but I'd like to address this glass shader.  PS - Any other tips appreciated, I'm a fairly novice user! I do 3D in spare time because I just love it.
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Hello blender community.  Could someone please let me know how to fix this issue? I have one material for the whole face and a different one for the lips.  there's a noticeable edge that I want to get rid of. I just want it to have an ease fade instead of a sharp edge.   what's the best way to go about this?  Thank you in advance!    Finished Update  I wanted to give an update on how it was fixed with @hexbob6 and @Lemon 's help.    I needed two textures. One is the actual colored version and the 2nd is the black and white masked version. Hexbob6 described very well on the process here:   A: The node process on how to do it.    The B/W masked texture is going to be connected to the Fac of the mixed shader along with its UV coordinates. Make sure the image is on clip instead of repeat. the 1st shader is going to be the black part of the B/W masked texture. An important thing to note is if you have a texture already for the object, be sure to connect the other UV coordinates! the 2nd shader will be the white part of the B/W masked texture.   B: This section is the UV layout called "mainUV" where all the color goes.  C: This section is the B/W masked texture to focus on the lips.  D: Just the render view  E: Best way to texture something is to be able to see it in 3D view and texture paint.  F: Just showing that there are two textures to keep track of. One is the main UV and the 2nd is to focus on the lip.   That was it. Once again thanks to those who replied and helped me figure this problem. In the process I learned other things that I didn't know about blender even though I've been using it for years.
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I'm trying to follow along with a blender beginner tutorial, and I'm having trouble with spot lights. All other lights seem to work fine but I can't get spot lights to work.    Light isn't really doing anything to the scene, I can delete it and it'll look the same.  You can find the blend file here -
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Here's a sample scene:  A room with a window, a point light to project light into the room, an HDR environment outside the room and a nice Image by Rembrandt that should be somewhat reflected on the glass:    Using a standard glass shader on the window, the direct light from the lamp does not shine into the room, regardless of how bright that light is. So I can't recreate the impression of hard day light, with clearly defined areas of light and shadow.    Adding a transparent shader to the glass shader I get a very pleasing result. The light from the lamp illuminates into the room creating defined shadows, transparency seems unaffected, to see the HDR in the background, the refection seem correct to me (I also like how I get double reflections from the thick glass).    Even though I am quite happy with this solution, I've gotten a few comments on making a setup with light path nodes controlling the mix of transparent and glass. The biggest issue is that the reflections on the glass are brighter than what they should be.  So the question is: By using this approach am I messing up any of the qualities of glass? And if so, what would make a proper glass shader that is realistic, in terms of letting direct light through, while keeping reflections, refraction and transparency?  A file to play with:    The HDR image used was created by
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I have created this with cycles:  But the edge between the glowing and non glowing materials is very sharp. The material was manually applied to faces in edit mode. Is there any way I can smooth the edge between them in cycles?
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I feel I am nearing completion of the tutorial but am still having gaps in knowledge on how to render light properly. 2.92.0 blender file:  Overview layout:  Lamp:  128 sample before denoise:  128 sample after denoise:  1024 sample 1080p 100% render before denoise:  1024 sample 1080p 100% render after denoise:  I've been trying different Light paths, but I honestly don't understand the extent of how they interact with each other. I haven't seen any example of what those numbers should be in the tutorial either, if someone knows please let me know.  but it is now again a little bit too opaque, dunno when that happened. :D Not too sure what I am missing out so any suggestions would be lovely! Thank you in advance
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I am using the Cycles render engine. I love the ability to use my GPU for rendering, and I have achieved some nice results texture-wise, but I am having a hard time with lighting.   One problem in particular I've noticed is Hemi and Spot lights don't seem to work.   I also don't know what is the most professional way to setup lighting in Blender. I have heard some people say to use planes with an emitter texture for lighting. Does that work better than lamps?
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How could a one-sided material be achieved with the Cycles renderer?  I would like to create a plane that is completely transparent from one side, and a mirror from the other side.  It would be cool if Cycles/Blender simple supported backface culling like the game engine. But I guess it doesn't?  How could something like that done with nodes?
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I've made a roughness 0 glass pane, when I'm in lookdev mode it's reflecting a background that I didn't put there. I know I could just ignore it, but I'd rather be able to see what it'll mostly look like when I'm in the later stages. I also just want to know how on Earth I managed to set this background without realising it  Reflection completely ignores any objects I put in front of it. If I placed this glass inside my house, it would still just reflect trees (This is the point where I felt I couldn't ignore it - reflections are going to play a big part in my project and I don't want to be in render mode all the time)  The nodes are the default glass BSDF, except I set roughness to 0  The glass is set to 20mm thick, if that makes a difference  The background moves with my perspective and moves when I relocate the glass  I have a few HDRI's on my PC, but none look remotely like this   Also, I'm using cycles as I find Evee buggy as hell