3 Ways to Add Volumetrics to Your Scenes

⛩️ Join the Blender Dojo; / kaizentutorials ⛩️
In this video I will show you 3 ways to add Fog/Mist to your Blender scenes. I'll show you how to set it up, how to control each effect and give the pro's and cons for each method!
#b3d #kaizentutorials #blender3d
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Follow me on Instagram - @Kaizentutorials
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:18 A quick tip to keep your scenes responsive
1:00 Method 1 - Volumetrics
4:52 Method 1 - Pro's and Cons
5:40 Method 2 - Image Cards
10:32 Method 2 - Pro's and Cons
11:25 Method 3 - Mist Pass
15:07 Method 3 - Pro's and Cons
15:43 General thoughts and overview
16:14 Outro
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Second track; Solas - A Just Ronin
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Nature assets credits to Maxtree

[@KaizenTutorials]

For anyone wondering what specs I'm running on; I have an Aorus x570 Elite, 32GB RAM, Ryzen 3700x CPU and a RTX 3070 Ti card. Just to put some of the render times I'm naming into perspective!

[@redmart9449]

💄💄💄make lipstick I am a 😜😜😘😘girl I like makeup

[@AmberSantana-is3dq]

Wait dude I’m about to do a side by side to see what my specs are

[@AmberSantana-is3dq]

What’s an aorus x570 elite

[@WantedForTwerking]

@@AmberSantana-is3dq hi, ultra late but its a motherboard with an AM4 socket for AMD ryzen cpus like mine for example (R7 5800x)

[@Mortom83]

5. Method - use emission with low value on volume socked in material. Pros: Very low cost for computation and affect reflection and refactions :) Cons: is fake mist but if you know what you are doing it can be very handy to use it :)

[@KaizenTutorials]

Great tip! Thanks for sharing 💪🏻

[@Somewhatdamaged1989]

Interesting, seems like a logical approach. I just didn’t understand the “volume socked in material” can you explain exactly what you meant by that? Thanks for this tip anyway!

[@Mortom83]

@@Somewhatdamaged1989Shader Editor>Material Output>Volume > connect Emission material

[@Somewhatdamaged1989]

@@Mortom83 thanks, gonna try it out!

[@bennyweimer2345]

a tweak for the cards to make them more realistic when moving through them is to mix the opacity with the camera depth so when the camera gets close they fade out which makes it waaaaay less obvious that they are 2d cards.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Very good tip! Thanks for sharing the info ❣️

[@discreet_boson]

3:33 changing the anisotropy makes it look so cinematic 😍

[@WheelchairDrift]

there's always something new in your Channel which makes it one of the best channels I've been following. thanks for the hard work sensei🙇🏻‍♂️

[@KaizenTutorials]

Your more than welcome! Appreciate the kind words 🙌🏻

[@-manuterodactilo-7177]

damn! this is GOLD for me! thanks, next renders will be better

[@KaizenTutorials]

Awesome!

[@RyanKingArt]

Great tutorial!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you Ryan! Appreciate it :-)

[@dean3d22]

bro the way you edit the videos are top tier- great work

[@KaizenTutorials]

I appreciate that, thanks!

[@TheAXIMIDEY]

Tnx a lot!👍🙏 Connecting a Mist to a mix factor gives slightly more control, i guess.

[@3tap]

im glad i found this channel, everything you do is impressive, super underrated!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks a lot! Appreciate the compliment 💪🏻

[@APBXylon]

The low transparency bounces and black cards at around 9:00 is not because Blender does not 'know' that they're supposed to be transparent. It's literally the amount of times a single path-traced light sample will bounce on each type of material. In your setting, a single light sample will bounce a total of 12 times, but within those 12 times, it can bounce 4 times on glossy, 4 times on diffuse, 50 times on transparency. Setting individual type higher than the total just means that some samples will focus entirely on transparent materials, which is not optimal.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks for the in-depth comment. And yeah I know it's not optimal, but I find it beats setting the total bounces to a very high number as it really slows down the render. Obviously if you're doing professional stuff it should be high to reflect realism as much as possible!

[@kritzstudio]

Thank you very much for this tutorial, excellent!

[@KaizenTutorials]

You're very welcome!

[@qmung4100]

thank you so much!! very cool tutorials

[@KaizenTutorials]

Glad you like them, thanks!

[@anujayajayanath7421]

How did you add these trees? Wow. Can you make a vid about it?

[@jim-wallace]

I also like to know 🙏🙏

[@KaizenTutorials]

All the nature assets are from Maxtree. I scattered them with simple geometry node setups!

[@JosBlomsma]

Mooie, compacte vergelijking!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Dankjewel!

[@MarcoKalantari]

Great tutorial - thorough and well explained.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks!

[@TadThurston]

Had no idea how the mist pass worked or how simple it really is to set up. Thanks!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Super simple for sure! 🙏🏻 thanks!

[@bahrainhasnan]

Great explaination for each method. Learned about the anisotropic function too in this video. Thanks for uploading!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Glad it was helpful!

[@TomWDW1]

Great video! I've seen people use cards before, but haven't tried it yet myself. I will give it a shot. Thanks!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Great! Love to hear what you think about it 🙏🏻

[@buddhasinger]

Thank you! Your tutorials are always satisfied me aesthatically!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Happy to hear that, thanks!

[@liquaard2824]

awsome video bro , please make more contents like these -- Subbed

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks for the sub! Yeah will do!

[@VisualistAyush07]

Amazing

[@redmart9449]

Great video! I like it so much sir 😍😍😍😍😜😜😜 I love it

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks! 😃

[@ReaZaaa]

Additionally you can adjust the mist pass with live preview in the viewport if you go to rendered view dropdown menu, choose Mist as render pass and play with the settings in the world tab. PS: never touched the Anisotropy slider for the volume , that's awesome :D

[@KaizenTutorials]

Good one! 🙌🏻

[@unp2louad]

as always thx bro.

[@KaizenTutorials]

You’re welcome 🙏🏻

[@dannybouchard4140]

Nicely done and well explained. Très bien fait!!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Merci Danny! Appreciate the compliments :-)

[@johnleighdesigns]

I was interested to see this - I have a modest MSI GeForce GTX 1650 GPU and it can work with the volumetrics to a certain point but also because of the work I generally am involved with i mainly use EEVEE for 99% of rendering and have used video "cards" with smoke/fog/particles for FX and can be really good within my budget setup. Recently I had seen that can also use Geometry nodes to create fog/dust/particles which I have yet to try as so far have not got into those geometry or animation nodes at all!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Nice! I think GN could be a great option too yeah.

[@doantuanan]

i think adding bloom via compositing with the mist pass method add the glowing blooming effect of using fog cube

[@KaizenTutorials]

Hmm good idea! Thanks for sharing.

[@whitenoise115]

Thanks for these tutorials. You should be bigger on KZbin.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@matchdance]

Thank you so much! I never understand anisropty!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Glad I could help :-)

[@vectorr6651]

Great tutorial, thanks!

[@nirmansarkar]

One feedback > Increase the size of UI in preferences since your ultra high res monitor doesn't translate very well to lower res monitors on youtube and we get to see a bit blurry / checkered interface.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Ok thanks! I have set it to 1.25 scale nowadays. Is that better?

[@richard29sher]

Another great video. Thanks very much.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks again!

[@GodexOficialyt]

Method 1 Settings > Blend Mode and Shadow Mode: Alpha Blend and Hashed

[@mark-rutte]

7:31 little voice crack ;) haha. I love your work keep up the great work

[@KaizenTutorials]

Dankje Mark! Altijd goed om van je te horen 😂🙏🏻

[@mark-rutte]

@@KaizenTutorials Ik wist niet dat je Nederlands was! 😂

[@KaizenTutorials]

Haha, nou nu wel ;-)

[@samiullashaik2456]

Love your tut. Could you plz make a tutorial how you setup the forest and lighting all.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks! I'll take it into consideration.

[@YoussefYAL]

thank u so much that is so helpful♥♥

[@KaizenTutorials]

Glad it was helpful!

[@m6llu_0]

Thanks for the help ❤ useful

[@KaizenTutorials]

You're welcome 😊

[@designerlee7662]

I love you :)

[@KaizenTutorials]

I love you too

[@m3dvision791]

Thanks to you!!! Very cool videos

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks for watching!

[@kkojha]

wow

[@KaizenTutorials]

Appreciate it!

[@XxAkoushxX]

Great video as always! btw, can you do the card method with an animated noise texture? i would like you to try it out at some point, and perhaps show us the results? ..Keep up the good work!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Yes you definitely can use animated textures. Just need to make sure blender cycles through the animated frames, so it actually works! Maybe I'll do a video on that in the future!

[@pritamxiron7759]

This the video which will put lives in to my environment desgin...once very long time ago i came across this but missed it and now because i find it i am really happy to know about the technique that i had ignored.... A really informative and great video love it..🍓🍓

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks a lot! Glad to hear this will help you. :-D

[@anonymouxx9261]

10:04 they all went like :D

[@KaizenTutorials]

😜

[@CodeZakk]

Very helpful tutorial thanks!! My question on volume shading render you said it takes 2 min in what computer spec and in how much samples it takes that?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Good point, I shoul've mentioned it in the vid. I've got a beefy PC - Ryzen 3700x CPU, 32GB RAM and a RTX3070 Ti. For the render I used 132 samples and let denoise do the rest. So the original frames took about 50 seconds each, some up to 1 minute. With the Volumetrics this went up to about 2m20s and some frames upwards to 4 min.

[@nigellill3222]

Great video that answer's a lot of questions when you want to add fog to a scene, especially the pro's & con's commentary. Thought: I'm wondering how much further Blender can develop it's program before the only option for rendering becomes sending it out to a render farm ? or if the Blender program will split itself into 2 parts, one for commercial use where creators use computers with huge amounts of processing power & the other for people like us who can't afford computers with enough processing power to do complex scenes. There's a lot of creators (yourself included) that give the warning in their tutorials "be careful, this will make your computer slow & increase render times". Makes you wonder if Blender is developing itself quicker than the average creator can afford the equipment to run it effectively . 🤔 Love your work 👍🏼🦘

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks again Nigel! On your thought: I agree that this is a problem and to be honest I think it will almost always stay a problem, even in the future. I see it like this; you work with what you have, software allows for almost anything these days (think full-blown 3D movies with near 100% photorealistic graphics) and that's a great thing. You, as a creator, try to pack as MUCH as possible inside of the specs that you have. But with current tech development still computing speed doubles about every 2 years. So when you upgrade after e.g. 4 years you get a major improvement. But then, you just try to pack in as much as possible again haha. This is the cycle of digital creation, I suppose. Doesn't mean though that Blender doesn't do things like completely revamping Cycles into Cycles X (since 3.0) increasing renderspeeds by a enormous amount. So there's bright spots in software development aswell! I guess we'll have to wait for the day that they invent the first supercomputer AI chips to put in desktops. That will be the revolution we could all use! Renderfarms are definitely useful, but can also be expensive. So it's a solution for some problems for sure, but not necessarily one for everyone (especially those with lower budgets).

[@nigellill3222]

@@KaizenTutorials Thanks for your thoughts, I appreciate an experts opinion. I was amazed about your comment on computing power doubling every 2 years, but when I think about it, your probably right. Best thing Blender did was introduce cycles X but I guess in the not to distant future even that will be slow due to new versions like 4.9 - 5.0. 😉 Great talking with you, thanks. 👍🏼

[@KaizenTutorials]

Right back at ya! 🙌🏻

[@fullyleaded]

I love this video. Perfectly articulated and the content is the best. I’ve come back to this video many times to remind myself how to do whichever method I’m using. In the mist method you use a color ramp to adjust the color and strength. But when you use grey, instead of making the fog grey it reduces the strength of the fog. ie greyscale is used to effect the strength of the fog. What if I want grey fog? How would I make grey fog?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks a lot! Appreciate the kind words and support! I’m not sure how to get grey mist though haha, that’s a good question

[@KaizenTutorials]

I think you can also plug in the color ramp into the density and then just make the overall color grey!

[@fullyleaded]

@@KaizenTutorials Thanks for replying but I dont see a density option anywhere?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Uhm! I’ll check tommorow!

[@fullyleaded]

@@KaizenTutorials Did you get a chance to look at this?

[@barret-xiii]

A good way to add realistic volumetrics, and still have faster CYCLES renders, is to set it all up normally, but use multiple scenes and the compositor to render the fog in EEVEE, then add it to the CYCLES render. You lose a bit of realism (the fog won't appear in reflections and such), but you still get fairly realistic dynamic fog without ramping up render times. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qojOgnSbe9-sfpY

[@KaizenTutorials]

Nice one!

[@yanni2311]

Is this just the videos compression or are you using a different rendering engine? It looks almost like an impressiont painting when it's actively rendering. Edit: Looked a little closer at the options and you are using Cycles :) also noticed that at the beginning of the Mist Pass section it says "Cards" just fyi

[@KaizenTutorials]

Yeah it’s the live viewport denoising that you see! And thanks yeah made an oopsie there!

[@klippe-nv5ds]

nice！ but how do I export the animation in the third way because I can't find it in the folder

[@KaizenTutorials]

Using the mist pass? Well you have to render it out once with the mist pass (render image), then make sure in compositing to composite the mist pass properly together with your default image render and tweak the mist pass using the methods shown in the video. Now take the combined output (usually a MixRGB node) and plug that into the output node in the compositor. If you now render an animation it will automatically composite the mist in there. If you JUST want the mist pass, plug the mist pass into the output and render the animation. Now you'll ONLY get the mistpass as an animation!

[@systematicpsychologic7321]

Great video. Also, at 11:26, you have 'Cards' as the title instead of 'Mist pass'.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks and thanks for sharing! Can’t change it but it’s good to know 👍🏻

[@mrFryd4y]

Anisotropy controls how much the light is reflected vs passes through the volume.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Good to know! Thanks 🙌🏻

[@jeffspinner6579]

Is there a way to prerender the volume cube like a sim cache? For some reason I think if I command line render 2 instances of Blender and then combine in post... this will somehow help... With the image cards method, can't you do what Alpha Trees does and have all the images always face the camera, wouldn't that solve the problem of realism? I forgot if it's the is Camera Ray socket on the Light Path node or something... I just learned to take out the HDRI background (is Camera Ray) and the HDRI reflections (is Glossy) with that node... Can I somehow recreate the UE4/5 height fade of the mist with any of these methods? Having a mist that fades as it goes up really looks good to my eye.

[@KaizenTutorials]

There's no way (that I know of) to cache a volume cube! Yeah you can use this method of having the cards face the camera. This will definitely help with realism, however it's still not perfect compared to actual volumetrics. Especially up close the cards become apparent! I know you can do this with constraints for individual objects. But I''m not sure how to do it with particles. Might be easier to do in GeoNodes actually!

[@jeffspinner6579]

@@KaizenTutorials I'm trying to get over my OCD of being perfect, to be able to render scenes before the universe ends (even when I'm using K-Cycles!) so, sometimes "good enough" something I learned from Chipp Walters, may indeed be _good enough._ You've given me motivation to learn GN for realz. I've been bitten by Houdini many years ago and almost developed a PTSD type aversion to the geometry spread sheet... as I've matured in CGI maybe I should try again, but this time with more experience... For me, my Machinima is both Art Therapy and an attempt to get content creators to crowd fund entertainment we all can enjoy, and overcome the cartel like control holly dead wood now enjoys. I dream of a day we all contribute to a pile of content where we can spend our days not being preached at, but just entertained again. Dare I dream a little dream? Maybe it will start with one more person and the copycatting will start an avalanche!

[@lord_lucario3429]

I saw that with your light bounces, u have total as 12 but increasing the light bounces above that makes a change, shouldn't the total of 12 limit your light bounces, if not, what does it do?

[@KaizenTutorials]

You're right the total should limit the total, highest allowed bounces for the scene. However for transparant this somehow doesnt affect it. It's in it's own tab aswell! So you can set a high amount of transparent passes, but leave the overall bounces low.

[@gdematteis9023]

Great tutorial. Your "bonus" was equally great - use of bounding box for large objects for scattering in Geometry Nodes. I have a scene with large counts. But even after the object to be scatted is converted to a bounding box the stats are still high numbers. Am I missing something - would you provide insight?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks! Well can’t be to sure without seeing your scene. But maybe you still have a high polycount on your ground and other objects in your scene? Also, check if you aren’t using stuff like solid view depth of field, shadows and cavity etc. This can also slow down the viewport!

[@gdematteis9023]

Thank you for your response.

[@KaizenTutorials]

No problem

[@GeorgeLitvine]

Hi! Thanks! With all the respect I owe you, why this screen res? We don't see anything of the UI :)

[@KaizenTutorials]

Appreciate the feedback! I’ll look into scaling things up maybe for the next videos, thanks 👍🏻

[@Damdidamdamdam]

Hi! How is your rendered view working as it is? It doesn't refresh as a pixel mess, rather gradually sharpen the image? How to set it up?

[@KaizenTutorials]

That's super simple! In cycles (only works in Cycles) you can enable Viewport Denoising. It's under the Viewport samples in the Render settings tab, I believe :-)

[@Damdidamdamdam]

@@KaizenTutorials Thanks, amazing! :D

[@Youkai_graphics]

or 4. use all three methods, thats what i do

[@passerbylau4979]

8:12 Help, after I drag Mist.png and connect to Instance on Points node, the Mist.png node show ⚠, Geometry modifier🔧 also show "geometry cannot be retrieved from the modifier object", Why ？😥

[@KaizenTutorials]

Because your trying to display an image on a geomtry input. Import the image as a plane in your project (enable import image as planes addon) and add that plane object as the jnstance in your geonodes. Now you should get a ton of planes scattered all over and it works. Don’t use the image texture node in geonodes directly.

[@passerbylau4979]

Thank you, turn out I miss one step at 6:58 (add a plane), I direct apply scale & loop cut to Mist.png 😅

[@lord_lucario3429]

How do you instance your trees? Do u do it with alt+d?

[@KaizenTutorials]

No I instance them using GeoNodes. It's a lot lighter on Blender! So I just instance points on the ground plane, using a weightmap to define their location.

[@H53.]

How do I make grounds like that? Is it a material only?

[@KaizenTutorials]

The ground is 2 materials combined through a weight map and just a lot of grass assets scattered. The shape was done with some manual modeling, randomization and some basic displacement.

[@yehonamgeker]

Please, Did you get your nature models from Maxtree?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Yes! It's in the video description. The Maxtree assets are high-res and pretty heavy on your computer but they're super high quality!

[@yehonamgeker]

@@KaizenTutorials Yeah, I have wanted to create a nature scene with those but they are so high in resolution.

[@yehonamgeker]

@@KaizenTutorials And do you please think you could make a tutorial on scattering objects in Blender in such a way that these objects don't squeeze at some places?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Yeah they’re super high quality, which is both a good and a bad thing haha. How do you mean squeeze? No overlap?

[@yehonamgeker]

@@KaizenTutorials No like squeeze on certain axes, like the x or y

[@AmberSantana-is3dq]

Volumetrics is so hardware consuming I’m trying to create some apocalyptic scenarios and start doing films but damn I have a 3060 and it’s still not as good to handle volumetric plus verts I want to be a short film creator it’s time consuming tho and my wife says all I do is stay on pc it’s sooo good tho and addictive as a fuel truck driver the job is flat out boring I’m thinking about maybe becoming a tech or something but blender is the only thing that takes my mind off this dumb world

[@KaizenTutorials]

Volumetrics are hard on your pc, for sure! Try not messing to much with them untill you're far in your design process. They add that final touch, so just leave 'm be or disable them after adding them and focus on the rest. For rendering you can always opt for a render farm if you don't want to have your PC be stuck on rendering for days. Furthermore I'd say; do the things in life that bring you joy. You only have 1 life, so spend it with what you love! And don't forget to give some attention to the missus every now and then 😜

[@pxrposewithnopurpose5801]

can you show us how to use blender while using trillions of geometry even with geometry nodes

[@KaizenTutorials]

Maybe, thanks for the idea!

[@SVgamer-mv6hw]

What you do for a living?

[@KaizenTutorials]

This 😅

[@SVgamer-mv6hw]

@@KaizenTutorials Ok. Well patreon is the good source. Thanks for your tutorials.🙏

[@pastellepuppy]

Why do your live renders look like paintings-

[@KaizenTutorials]

Viewport denoising! 🙌

[@pastellepuppy]

@@KaizenTutorials IT'S SO PRETTY