Optical setup schematics in Blender

This video shows how you can create simplified illustrations of optical setups in Blender, that are suitable for use in publications, presentations and other scientific media. (Sorry for the bad audio quality, will fix for future videos...)
Download links:
Optical components pack (Gumroad): ryomizutagraph...
HDRI from Polyhaven: polyhaven.com/...
My socials:
Website: ryomizuta.com/
Twitter: / ryo_m_graphics
Instagram: / ryomizuta_graphics
Music:
penguinmusic - Modern Chillout (Future Calm)

[@gunchimssakdone]

Amazing... I bought it. sorry for paying only 1 dollar.. I'll pay much more when I get a permanent job someday. So incredible jobs. keep going!

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Not a problem! Hope you find the asset pack useful

[@zanelevundla5829]

This has changed my world thank you❤

[@GTS00000]

Awesome work! suggestion of components: Shutter Iris diaphragm Spatial filter Thorlabs kinematic mounts Rotation mounts Difraction gratings Galvos NIDAQ breakout boards Filter wheel

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Thanks a lot! Will incorporate these in the next batch of component models!

[@mahmoudmehrabad3993]

i wii look forward for the same components @@ryomizutagraphics

[@German_K5]

Very nice package!

[@timjx3675]

Fantastic stuff 👏

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Thank you!

[@timjx3675]

@@ryomizutagraphics is the backdrop used available anywhere or should i try to construct it myself, many thanks

[@fracanella]

Amazing, thank you

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Pleasure 🙇🏻‍♂️

[@xyz-rj9bh]

wonderful! May I use your components to create illustrations for my paper?

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Of course! 😊That’s what the pack is for

[@cyou3403]

nice work! It is funny that I personally know the authors of the figures and tweets you referenced...

[@ryomizutagraphics]

What a small world! Hope these people don't mind my using their paper (and tweet) for reference

[@cyou3403]

haha I am sure they are super excited that people like their work and trying to recreate the figures@@ryomizutagraphics

[@HanaUhlirova-cj8ot]

Why don't the lenses in my setup look like glass (nice transparent) but rather opaque? I do everything the same way as you do. Thanks.

[@ryomizutagraphics]

I run everything with the Cycles engine. If you are using Eevee (which Blender does by default), you'll need to: 1) Under render settings, activate refractions (in the “screen space reflections” section) 2) Under material settings, activate “screen space refraction” and set the blend mode to Alpha hashed N.B. Glass materials in Eevee generally don't look as good as in Cycles, which properly path-traces the light bounces

[@Richa-w8h]

Hey, awesome video and an amazing assets pack. I am somehow not able to get the transparent effect in prism and mirrors, can you please point me to something that will help?

[@ryomizutagraphics]

This is likely because you are rendering with the Eevee render engine, whereas I used the Cycles engine. You can either swap to Cycles, or (if your PC can't handle Cycles well) you need to enable a few settings for Eevee to be able to handle transparencies correctly. There are many tutorials on this already, eg Ryan King's tutorials are great (kzbin.info/www/bejne/gIrchoCDl9SNfM0)

[@jelmermeuleman8462]

Incredible! I'd love to use it for my next paper When following the tutorial mine doesn't look nearly as good. The prism boxes and lenses aren't transparent (more like mirrors) and the beam doesn't glow, etc. I'm a total blender noob here 😅 Any tips on what I can do to fix that??

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Happy to hear its useful! You are likely using the Eevee render engine, whereas I used Cycles. Cycles computes real light bounces and transparency so looks better out of the box. However it is harder on your computer, especially if you have no gpu. Eevee is rasterization engine, so is less computationally demanding but requires extra settings to be enabled to make it look realistic like Cycles. If you intend to stick with Eevee, there are many tutorials on YT that discuss the settings you need to enable for transparency. For the glow, you need to enable the “Bloom” feature.

[@jelmermeuleman8462]

@@ryomizutagraphics Thanks for your answer! You were absolutely right, I've switched it up to cycles and it looks much better. I'll just have to fiddle with the settings for a bit to get it exactly right. I'm really getting an appreciation for how intensive blender is, even my (pretty decent) consumer GPU is working hard. (And if you're ever looking for another video idea, I'd suggest integrated photonics circuits with light as a good challenge 😉)

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Great to hear it is working now! And yes, it is quite intensive. There are ways to optimise though (eg reducing sample count, minimum noise level, light path/bounce counts). And thanks for the suggestion! Funny you should mentioned integrated photonic circuits, I'd just started planning a tutorial for that :)

[@emmanm5633]

amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I like this please create more tutorial :D

[@brains1473]

As I understand, these assets are just 3D models. Not possible to calculate (simulate) how the light beam would propagate through a system of mirrors? Blender is for visual stuff, not physics.

[@brains1473]

In other words, to see the light beam after a few reflections, I need to draw the beam manually, it is not simulated by the assets?

[@ryomizutagraphics]

@@brains1473 Correct. This is just to expedite the process for anyone wanting to create 3D illustrations for setups. That said, I'm fairly certain that simple ray optics calculations can be set up with geometry nodes (if you know what you are doing). E.g. see this old post by Thomas Hartman (aka This Illustrations on X): x.com/Illustrate_THIS/status/1626527055855624193

[@brains1473]

@@ryomizutagraphics Thank you for the link, very interesting.

[@thejassatheesh5090]

really nice tutorial video! how can you go about animating the laser beam

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Thank you! The beam is a curve object, and so there are several ways to animate it (I'm assuming that you want to animate the beam propagating). First, I'd apply a Resample Curve node to give yourself more vertices. To animate in geometry nodes, I'd use a Delete Geometry node. You need plug something that you can animate into the Selection socket. I would connect a Compare node (set to Greater than and integer type). In its socket A, I'd add an Index node. If you now scroll the integer value in socket B, you should delete more/less of the beam. You can use that to create the effect of a propagating beam. You could also do something similar in the shader editor

[@leethuan102]

@@ryomizutagraphics i'm a beginner, but i'm very interesting about optical animation, so i really want to animate the laser beam, your tutorial is very detail but i don't know how to make it in geometry nodes. can you share me a reference link that show how to make it? Thank you very much....

[@ryomizutagraphics]

@@leethuan102 Unfortunately I currently don't have a video outlining how the beam was created. However, the basic principle of how it was made in geometry nodes is covered in my Tubular Structures video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iZinZ2yvqJyVbLs To animate the beam appearing, you could use the Trim Curve operation (what I use to create the "peeling away" effect in the above video). Good luck!

[@leethuan102]

@@ryomizutagraphics thank you so much, you’re so nice!

[@peshawaamin3083]

❤❤

[@jaechulju836]

I cannot change the color at all... can you give me advice please?

[@ryomizutagraphics]

@@jaechulju836 what component do you need to change the colour for?

[@dionadamou3330]

Hi Ryo, thanks for the video. I am following all of the instructions but i am having trouble viewing the laser beam so it has that glow to it.. what could i be doing wrong? Cheers.

[@ryomizutagraphics]

Hey, thanks for checking out the video :) That could be a number of things. If you mean the "glow" that the beam has in the rendered thumbnail, that is because I added a Glare node to the Emission pass in the Compositor. I am working in Cycles, so emissive materials don't naturally get that realtime Bloom effect in the viewport that Eevee has (although, this will likely change in Blender's upcoming v4.0). Otherwise, things you can do to enhance the beam glow. 1) Increase the emission material strength, 2) make sure your floor/backdrop has roughness > 0. Lights can look more "glowy" if they have surrounding objects to light up. This works best if you can maximise diffuse secondary bounces from these objects, so they need some roughness.

[@dionadamou3330]

@@ryomizutagraphics Hi ryo, thanks for this! I found it, there was a "Bloom" option unticked on the rendering options! Thanks

[@ryomizutagraphics]

@@dionadamou3330that makes sense 😊 I’m actually not using the Eevee render engine (which has Bloom), but Cycles. So you might find that the end result still looks different, especially the glass materials

[@PaulHsiehFuTsai]

you're super.

[@ryomizutagraphics]

😊 thank you