Realistic Details in Blender with One Powerful Node

[@roundninja]

When Blender tutorials say "one node" they mean you need to do a whole complex process involving ten different nodes. This is still really cool though, definitely gonna use it

[@thefuzzycat]

lol so true :D

[@gloriouslumi]

I mean, it technically is just one node, the Ambient Occlusion node. Everything before and after it is just standard basic texturing. You can turn this into a Group Asset and then you can plop it down as one node anytime you need it.

[@qoph1988]

They're still hiding the "make good art" node from you. Legend says there's a tutorial somewhere in the deepest recesses of youtube which shows you how to add this node

[@evilotis01]

just noting that this does work in Cycles, but for anyone confused, you won't find an option to enable AO in Cycles' render properties menu. you just add the node and use it as described here.

[@phantomsmithy]

Thanks, this was my exact question.

[@dirtybug82]

you, good sir, are my hero.

[@carsonreader515]

Since Cycles is a path tracer, ambient occlusion exists inherently, not as an additional feature which is why it doesn’t have a checkbox. Path tracers are cool!

[@spyegle]

I have to add that while it works, AO node is very ressource consuming, especially to mix different materials with Cycles. But it does look good

[@nonamehere1123]

Amazing tutorial, just to add one more thing, i feel like mixing the two materials as shaders would give even better results rather than just the base colour

[@deadsimple]

Make sure you apply scale every now and again to prevent textures stretching.

[@DesignsbyDonBrown]

Nice job on the tutorials. At 3:53 when you said you added the node wrangler, you added the mapping and texture coordinate nodes. The node wrangler is an add-on that lets you add nodes with hot keys, like you did.

[@polyplayground]

My bad! 🫣Said that wrong and didn’t even notice! Thanks for pointing out and glad you enjoyed it 👍

[@MickSturluson]

You were not kidding, this looks great and it's easy and quickish to do

[@polyplayground]

Thank you!

[@IstyManame]

Lighting. It's all about lighting

[@MjrPayne-bf4pe]

[@von.3d]

yes but small details matter as well.

[@IstyManame]

@@von.3d ye I'd say large, medium and small details and making their distribution interesting. Just covering the whole screen with details won't do it

[@AtrusDesign]

Lighting is important but also what light is illuminating.

[@LambVisionStudios]

Some people make models for games and lighting isn't going to give you this full of details without breaking memory

[@ianfavreau9776]

Great tutorial! You can also use the geometry node in shader editor with pointiness going into base color to bring out the cavity in any model. For this, you have to go into cycles to see the changes in real time, but then you can bake it and use it in evee. I usually add both to really bring out the details of sculpts.

[@polyplayground]

Great tip! Thank you

[@GinoZump]

I plugged in the AO node and voilla: Blender crashed

[@kevinduc321]

This is fantastic. Thanks so much for the clear presentation. I appreciate it! Also, love your editing, music, and vibe. Subscribed!

[@polyplayground]

Thanks for subscribing! and thanks for the feedback on the video!

[@duck_entertainment]

Always assumed you could do something like this but didn’t think it’d be so easy

[@gitboxer2000]

What an excellent set up to share! Thanks this is really useful.

[@polyplayground]

Glad it was helpful!

[@basiccomponents]

Incredible thank you!

[@nixonmanuel6459]

Wow! Thank you!

[@polyplayground]

You're welcome!

[@nisbahmumtaz909]

He is on blender version 4.0, in case anyone is wondering. For some reason that part of the screen is cropped out for most of the video.

[@phillparkinson4671]

How would you turn off the vertical noise so that it’s just around the base rather than up the wall or the side - can you control where it appears when the objects touch?

[@theftking]

Just wanna point out that having to create a cube to drop a blenderkit material onto simply because theres no way to download a material without also entirely overwriting an existing one is dumb and blenderkit needs to fix that.

[@samarthwadhwa2912]

I think you can if you add another material slot to the existing object and select that before downloading from blenderkit

[@BECK_4D]

I wasn’t even looking for this, but I was trying to figure out how to blend those transitions like that just yesterday, thanks algorithm 😅 and also thank you for this awesome tutorial 🙏🏼

[@polyplayground]

No problem! Algorithm is a strange thing 😂😂

[@frankb4793]

This is GREAT, thank You!

[@polyplayground]

You're very welcome!

[@ЖеняБерков-т3ц]

It's insane!

[@iamgruff]

such a great AO tutorial Thank you :)

[@polyplayground]

Glad you liked it!

[@troyacarpenter]

Thanks, this is such a good idea. Has anyone found a way for the AO node to exclude the AO being cast by a moving object (i.e. a character walking by.)?

[@Nathan_RM]

My good sir, I must say, the AOOOOOOOO was tastefully done 😂

[@polyplayground]

Thank you 😂

[@flow_leit]

Seriously, i couldn't stop laughing during the whole video after this wild "AOOOOOOO". That's the perfect exemple of "learn with fun".

[@maxtatoolille]

Is there a way to make that kind of soft transition but in Cycles ?

[@AdamIsailovic]

One note: You can hold your LMB and pull down if you want all three scales to be changed at the same time. That goes for rotation and location, too, or any other options.

[@forte.vision]

Thank you.

[@polyplayground]

You're welcome!

[@dinarichards7064]

fantastic thank you so so much 😁

[@mackdaddprod]

Excellent tips!

[@polyplayground]

Glad it was helpful!

[@serge1643]

Finally, now I know how to do it. Thank you!

[@polyplayground]

No problem! Glad it helped! 👍

[@Doublevsound]

​@polyplayground Can u pls explain this better What do u mean ?

[@luciox2919]

A good lighting setup is the first thing to make any render look realistic

[@AtrusDesign]

Yes but this tutorial is about add details in textures, and it also add A LOT of realism.

[@ArfatXeon]

Very helpful, thank you!

[@polyplayground]

Glad it was helpful!

[@danilodelucio]

Holy moly mate, this trick was awesome, thanks a lot for that! 🙏🙏

[@polyplayground]

Not a problem! Glad it’s helping so many people 👌

[@onurnidayi]

Really good clear tutorial, thank you 🙏

[@polyplayground]

Thank you! Glad it helped 😊

[@muajin]

This is pretty dang cool!! I'll be giving this a go on my renders as well~

[@polyplayground]

It makes a huge difference!

[@selamatmenontonpemirsa]

this is simple but WOOWW tutorial.thx dude

[@polyplayground]

You're welcome!

[@polatkemalakyuz2021]

Now, I fell in love with AO

[@Beetlebomb3D]

You didn't cover whether this was for Evee or Cycles or both at the beginning. Just a friendly reminder that this would be very helpful to know with every tutorial.

[@skyee99]

I love YOUR VIDEO AND THE MUSIC its perfect

[@polyplayground]

Thank you! Appreciate the feedback

[@kinjoyokai367]

Humorous and crisp tutorial! Deserved an Abo. Especially loved the AOOOOOOOO 😂

[@polyplayground]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@Ellyteee]

I use blender kit a lot. Still learning about lighting. Awesome tutorial man thanks.

[@polyplayground]

No problem! Glad you liked it!

[@RamBAnimations]

thanks for the tutorial

[@polyplayground]

No problem!

[@Shinesart]

quick and efficient. Nice

[@bruodar3149]

Simple and powerful, thanks 🙏

[@polyplayground]

Glad you liked it!

[@Architector_4]

Important to note that with some effort you can achieve more artistic control and more compatibility with animation by creating a secondary white texture and manually painting black over the intersections with the "sharp" falloff. If your UVs are funny, you could create a secondary UV map and do a proper non-overlapping unwrap of your geometry into it to then use it with this mask texture.

[@polyplayground]

Thank you for that!

[@darkknight4353]

Out of topic question. Which video editor do you use

[@polyplayground]

I use CapCut the desktop version 👍

[@Kushmandam]

will this work on cycles ?

[@polyplayground]

It does, just adjust parameters when switching between Evee and cycles as it will give a different look

[@dertobbe1176]

How to bake this?

[@inu-dog-lover]

Wow This video is very educational!😳thanks!

[@polyplayground]

Glad it was helpful!

[@sim.ba83]

Works great! Newbie Question: Is there any option to realize this effect even in Cycles?

[@polyplayground]

Yeah, just switch to cycles and adjust the material parameters. I’ve found when switching from Evee to cycles the material effect stretches a lot further so reducing the effect works great

[@sim.ba83]

@@polyplayground aah perfect, I have to test it right away:)

[@storymonk4546]

Thanks

[@polyplayground]

No problem

[@dertobbe1176]

But can it baked game ready für unity or unreal?

[@Mr.McWatson]

This is cool. More bite sized tips plz

[@Virtual_art_studio]

Helpful 😎

[@polyplayground]

Glad to hear!

[@extrider69]

what about cycles?

[@lineobiribin1157]

for cycles do not check inside

[@extrider69]

@@lineobiribin1157 what inside?

[@sanse4409]

Does this also work in version 4.2 because the AO setting has been removed? But thanks for the tutorial and I like your style of explaining things a lot!

[@polyplayground]

It does! The AO setting has not been removed in 4.2 :)

[@sanse4409]

@@polyplayground Thank you!

[@ekoeschannel140]

A question.. This process must be added to all the materials in the scene?

[@polyplayground]

Yeah, you would have to add it to each material you want it to work on

[@ekoeschannel140]

@polyplayground Thanks! I appreciate your videos. I recently start using the contact shadow in the light setting. It helps too. Greets from Italy ! 👍

[@brunocastro4558]

Excellent tips ! Thank you soo much !!

[@polyplayground]

No worries! You’re welcome

[@Doublevsound]

Holy crap So many ideas running through my mind already 😂❤

[@polyplayground]

😊👌

[@jorgebernier5d]

This is fantastic. Could you make a tutorial on how to use this with Cycles?

[@polyplayground]

This works on cycles, just switch over to cycles, and adjust the settings to what looks good for you. Obviously the only step you miss when in cycles is not needing to turn on Ambient Occlusion when on render properties 👍

[@3DMVR]

this is a great tut

[@polyplayground]

Thank you! Appreciate the feedback 👌

[@mintgreen5614]

how is the rendertime on this? i come from maya and arnold and there i know that using the ambient occlusion or cavity nodes instead of just painting in the AO by hand will drastically increase your rendertime. i see SO many blender tutorials using just nodes to create full scenes, does this work well in blender? is the render time increase from node based procedual VS hand paintet texture map so insignificant that you can just do that in blender?

[@polyplayground]

Personally, when using this and rendering out the videos in the tutorial, I didn’t actually notice any difference but again this is in Evee which is pretty fast in general

[@Dreamzescaper]

thank you very much

[@polyplayground]

You're welcome! Glad it helped!

[@zedeon6299]

But what about animation? If my character close to the wall that has AO node in it, will my character affecting the AO?

[@Arjjacks]

Yes, it will. Unless you tick on Only Local in the AO node. Then it ignores all other objects in the scene and only ambiently occludes itself.

[@jackmcmahon6311]

none of my materials show up as applicable files for the image texture node

[@revotiva]

how can i do this in 4.2?

[@polyplayground]

Works exactly the same way 😊

[@astrounwrapped]

Awesome trick. Wondering if there’s any similar approach to blend normals between objects. We have this in UE. Any simple approach for this in Cycles?

[@d00mhound]

This has to be the first Blender tutorial I've seen where you don't first off start by deleting the default cube.

[@polyplayground]

Haha, have you seen where they go?! 👀 instagram.com/reel/C7evHGDqr-N/?igsh=bnZwNW94aWJ5cGw2

[@endlessexpanse]

Awesome tutorial. I would also like to ask you one question: What music are you using in the background? I really like it. Could you tell me what it is and where you got it from?

[@polyplayground]

Can’t remember the name of the song off the top of my head but the website I use is artlist.io 👍😊

[@WANKRCLUB]

Thanks for this!!!! Very helpful :)

[@polyplayground]

No problem! Glad it helped 😊👍

[@emmanm5633]

yoyo this is so gold NIcsuuuu

[@3DMVR]

Im prob gonna come back to this video a lot

[@abbajr8518]

how to do this in cycles

[@polyplayground]

Just switch to cycles and adjust your material parameters to something that you want, all the same setup as evee minus switching on ambient occlusion as that’s built into cycles 👍

[@alexv4907]

Does raytracing break this in 4.2?

[@polyplayground]

Nope! Still works just fine :)

[@morkaili]

Certainly nice to use as an underlying texture, though to make it believable you still need randomly, but realistically scattered objects, such as pebbles, there.

[@polyplayground]

Definitely, this was only made for the tutorial, but this trick is for sure needed to be used in conjunction with other details, it just adds a little extra pop to the scene.

[@dovesk1]

does this only work in Eevee?

[@polyplayground]

Works on both Evee and Cycles, but when using in evee or cycles you will just need to adjust parameters

[@AlbertoSchmidt63]

Why isn’t Node Wrangler added by default???

[@polyplayground]

I know! Hopefully they do this in new updates

[@Hashirama_Sinju]

lovely

[@KangrenaGraphiX]

AAOOOOOOOO kkkkkk great video, very powerfull tuto

[@polyplayground]

👍👍😊

[@xard64]

While this is a really powerful technique the problem is that it's bit too powerful meaning that it's really difficult to include or exclude the objects from the scope of the AO effect. To make this approach more powerful we would need a more granular control to define which objects / groups are included in the AO pass used for material wear effect.

[@swoop8047]

Pavlovian response added to boost algorithm: AOOOO

[@polyplayground]

😂👌

[@andreybagrichuk5365]

AOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! ahahah, mate you make my day ! LOL!

[@polyplayground]

Haha thank you!

[@artffan5413]

This tends to stop working once u add a volume cube on the scene

[@MrRac2010]

Pero si usas Cycles te ahorras muchos de esos pasas!

[@JFFAF]

thats only for evee ?...

[@polyplayground]

Nope, it works on Cycles as well, just switch to Cycles and adjust the parameters in the materials :)

[@Ablumz]

this doesn't work if you have a fog volumes in your scene, they will interact with non local AO and cause weird vertical or horizontal shadows throughout the affected mesh.

[@polyplayground]

Thats strange, I just test this myself and it works fine for me

[@lineobiribin1157]

for cycles do not check inside

[@z.o.m.u.l.z.o.m.u.l]

genius

[@ARDIZsq]

5 minutes of my time well spent

[@3laps2p1simracing9]

Noice!

[@3E_XEZ]

sorry buddy but Blender's New "eevee next" just killed that method

[@polyplayground]

Eevee next will definitely have better ambient occlusion available but this is not specifically about ambient occlusion (the standard shadow technique) it’s about using the ambient occlusion node and adding edge wear and grime to corners

[@JediPlays0309]

Do you use ai

[@banaz5018]

Hope Ai can generate node by hey blender 😁

[@LifeLess1999]

eevee just switch to cycles then all your problems will be solved. Eevee lololol

[@polyplayground]

It’s not about using the ambient occlusion default setup… it’s about using the ambient occlusion node to create fast and easy edge wear and extra texture layering where objects touch…

[@LifeLess1999]

@@polyplayground I know its a super great technique I was just trolling ;)

[@jmalmsten]

Is the first 40 seconds just repeating itself and stalling for time and showing off the text animation we did not click to find out about? Or is it some other purpose it repeats itself halfway through the introduction?

[@ejcy3101]

Just ambient occlusion.

[@genericgymvlogsph9739]

or you could just cycles

[@crispyspadez]

aooooo!

[@racerider6477]

AOOOOOOOOO 🤣

[@angrychompski]

i farted 🌮

[@H1tARun]

Not only does it not work without enabling AO in the engine, it also works with a bunch of interference that can only be cured by powerful video cards. Total crap.