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Malcolm Riley edited this page Jun 21, 2024 · 1 revision

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Table of Contents

Introductory Series

  1. Blender Basics
    How to use Blender
  2. Plates and Beams
    Dynamic and manual Mesh-making
  3. Gears
    Blender Add-Ons, simple Materials, and environments
  4. Corroded Metal Things
    Using Shader Nodes for procedural materials
  5. Gravel Pile
    How to use Geometry Nodes to procedurally generate Meshes, including automatic item variants

Miscellaneous Techniques

Blender-External Techniques

WIP Articles

  • Automatic Decoration: Rivets, Bolts and Fasteners
    A common visual motif is the ever-presence of rivets, bolts, and fasteners on the surface of metal objects. From the humble Assembling Machine to the exotic Spidertron, Factorio machines are a beautiful mess of crudely-fastened metal plates. Manually placing such Objects on the surface of Meshes is too much work, but Blender offers several semi-automated solutions.
  • Creating Compelling Crystals
    There isn't much precedent for effects like this in the base game, but even a relatively simple Material can create compelling images. Even seemingly complex features such as realistic refraction and chromatic aberration are relatively simple to accomplish.
  • Adding Details to Transparent Objects
    No material in real-life is perfectly uniform. Therefore, adding imperfections to the interior of a transparent Object can add realism and visual interest to a render. Whether adding bubbles to a gel or fluid, or adding mineral inclusions to a crystal, this simple method can help.
  • Using Shader Nodes to Rotate an Environment Texture
    HDRIs add realism and character to the lighting of a Scene, but rarely do the light features of these images arrive from the needed direction. Fortunately, there is an easy way to "rotate" the appearance of an HDRI without having to reorganize each and every Object in the Scene.
  • Looping Animations of Procedural Textures - Without Trigonometry
    Creating looping animations of animated procedural textures is fraught with peril - and trigonometry. There is an easier, more flexible, and more comprehensible method; what's more, it doesn't involve using a single trigonometric function. It can be used with 2D or 3D textures - you too can create looping animations of roiling volumetric clouds.
  • Easy Procedural Ores - Including Ground Transitions
    Many Factorio mods seek to add ores to the game - It may be easier than you think to create your own without having to resort to recoloring base-game assets.
  • Holdouts, Shadow Catchers, and Glow Textures
    When making a Factorio mod, sometimes it's necessary to capture only the shadow cast by an Object, only the light or "bloom" that it emits, or only everything except the Object itself. Blender makes alternative rendering techniques very straightforward.
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