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Training Highlights
Stylized Rendering with Brushstrokes
Geometry Nodes from Scratch
Procedural Shading Fundamentals
Stylized Character Workflow

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Animation Geometry Nodes Lighting Rendering Rigging Shading
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Wing It!
2023
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2022
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2021
Spring
2019
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Course
Procedural Shading: Fundamentals and Beyond
Introduction
  1. 01

    Introduction

    Free
  2. 02

    Definition

  3. 03

    Content Overview

  4. 04

    The Shader Editor

1: Fundamentals
  1. 01

    Colors, Values & Vectors

  2. 02

    Vectors and Pixels

  3. 03

    Coordinate Types

  4. 04

    Value Control

2: Procedural Textures
  1. 01

    Noise Textures

  2. 02

    Shape Control

  3. 03

    Repetition

  4. 04

    Texture Composition

  5. 05

    Space Manipulation

3: Shading Principles
  1. 01

    PBR

  2. 02

    Geometric Dependency - Context Sensitivity

  3. 03

    Generating PBR Maps

4: Shader Composition
  1. 01

    Blending & Masking

  2. 02

    Randomization

  3. 03

    Semi-Procedural Workflow

  4. 04

    Volumetric Shaders

5: Modular Setup
  1. 01

    Parametrization

  2. 02

    Nodegroups

6: Automation
  1. 01

    Drivers

  2. 02

    Animation

Workflow Examples
  1. 01

    Walls (Chapter 2+)

  2. 02

    Wood (Chapter 3+)

  3. 03

    Dynamic Walls (Chapter 4+)

  4. 04

    Wooden Boards (Chapter 5+)

  5. 05

    Fire (Chapter 6+)

  6. 06

    Rainy Window (Chapter 6+)

Files & Tools
  1. Example Scene
  2. Example Scene - Simplified Free
  3. Visualization (Chapter 1-4): Value Graph
  4. Visualization (Chapter 2-5): Space Origami
  5. Example Shader (Chapter 3-1): Rock
  6. Example Shader (Chapter 4-1): Dilapidated Cube Scene
  7. Example Shader (Chapter 4-3): Image Texture De-Tiling
  8. Example Shader (Chapter 4-3): Semi-Procedural Fishbones Boards
  9. Example Shader (Chapter 4-4): Procedural Volumetric Clouds

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Simon Thommes
Simon Thommes Author
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Introduction

Content Overview

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63 comments
Juan Nino
Juan Nino
April 24th, 2025

I'm very interested in the mathematical Background! 🤯 +1 Addendum

Martin Falk Jensen
Martin Falk Jensen
Sept. 26th, 2024

+1 Addendum !

Juan Beltran
Juan Beltran
Sept. 12th, 2024

+1 Addendum!!! :)

Abhay
Abhay
Aug. 27th, 2024

i don,t see the baking

Carson Frink
Carson Frink
June 23rd, 2024

Highly interested in Ray-Marching and its applications in blender

Nicolás Cabral
Nicolás Cabral
Jan. 8th, 2024

Seeing more about the mathematical background could be interesting!

Zakaria
Zakaria
Dec. 16th, 2023

i would reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaarrrrrrly apreciate if u talked about the addendum, like all of them, maybe like introduce them on a seperate course, or just put it on this course as a bonus lesson. Thank you very much.

Albert Campos
Albert Campos
Nov. 22nd, 2022

+1 for procedural realism

jan laub
jan laub
Nov. 9th, 2022

Iam highly interested in Achieving Procedural Realism. Is this still being considered or is it no longer?

Geoffrey T. Blackwell
Geoffrey T. Blackwell
Oct. 1st, 2022

I for one am still quite interested in "VII Baking," as well as the Vector Displacement and Procedural Realism videos, if those are still a possibility.

G Gibson
G Gibson
June 23rd, 2022

Dear Simon- I would love to see the Baking section. Also Mathematical Background and Achieving Procedural Realism. Thank you for this course!

John Ko
John Ko
June 19th, 2022

Mathematical Background sill wating thank you~

Johannes Mayrhofer
Johannes Mayrhofer
June 5th, 2022

I would too love to see a video on how to achieve realism with procedual shaders.

Jon Lovac
Jon Lovac
May 26th, 2022

the baking session would be cool to have!

Vee Cel
Vee Cel
March 27th, 2022

I believe that "Math Gives You Wings" so I'm interested in the Mathematical Background

bastien
bastien
Nov. 6th, 2021

thank you for the course! very keen on the advanced topics of the addendum, if that is still an option

joab9639
joab9639
May 24th, 2021

the matematical baackground would be AWESOME

eugeniop
eugeniop
Dec. 29th, 2020

I'd be interested in all 4. If I had to place them in order of interest, it would be: vector displacement, realism, ray marching, and maths. Thanks!

Jimmy Nolan
Jimmy Nolan
Dec. 21st, 2020

Oh my, Ik wil graag Achieving Procedural Realism! PLEASE?.................en een biertje

Kevin Healy
Kevin Healy
Dec. 14th, 2020

I am personally interested in photorealism as I intend to create natural materials like planetary landscapes, clouds, and other astronomical objects. Being able to see details that make things photorealistic and then recreating these details would be the most interesting to me of the topics you list in the Addendum ideas.

James Blix
James Blix
Nov. 28th, 2020

For addendum material, I suggest that more is better, with no fear of being too technical.

a.zukowski
a.zukowski
Nov. 11th, 2020

vector Displacement and Ray Marching definitely! -- Thanks very much for this course

Yen
Yen
Nov. 10th, 2020

Clear contents. Nice! It's the best way to learn easier.

cbrehautumw
cbrehautumw
Nov. 6th, 2020

It would be awesome to have a video on mathematical background!! It's been so long since I've studied math, but I think I would find it exciting to study again in this context

mathiasriedel12
mathiasriedel12
Nov. 3rd, 2020

I would be very interested in a video on the Mathematical Background! Ray-Marching sounds interesting too

Lonnie Hirdman
Lonnie Hirdman
Oct. 27th, 2020

I would love to see raymarching stuff

jamesrossbond
jamesrossbond
Oct. 23rd, 2020

Please get them extra topics included, all sound fantastic! <3

samirako3d
samirako3d
Oct. 7th, 2020

Vote to All Addendums please

Huân Lê-Vương
Huân Lê-Vương
Oct. 2nd, 2020

When will we have chapter 7?

Simon Thommes
Simon Thommes
Oct. 5th, 2020

*@Huân Lê-Vương* Soon, a couple of things have thrown me off schedule, as I am mostly working on other projects at the moment, but I am just finishing it off now.

Huân Lê-Vương
Huân Lê-Vương
Nov. 15th, 2020

@Simon Thommes I'm still waiting.

patrik.neunteufel
patrik.neunteufel
Nov. 4th, 2020

@Simon Thommes what about Nodevember in Chapter 7?

Chuck Ocheret
Chuck Ocheret
Sept. 17th, 2020

Perhaps related to ray marching, I’d love to see a discussion of things like parallax mapping for decals or parallax occlusion mapping for windows.

Huân Lê-Vương
Huân Lê-Vương
Sept. 11th, 2020

Can you to make a tutorial about Worley's algorithm "Cellular Texture Basis Function"

Resource: http://www.rhythmiccanvas.com/research/papers/worley.pdf

I think it's very helpful for procedural shader.

Simon Thommes
Simon Thommes
Sept. 14th, 2020

*@Huân Lê-Vương* I won't add something specific like this to the course, sorry. But with the concepts from the course and some additional thought, you might be able to pull it off yourself.

As a tip how to set up worley noise: You can define a regular grid of cells on the coordinates and then evaluate the random values of the cell neighbours. And the random values you can use to place dots. The worley noise is then the distance to the closest dot.

But, of course, you can just use the voronoi noise texture node. Setting it up yourself is a nice exercise. But if you just want the result, the voronoi noise is the way to go.

Huân Lê-Vương
Huân Lê-Vương
Oct. 2nd, 2020

*@Simon Thommes* Thanks. I hope the voronoi node add a feature like this: https://blenderartists.org/t/how-to-animate-the-cells-in-voronoi-texture/1251915/7?u=lehuan5062

Joshua Merrill
Joshua Merrill
Sept. 3rd, 2020

I would love to see how to use Vector Displacement and more Realism in Procedural Materials.

Shikher Pandey
Shikher Pandey
Aug. 22nd, 2020

Mathematical Background would be great to have.

jhonatansilva31415
jhonatansilva31415
Aug. 16th, 2020

I would really enjoy the mathematical background, also a specific video on stylized procedural scenes

altieresdelsent
altieresdelsent
Aug. 16th, 2020

mathematical background and achieving procedural realism please :)

quentin.choulet
quentin.choulet
Aug. 14th, 2020

I would love some videos about the Mathematical Background, everything feels a bit too "magic" without the proper knowledge. I just started the series and it seems really promising, keep up the good work

Mário José Marinheiro Duarte
Mário José Marinheiro Duarte
Aug. 10th, 2020

Good afternoon, i would like to know more achieving procedural realism, because i started working with architectonic visualization. thank you

Garry Giomarelli
Garry Giomarelli
Aug. 8th, 2020

A realism video would be very valuable. All of the suggested videos sound good though. All those topics would make great videos that would be appreciated

Andreas Friedel
Andreas Friedel
Aug. 6th, 2020

With procedural shaders you get infinitely resolution, so you can zoom really deep in without getting blocky/blurry results. But you get ugly results if you have to zoom out or be far in the background. Do you talk about solutions for this problem too?

Simon Thommes
Simon Thommes
Aug. 6th, 2020

*@Andreas Friedel* I am not exactly sure I understand what you mean with 'ugly results when zooming out'. Due to the fact that you are not bound to tiling for large areas as with photo textures, if anything I would argue the contrary.

But this course contains the fundamental techniques that you can use to accomplish practically anything. Generally the trick is not relying on singular base textures but mixing multiple noises if you want more natural variation. This is something I talk about as well, but the main focus is on the techniques and concepts.

Oliver Iliffe
Oliver Iliffe
Aug. 1st, 2020

Honestly I'd love to know more about all those topics! The mathematical background would probably be #2 and ray marching #1

LTSeto
LTSeto
July 31st, 2020

I would love to see a video on how to achieve realism with procedual shaders.

regis@redj.be
regis@redj.be
July 30th, 2020

Mathematical background would be definitely very helpful. Vector displacement, and ray-marching (but this last one is more out of curiosity than true interest) have my vote too! This series looks really good, thanks a lot for it :)

Markus "Sunny" Shadetree
Markus "Sunny" Shadetree
July 22nd, 2020

The Mathematical Background and the Achieving Procedural Realism would be very beneficial for advanced topics! Thank you for making this series, I've been looking for a procedural training since I came into awareness of it.

zambino.ueca
zambino.ueca
July 28th, 2020

*@bentrainbow484* I'm 100% with you. I'm up for the Mathematical Background and Achieving Procedural Realism. Thanks for the course!

Arturo J. Real
Arturo J. Real
Oct. 14th, 2020

*@zambino.ueca* This is a +2 on the above, and thanks for the course, Simon!

Show more replies
fuguesoft
fuguesoft
March 13th, 2023

@Markus "Sunny" Shadetree +4 for Mathematical backgrounds and I would also like a look at baking for a game engine. Curious about telex density and how that all works with the procedural workflow.

Thank you for this course!

Ahmed Barakat
Ahmed Barakat
Oct. 15th, 2020

*@Sunny Shadetree* +3 here fro the Mathematical background and Ray Marching

T3CH
T3CH
July 17th, 2020

pls do vector displacement, and whats raymarching?

Simon Thommes
Simon Thommes
July 17th, 2020

*@hasysler* ray-marching is a technique that can be used to fake depth and do some other cool things. I used it on the settlers project for example: https://cloud.blender.org/p/settlers/5e863d958f0b5df3d84def37

jupiter.station.co
jupiter.station.co
July 15th, 2020

Mathematical Background at least in part, would be helpful. Given so much of this revolves around vectors, it starts to feel like a bag of tricks if you don't see how all the linear algebra fits in to why combinations of vectors do this or that in a visual way.

Adam Yoohasz
Adam Yoohasz
July 15th, 2020

I find vector displacement the least interesting out of the addendum, due to the fact that I jave ZERO idea where they would use it in production. If anyone knows use cases where it was favourable to use it please educate me. So Math, Proc Real, and Ray Marching get my vote.

jupiter.station.co
jupiter.station.co
July 15th, 2020

*@Adam Yoohasz* There's Vector Displacement Brushes in ZBrush. Not that this is directly applicable in Blender, but I could see it's use for convex -> concave decal work where normal+displacement doesn't quite work. However, I mostly agree, largely a niche case that's "neat" if not used specifically as a tool.

Peter Evans
Peter Evans
July 15th, 2020

Would like to see clouds, water, and natural phenomena. (Especially clouds) :D

Devanshu Tak
Devanshu Tak
July 14th, 2020

It would be really nice if you could so a few videos about Vector Displacement and Ray Marching! Thanks for the series! :D

Blair Martin
Blair Martin
July 15th, 2020

*@Devanshu Tak* I had the same thought, particularly about ray-marching. So if that question mark after Addendum means something like "depends on demand" then here's my vote for it. :)

Show more replies
Daniel Hinnerkopf
Daniel Hinnerkopf
Oct. 15th, 2020

*@Devanshu Tak* Yeah, I also vote for Vector Displacement and also for achieving realism.

Anoop A K
Anoop A K
Aug. 18th, 2020

*@Devanshu Tak* +1

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