{"id":108726579754,"date":"2015-01-21T03:06:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T02:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sketchfab.com\/post\/108726579754"},"modified":"2019-08-15T17:55:55","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T15:55:55","slug":"adding-sparkle-to-your-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sketchfab.com\/blogs\/community\/adding-sparkle-to-your-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding Sparkle to Your Models"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sparkle Tutorial – Disco Ball<\/a> by Xelus<\/a> on Sketchfab<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier this week, I noticed that Ettienne Vorster’s new models Jewelry Set 01<\/a> and Exquisite Chandelier<\/a> were insanely sparkly. He’s obviously hit upon a good Sketchfab trick. In this tutorial he reveals his secrets.<\/p>\n

Etienne is known as Xelus here on Sketchfab. Don’t forget to check out his profile<\/a> and his personal website<\/a>!<\/p>\n

This tutorial uses Blender, but you can use his approach with any 3D app.<\/p>\n

Allright, it’s time to get your sparkle on!<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/h3>\n

My Name is Ettienne Vorster, and in this quick tip tutorial, I\u2019ll be showing you how to create a shiny sparkling disco ball using Blender and Sketchfab.<\/p>\n

Creating the model<\/h3>\n

First up, open your Blender and switch your render mode from Cycles to Blender Render. As Sketchfab understands Blender internal\u2019s material setup, we\u2019ll be using it to map the two materials we\u2019ll need, to make the disco ball.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Once you\u2019ve switched to Blender render, go ahead and add a UV sphere. Add > Mesh > UV Sphere<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Step

Once you\u2019ve added the sphere, select it and press tab to go into edit mode. From here, select all the faces by pressing \u201cA<\/strong>\u201d. Once you\u2019ve selected all of the faces, deselect both middle vertices on the top and bottom part of the sphere.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Now that you\u2019ve deselected them, press ctrl+b<\/strong> to bevel the faces, to create just a small edge around each of the faces and left-click<\/strong> to confirm<\/strong> the bevel.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Once you have the bevel, we\u2019ll be extruding these small faces inwards. Press \u201cE<\/strong>\u201d and immediately right-click, this will cancel the extrude direction, allowing us to now scale these faces inwards, in order to create the disco ball plates. Press \u201cS<\/strong>\u201d and drag your mouse slowly towards the sphere to scale the selected faces smaller.<\/p>\n

\"Step

From here you can add a few more additions to your model if you wish, just remember, the parts that we want to add the \u201csparkle<\/strong>\u201d effect to needs to always be set to solid. This will allow for the surfaces to reflect at different angles which would help us in getting a nice bright reflection at random times and angles, giving the \u201csparkle<\/strong>\u201d effect. I\u2019ve gone ahead and added some small diamond shaped models to my disco ball, all of the diamonds are set to solid, as I want them to reflect the environment.<\/p>\n

Remember that you can set any surface as well as any object to “Shade Flat<\/strong>” or “shade Smooth<\/strong>”, by selecting your model, and pressing “T<\/strong>” in your 3D view to open the “Tools<\/strong>” menu. From here look under the “Shading<\/strong>” tab and click the “Flat<\/strong>” or “Smooth<\/strong>” button.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Materials<\/h3>\n

Now that we have the small edges, we can go ahead and add two materials to the sphere. Our first material will be specifically for the edges we scaled down, and the second material will be for the reflective plates of the disco ball and my added diamonds.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Once you\u2019ve added the two materials, assign the first material to the inner edges we made, by clicking the \u201cassign<\/strong>\u201d button while having these edges selected.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Assign the second material to the outer plates, by pressing ctrl+I<\/strong>, we can select inverse and immediately have the surfaces we want. Select the second material and press the \u201cassign<\/strong>\u201d button once more.<\/p>\n

\"Step

If you have any other parts you added like I did, you can assign them a material depending on what you want to see happen with them, in my case, I\u2019ve added the small diamonds, however I\u2019ll let them use the same material as the plates, seeing as I want them to reflect the environment as well. Now that our disco ball has the right materials assigned to the right areas, we can go ahead and save this model as a .blend file in a folder of your choice.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Uploading to Sketchfab<\/h3>\n

We can now upload our model to Sketchfab and start working on our materials.<\/p>\n

When uploading your models to Sketchfab, try to add as many relevant tags to your model. This helps people to find your model if they can\u2019t for instance remember the name of the file, or if people generally just do a search. The more relevant tags you have, the more likely your model will appear in search results.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Once our model is uploaded, we can then start to change a few settings in Sketchfab to make our disco ball shiny and sparkly. When it is complete, click the \u201cSettings<\/strong>\u201d button at the bottom right and select \u201c3D Settings<\/strong>\u201d from the pop-up menu.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Sketchfab Material Editor<\/h3>\n

Our model is uploaded, and the right materials are assigned; now we can fine tune the materials in Sketchfab to get the result we\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n

First off, we\u2019ll need to set our \u201cEnvironment<\/strong>\u201d to an image of our choosing. This image will be our HDR image provided by Sketchfab, in order for us to be able to get the reflections we need. Click the \u201cEnvironment<\/strong>\u201d tab and select the button next to the tab\u2019s name to turn the image on. From here we\u2019ll select the \u201cTokyo BigSight<\/strong>\u201d image from the drop\u2013down menu. Depending on your connection will determine how quickly the image will load.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Now that we have the environment image selected, we can switch over to the \u201cMaterials<\/strong>\u201d tab at the top of the window. From here we\u2019ll change our two materials to get the desired result we want.<\/p>\n

\"Step

With our first material selected, we\u2019ll need to change a few settings for the inner edges. As we only want the plates to reflect, we\u2019ll need to lower the \u201cEnvironmental Reflection<\/strong>\u201d as well as the \u201cSpecular Color<\/strong>\u201d, \u201cGlossiness<\/strong>\u201d and \u201cDiffuse<\/strong>\u201d to make this material appear more diffused.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Now we\u2019ll select the second material from the drop-down menu at the top of the material editor. This material will be the chrome-like material that will have a bright reflection that would help in getting the \u201csparkle<\/strong>\u201d effect.<\/p>\n

\"Step

Diffuse Color<\/strong><\/p>\n

Change the \u201cdiffuse color\u201d to black, this will help the \u201cEnvironmental reflection\u201d to be more visible to the viewer.<\/p>\n

Specular<\/strong><\/p>\n

Set the specular to max, on both the \u201cColor\u201d as well as the \u201cGlossiness\u201d. This will further increase the reflection as well as adding to the chrome look.<\/p>\n

Environmental Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n

Set this value to its maximum, this now gives a bright reflection to this specific material as seen below:<\/p>\n

\"Step

Camera Effects<\/h3>\n

Sketchfab recently introduced some awesome new camera effects\/filters<\/a>, which can help you in getting the most out of your model. We\u2019ll need a few of these camera effects in order to get the sparkle effect to work correctly.<\/p>\n

Switch back to the \u201cScene<\/strong>\u201d tab at the top of the window, and scroll down till you see a tab called \u201cCamera Effects<\/strong>\u201d. Expand this tab by left-clicking on the tab\u2019s name. Once you\u2019ve expanded the tab, just enable it by clicking the \u201cOFF<\/strong>\u201d button next to the name of the tab. Now in this menu we\u2019ll be changing the following settings:<\/p>\n

Chromatic Aberration<\/strong> \u2013 This going to help us to add that slight bit more greatness to the glow in general. This will be slightly visible as we don\u2019t want a 3-tone color over the whole preview of our model.<\/p>\n

Vignette<\/strong> \u2013 This will help in adding a slight bit more focus on our model, and make things look a bit better. (This is optional<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Bloom<\/strong> \u2013 This will be the glow effect that is added to bright surfaces. Changing the radius and intensity is what we\u2019ll be focused on here. We won\u2019t be worried about the threshold, as by default, it is sufficient enough to only add glow to the bright areas being reflected by the Environment Texture (HDRI)<\/em> we added: Tokyo Big Sight<\/strong><\/p>\n

Setup your settings as follows:<\/p>\n

\"Step

Chromatic Aberration:<\/strong><\/p>\n