Hey, use pbr textures. Four 2d texture maps and the principled bsdf. Use really good pbr textures in 4k, and make sure you've scaled them properly in the UV editor or shader editor, so you're getting your full resolution (or as much as possible). I started by downloading free pbr textures from poliigon, ambient cg and texture haven. For blender, always choose OpenGL normals (not DX), and, if offered, always choose the 'metallic' workflow, not 'specular'. There's a few really good tutorials on KZfaq for 'setting up' a pbr material. One that's *very* good is CG Masters tutorial on 'pbr materials and shading' (about 28 minutes long) he did, about a year ago or so. It's essential viewing. Daniel Grove Photo also did a really good tutorial on the same thing, and 'The CG Essentials' (Justin Geis) has done several on this. Once you get the hang of it, it's the same procedure every time. Remember to enable Node Wrangler in edit>preferences>addons, because every blender instructor will assume you have this enabled. Also, whilst you're doing that, make sure you enable 'Bool Tool' and 'Loop Tools'. The essential four 2d maps that make a pbr material are: diffuse (colour), metalness (or specular), roughness, normal. Additionally, you can add an AO (ambient occlusion) map, and a bump map (also called a height map). The bump map is converted to normals by the 'bump node' and plugged into the normal socket of the normal map node (i think, from memory). As a beginner, I would probably stay away from displacement maps/displacement node because they are a bit of pain to set up, and sometimes look a bit weird. You can investigate them later. But the 'basic' pbr system works ever so well, and when combined with good, carefully considered lighting, can produce fantastic results when rendered with cycles. I hope this helps you.

Hey, use pbr textures. Four 2d texture maps and the principled bsdf. Use really good pbr textures in 4k, and make sure you've scaled them properly in the UV editor or shader editor, so you're getting your full resolution (or as much as possible). I started by downloading free pbr textures from poliigon, ambient cg and texture haven. For blender, always choose OpenGL normals (not DX), and, if offered, always choose the 'metallic' workflow, not 'specular'. There's a few really good tutorials on KZfaq for 'setting up' a pbr material. One that's *very* good is CG Masters tutorial on 'physically based rendering and the principled node' (about 28 minutes long) he did, about a year ago or so. It's essential viewing. Daniel Grove Photo also did a really good tutorial on the same thing, and 'The CG Essentials' (Justin Geis) has done several on this. Once you get the hang of it, it's the same procedure every time. Remember to enable Node Wrangler in edit>preferences>addons, because every blender instructor will assume you have this enabled. Also, whilst you're doing that, make sure you enable 'Bool Tool' and 'Loop Tools'. The essential four 2d maps that make a pbr material are: diffuse (colour), metalness (or specular), roughness, normal. Additionally, you can add an AO (ambient occlusion) map, and a bump map (also called a height map). The bump map is converted to normals by the 'bump node' and plugged into the normal socket of the normal map node (i think, from memory). As a beginner, I would probably stay away from displacement maps/displacement node because they are a bit of pain to set up, and sometimes look a bit weird. You can investigate them later. But the 'basic' pbr system works ever so well, and when combined with good, carefully considered lighting, can produce fantastic results when rendered with cycles. I hope this helps you.

Model half the archway and mirror modifier the other half?

hey Flamers, I don't know if this will help, but .... Artisans of Vaul did a couple of videos about 6 months ago entitled "what's the best way to make a gothic arch in blender".

It's pretty predictable by now: 8 core/16 thread cpu or higher; 32 GB RAM or 64GB if you need it; very good gpu, typically rtx 3090 or 4090. Fast SSD boot drive and loads of storage, or NAS. Some people even have two top end gpus, so they can continue to work whilst rendering. A good psu is essential. Buy 1st tier, Seasonic or BeQuiet, and minimum 750 watts for one GPU, but depends on what you have. Components are getting very power hungry these days, especially cpus and gpus. You can tweak gpu power consumption down a bit, which is recommended. Good cooling is essential. Cpu cooling by Noctua, D-15 is superb, and good case ventilation.

@@richardconway6425 I'm looking to build my first PC. (My budget is very tight) this is how it looks 👇 i5 14500 RTX 3060 12gb 32gb ram 1tb SSD

@@lavatr8322 that's perfectly fine, you'll be able to do a lot of blendering with that. Looks like a good balance of components. Blender is actually very efficient, I think, and so that choice of components will make for a fast, responsive machine. Good to see 32 GB RAM. You may want to consider, at some stage, some cheap big storage, in the form of a 2 TB mechanical hard drive (3.5 inch SATA ), because once you get going, you'll find that lots of blender related things take up a fair bit of space, like hi res texture maps for pbr materials (4k/8k). Does depend to a certain extent on what you're doing, but if you're doing 4k res animations, then you'll use loads. You'll find out. Try not to fill your boot SSD to 100% full. Always leave, ideally, 15 - 20% free, for a long and happy life. Use Windows 10 Professional, and lock down obnoxious windows behaviour with the excellent Group Policy Editor (GPedit). This is essential for taking control of windows update, and disabling things like the Microsoft consumer experience, which is responsible for a whole load of totally cr*p things, like reinstalling candy crush saga with every update. You can buy an oem key for win 10 pro very cheaply online. If you're not sure where, see 'Moore's Law is dead' youtube channel. If you're mostly using your pc for blender, then you can use nvidia's studio drivers, which are supposed to be better and more stable for 3d content creation software. But if you game, I guess you'll probably be best with nvidia's game drivers. All in all, I think your set up will do really well. The only limitation I would say is the amount of vram (frame buffer) on your gpu. This won't be a problem for you for a while, but if you start getting more ambitious with your scenes and textures, then you might find yourself running close to your memory limit. There are quite a few workarounds to this, like rendering in layers, optimising your geometry and textures etc, so don't worry. But I just thought I'd mention that, in case you were wondering why people spend so much money on high end gpus, because in the case of the rtx cards, they have 24 GB of vram, which gives loads of headroom for big scenes and hi res textures. Everything I have just said assumes you are doing your rendering on your gpu in cycles, which I would recommend. Your gpu will render scenes in cycles many times faster than your cpu. Try it both ways, and see the difference. If this issue of gpu resources ever becomes a problem, you could consider cloud rendering, via Barista, but that's another story. I do my rendering at home on my rtx gpus. Any queries, let me know.

@@lavatr8322 I've responded to this fully, but I'm having problems with youtube accepting my comments atm, so I'll try reposting again later.

@@lavatr8322 that's perfectly fine, you'll be able to do a lot of blendering with that. Looks like a good balance of components. Blender is actually very efficient, I think, and so that choice of components will make for a fast, responsive machine. Good to see 32 GB RAM. You may want to consider, at some stage, some cheap big storage, in the form of a 2 TB mechanical hard drive (3.5 inch SATA ), because once you get going, you'll find that lots of blender related things take up a fair bit of space, like hi res texture maps for pbr materials (4k/8k). Does depend to a certain extent on what you're doing, but if you're doing 4k res animations, then you'll use loads. You'll find out. Try not to fill your boot SSD to 100% full. Always leave, ideally, 15 - 20% free, for a long and happy life. Use Windows 10 Professional, and lock down obnoxious windows behaviour with the excellent Group Policy Editor (GPedit). This is essential for taking control of windows update, and disabling things like the Microsoft consumer experience, which is responsible for a whole load of totally cr*p things, like reinstalling candy crush saga with every update. You can buy an oem key for win 10 pro very cheaply online. If you're not sure where, see 'Moore's Law is dead' youtube channel. If you're mostly using your pc for blender, then you can use nvidia's studio drivers, which are supposed to be better and more stable for 3d content creation software. But if you game, I guess you'll probably be best with nvidia's game drivers. All in all, I think your set up will do really well. The only limitation I would say is the amount of vram (frame buffer) on your gpu. This won't be a problem for you for a while, but if you start getting more ambitious with your scenes and textures, then you might find yourself running close to your memory limit. There are quite a few workarounds to this, like rendering in layers, optimising your geometry and textures etc, so don't worry. But I just thought I'd mention that, in case you were wondering why people spend so much money on high end gpus, because in the case of the rtx cards, they have 24 GB of vram, which gives loads of headroom for big scenes and hi res textures. Everything I have just said assumes you are doing your rendering on your gpu in cycles, which I would recommend. Your gpu will render scenes in cycles many times faster than your cpu. Try it both ways, and see the difference. If this issue of gpu resources ever becomes a problem, you could consider cloud rendering, via Barista, but that's another story. I do my rendering at home on my rtx gpus. Any queries, let me know.

He's a professional 3d content creator, so it's a long story. He's also produced music professionally as well, so he has a synergy of skills.

so what do i have to do to get as good as he is@@richardconway6425

can he make a video on it? @@richardconway6425