CGCookie – Create Realistic Industrial Environments with Blender and Eevee

Learn to build photo realistic industrial environments with Blender and Eevee in this tutorial course. Simple 3D modeling combined with robust procedural materials makes for a powerful creative experience! Welcome to the Realistic Industrial Environment course for Blender made possible by Eevee!

Or - more accurately - made practical by Eevee. You may recognize this environment from the Backhoe assembly animation:

This environment was rendered with Eevee
While the backhoe was rendered with Cycles.

I first tried rendering the environment with Cycles as well...but I needed it to finish before my kids graduated college....Eevee came to the rescue!

In this course, learn how to create photorealistic environments with Eevee
The total runtime is 5 hours of video, broken into easy-to-digest lessons.

Simple modeling based on primitives
The modeling is very simple since it's all based on primitive shapes; cubes and cylinders
Our models will maximize Eevee's realtime potential...so we're avoiding subdivision smoothing
The models will be low poly, but appear smooth (a best of both worlds situation!)

Simple yet competent models + robust materials
Our shading does most of the heavy lifting for this project
All materials are 100% procedural. (no UVs or image textures)
We'll use key procedural concepts, repeated and adjusted in useful ways

Plus, numerous tips and tricks:
Eevee's indirect lighting provides an approximated global illumination component. Sure it's not as accurate as Cycles but it can get the job done in the right conditions! Darkly lit being one of those conditions.
Volumetric Fog / Smoke does a lot for establishing spacial depth as well as introducing cinematic drama. Eevee's fast volume calculation is one of my favorite features.
Photorealistic post-processing techniques. We'll go over a few go-to compositing techniques that push a realistic render further into *photo* realism.