How to make Clay Render in Blender

Clay Render, or Grey Box Render is a 3D working process that can be done in 3D rendering software, for example Blender, Maya, 3ds Max. If you have seen the procedure of creating 3D rendering or animation, you might notice that the first step is to building 3D wireframe, and then adding the color, texture, material, shader into those 3D wireframe. After that, we need to create camera view, lighting effect, and scene to render an image.

What is Clay Render?

Grey Box Render, or Clay Render is comparatively fast rendering process to visualize the shape of 3D objects with their scene setting. Grey Box Render always setup with minimal render setting (including minimal material / shader, minimal the number of light), to achieve the fast rendering for preview the 3D objects and the whole 3D scene.

What is Clay Render for?

In general, Grey Box Render, or Clay Render, is for reviewing the shape of 3D model, the positioning of 3D models in a scene, and the camera view angled. This is quick process to visualize the 3D model / 3D scene without adding complicated material texture shader, and without complex lighting setup, which is to minimize the computer render time. Grey Box Render, or Clay Render can be reviewed internally within 3D CG team, or reviewed with clients, to make sure that the 3D scene setup and camera view angled are good for moving to next step. P.S. The next step is going to setup the rendering by applying material texture shader, and applying stunning lighting setup.

Example of Clay Render Setup

Below is a timelapse demonstration video to show how to setup Greybox Render (Clay Render) by using Cycle Renderer in Blender 3D. This is good Bender 3D tutorial for beginners to understand the workflow of 3D render setup. This include the 3D object itself, add material (or texture), setup scene with backdrop, camera with lighting. Hope this 3D rendering video helps.