Jun 15
Cooking a donut in blender Posted by SiNuS

Nothing simpler!
Open blender delete the default cube in the scene and add a torus.

Change the default values to Major radius 2.25, Minor radius 1.25, Major segments 24, Minor segments 12. To smooth the shape of the donut switch to Object mode (TAB) and load the Editing panel (F9): press “set Smoot” and add a Subsurf modifier.

Voilà the donut is made. Now let’s add some nice glaze on the top.

Duplicate the donut just created (SHIFT+D) and enter to edit mode (TAB). Enter in “Face select mode” (CTRL+TAB 3) and activate “Occlude background geometry” button on the header bar in 3D view window, then press “B” twice to activate the circular selection. Select some faces on top of our donut and some faces near the borders like in the image.

When you are satisfied, invert the selction (CTRL+I) and erase the faces (CANC 3). Select the remaining faces pressing A and Extrude Region about 0.2 unit on the Z axis (E 1 Z 0.2).

Maybe you can adjust the extrusion fattening the top along the normals (ALT+S).

Once done, we going to add some material on the meshs.
On the donut I used light orange as diffuse color and a orangish yellow as specular one. In the shader box I use Lambert with Ref. at 1 for diffuse and Cooktorr for specular with Spec. at 0 and Hard at 10.

I also added a displace map with a large cloud noise with low contrast, just for make the donut more irregular than a torus, and some small stucci noise to add a grainy look to the surface.

On the glaze I used pinky magenta as diffuse color. In the shader box I used Oren-Nayar with Ref. 1.0 and Rough. 2.0 and CookTorr with Spec. 0.6 and Hard 25.

Also on the glaze I added a displace map to make it more beliveable. This one smaller than the previous. I keep the map values near the middle gray for a good reson, if you want to add some sugar tails on top of the glaze.

Ok, the donut is almost cooked!

Now the tricky part to add some nice little sugar tails (those colored things on the top of the glaze).
For this I used the blender particle system (if anyone knows a better way let me know). In First put the cursor in the intersection of x,y,z axis then create a cylinder with Radius 0.05, Depth 0.5 and cap ends. Duplicate this mesh 3 times and give each sugar tail a different color. Mind that every mesh has to be in the intersection of the x,y,z axis. I suggest to use light color like white, light magenta, light cyan, yellow.

Now select the glaze and hit F7 for Object panel then select “Particle buttons”. Here create a particle system with the follow values:

  • in the Particle system box set the type to Hair, the amount to 40, emit from Faces, Distribution Random, switch Random and Even button on.
  • in the Physics change only Normal to 0.300
  • in the Visualization box chose Object from the boxlist, switch Emitter button on
  • in the OB textbox insert the name of one colored cylinder made previosly
  • in the Extra box adjust the size if needs (I set to 0.6) and maybe set Rand for random variation of size (for example 0.3)
  • last but not least change Seed (it affects the random positioning of the particles) until you like the result

Once done, repeat these steps for each colored cylinder you made previously. One particle system for each colored cylinder.

Adjust the lights , the camera , maybe switch Edge on and… Ta Da! The donut is cooked! mmm…

PS: feel free to post your own result or maybe your suggestion.