Did you know you can quickly and easily make a low-poly candle in Blender?
In this Blender tutorial I will show you how to make low-poly candle with a procedural wax material in Blender.
Candle
To make a low-poly candle, I will start with a cylinder
In edit mode, I will inset the top face using the I-key
Then using the E + Z keys, I will extrude the face down along the Z-Axis
I can then scale the face along the X- and Y-Axis
I then inset the face again – extruding and scaling the new face
I select a few faces around the top and using proportional editing (O-key), I move the faces up along the Z-Axis
I can now select the edge loops using CTRL + Left-click
I then add some bevels to the edges using CTRL + B
In object mode, I right-click and choose “shade smooth”
Under the object data properties tab, in the normals panel, I activate auto smooth to fix any shading issues
Wick & Flame
Now that I’m done with the candle, I can add a simple wick
I will add a simple Bezier curve for the wick – rotating it using the R-key and Scaling it using the S-key
After placing it into position, in the object data properties tab, under the geometry panel, I will add a bevel (making sure I also activate fill cap)
I now right-click on the wick and convert it to a mesh
In edit mode, I select the top faces and scale them along the X- and Y-Axis
I then select the very top faces using the C-key to access circle select
I then extrude them with the E-key and scale them to round out the end
I also add an edge loop using CTRL + R and scale the loop along the X- and Y-Axis
In object mode, I right-click and shade the wick smooth
I have a flame that I extracted from a photo
I have the import images as planes add-on activated in my preferences
Now, I can use SHIFT + Right-click to move the 3D cursor to the top of the wick
I import the flame image and go into material preview mode so I can see the image
I rotate and scale the flame to the proper size
I move the flame into position
In edit mode, I use the spin duplicates tool to duplicate and rotate the flame using 20 Steps and 360-degrees
Wax Material
I will now add materials to the candle and the flame
I select the candle and open the shader editor
I add a new material to the candle
I don’t need the principled shader so I delete it and add a diffuse shader node
I change the roughness to 0.4
Now I can add a glossy shader node to add a reflection distribution to the material
I change the roughness to 0.2 to add a bit of blurriness to the glossy shader
I combine these two shader nodes with a mix shader
I now change the factor to 0.7 – this means that the diffuse (top shader) will override the glossy shader
I add a subsurface scattering node
I combine the nodes with a second mix shader and change the factor of the second mix shader to 0.2
I add an RGB node and connect it to the diffuse and the glossy shader nodes and the subsurface scattering node
Now I change the color on the RGB node [#C2A79A]
I also add a noise texture node and connect the factor to the factor of the second mix shader
I can now change the options on the texture to achieve my preferred look
Wick Material
I select the wick and add a material
I add a gradient texture node and connect it to the principled shader
To more easily control the gradient, with the node wrangler add-on activated, I can select the gradient texture node and use CTRL + T to add a texture coordinate node and a mapping node
If I change the scale to 0.75, I now have a gradient that shows a more gradual transition from white to black
I can now add a color ramp between the gradient texture and the principled shader
This will allow me to change the color of the gradients
I can move the color stops to make changes to the gradient
I can also choose a different blending mode on the gradient texture – for now, I will use easing as the blending mode
Flame Material
I can also add a simple material to the flames
I connect the color of the image texture to the emission of the principled shader
Under the render properties, I activate bloom – changing the color to a yellow and increasing the intensity