See How This Sparkly Glass-Like Apple Was Made in Blender

3D artist Moop-A-Doop presented a stylized apple render that separates a semi-transparent shell from an inner mesh to create glass-like depth. Hand-painted matcaps, SDF-based ray marching, and view-de

Moop-A-Doop’s stylized apple render made in Blender separates a translucent outer shell from an internal mesh that simulates depth, rather than simply making the surface transparent. Dividing the roles of these two layers creates both a glass-like exterior that catches the light and the impression of space inside. This is the key approach.

Depth Created by a Two-Layer Mesh

The artist used hand-painted matcaps as the base color for both the shell and the internal mesh. Because matcaps allow the color and reflective impression of a material to be designed quickly without relying solely on lighting calculations, they are well suited to non-photorealistic rendering like this, where maintaining clear forms is important. Since the internal layer is responsible for visual depth rather than meticulously modeling real flesh, it offers an efficient balance between model complexity and the final impression.

Mathematical Detail and Fake Sparkle

The artist used Signed Distance Function (SDF) primitives to add ray-marching detail to the inner apple. The setup converts the position and viewing direction from world space to object space, allowing each object to retain its own star details even when rotated. On the fragmented cut surfaces, a matcap combining fake glitter with a monochrome ramp was used to express surface reflections.

The sparkle also does not come from placing a large number of particles. A Voronoi texture and the dot product of the viewing direction were used to create an effect that appears to glow depending on the viewing angle. This approach achieves the necessary on-screen gloss with simpler control than physically based reflections, demonstrating a way to manage material costs in prop renders that prioritize style.

Source: 80 Level original article