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I've been trying to get a multi-colour gradient (more than 2 primary colours), so I followed a few tutorials using:

texture coordinator - mapping - gradient texture - color ramp - diffuse bsdf - material output

But the end result is a horrible grainy dark rendering. I want to get a nice mult-colour gradient from the bottom up.

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/38975

gandalf3
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lakerice
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    The diffuse shader is lit by lamps and light from the environment. If you prefer to just have straight colors without any shading, use an emission shader. See http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/8108/599 – gandalf3 Nov 05 '15 at 05:38
  • I'm fine with shading actually, but after trying to understand the link you gave, I have a black screen again. Sorry if I'm missing something obvious...it's my second day using Blender lol. – lakerice Nov 05 '15 at 06:52
  • @lakerice pasteall.org has a time limit on how long they make the files available. After that periond your links will disappear and other users won't be able to download and learn from your files anymore. Please use http://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ –  Nov 05 '15 at 15:33
  • Thanks Cegaton, I didn't know that. However, now the file is ready on pasteall. Can you understand the problem I'm having? I really am stuck on this. – lakerice Nov 05 '15 at 15:45
  • If you want shading but it's too dark, that means you probably need more light. Try adding a sun lamp or some environment light for example (see http://blender.stackexchange.com/q/6800/599). Just to be sure what you meant by "black screen", If the final render appears completely black (all pixels are 0,0,0), then perhaps there is indeed a different problem. – gandalf3 Nov 06 '15 at 00:11
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    Turns out my main lighting issue was coming from the background itself. I was using a black background, not realizing that affects the lighting on the object itself...thought it was neutral. In fact, I don't even use lighting sources now that I've made the background white. – lakerice Nov 06 '15 at 17:28

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Your matierial is flawless and gorgeous. It's your lighting setup you need to fix. Move your lamp a little further away from your objects and crank up the strength. I put it about halfway between your objects and your camera and put the strength to 3000. Also on the lamp, lower the bounces. If dark sharp shadows are what you're going for, lower the size of the lamp to zero, as well. That will reduce some of the graininess. A lot of it is also simply render samples. Go to your light paths and pick 'Global Illumination' from the dropdown. Increase your render passes to 200 or higher. If you find it's rendering slowly, go to performance and change the tile size to a multiple of 8. (I just went with 8).

enter image description here

IncessantLee
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  • Hey thanks! I really appreciate the compliments considering it's my second day using Blender. But unfortunately due to my inexperience, I still can't get it illuminated like the pic you posted, despite trying all your suggestions. I now just have a black screen and nothing else when I render it. Let me know what I'm doing wrong http://www.pasteall.org/blend/38976 – lakerice Nov 05 '15 at 06:56
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Hey thanks! I really appreciate the compliments considering it's my second day using Blender. But unfortunately due to my inexperience, I still can't get it illuminated like the pic you posted, despite trying all your suggestions. I now just have a black screen and nothing else when I render it. Let me know what I'm doing wrong

Is your renderer (top of the gray menu) set as Cycles Renderer or as Blender Renderer? If it's Cycles I would suggest adding an Emission shader to a mesh that will irradiate light. You can check how to do it here. Sometimes, Cycles gets all bugged with non-Cycles lights.

Crazychemist
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