Creative Shrimp
Level-up your 3D lighting skills by watching our foundational 13+ hour course - now Updated and Remastered for Blender 5.x | 2026.
It’s all really simple: lighting is everything! After all in order to see ANYTHING we NEED light. As 3D artists we all know this obvious truth but we're still too often guilty of spending WAY more time on the modeling and barely a thought to the lighting when it's that which makes or breaks a scene.
The Secret of Lighting That is NOT FLAT
Does it sound familiar? "Sometimes a scene can just look so ‘meh’ or lack any feeling? No matter what I do, lighting just... looks 'too CG' and lifeless?"
It may look like some successful lighting artists just intuitively ‘know’ what to do and naturally have the ‘eye’. Whether it is conscious or not they will be using a kind of to-do list for where to place the lights, how to set the right levels and so on.
If you simply tick most or even some of the boxes from this list, it will instantly improve the result. Good news: it's not rocket science, lighting in Blender can be learned fairly easily if you know where to start.
Course Details
📚 Over 13+ hours of lessons. 1440p (2560x1440), 60fps, .mp4 videos
⚙️ Updated and remastered for Blender 5.x (course version 1.3). What's New.
🎯 Skill Level: Beginner-Intermediate
🎬 Learn to light character shots, still life (and object) shots, 3D environments and outdoor scenes
💡 Photorealistic Cycles lighting workflows
💡 An excursion into EEVEE (Monastery Dungeon chapter)
📦 Project Files: get all environments shown in the course and useful assets such as node groups, textures and models
📝 Closed Captions (English) manually edited for all videos
✨ A full explanation of all the qualities of lighting that help any render feel more alive and cinematic
Instructor
Hi, I’m Gleb Alexandrov, co-founder of Creative Shrimp. Together with Aidy Burrows, we run a YouTube channel with over 237,000 subscribers, where I focus on lighting, rendering, and cinematic visuals in Blender. Our courses have been taken by more than 30,000 students worldwide. I also really love coffee. ☕️
What Will I Need?
This course is 100% vanilla Blender. No third-party addons or applications are required.
Rendering does require reasonable hardware though, if in any doubt check out Blender’s own recommended minimum specs here.
Difficulty: Intermediate
It would definitely help to have some familiarity with the basic Blender interface and tools. If you have JUST begun using Blender then we would recommend watching any beginner course to get yourself properly acquainted first.
Bonuses
* All project files included for free
* A student’s chat as well as a dedicated support channel on Discord is available for all the course students
* Some of our relevant lighting tutorials from YouTube are now bundled in
Update 1.1. Night Lighting Extension
The Night Lighting extension pack dives into three key areas:
* Image-Based Lighting: This essential technique allows you to extract lighting information from any image on the internet and apply it to your 3D scene in Blender.
Fun fact: the character 3d model for this chapter was kindly donated by no other than William Landgren!
* Universal Night Lighting Setup: This in-depth, step-by-step guide will walk you through the process of creating a night parking lot shot.
* Projectors: Discover the mysterious world of image projection in Blender, as we guide you through creating multi-colored light patterns, both static and animated.
Update 1.2. Reverse Key Lighting
Reverse key lighting - also known as upstage lighting or short/narrow lighting. It’s one of those “why didn’t I try this sooner?” techniques.
Update 1.3 (2026). Cinematic Outdoor Lighting
Over 2 hours of brand-new content: Sea Shore (Cinematic Outdoor Lighting). Learn the impactful outdoor lighting workflows for Blender which use the built-in Sky Texture - Multiple Scattering - and a custom multilayer lighting setup.
Get in Touch
We love talking to people, so feel free to ask any questions or just say hi.
🦐 Website: https://www.creativeshrimp.com/
🔥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GlebAlexandrov
👾 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/nNReRkzWsh
💌 Newsletter: https://www.creativeshrimp.com/subscribe-shrimp
What the Artists Say
"In digital art, creating the right mood is the key to making an immersive visual. By the conscious use of lightning in the scene, an artist can evoke a certain feeling and manipulate the viewer’s perception. It’s a crucial step that can make or break the final image. Learning how to use the light to their advantage is an important tool allowing the artist to elevate their work to another level.
Gleb doesn’t need any introduction, as almost everyone who tried learning Blender used his tutorials. He is truly amazing in the way he shares his expertise. If you want to learn, do it from the best."
Ada Sokół - Ada Sokół Art Lab, 3D Artist and Designer
“Gleb does it again! A great lighting course that includes the technical and also the artistic aspects of lighting in Blender.”
Daniel Bystedt - Senior Concept Artist
“Gleb does an amazing job to demystify lighting in Blender, covering both Cycles and Eevee workflows throughout the course. The videos are well-paced and concise with exciting and relevant examples. This really is the canonical course for achieving cinematic results!”
Erindale - Senior Generator Artist | Blender Instructor
“A very enjoyable course. The delivery is based on four case studies, explained in detail with a nice mix of lighting theory and practice. Mainly using Cycles with one section on Eevee. Gleb's passion for the subject shine's through. Overall an outstanding course which will help you take the quality of your renders to the next level."
"Creative Shrimp keep raising the bar when it comes to video courses. This time, it's a sequel to their Realistic Lighting course from 6 years ago. Obviously, they've kept learning about lighting in those years and have condensed all these years of learning into a series of short, entertaining tutorials, with each chapter focusing on a specific environment or subject.
It's also a great addition to the Photogrammetry course they put out earlier. With the knowledge from those two courses combined, nothing is stopping you from creating a very atmospheric Silent Hill-style short film... If you want to boost the quality of your renders, you can't miss this one."
Jan Van Den Hemel - Blender Secrets
