4.1 Introduction to Materials 4.2 Material Settings
4.3 Material Buttons 4.4 Material Colors
4.5 Adding a New Material 4.6 The Preview Tab
4.7 The Diffuse Tab 4.8 The Specular Tab
4.9 The Hardness Value 4.10 Ramp Shaders 4.11 Transparency 4.12 Halo Settings 4.13 Vertex Painting
4.14 The Application of Materials and Material Slots
4.1 Introduction to Materials
What is a material in Blender? A material is a color but it is also much more than that. Th ink of the color red: it could be dark red or light red or any shade of red you could image. Th e color can be shiny or dull, it can be transparent, or it can gradually fade from one shade to another; the possibilities are endless. Th at is a material.
4.2 Material Settings
Th e default Blender scene has a cube object that displays as a dull gray color.
Color is the way your eyes interpret the refl ected light from an object’s surface.
If there is no light, you see nothing, so Blender has placed a white-light lamp in the default scene and assigned data to the cube that shows the cube as being gray in this color light. Every object added to the scene will also be given the same data as the cube, so you will see them as gray.
Adding a material is done in the proper-ties window with the “ Material” button
Note: In the default Blender scene, the default cube object has been given a material as seen by the gray color of the cube object and the fact that the mate-rial buttons are displayed in the proper-ties window. Subsequent objects added to the scene also display with this same color although the material buttons for a new object do not display. Clicking on “New” will display the buttons. For now, consider an object as not having a material unless the “Material” button displays all the tabs shown in Figure 4.2.
Remember, the values in the properties window only apply to the object that is selected in the 3D window.
When you click on the material button for a new object, the properties window only dis-plays the information in Figure 4.1. To add a material to an object, first select the object you want to work with (the default cube comes with a material added). In the properties win-dow header, click the “Material” button, then click the “New” button. You will see the mate-rial properties tabs open up. The values will be the same as those for the default cube.
Figure 4.2
click in the color bar to display
87 4.5. Adding a New Material
4.3 Material Buttons
The material panel is used to change some of the physical properties of the object’s ap-pearance (Figure 4.2). If you plan on using just straight color and no texture, this is where you set the object’s color. This panel is also where you set other properties such as shading, transparency, glossy or flat, reflective, halo effect, etc. A brief example of setting a material will follow.
4.4 Material Colors
Each material can exhibit three colors:
t the basic diffuse overall color, which is seen when a surface reflects light, t the specular color, which gives a surface highlights or a shiny appearance, and t the mirror color, which is the color used to fake mirror reflections.
It is important to remember that the material color is only one element in the rendering process. The rendered color of an object is a product of the material color and the emitting light color. An object may have a yellow material color, but put it under a blue light or a red light and you’ll see something else altogether.
4.5 Adding a New Material
I will demonstrate the basics of adding a material by the following exam-ple. Start a new Blender scene and add a monkey object. Monkey always enters the scene lying on his back, so, with him selected, press the R key + X + 90 (to rotate him about the x-axis 90 degrees) (Figure 4.3). Hit the number pad + key and zoom in a bit. Go to the tool shelf and under
“Shading” click on “Smooth.” Make sure the monkey is selected then go to the properties window “Material” button (Figure 4.4).
Click on the “New” button to display the material properties buttons.
When the monkey is added to the scene, Blender assigns it the proper-ties for the gray color even though the material properproper-ties are not dis-played. After clicking “New,” you can modify the properties to achieve the look you want.
Note: We selected the smooth option from the tool shelf to better display the modifi-cations to the material. Some of the effects are very subtle, so a nice smooth surface is best for this demonstration.
Figure 4.3
Figure 4.4
Properties window –
“Material” button
Click on the “New” button.
4.6 The Preview Tab
Take a look at the “Preview” tab in the material properties window (Figure 4.5). This preview gives an indication of what you will see in a render of the 3D window. To save computer memory, Blender does not display everything in the 3D window. On the LH side of the “Pre-view” tab, there are options for viewing the preview in different formats. One of the op-tions is “Monkey,” but for simplicity, I have left my preview as the default sphere.
4.7 The Diffuse Tab
I previously stated that the monkey object had been as-signed a gray color. This is the diffuse overall color of the material. Click the gray bar to display the color picker and note the R: 0.800, G: 0.800, and B: 0.800 values (Figure 4.6).
These are the numeric values that denote the gray color in the RGB color system. RGB stands for “red, green, and blue,” the primary colors. Mixing the three 0.800 values produces the gray color. There are three color system options available: RGB, HSV, and Hex.
What is intensity? The intensity of a color is the shade of the color going through a range from absolutely no light to maximum light. Figure 4.7, which demonstrates intensity, also serves to show that light has a major ef-fect on a rendered image. When the monkey was added to the scene, it was added at the center of the world and then rotated on the x-axis by 90 de-grees. This means that the position of the default lamp is above and behind the monkey’s head, which explains why the monkey’s face is in shadow. So how come we see the monkey when the intensity is 0.000 (no light)? We will come back to that a bit later. For now, let’s make the monkey a bit more colorful.
Figure 4.5
Preview monkey option
Figure 4.6
Figure 4.7
Intensity = 0.000 (no light) Color bar showing the diffuse color:
click to display the color picker
Intensity slider
89 4.7. The Diffuse Tab
Open the color picker again and select a color you like. If you want to match my example exactly, enter the RGB val-ues R: 0.800, G: 0.430, and B: 0.000—we now have a pretty golden monkey. The difference between what you see in the 3D window and the rendered image is shown in Fig-ure 4.8. The 3D window has some shadowing effect so that you can see 3D features. This shadowing is evident in the render, but in addition you can see some shiny highlights.
The shiny highlights are there because, by default, Blender has added specular color (discussed next) to the monkey;
that’s why we could see the monkey when we turned the diffuse color intensity down to 0.000 in Figure 4.7. In effect, we canceled the diffuse light reflection but there was still specular light reflection.
See Figures 4.9 and 4.10 for comparisons of 3D win-dow objects and rendered images, respectively, when the intensity changes.
Figure 4.8 Intensity = 0.800
Color selected
3D window Rendered image
Note the shiny hightlights.
Figure 4.9 Intensity = 0.000 (no light) Intensity = 0.500 Intensity = 1.000
4.8 The Specular Tab
The “Specular” tab is similar to the “Diffuse” tab with a color bar that, when clicked, displays a color picker. The difference between the two tabs is that the specular tab has a hardness value (Figure 4.11).
Click on the color bar and then slect the green color with R: 0.000, G: 1.000, and B: 0.450. Set the diffuse color inten-sity to 0.800. When you add a specular color to an object’s material, there is no dramatic effect in the 3D window—the difference will be the specular highlights, which are more evident in the rendered image. Figures 4.12 and 4.13 dem-onstrate the differences with varying intensity values for 3D window objects and rendered images, respectively.
Figure 4.10
Intensity = 0.000 (no light)
Hardness value
Selected specular color
Intensity = 0.500 Intensity = 1.000
Figure 4.11
Intensity = 0.000 (no light)
Specular highlights
Intensity = 0.500 Intensity = 1.000
Figure 4.12
91 4.9. Th e Hardness Value
4.9 The Hardness Value
Th e best way I can describe the eff ect of the hardness value is to say that the eff ect spreads the specular color across the surface of the object (known as “soft light”) or focuses it (known as “hard light”). Th e default hardness value is 50 and the value range is 1 to 115. Th e most visible eff ect when altering the value occurs in the lower region of the range. Figures 4.14 and 4.15 demonstrate this eff ect for 3D window and rendered images, respectively. Set both diff use and specular color intensities to 0.800.
Intensity = 0.000 (no light) Intensity = 0.500 Intensity = 1.000
Figure 4.13
Multiple Materials, Blender Materials – Mirror
Learning Unit 5
Hardness: 1 Hardness: 50 Hardness: 115
Figure 4.14 Hardness: 1
As you see in the rendered images, there is a relatively small change between hardness value 115 and 50, but a huge difference between 50 and 1. It is especially hard to see the difference between 115 and 50 in the 3D window.
Hardness: 50 Hardness: 115
Figure 4.15