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Theme 12

The document explains the fundamentals of working with materials in 3D modeling environments, specifically in Blender. It details how materials differ from colors, the process of applying and customizing materials, and the various properties that can be adjusted, such as reflectivity and transparency. Additionally, it covers the Material tab in the Property Editor, how to manage material slots, and the impact of shadow settings on rendering speed.

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14 views3 pages

Theme 12

The document explains the fundamentals of working with materials in 3D modeling environments, specifically in Blender. It details how materials differ from colors, the process of applying and customizing materials, and the various properties that can be adjusted, such as reflectivity and transparency. Additionally, it covers the Material tab in the Property Editor, how to manage material slots, and the impact of shadow settings on rendering speed.

Uploaded by

qajabergenerbolsyn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Theme 12: Materials

In 3D modeling environments, changing the color properties of an object is not the same as
changing the color in most 2D graphics environments. In 3D, you don't add and adjust an object's
color, but the material, that is, what the object is made of, as it were. The material can mimic green
plastic, yellow sand, glass, reddish metal, water, etc.
Although the color of the object still plays an important role, many other visual properties come into
play: reflectivity, transparency, light refraction, etc. Setting up materials in Blender is a vast topic.
This tutorial will cover the basics of working with materials.
In Blender, the same material can be applied to many objects. On the other hand, multiple materials
can be applied to a single object. For example, you can associate a different material with each face
of a cube. However, when you create a material, it is automatically bound to the selected object.
The Material tab of the Property Editor is used for customizing materials. Camera and lamp don't
have it, but mesh objects do. The newly added meshes do not have materials. However, the start file
cube has one. If you delete this cube and add a new object, the contents of the Material tab will look
like this:

The large field will contain the so-called material slots. Usually objects have one slot and therefore
one material. However, if several materials are applied to one object, there will be several slots.
To add a material to an object, you need to click on the New button and a new material will be
created, or select an existing one from the list that is expanded by clicking on the balloon icon in
front of the New button.
As soon as you do one or the other, the object will automatically have the first slot to which the new
or selected material will be loaded.

Materials can be renamed either through a slot or through the material selection/creation block. This
block has changed. Now, if you want to create a new material, you should press the plus sign, the
cross deletes the material, and the enabled F button allows you to save the material even if it is not
used by any object. It should be noted that until you close the file, all unused materials are saved.
If you now select a different material or create a new one, it will replace the previous one in the
existing slot. If an object needs more than one material, additional slots are created with the plus
button to the right of the slots field. After adding a new slot is empty, it must be selected and
assigned a material.
The Assign, Select and Deselect buttons appear in the editing mode. Using Assign, the material of
the selected slot is assigned to individual faces and groups of faces of mesh objects.

The Surface, Wire, Volume, and Halo buttons define what will be drawn on the final image -
surface, wireframe, volume, or halo particles.

Just below in the preview panel you can see how it will look like. The icons on the right(plane, ball,
cube, monkey, etc.) have no effect on the object, they just serve to see what the material looks like
on this or that potential object.
The Diffuse tab defines the primary color, Specular is the glare color, which is usually left white.
Take a look at the Surface preview in the image above. The white blurred spot on the balloon is the
glare. Some of the Diffuse and Specular settings are determined by the selected model from the list
to the right of the color selection box.

In the Shadow panel, if you turn off the Receive checkbox, the object with this material will not
have shadows cast by other objects when rendering. This allows the image to be rendered faster.
In the images below, the plane has shadow reception disabled on the left and enabled on the right.

Also, a second lamp is used here so that there are no completely darkened areas. This second lamp
has the ability to create shadows on objects disabled. Otherwise, the cube on the right would cast
two shadows at different angles. The lamps are configured on the ObjectData tab of the property
editor.

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