Talk:Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Quickie Material

=Old Text=

(User:- This tutorial, though still under construction, is very helpful because it addresses what I believe is a new panel, 'Links and Pipeline', in 2.42. A lot of the other tutorials seem to date before this addition. It is also very explanatory which helps a lot. Thanks.)

Below is old text for this page. I want to preserve it to use elsewhere. Please disregard for now. Materials are what gives an object its basic colour and 'feel'. For example, plastic is quite hard and smooth so it reflects light well, while cotton is soft so it mostly only reflects ambient light.

=Adding A Material= To add a material, select your object, and click the Shading button (a shaded sphere) or press F5. In the Material box, click "add new". (If you can't see this button, your object already has a material.) Your object now has a material and you can change lots of settings. The most interesting ones are Textures (see next page), the Colour and Alpha (transparency) sliders in the same box, and the next two boxes, Shaders and Mirror Transparency. Your material will be called something like Material.001. You can change this name by clicking on the name box. Naming things is good! It makes things much less confusing later on.

=Shaders= Shaders are what makes the difference between the way light behaves on cotton, plastic and many other objects. The reflectivity slider controls how much ambient light is reflected (move it and watch the preview). The Halo button turns your object's vertices into points of light. Specularity controls how much light bounces directly off objects (think sunlight reflecting off the sea), and hardness controls the angle at which specularity is noticible. Translucency is used to light a surface if the side facing away from the eye point is receiving light. Ambient colour sets the amount of global ambient color the material receives. Emittivity will make the material glow in the dark (good if a particular object is too dark).

=Mirror Transparency= The mirror transparency tab is used to control reflections and transparency. You should have raytracing turned on on the render tab to use these settings (Ray button after you press F10). Reflectivity makes your object reflect other objects. Press Ray Mirror to turn it on and the slider to control the amount. Depth controls how many times a reflection can bounce before it reaches the camera (if two reflective objects are next to each other, they will only reflect each other this number of times). Ray Transparency is used to make objects see-through. The Alpha slider on the materials tab controls how transparent the material is; IOR stands for Index of Refraction - how much light bends when it passes into or out of the object. (If it is 1, light passes straight through and the object often looks fake. Glass has a typical IOR of 1.5, and water is about 1.33.)  ZTransp does not rely on raytracing, but Ray Transp looks much better. The object will not be transparent without ZTransp or Ray Transp checked.

EDIT: Translucency will make the object translucent. translucent means: Transmitting light but causing sufficient diffusion to prevent perception of distinct images. (clear)

=Preserving text= Please use the edit history to preserve text, and use this Talk page for discussion. Revisions are identified by unique URLs so if you need to keep your place, you can create a bookmark in your browser.

Brinman 18:27, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

=Updating=

I am updating the text so it fits 2.59 I have done the first part until Specifying Colors and hope to do the rest asap. --> done!

Good on ya! BTW you may want to get an account if you're going to do this consistently. --JamesNZ (discuss • contribs) 08:24, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I have but I forgot to log in :D