- Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook
- Colin Litster
- 722字
- 2025-03-31 05:24:18
In this chapter, we will cover:
- Creating a realistic pebble material using procedural textures and node materials
- Creating a gray limestone pebble
- Creating the quartz pebble material
- Creating an opalescent quartz material
- Creating a mask to represent the quartz veins
- Combining two materials, to make a third, using nodes
- Creating a large rock material using procedural, and node textures
- Creating a texture node to simulate seaweed at the base of a rock
- Creating a large rock face using photo reference
The surface of a natural material may seem one of the easiest to reproduce in a 3D suite such as Blender. However, natural surfaces can be quite complex in their appearance. Color, specularity, and reflection can organically change across a surface as a result of location, climate interaction, and variations in the natural substance. In many ways simulating natural objects in Blender will require more complex materials and textures than man-made objects to make them look convincing. Fortunately, learning how to create believable natural surface materials will help you in the development of many other material types. After all, most manufactured objects are created from, or based on, natural materials.
Blender offers a vast array of material and texture tools to aid you in the creation of natural-looking surfaces. Because of this there are many ways to produce similar, and equally pleasing, results. However, there are approaches that will speed material creation and make the process easier, adaptable, and more enjoyable.
Although there are no prerequisites to using the recipes for this first chapter it would be useful for you to know how Blender materials are organized and the various methods of mapping them to mesh objects. If these concepts are unfamiliar, or new to you, visit the free support documentation at the BlenderWiki: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page
At the time of writing most of this documentation is based on prior versions of Blender. However, I can recommend the Blender Summer of Documentation section on Materials and Procedural Textures written by me in 2006.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Materials/BSoD
Although utilizing images from the 2.49 series of Blender it still covers many of the basic principles of material creation.
This book, however, will take you beyond the basics and into the new Blender v2.5 materials and textures interface.
When trying to simulate any surface, your eyes will be your greatest asset. Carefully observing either the real material, or good reference photos, will make the task of simulation in Blender much easier. This is particularly important with natural materials, which have complex structures giving fine variation in surface color, specularity, and texture. Understanding what these details are will make any material simulation easier and give the viewer the correct visual clues so that they know what they are meant to be looking at. Even if you intend to represent a surface in a non-photo-realistic manner it is important to provide the viewer with some essential surface properties that will give them the visual essence of a surface.
The good thing is that natural materials are usually easy to study because we can pick them up around us. If the natural object you are trying to create isn't at hand, then use the Internet to look for photo references.
http://uk.images.search.yahoo.com
Alternatively, try to take your own photo reference shots by carrying a digital camera around with you. Even a mobile phone camera can be good enough to take reference photos.
Another useful tool is a magnifying lens. Being able to closely study the real surface that you are trying to simulate, can aid your perception of the detailed color variations and surface texture of a natural object. Just using your eyes should give you enough information about a natural surface to enable you to simulate it in Blender.
It is also a good idea to set up the default scene in Blender to provide better lighting for material and texture creation. You will need to regularly render the objects you are creating textures for, just to see a more accurate example of a materials effect. Improving the lighting, from that given in the factory settings, will aid you in that process.
You will find a recipe in Chapter 4, Setting a default scene for materials creation, that provides a better materials setup.