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[edit] Texture Buttons

[edit] Description

Once a new texture has been added to a material, it can be defined by switching to the Texture Buttons (F6) or sub-context of the Shading context to obtain Texture buttons.

A new, empty texture Button Window presents two panels:

1. a Texture Preview and
2. a Texture panel, the latter with two tabs.

[edit] Texture Preview

[edit] Description

The texture preview panel provides a quick previsualisation of how the texture looks on it's own, without mapping.

[edit] Options

You can choose what kind of textures you are editing:

Material

Edit the stack of textures linked to the active material

World

Edit the stack of textures linked to the active world

Lamp

Edit the stack of textures linked to the active lamp

Brush

Edit the stack of textures linked to the active brush (in sculpt mode).

Alpha

Show alpha in preview

Default Va

Reset all the texture properties to their default values

[edit] Texture Channels

[edit] Description

This panel lets you manage the list of texture channels available for the particular shading data that you are working on (material, world or lamp).

[edit] Options

Standard datablock selector

Choose, rename, unlink, automatically generate a name, or add a fake user for the active texture

Texture channel button

Change the active texture channel

Here you can also define the active texture's type. The available types of textures are:

Image

Allows an image to be loaded and used as a texture. See Image Textures

EnvMap

To simulate Reflections (and Refractions) without Raytracing. See Environment Maps.

Plugin

Allows for loading an external piece of code to define the texture. See Texture Plugins.

Procedural

The remaining options define 3D procedural textures, which are textures that are defined mathematically and are built into Blender. See Procedural Textures.

[edit] Texture Colors

[edit] Description

All textures may be modified by the Bright(ness) and Contr(ast) buttons in the Colors panel. All textures which posess RGB-Values - including Images and Environment Maps - may be modified with the RGB sliders. (Texture Colors Panel).

[edit] Options

R, G, B

Tint the color of a texture by brightening each red, green and blue channel

Brightness

Change the overall brightness/intensity of the texture

Contrast

Change the contrast of the texture

[edit] Colorbands

If intensity-only textures are used, the result is a black and white texture, which can be greatly enhanced by the use of colorbands. The colorband is an often-neglected tool in the Colors tab in the Texture Panel that gives you an impressive level of control over how procedural textures are rendered. Instead of simply rendering each texture as a linear progression from 0.0 to 1.0, you can use the colorband to create a gradient which progresses through as many variations of color and transparency (alpha) as you like (Texture Colorband.).

To use Colorbands, select a procedural texture, such as Wood. Click the Colorband button. The Colorband is Blender's gradient editor. Each point on the band can be placed at any location and can be assigned any color and transparency. Blender will interpolate the values from one point to the next.

For information on using the colorband UI controls, see Colorbands in the Ramps section of this manual.

[edit] Hints

• The alpha slider changes the transparency of the selected arrow of the colorband.
• If you use a colorband, the results of the texture are intensity and RGB. The alpha values deliver intensity, the colors RGB. Use the NoRGB button in the Materials context to calculate intensity from the RGB values.

[edit] See Also

• Ramps

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