Doc:Tutorials/Materials/BSoD/part1a

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[edit] Approaches to simulating a real material

Time to get down to creating materials in Blender. As a starter exercise I wanted to show how a relatively complex surface material can be created with just a few commands in Blender. I also want to show an approach to simulating a real material that you can use time and time again to speed up the process. However, at the same time I don’t want to bog you down with too many explanations of each function and what it is doing. So initially some commands and options will be glossed over to help you achieve as quickly as possible. Don’t worry though we will come back to those areas in more detail later.

The best tools you can employ in creating any material are your eyes. Direct visual interpretation of what you are trying to simulate really is the best way to start material and texture creation. For that reason we will start with a surface that I can see quite clearly in front of me now.

[edit] My office desk

caption The real table top. Photographs often produce their own color cast so the eye is a better observer.

You cannot see my desk directly so I’m setting the colors etc as my eyes see them. Later you might want to change the colors to your interpretation of the photo. Just be aware that modern digital cameras can add color casts due to the mixing of real and artificial light in a room. The eye automatically compensates for these differences.

[edit] Exercise 1

We will start with the simple desk surface, ignoring for now the power adapter and leads.

[edit] Creating the object and setting the lights

Any surface, such as our desktop, either passes the light diffusely, or specularly reflected from it. That means we require some simulated lights to represent the lights that exist in the real scene. Hopefully you will have read the BSoD section on lighting by now. http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Lighting

If not don’t worry because I include the blendfile, with lights setup to represent the window and reflected light in the room, so that you can start at the same point as me.

Media: desktop-01.blend

Download the desktop-01.blend and save it into your main blender directory.

[edit] Diffuse Light

Any surface, such as our desktop, will reflect light bouncing off and back to our eyes. The general light is often called diffuse because it’s more evenly scattered. Such light will illuminate the overall color of a surface.

[edit] Specular Light

Some surfaces will also have specular highlights where the light reflects in a more concentrated manner giving shininess to the surface.

It’s therefore important that lights are setup to ensure our materials are seen correctly.

In our example there are 3 lights.

Light 1 represents the outside sunlight that is coming through the window.

Lights 2 & 3 are there to represent light bouncing off of the walls and the artificial light source in the room.

It is possible to setup very realistic lighting that will accurately mimic the scientific properties of real lights but I prefer to use quite simple setups that copy the general location and brightness of real world lights. Simple setups mean that you can easily arrange and fine tune their effect and therefore concentrate on making a material perfect.

If you want to learn more on lighting then read the BSoD section on lighting http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Lighting.

Tutorials

Redirects to fix

• BSoD/Introduction to Materials/Intro exercise → Doc:Tutorials/Materials/BSoD/Intro exercise
• BSoD/Introduction to Materials/part1b → Doc:Tutorials/Materials/BSoD/part1b