Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8

Giving Models Texture

In This Chapter

• Working with textures
• Creating procedural textures
• Thinking about texture mapping
• Unwrapping a mesh to use image-based textures
• Trying your hand at texturing with an example

If you want a more controlled way of adjusting the look of your object than what's described in Chapter 7, then using material settings alone won't get you there. You can use Vertex Paint (V), but if you're working on a model that you intend to animate, Vertex Paint can cause you to have many extraneous vertices just for color. Those vertices end up slowing down the processes of rigging, animating, and even rendering. Also, you may want to have material changes that are independent of the topology and edge flow of your mesh.

For those sorts of scenarios, you're going to want to use textures, which is the focus of this chapter. (Note: This chapter pairs well with Chapter 7.)