Blender For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 7

Changing That Boring Gray Default Material

In This Chapter

• Understanding how Blender handles materials
• Taking advantage of Vertex painting
• Trying your hand at a practical example

As you work on your models in Blender, you're eventually going to get tired of that plastic gray material that all Blender objects have by default. Nothing against neutral colors — or plastic, for that matter — but the world is a vibrantly colorful place, and you may occasionally want to use these colors in your 3D scenes. To add colors to your scenes and models, you use materials and textures. Think of a material as a collection of instructions that you give Blender to describe the appearance of your 3D object. What color is it? Is it see-through? Is it shiny enough to show a reflection? In some ways, Blender's way of adding materials and textures to an object is one of the most confusing parts of the program. It can be a pretty big challenge to wrap your brain around the full functionality of it.

This chapter is intended to give you the skills to know enough to be dangerous with Blender's materials. Hopefully, with a little practice, you can become lethal. Well, lethal might be the wrong word: I don't think I've ever heard of anyone killed by excessively sharp specular highlights. (Don't worry if you don't get the joke right now. After you finish this chapter, you'll realize how horrible a pun this is.)

Understanding Materials and Render Engines

Before you throw yourself down the rabbit ...