Blender For Dummies, 4th Edition

Chapter 8

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. Sure, it’s helpful to add matcaps to your objects while sculpting (see Chapter 6), but that’s just a temporary thing meant to help you while you work. Eventually, you’re going to want something more specific to your model. 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 ...