Basic materials in Blender

For an image synthesis must add objects, lights and cameras to the scene. The representation of these objects depend on the scene illumination, the camera parameters and the visual properties of these objects that basically know as your “color” or “material”.

We can say that the appearance of an object is determined primarily by the properties of their “material”.

When we started to prepare Blender tutorials, using version 2.49, wrote a small article titled “Edit or Add a Material“. We will review this material updating the interface with version 2.77 and adding some new aspects that complement.

The material will be added “Textures” that often be some images that affect material properties such as Color, reflection, transparencies …etc..

La textura más simple que se puede utilizar en un objeto es una imagen sobre su superficie, sustituyendo el color liso del objeto por los correspondientes de la imagen utilizada.

Add a Material

To add a material to an object we select (left mouse button) and access the menu “Properties” and click on the icon representing a sphere “Material”

La primera operación a realizar por lo tanto será seleccionar el objeto o superficie a la que se quiere añadir un nuevo material o la textura. Blender realiza las operaciones sobre los elementos activos, namely, that you have selected with the right button of the mouse.

The object can have a set of previous display attributes or lack of them, in this last case we will have to define a new “material” to store the set of parameters you need blender for rendering the scene; select the button “New” for this purpose.

Immediately new tabs in our window controls, that I will learn progressively:

El material tendrá un nombre por defecto que podemos cambiar para identificarlo más claramente en nuestro proyecto.

Aparecerán nuevas ventanas asociadas al material con las diferentes propiedades que lo caracterizan.

The first tab that we discuss is the “Preview window“, que nos muestra de forma aproximada como se vería nuestro objeto al realizar el render (obtener la imagen de la escena). In fact, What is shown is a simple surface, normally a sphere, to which is applied the material that we have defined:

En el lateral de esta ventana podemos seleccionar el objeto que usaremos para la previsualización desde un menú gráfico, como un plano, sphere, cube, cara de mono, fibras o esfera con fondo.

The object of these options is to facilitate visually, interactively, a better approximation to the results that we obtain. The use of simple forms allows a very fast rendering and therefore a friendly interaction between complex controls with a rapid assimilation of the results to obtain.

Lo que se ve en la ventana de previsualización es únicamente una aproximación, Since the surrounding objects and used lighting can significantly influencing the final result.

Color can mainly affect three aspects:

Color emisivo del object as such
Color glitters specular highlights
Color projected in the highlights

Las dos componentes básicas del color del objeto son la componente difusa y la componente especular. A estas componentes deberemos añadirles su emisividad, transparency, refracción etc.

Básicamente la componente difusa es la que determina el color del objeto, siendo más obscura en las zonas de la superficie del objeto en las que la luz incide con un ángulo menor (casi paralelo a la superfície) o símplemente la luz no incide sobre ellas (sombra).

The componente especular aporta el efecto de brillo sobre el objeto, que se produce al “rebotar” la luz y salir en dirección a la cámara.

Each of these colors can be defined by its components in different formats (as RGB or HSV, hexadecimal format …) and also with specific windows that are activated by clicking with the mouse on the boxes containing the color swatch in the Material window.

The result of the modification can be seen in the preview window, that is automatically updated

Next to the color determination we can adjust the intensity of the, as well as the type of calculation (mathematical model) to be applied in order to obtain the final result. Classically use the lighting model Lamber, although others may be used models “shading”.