Table Of ContentBlender 2.5 Materials and
Textures Cookbook
Over 80 great recipes to create life-like Blender objects
Colin Litster
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures
Cookbook
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
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First published: January 2011
Production Reference: 1200111
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849512-88-6
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Cover Image by Colin Litster (www.cogfilms.com)
Credits
Author Editorial Team Leader
Colin Litster Aanchal Kumar
Reviewers Project Team Leader
Darrin Lile Lata Basantani
Sanu V.M
Willem Verwey Project Coordinator
Rebecca Sawant
Acquisition Editor
Sarah Cullington Proofreader
Ting Baker
Development Editor
Meeta Rajani Production Coordinator
Melwyn D'Sa
Aparna Bhagat
Technical Editors
Pallavi Kachare
Ajay Shanker Cover Work
Melwyn D'Sa
Indexer
Tejal Daruwale
About the Author
Colin Litster started his passion for animation, and things 3D, after studying for an Art
degree with 3D in its title. At that time computer animation had not even happened, but
working as a special effects cameraman in the British film industry convinced Colin that
there must be better ways of generating film effects other than directly in the camera, or
by post processing in the labs. After studying further he discovered the microprocessor
and became hooked on using this new computer technology to further those ideas.
Colin moved into higher education, eventually to the position of Head of IT and Media
Services in the south east of England. In 2002, Colin discovered the relatively unknown
Open Source 3D suite called Blender. After working with all of the commercial 3D
applications up until that point, Colin thought that this young upstart of an application
must be inferior. However, after just one week of use Colin realized that Blender was not
only capable of most things 3D, it was also incredibly easy to use. At this point, Colin
realized that an ambition to produce a full-length 3D feature was possible to achieve
with this package. Embracing the Open Source ethos, Colin wanted to give something
back to the community so he decided to document and create tutorials for others to see
its potential. Some of Colin's ocean, smoke, and special effect tutorials have become a
driving force in how to stretch the use of this superb 3D tool.
Colin was a contributor to the Blender Summer of Code documentation project with
the Blender Foundation in 2006. Since then he has been a contributing author to the
Essential Blender book edited by Roland Hess, and Ton Roosendaal. Colin has also
been a presenter at the Blender Conference showing others how he approaches material
and texture creation to create the impossible using the Blender 3D suite.
I would like to thank Sarah Cullington, my commissioning editor, and all
the wonderful people at Packt Publishing who have gently guided and
encouraged my development of this book. I would also like to thank Tony
Mullen who has been urging me to put together my material experiments
since 2006. I also cannot forget Ton Roosendaal and all the wonderful
developer community of Blender. But mostly, I must thank my lovely wife
Eveline as without her complete encouragement and support this book
could not have been written. I love you very much.
About the Reviewers
Darrin Lile received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in Film and Media
Studies from the University of Kansas. He has worked as a producer and director
of educational videos, a sound editor for film and television, a control systems
programmer, and a network security analyst. Check out his latest media project
at www.darrinlile.com.
Sanu Vamanchery Mana is a 3D artist from India with over 11 years of experience in
the field of animation, gaming and special effects and Lecturer of Interactive Media Design/
Animation and Game Design at Raffles Design Institute, Singapore. As a lecturer, he has
given many workshops, trainings, and presentations in many countries of Europe, Asia, and
Latin America. Currently, he is reviewing two Blender 3D books for Packt Publishing.
He has worked for gaming projects like Golden Eye 007 (Electronic Arts), Neopet (Sony
Entertainment), and World Series of Poker (Sony Entertainment). He was also involved
in the short movie JackFrost, which was nominated for a BAFTA.
In 1992, Willem Verwey started working in 3D Studio back in the days when we used
DOS. He later moved to 3D Studio Max 1.2!
He founded the 3D Animation Network in 2007 and developed the ANIM8 program
introducing school children and young people to the world of animation.
Since 2007 Willem has been focusing on Blender, developing the ANIM8 program and
freelancing. You can contact him at willem@3danim8.net.
Willem is a member of the Blender Foundation Certification Review Board.
"I believe there is a great future for Blender to professionals since it is a great package
to use.
In my opinion Blender does have a place in the market and we will see a great increase
in professionals using Blender in the world!"
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Creating Natural Materials in Blender 7
Introduction 7
Creating a realistic pebble material using procedural textures 9
Creating a gray limestone pebble 11
Creating the quartz pebble material 16
Creating an opalescent quartz material 19
Creating a mask to represent the quartz veins 21
Combining two materials, to make a third, using Nodes 25
Creating a large rock material using procedural, and node textures 28
Creating a sea rock material 30
Creating a texture node to simulate seaweed at the base of a rock 33
Creating a large rock face using photo reference 40
Chapter 2: Creating Man-made Materials 47
Introduction 48
Creating a slate roof node material that repeats but with ultimate variety 50
Using a tileable texture to add complexity to a surface 52
Warping a texture to disguise seams in a repeated texture 56
Adding weathering by copying and reusing textures 58
Combining materials using nodes 60
Creating metals 64
Using specular maps to add age and variety to man-made surface materials 70
Adding oxidization weathering to our copper material 72
Adding grime and artistic interest to our copper material 75
Creating a path or road material that never repeats 76
Repeating a tiled texture to duplicated objects 77
Deforming materials and textures in Blender 81
Table of Contents
Chapter 3: Creating Animated Materials 83
Introduction 84
How to move textures and create animation without moving a mesh 85
Manipulating the F-Curves of texture movement 88
Using an Empty as a dummy object to control texture movement over time 91
A barber pole with no moving parts 96
How to alter the color of materials and textures over time 99
Creating a red hot iron bar 100
How to animate transparency in a texture 107
Creating a burning sheet of paper 107
How to change textures during an animation 110
How to texture with movies creating a TV screen 114
Chapter 4: Managing Blender Materials 121
Introduction 121
Setting a default scene for materials creation 122
Additional settings for default scene 127
Creating an ideal Blender interface for material creation 131
Creating an ideal texture animation setup 134
Naming materials and textures 136
Appending materials 139
Linking materials 141
Making blendfiles stand alone 143
Chapter 5: Creating More Difficult Man-made Materials 145
Introduction 145
Creating rust on iron-based metals 146
Creating a mesh object to provide good reflective surfaces 150
Using environment map textures to simulate reflection 152
Varying environment map reflections to simulate corrosion or wear 156
Using raytrace reflections to simulate polished metals 159
Varying raytrace reflections to simulate dirt and grime 163
Chapter 6: Creating More Difficult Natural Materials 167
Introduction 167
Creating realistic large-scale water in Blender 2.5 168
Setting up an ocean vista environment 170
Creating a wave surface using textures 172
Creating an ocean surface material 176
Creating wake around objects in water 180
Creating a non-repeating leaf material 184
ii
Table of Contents
Creating image and bump maps, with alpha channels 185
Using images as the basis for a leaf material 188
Using alpha to create a leaf shape on a simple mesh 191
Adding a non-repeating bump to the leaf material 193
Adding color complexity to the leaf material 195
Chapter 7: UV Mapping and Sub Surface Scattering 199
Introduction 199
Creating a face map from photographs 200
Unwrapping a face mesh to produce a UV map 203
Editing a UV map to optimize the image space 209
Creating multiple UV maps for a single object 215
Combining UV maps to create an enveloping UV 219
Using a paint package to merge UV maps 221
Extracting color, bump, and specularity maps from photographs 224
Applying UVs to create an accurate skin material 227
Skin shading using SSS and AO 230
Chapter 8: Painting and Modifying Image Textures in Blender 237
Introduction 237
Post processing rendered images from within Blender 238
Adding more than one material to a surface 248
Adding dirt onto a model 251
Creating an aged photo with simple Blender materials 255
Chapter 9: Special Effects Materials 263
Introduction 263
Creating explosive smoke in Blender 264
Igniting a flame and making things burn in Blender 275
Creating loopable fire and smoke sequences 281
Adding complex FX without the render overhead 285
Index 291
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