Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook

Blender 2.5 is one of the most usable 3D suites available. Its material and texture functions offer spectacular surface creation possibilities. It can take you hours just to create basic textures and materials in Blender and when you think of creating complex materials and textures you are petrified. Imagine how you will feel when you overcome these obstacles.

This book wastes no time on boring theory and bombards you with examples of ready-created materials and textures from the start, with clear instructions on how they were created, and what you can learn from them for making your own. It covers all core Blender functions you will ever need to easily create perfect simulation of objects from the simplest to the most complex ones.

The book begins with recipes that show you how to create natural surface materials, including a variety of pebbles, rocks, wood, and water, as well as man-made metals, complete with rust. By utilizing some of the easiest-to-use animation tools available, you will be able to produce accurate movement in mesh objects. Familiarize yourself with a plethora of tools that will help you to effectively organize your textures and materials.

You will learn how to emulate the reflective properties of natural materials and how to simulate materials such as rusted iron, which is difficult to make believable. Transparency and reflection are both tricky natural surface properties to simulate but these recipes will make it easy. Explore ways to speed up animations by using special painting techniques to significantly lower render times. By the end of the book, you will be able to simulate some of the most difficult effects to recreate in any 3D suite, such as smoke, fire, and explosions.

A practical book packed with powerful techniques and solutions for adding materials and textures to your Blender projects

What you will learn from this book :

• Understand the new Blender 2.5 user interface that simplifies creation of materials and textures
• Explore the complex task of UV mapping of a human face
• Use the Sub Surface Scattering commands in Blender to create objects the way you want
• Confidently simulate materials such as smoke, flames, and explosions using the Blender 2.5 Smoke Physics module
• Create an entire ocean that animates and reacts with objects in the water by using the new Blender 2.5 features
• Employ simple repeating textures that can be applied with infinite variety without appearing to repeat
• Synthesize complex materials without complex mesh objects by using alpha transparency
• Create incredible moving textures and materials by using Blender 2.5 animation curves
• Create flexible materials that can curve around corners or apply themselves to complex winding meshes without unwanted texture distortion
• Manage Blender 2.5 materials and textures and effectively apply them to your Blender projects

Approach
Each chapter in the book follows a themed approach to creating materials using the new Blender 2.5 features. As you read through each chapter you will learn approaches to create materials and textures. These materials and textures will help you to create a flawless simulation of real-world objects. You need not read the chapters in any particular order to learn to use the Blender 3D suite for materials simulation appropriately. Every recipe in this book will enable you to create a usable material or texture effect as well as teaching you techniques that save your time.

Who this book is written for
If you are a Graphics Designer looking to master the features for materials and textures to create realistic looking models in Blender, then this book is for you. It can be read by both beginners and experienced Blender users; however, prior understanding of object creation and manipulation in Blender would be an advantage.

This is a must-read for Blender users who want to learn the concepts and at the same time experiment with the different Blender Material and texture functions.

Book Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (January, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849512884
• ISBN-13: 978-1849512886