Course: 3D Design
Title: MyMaterials – MyMaterials.Blend
Dropbox File:
Blender: Version 2.5X
Level: Beginning
Author: Neal Hirsig (nhirsig@tufts.edu)
My Materials – MyMaterials.blend –
In this tutorial, we’ll examine the material settings for some simple common materials
used in modeling.
Open MyMaterials.blend. This file is located in the MyMaterials.zip file. This blend file
contains a series of smoothed spheres with various materials applied to them. The spheres
have a child Text object associated with it to identify the material.
There is also a Floor plane that has a Black and White checkered pattern texture. This
floor plane has a hole cut out of it.
The scene is lighted by 3 Sun lamps (a cool backlight, a white key light and a warm fill
light). The lamps are focused on a lamp Target object.
There is also a Camera object and a Camera Focus object. The camera is focused on the
camera focus object which (along with the lamp target) and is located at X, Y and Z = 0.,
which is in the center of the cutout hole. The 3Dviewport is in Top View.
Select the sphere with the Matte material (Upper right) and press the GKEY (Grab).
Place the sphere in the cutout hole as shown below.
Render F12.
The sphere is rendered with a red matte material and the Floor plane is rendered with a
Black and White checkered pattern.
To examine each material just grab it and drag it to the cutout and render.
When finished, drag the material back to its storage space and select a different material.
The following displays the various Material Panel settings for these materials.
MATTE:
A matte material contains a flat color with little highlight. The basic color is set with the
RGB color sliders. The specular intensity and hardness is generally set low and the
diffuse intensity is generally set high.
PLASTIC:
Plastic has a hard and shiny surface. The general color is set with the RGB sliders. The
specular intensity and hardness is generally high. This sample uses the Blinn Specular
shader. There is a very slight Mirror effect to reflect some of the environment.
TRANSPARENT PLASTIC:
The general color is set with the RGB sliders. The transparency alpha is set near half. The
specular intensity and hardness are generally high and this sample uses a Blinn specular
shader. There is a slight mirror effect and raytrace transparency is enabled at a low level
to render some of the transparent parts with a slight refraction effect.
GLASS:
The example is clear but color can be affected with the color sliders. This is a simple
glass material using ztransparency with the alpha set quite low. It has no refraction but it
does have a bit of mirror added to it. The translucency setting is high. The specular
intensity and hardness is also quite high.
GOLD:
The Gold color is derived from the color sliders in the Diffuse, Specular and Mirror color
swatch settings. The Oren-Nayar and Phong shaders are used as well as a Mirror effect.
GOLD FOIL:
The Gold color is derived from the color sliders in the Diffuse, Specular and Mirror color
swatch settings. The Oren-Nayar and Phong shaders are used as well as a Mirror effect.
The foil effect is created by adding a Procedural Voronoi texture.
In the Textures Panel Texture Type dropdown box choose Voronoi (instead of “Image”).
In the Voronoi Panel Metric Distance dropdown box choose Minkovsky 4. This
Procedural texture is then set to influence the object’s normals.

SILVER:
The Silver color is derived from the color sliders in the Diffuse, Specular and Mirror
color swatch settings. The Oren-Nayar and Phong shaders are used as well as a Mirror
effect.
SILVER FOIL:

The Silver color is derived from the color sliders in the Diffuse, Specular and Mirror
color swatch settings. The Oren-Nayar and Phong shaders are used as well as a Mirror
effect.
The foil effect is created by adding a Procedural Voronoi texture.
In the Textures Panel Texture Type dropdown box choose Voronoi (instead of “Image”).
In the Voronoi Panel Metric Distance dropdown box choose Minkovsky 4. This
Procedural texture is then set to influence the object’s normals.
COPPER:
The Copper color is derived from the color sliders in the Diffuse, Specular and Mirror
color swatch settings. The Oren-Nayar and Phong shaders are used as well as a Mirror
effect.
BRONZE:
The Bronze color is derived from the color sliders in the Diffuse, Specular and Mirror
color swatch settings. The Oren-Nayar and Phong shaders are used as well as a Mirror
effect.
MIRROR:
The Mirror material is applied to a flat plane object, which is angles toward a basic cube
object.
The mirror acts like a real mirror reflecting everything in front of it.
The diffuse and specular colors have no effect because the mirror reflectivity is set to full
(1).
You can use this MyMaterials.blend to add materials to your models. Close
MyMaterials.blend and open a new blank Blender file. Add a mesh object to the scene.
To add the material press File /Append.
Select MyMaterials.blend. This displays the items in the file.
Select Material. This will display all of the materials in the blend file. Select one of the
materials (like Gold Foil).
Then press Append/Link. This will append the material to your file.
With the object selected, go to the material editor. Use the dropdown box to the left of the
“New” button and select the appended material.
The appended material from the MyMaterials file is now added to the object in the scene.
You can also use the MyMaterials.blend file as a sort of Materials Lab. Create a new UV
Sphere and place it in the cutout and experiment with the material creation tools. Save
your new material with the file creating a library of materials that you can use with any
Blender project.