Hi all - I have searched around and also looked in my (new!) manual, but I cannot figure this out:
example:
I have a mushroom and I have 2 materials assigned to the stem - a yellow in the middle (mat 2) and a green on the bottom part (the base - mat3)
I want to fade the green gradually into the yellow (3 -> 2) so that you don’t see a hard line.
I have tried all kinds of stuff, but I can’t get it to work. It seems colorbands can’t be rotated! And when I flip X/Y and muck about with material map-to settings and view it in CTRL-Z mode, the preview on-screen is different to a proper F12 render!
with textures modifying particular regions, set one texture channel to stencil so that the following channels don’t show through [this is how you will create the blend]
What if I want to fade from a material with a cloud texture into a material with a wood filter?
How do I do this in one material?
Also, if one can place multiple materials on a single object, then there must be a simple way to ‘blur’ the edges - no?
Excuse the newb questions - I was really hoping the manual would explain textures better, but it’s really poor. There is so little detail and so few examples.
This is not too hard to do, have the base texture be in the first layer and then for the second layer use a blend texture and set it to stencil mode using the stencil button. Then make the rest of your textures.
Basically you turn off the material values in the sliders and you use the textures (contrast and saturation) thru the mapto tab options to give difuse and specularity values (and any other material-like options like bump and alpha). Then a stencil between them will efectivly blend two “materials”
Dedicated textures, the sheer power of the concept eluded me until that thread!
Cool - thanks for the simple explanation; I never ‘got’ that stencil thingum.
What if you want more textures than the 8 slots can give you? Is there really no way to blend two materials together so that you can’t discern the edge?
On the same subject - how can one rotate a blend-texture to face the direction you need? Example; my mushroom’s stem is vertical, the blend goes horizontal - I can’t make it go up the bloody stem! Not to mention the stem actually going slightly at an angle!
Is there really no way to blend two materials together so that you can’t discern the edge?
A face can only be in one material – so no there is no way to blend materials together.
What if you want more textures than the 8 slots can give you?
This is a current limitation of blender but not as limiting as you make it sound. UVmapping or using the orco mappings (as “env” uses) lets you create pretty well any look you want although I admit there have been rare occasions where I would have liked another texture channel.
Don’t expect blenders materials/textures to be anything like maya’s or 3DS they are implemented quite differently.
Can you help me with understanding how to get blend textures to go in the direction I require?
Example, my 'shroom: Material 2 (the stem) is yellow. Material 3 (the base) can be a material with a blend from red to just a small fraction of the same yellow - thus a clean join.
Only thing is I can’t get the blend to move ‘up’ the stem. How do I accurately place procedural textures?
Biggles: I am not quite sure if this is your question so, if it is not, ignore what I wrote here.
Is this what you want? 1 object - 2 procedural textures on it
It can be this way too, that is what I believe you really want. 1 Texture on the top and other on the bottom
Now the trick: You have to use 3 procedural textures to acheive this effect, not 2. One of them must be a “blend” texture with the “stencil” option on.
Here is a sample .blend file with this 3 procedural textures. (71Kb download)
Note that the file can be unavaliable depending on the how much people download it at once, so you will have to try latter. And the images too.
To rotate the blend texture and change the position of the other two textures consequently, you must do the changes below.
Go in edit mode and select all the vertices of your object and rotate them “x” degrees. Tab out of edit mode and you will notice that the texture space has not rotated – only the object. Now in object mode rotate the object back “x” degrees to its original position. When you rotate in object mode the texture space rotates with it.
You now have the object in its original position with the texture space rotated.
I agree a rotation option under “T” would be better.
GreyBeard you are becoming the Blender helper! Good technique. Actually, good and simple. I just avoid using it because you are not rotating the texture space, you are changing the object orientation and it may cause some more troubles when using complex armatures.
Could you explain, in English for non-maths fools (like me), what the heck that grid of x, y’s and z’s is all about?
Biggles this grid allow you to change the texture orientation in relation to the object coordinates. In other words, the object has its own X, Y and Z coordinates. The texture also has its own X, Y and Z coordinates. When you change the buttons in the grid you are altering the relation between the texture coordinates in relation to the object coordintes that are the reference to the texture orientation.
To improve GreyBeard’s option, I will sugest you to do the following:
1 Add an Empty in the center of the object
2 Scale it so the mushroom is inside its bounding box (F7 menu to activate it)
3 In the material menu, in the map imput tab, choose “Object” and fill the blank space with the empty name exactly like it is written.
4 Rotate the Empty until you have the texture the way you want it to be.
To help you when you are rotating the empty you can do this:
Joke aside, I’d like to take the time to thank anyone who take time to write complete and easy to follow answers in the Q&A forums. Not only does it help the person asking the questions, but it’s most likely going to help countless users using the search engine (yes, I hear that actually happens ;)).
Good technique. Actually, good and simple. I just avoid using it because you are not rotating the texture space, you are changing the object orientation and it may cause some more troubles when using complex armatures.
