I can’t find where in the documentation materials are explained, nor the right tutorial. I know about optics, already; what I need is a general overview of how Blender organizes things. I try to create a new material, and after I’m done changing its characteristics, the previous material has also changed. Even the name of the previous material changes… My space-ship now looks transparent green and I can’t seem to get it back to its metal look. U-ndo doesn’t seem to undo it. Can’t even work with it anymore… What the heck are all these “indexes” and “users” and “datablocks”? And why are all the parts of my ship named “tube”? I’m going nuts…
objects are named what they are created from, so you started creating your object from a cube and never changed its name.
Unless you add a new material, you’ll be editing the default material, so it is possible that you changed your spaceship material to your green material.
indexes - not sure, users and datablocks - these are for sharing a material ie a datablock stores the item and users are the one who use the item.
Of course if it is edited and shared, all objects get the edited version.
LetterRip
I agree, it is a bit of a pain how it’s set up, but it’s not really as bad as it seems…
This is quite a good tutorial on materials.
Other than that, just play around with it.
Oh, and U-ndo only works in the editing mode… in the current version, you can undo with Ctrl-Z (This is for the newest version, running in windows. I don’t know at which version they started it, or if it works under other OSs the same way)
Yes, that’s a good tut so I’ll copy the URL so it’s clickable
http://feeblemind.homeip.net/dotclear/index.php/2004/12/21/5-blender-indices-materiau
These are links to the 2 chapters in the docs; Materials and Textures:
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/ch10.html
http://download.blender.org/documentation/htmlI/ch11.html
%<