Newbie

Support Basics & Interface
1

I am new to Blender and don’t find it is an easy program to learn at all. I have used other programs such as Photoshop and Flash, which is much easier. Apart from this, one question. Once I created an object onto the 3D Window, I would like to add materials and textures. I tweek the parameters in the appropriate windows, ie. Materials, but how do I ‘add’ this material to my object in the 3D Window?!? Colors typically come up once I click on the object, but what about textures?

Thanks for the help.

Ian

2

There are add material buttons in the … ehm material section F5 … and the texture can be added there too … In this section you can set all kinds of settings for the materials… there’s also a seperate texture section were you can tweak them…

But to tell you the truth … noone can explain all these settings wich are there… But they are really easily explained in the documention of blender…
Check \

http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Using_Blender.80.0.html

I am sure anybody here will be happy to answer remaining questions…

3

if your object is selected ( pink ), whatever you do in the material window is for that object. If there is no material in the material window, then that object has not yet been assigned a material. To change the material of an object click on the double arrow on the left in the materials window, and create a new material, or select one that is already there. as long as your object is selected, that material will then be assigned to yur object.

4

The 3D window doesn’t give you the colors you’re looking for; the preview screen in the buttons window is the closest representation of what will be on you mesh. And the texture will show the chosen texture in the texture buttons preview (F6) but you’ll see materials, mapto and textures in the shaders (materials) preview (F5). Click the buttons in the preview to change the representation from flat to sphere to cube.

The only texture you can see in “full color” in the 3D window are images mapped thru the UV editor. You can get a rough idea of procedural textures if you use shaded mode (Alt-Z). The more you subdivide the mesh the closer it will get to “full color”, but the only way to see what you’re looking for is to render (F12).

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5

Only three types of texturing are shown in the 3D window

  • UV mapping (a bit complicated for newbies imo, but can be very useful for complex texturing problems)
  • Vertex paint (fun to mess around with, but not quite as useful outside the gameengine)
  • The base colour of a material

any other texturing you’ll have to rely on the preview in the F5 and F6 windows, and make test renders (with F12) often.