Noobish question about textures

(Jords) #1

I don’t exactly understand about how to texture an object so at a certain positon or region of the object it is a paticular pattern/shade.

For example, if i had a roof on a house, obviously that’s going to need a different texture to the rest of the house. So would i need to make it a seperate blender object, with it’s own textures, and then have it have to be moved around seperatly with the rest of the house and probably be not quite on exactly, so it does’nt look right.

What about a gutter, a front door?

What is the best way of doing this?

(Modron) #2

you can have multiple materials on a single mesh. there’s a set of buttons related to materials in the edit buttons that look alot like the vertex group buttons, and work basically the same way. to make new ( material indices ) ones, add a few materials, then in edit mode select the faces you want to belong to a certain group, go to materials and select the material you want, then back in edit buttons in the materials groups buttons, press ‘assign’. repeat the process to make other groups. also, if you have multiple objects, with multiple materials on them, and you join them using ctrl J, they will retain their original material indices, so no problems there.

(Jords) #3

Okay, about to read that 3 times so it sinks in and try it, thanks!

(Jords) #4

How do i get to the edit buttions? (possibly know them, just not by name)

(Modron) #5

press the button that looks like a square with yellow dots on the corners.

(nico) #6

I can only give you the advice to avoid this ‘blender can have multiple materials’ stuff and put your energy into learning UV-Mapping. With the multiple materials you will always end up in procedural textures and repeating texture patterns.

UV-Mapping is what you need to make good textures anyway, so there’s no way around it, IMHO.

I started training it after 2 years of blending and I could slap myself for wasting time before.

When I give training sessions I usually don’t tell them how to texture without UV-Mapping (except for some cases when it really makes sense (animated water etc).

(Trident) #7

You’re not quite right here. UVs are important for both realtime and non-realtime render, but so does ability to have multiple materials. You can’t control raytracing setup with UVs you can’t control shader types with UVs.

… Just consider the house example. Roof material needs no trabsparency, window material does. Making everything, but windows alpha1 through UV is a very inefficient option. Human skin, eyes, lips and hair all need different materials, anfd no amount of UVmapping skills would help there.

That said, there is one fundamental problem with materials: they’re assigned on per-polygon basis, - something you’d rather consider while modelling.