Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook, Third Edition

Book Image

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook, Third Edition

By : Enrico Valenza

Book Image

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook, Third Edition

By: Enrico Valenza

Overview of this book

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook Third Edition

Blender Cycles: Materials and Textures Cookbook Third Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Overview of Materials in Cycles

Overview of Materials in Cycles

Material nodes in Cycles

Procedural textures in Cycles

Setting the World material

Creating a mesh-light material

Using volume materials

Using displacement

Managing Cycles Materials

Managing Cycles Materials

Preparing an ideal Cycles interface for material creation

Naming materials and textures

Creating node groups

Grouping nodes under frames for easier reading

Linking materials and node groups

Creating Natural Materials in Cycles

Creating Natural Materials in Cycles

Creating a rock material using image maps

Creating a rock material using procedural textures

Creating a sand material using procedural textures

Creating a simple ground material using procedural textures

Creating a snow material using procedural textures

Creating an ice material using procedural textures

Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles

Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles

Creating a generic plastic material

Creating a Bakelite material

Creating an expanded polystyrene material

Creating a clear (glassy) polystyrene material

Creating a rubber material

Creating an antique bronze material with procedurals

Creating a multipurpose metal node group

Creating a rusty metal material with procedurals

Creating a wood material with procedurals

Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles

Creating Complex Natural Materials in Cycles

Creating an ocean material using procedural textures

Creating underwater environment materials

Creating a snowy mountain landscape with procedurals

Creating a realistic Earth as seen from space

Creating More Complex Man-made Materials

Creating More Complex Man-made Materials

Creating cloth materials with procedurals

Creating a leather material with procedurals

Creating a synthetic sponge material with procedurals

Creating a spaceship hull shader

Subsurface Scattering in Cycles

Subsurface Scattering in Cycles

Using the Subsurface Scattering shader node

Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Translucent shader

Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Vertex Color tool

Simulating Subsurface Scattering in Cycles using the Ray Length output in the Light Path node

Creating a fake Subsurface Scattering node group

Creating Organic Materials

Creating Organic Materials

Creating an organic-looking shader with procedurals

Creating a wasp-like chitin material with procedural textures

Creating a beetle-like chitin material with procedural textures

Creating tree shaders – the bark

Creating tree shaders – the leaves

Creating a layered human skin material in Cycles

Creating fur and hair

Creating a gray alien skin material with procedurals

Special Materials

Special Materials

Using Cycles volume materials

Creating a cloud volumetric material

Creating a fire and smoke shader

Creating a shadeless material in Cycles

Creating a fake immersion effect material

Creating a fake volume light material

Index

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Creating a generic plastic material

In this recipe, we will create a generic plastic shader and add slight granularity (optional) to the surface, as shown in the following screenshot:

The generic plastic material as it appears in the final rendering

Getting ready...

Start Blender and load the 9931OS_Suzanne_start.blend file. This is a prepared scene, with Suzanne (the monkey head primitive that is Blender's mascot) leaning on a white Plane, a Camera, a mesh-light emitting slightly yellowish light, and a low-intensity gray World.

Note

We'll use a lot this file as starting point for several of our recipes.

How to do it...

Now we will go straight to creation of the material, so follow these steps:

Select Suzanne and click on New in the Material window under the Properties panel or in the Node Editor toolbar. Rename the material Plastic_Green_Soft.
Set the Viewport Shading mode of the Camera view to Rendered by moving the mouse into the 3D view and pressing Shift + Z.
In the Material window under the...