Fortunately, learning how to create believable natural surface materials will help you in the development of many other material types. In many ways simulating natural objects in Blender will require more complex materials and textures than man-made objects to make them look convincing. Color, specularity, and reflection can organically change across a surface as a result of location, climate interaction, and variations in the natural substance. However, natural surfaces can be quite complex in their appearance.

The surface of a natural material may seem one of the easiest to reproduce in a 3D suite such as Blender. By the end of the book, you will be able to simulate some of the most difficult effects to recreate in any 3D suite, such as smoke, fire, and explosions.

Explore ways to speed up animations by using special painting techniques to significantly lower render times. Transparency and reflection are both tricky natural surface properties to simulate but these recipes will make it easy. You will learn how to emulate the reflective properties of natural materials and how to simulate materials such as rusted iron, which is difficult to make believable.

Familiarize yourself with a plethora of tools that will help you to effectively organize your textures and materials. By utilizing some of the easiest-to-use animation tools available, you will be able to produce accurate movement in mesh objects. The book begins with recipes that show you how to create natural surface materials, including a variety of pebbles, rocks, wood, and water, as well as man-made metals, complete with rust. It covers all core Blender functions you will ever need to easily create perfect simulation of objects from the simplest to the most complex ones. This book wastes no time on boring theory and bombards you with examples of ready-created materials and textures from the start, with clear instructions on how they were created, and what you can learn from them for making your own. Imagine how you will feel when you overcome these obstacles. It can take you hours just to create basic textures and materials in Blender and when you think of creating complex materials and textures you are petrified. Its material and texture functions offer spectacular surface creation possibilities. Blender 2.5 is one of the most usable 3D suites available.

Blender material library free