tgj2o_3d-materials_blender

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Materials
We are now going to explore how to attach materials and textures to our model. The important thing to remember in Blender is EACH OBJECT SELECTED IN OBJECT MODE HAS ITS OWN MATERIALS. You can use settings from one object on another one, but in the end the cockpit will have it's own materials as will the disc. The UFO body is going to be a metallic grey except for a strip of colour around it's ring. To do this we have to be in **EDIT MODE**. We're going to be in __**Surface select**__ (instead of vertex or line select).

Step 1 - Putting a grey metal on the saucer disc.
Choose all of the surfaces of the saucer disk by pressing A.

Open the materials menu at the far right side of your screen and press NEW.

Rename this new material to **//Saucer.disc//** and press enter.

What values do we use for metal? We look it up here ->[]

For steel we're going to use the following settings:

__**Click on the colour bar**__ (next to the word DIFFUSE ) and choose:
 * R: ** 0.211
 * G: ** 0.214
 * B: ** 0.220

For SPECULAR choose: **R:** 1.0 **B:** 0.984
 * G:** 1.0

Click on the RAMP check-button in specular and choose HARDNESS 16, under the LINEAER menu there's a colour bar. Click on it and choose: **R:** 0.342 **B:** 0.475 **Alpha:** 0.5
 * G:** 0.416

This is for the slight blue-ish tinge metal has to it.

Our saucer section is done with one exception.

Step 2 - Ring Section of the saucer
Go to top-view mode (7 on the keypad). Once in EDIT MODE/Surface Select choose your circle select tool (C), change the size of the brush you are using to tailor to your zoom level (middle scroll wheel lets you roll bigger/smaller brush) and choose the middle ring of the top surface. If you make a mistake - no worries - you can DESELECT any mistakes you make by pressing SHIFT and painting the surfaces you want deselected. Once you're happy with the selection press ENTER.

We're going to colour this ring with a new colour (but same type of material). Click on the + on the right side of the materials panel. Make a new material called **Saucer.ring.** Notice how there are 2 material slots in this object now?

Choose the DIFFUSE colour settings of: R: 0.431 G: 0.448 B: 0.114

Make the intensity of 0.400

Click on the __**ASSIGN**__ button to get the colour to "stick" to the ring now.

Step 3 - Cockpit
Go back out to the OBJECT MODE. Right click select the cockpit and head back into EDIT MODE. We're going to edit faces on the cockpit. Add a new material and use the dropdown menu and choose the same Saucer.disc material used in colouring the disc. Call it **cockpit.black.** Select all of the faces (A) and ASSIGN the colour to the faces (under the material there's a button called ASSIGN). Deselect all the faces now.

Now __**create a new material**__ for the viewscreen. Use the [|material settings for glass]. Select a region of faces (4 'panes'). After tweaking the glass material ASSIGN the colour to the 4 selected faces.

The settings are thus:

Finally - let's smooth the cockpit and saucer to make them look more realistic. To do so, exit out into OBJECT MODE. Select the cockpit and on the left toolbar click on SMOOTH (instead of FLAT). Deselect, then select Saucer and click on SMOOTH.

Let's do a quick render to see what it's going to look like now.

Step 4 - Render
We are going to do a quick render to see what it's going to look like.

Hit 0 on the keypad to view what the camera will view. Now on the right side, near where you pressed the materials button, you will launch the render settings (it looks like a camera icon). Choose HDTV 720p default (it merely sets up the aspect ratio for the output - it doesn't really effect the quality of the render).

Click the Render button and the render will come up. Down at the bottom of the screen go ahead and choose IMAGE>SAVE A COPY

You'll have to choose the D: drive in your folder and give the file the appropriate name (probably saucer1.png). BY DEFAULT THE COMPRESSION TYPE IS PNG. It MUST be given that file extension or you won't likely be able to see the picture afterwards.

It still looks pretty fake right? There are MANY things we can do to start adding texture and lighting to make our saucers more "realistic" but still they're.....you know.....flying saucers so we won't expect much.