# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Creating a Simple Hat

|previous=Detailing Your Simple Person 2
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
In this module, you\'ll create a hat for your simple person. Along the
way, you\'ll learn how to use the Spin tool and use layers.

\_\_TOC\_\_

## Creating a Generatrix

For future convenience, you\'ll create the hat as a new object in the
scene containing the simple person. If you haven\'t created the simple
person, either go back and do it now or else download the pre-made model
from
.

Start by changing layers to layer two, then add the basis for your hat:
![](Blender-2.5_layers.png "Blender-2.5_layers.png")

1.  Make sure you\'re in Object Mode (so that a new object will be
    created).
2.  Click  on the second little square,
    this will make the viewport display layer two. (The top row is for
    layers 1 to 10, the bottom for 11 to 20, so layer 2 is immediately
    to the right of layer 1; layer 6 is across the space from layer 5.)
3.  Go to orthographic front view by pressing
    , then
    .
4.  Create a mesh circle at the cursor, by activating the 3D View
    window, pressing  +
     and choosing *Mesh → Circle*.

The new mesh object doesn\'t actually have to be a circle. You could use
any sort of mesh object here because you\'re about to reshape it into a
custom 2D mesh (called a )
that describes the profile of your hat. More precisely, the generatrix
describes one side of a vertical cross-section through the hat. You\'ll
want your generatrix to have a slope; it should be higher on one side
(which will become the top of the crown) than on the other (which will
become the brim).

1.  The newly-created mesh should be selected. If it isn\'t, select it
    by clicking  on it.
2.  Press  to edit the mesh.
3.  Activate Vertex select mode.
4.  Press  until all vertices are
    selected.
5.  Press  to erase all vertices.

![](Blender3DNoobToPro-SimpleHat-Profile.png "Blender3DNoobToPro-SimpleHat-Profile.png")
Now draw your generatrix, starting with the brim and sloping upwards
toward the top of the crown:

1.  Make sure you\'re still in orthographic front view.
2.  Press  to create the first
    vertex.
3.  Press  to one side of that
    vertex to extrude another vertex, connected to the first by an edge.

(If this doesn\'t work, make sure you are in vertex select mode.)

Keep adding vertices until you\'re satisfied with the shape of your
generatrix. You can always undo using
 or go back and adjust the
positions of particular vertices using the grab tool.

The mesh is then spun around an axis perpendicular to the viewplane. You
want to spin around a vertical axis, so press
 to switch to top view.

## Spinning the Hat

!The spun hat, drawn as wireframe in orthographic front
view.
Now, let\'s actually spin the hat:

1.  Move the 3D cursor to the vertex you want to spin around by pressing
     on it. You can also use the
    snapping tool for positioning the cursor more precisely by pressing
     after selecting that specific
    vertex. *Cursor to selected* positions the cursor.
2.  Press  to select all the vertices. The
    Spin control only spins vertices that are selected.
3.  Press  to activate the Spin tool.
    -   The Spin tool is also available in the Tool Shelf under *Add*\
        If you spin the hat in front view, your hat will be flat. You
        have to spin the hat in top view.\

You should now see 90° of a generatrix! To spin your hat all the way
round, press  or look in the Operator
Panel just below the Tool Shelf. There should be an input slider named
*Angle*, change this value from 90 to 360. There should also be a slider
called *Steps*, increase the value from 9 to 15.

If your hat has a large hole in the center, you must have accidentally
moved the 3D cursor away from the vertex you picked in step 1. Try
again.

Remember that if you spin an object 360° there will be a double row of
vertices at the row of vertices you spun. To fix this, press
 to select all vertices, press
 and select *Remove Doubles*. Note that
this will only work in vertex select mode.

You may also want to merge the vertices at the top of the hat. Do this
by selecting all the vertices at the top with
 and pressing
+ → *At
Center*. You may have to do this twice as some vertices might be beneath
each other.

Note for AMD windows users that \"Radeon Software\" using  ALT+R  as
default key for \"Overlay Hotkey\" which blocks key in Blender. You can
change hotkey in \"Radeon Software\" preferences.

You have more than one 3D View window, so Blender is asking which window
to perform the spin in. Click  on the
window that is showing top view.

## Smoothing Your Hat

!The finished
product!{width="400"}

You\'ll probably have noticed that normal hats aren\'t usually as
faceted as yours! To change this, first press
 to go back to Object mode then change
the shading to *Smooth* (available on the Tool Shelf). If there are
unexpected black marks, try recalculating the normals.

1.  Switch to Edit mode and open the Mesh menu in the 3D View Header.
2.  *Normals → Recalculate Outside*.

Next, add a Subsurf modifier to the hat and set the subdivisions to two,
as you did in
.

1.  Click on the modifiers tab (wrench icon) in a Properties window.
2.  *Add Modifier → Subdivision Surface*.

Save your work. You\'ll need this scene for the next module.

## Additional Resources

-   <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mPtxa_MEPA> Ira Krakow\'s Hat
    Creation Video Tutorial, based on this page.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Putting Hat on Person

|previous=Creating a Simple Hat
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
Once you\'re satisfied with the shapes of individual objects, you\'ll
want to combine them into a coherent scene. You do this in Object Mode.

In this module, you\'ll learn how to move objects to and from layers.
You\'ll also learn how to rename and parent objects, and you\'ll get an
introduction to Outliner Windows.

\_\_TOC\_\_

You\'ll need the person-and-hat scene from the previous module. If you
haven\'t done it, either go back and do it now or else download the
pre-made model from
.

## Adjusting an Object\'s Median Point

!The person that you (yeah you!) made with the origin in his geometric
center. made with the origin in his geometric center.")

1.  Load the person-and-hat scene.
2.  Make sure Blender is in Object Mode.
3.  Switch to Layer 2, select the hat and press
    . A dialog box will pop up for you to
    choose which layer to move it to. Either press *1* (the number on
    top of the keyboard, **not** the numberpad) or select the first box
    in the popup.
4.  Select the person you made earlier.\

Just as you did in Edit Mode, you can specify the pivot for rotating and
scaling objects in Object Mode. If you just finished the previous
module, the pivot is probably set to \"3D Cursor\". If so, change it
back to \"Median Point\".

In Edit Mode, the \"Median Point\" for pivoting is the geometric center
of all selected vertices, edges, or faces. In Object Mode, however,
it\'s the origin of the selected object\'s local coordinates, indicated
by an orange dot. In other words, the origin might lie far from the
object\'s geometric center.

You can use buttons in the Tools Shelf to reunify an object\'s origin
with its geometric center:

1.  With Blender in Object Mode, click
    on *Set Origin* in the Tool Shelf (under the \"Edit\" sub menu of
    *Tools*) and select *Origin To Geometry* (Blender 2.70: \"Object\"
    -\> \"Transform\" -\> \"Origin to Geometry\") to move the selected
    object\'s origin to its geometric center (without changing the
    object\'s appearance).\

This can be useful when you want a better picture of your object. With
the origin set to the person\'s geometric center, you can now snap the
object with  to the 3D cursor. This
will let you view more of the model at one time and make for a faster
editing workflow.

## Positioning the Hat

!Positioning the
hat Once you
have the hat properly oriented, move it into position on the person\'s
head. The grab tool enables you to position objects in Object Mode in
the same way you positioned vertices, edges, and faces in Edit Mode.

1.  Make sure Blender is in Object Mode.
2.  Click  on the hat object to select
    it.
3.  Activate the grab tool by pressing
    .

As you move the mouse pointer, the hat will move around in the viewport.
By default, the movement plane is perpendicular to the view axis, so the
hat will move differently depending on which viewpoint you\'re working
in.

Just as in the Edit Mode grab tool, you can:

-   Restrict the direction of motion by pressing
    ,
    , or
    . Press once to move parallel to a
    global axis, twice to use a local axis. (Press the same key a third
    time to return to view-plane motion.)
-   To restrict motion to the global X-Y plane, lock the global Z by
    pressing .
-   Hold down  to restrict motion to
    discrete steps (typically one Blender unit).
-   Hold down  to get finer control
    over the motion.
-   Click  or press
     to finalize the position and exit
    the tool.
-   Click  or press
     to return the object to its
    previous position and exit.\

Use two different orthographic views to position the hat on the
person\'s head. You will probably want to scale the hat to make it fit
the person\'s head better. When you are doing this along the X or Y
axis, make the changes symmetrical by specifying the axes you want
scaling to be constrained to. This option is available in the Operator
panel (just below the Tool Shelf) and also by pressing F6.

## Parenting the Hat to the Person

!The parenting
menu.

Once you have the hat properly sized and positioned on the person\'s
head, you\'ll want it to stay there. In order to maintain such a cozy
relationship between two objects, you\'d have to remember to select them
both before rotating, moving, or scaling. A drastic solution might be to
join them into a single object using
.

A better compromise is to  the
hat to the person. Parenting creates a relationship between two objects,
such that certain changes to one object (called the
) automatically affect
the other (called the ).
Changes to the child, however, do not affect the parent.

Note that an object can have many children, but only one parent.

Since the person is bigger than the hat, it\'s logical to parent the hat
to the person (meaning: parent = person, child = hat) instead of vice
versa.

1.  Make sure Blender is in Object Mode.
2.  Click  on the hat object to select
    it.
3.  Click  on the person object.

    :   Both the person and the hat should now be selected. The order of
        selection is important here.
4.  Press  to parent the hat to
    the person.
5.  Select *Object*. The most recently selected object becomes the
    parent of all other selected objects.

Now when you move the hat you will see a line from the hat to the
person, indicating that the person is the hat\'s parent. And if you move
the person, the hat will move with it.

You may get an error saying something like *Loop to Parents*, fix this
by clearing all previous parents with
+.

## Renaming Objects

!The renaming
dialog

When you have multiple objects in a scene, it helps to give each one a
name.

Click on the *Objects* tab in the Properties panel (the one with a box
icon).

1.  Now select the hat by clicking  on
    it.
2.  At the very top of the tab you should see a dialog box with the name
    of your object
    -   The hat\'s name might be something like \"Circle\" depending on
        which mesh primitive you first built the hat from.
3.  Click  on the dialog box and type in
    a more descriptive name like \"Hat\".

You have now changed the name of the hat\'s object datablock. This name
change will be reflected in the Outliner, which we will look at shortly.

Now select your person by clicking  on
it and repeat the process, changing the name to something like
\"Person\".

## Outliner Windows

!The Outliner window.

Once you give objects names, it helps to have a way to find objects by
their name and parent. This is exactly what the Outliner is for and it
comes in very handy when you are working with a large scene. The
Outliner is usually just above the Properties panel. You may want to
pull it down a bit to see it more clearly.

You\'ll notice that all the objects in your scene (Person, camera etc)
are listed and that you can select these objects by clicking
 on them. And if you click
 on an object, a menu will pop up with
options like *Select*, *Deselect*, *Delete* etc. If you select the
Person and then click the \"+\" sign to its left, you will see that the
Hat is listed below the person. This is because Blender lists all
children objects beneath their parents.

On the right of each object there are a series of icons which represent
the state of the object. For example, the eye icon means that your
object is visible in the 3D viewport. You can turn off its visibility by
clicking  on the eye, which will turn
grey; click again on the eye to make it visible. If you hover the mouse
over the icons a text box will pop up with a description of what that
particular icon does.

## Good on ya\' mate!

Congratulations!! You have now finished your simple character. Pat
yourself on the back, and have a celebratory coffee! (Or pop!)\
\

## Additional Resources

-
-
-


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Materials and Textures

|previous=Putting Hat on Person
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
In 3D graphics, materials and textures are nearly as important as
shapes. Scenes would be boring if all the objects were gray.

The  in Blender allows
you to model a wide variety of materials and how they interact with
light. The next few modules will introduce the available options.

## Material versus Texture

A  defines the optical
properties of an object: its color and whether it is dull or shiny. A
 is a pattern that breaks up
the uniform appearance of the material. Very few objects in the real
world have completely uniform surfaces. Instead most of them have
patterning or variation in color: consider the grain in a piece of wood,
the pile in a carpet, or the mortar in a brick wall.

Blender allows textures to influence materials in various ways, such as
altering their colors. Multiple textures can interact with each other to
produce interesting effects.

Note that textures have to be attached to materials to affect objects,
you cannot apply a texture to an object without a material.

## Other Material Settings

Additional settings you can specify for a material include
,
 and
.

Shaders determine how the appearance of a material varies with the angle
of the light:  shaders give a
non-shiny look, while
shaders give a mirror-like finish. Blender\'s material settings always
involve both kinds of shaders, but you can adjust a material\'s diffuse
and specular colours separately to control their respective effects; if
you set the specular colour to black, the surface will no longer produce
reflections.

Ray-tracing is a technique for modeling the physical path of light
through the scene. It is capable of producing exquisite reflection and
refraction effects, including different degrees of reflectivity,
translucency and transparency, and representing materials with different
indexes of refraction. Blender provides two separate groups of
ray-tracing settings, one for reflection of light and the other for its
transmission through the material. You can control these settings on a
per-material basis.

Halo rendering means an object no longer looks like solid matter,
instead it appears to be made of bits of light. This can be used for
real-world effects like fire, smoke and plasma, or to create fantasy
effects with no connection to reality.

Note that reflections produced by ray-tracing are separate from that
produced by the specular shader: the former are controlled by the
material\'s mirror colour, while the latter is controlled by its
specular colour.

Reflection is done in two different ways because, while ray-tracing
produces the most realistic renders, it is also very CPU-intensive. It
is therefore best to apply the ray-tracing effects when you\'re
completely done with your modelling to help reduce high CPU usage.
Enough practice with ray-tracing can also help you get stunning effects
with just few clicks without you having to do much trial and error. You
would do well to dedicate at least a few hours of your time to
experimenting with it, so that in a future real production situation,
you will be spared all that hassle.

## Types of Textures

When you create a texture in Blender, you will see a popup menu listing
a whole lot of different types for the texture. The
 texture type lets you
use a scanned image to texture your object: for example, you can scan an
actual piece of metal and use that to give your object a realistic
metallic appearance, or use a photograph of an actual brick wall to
texture the wall of a building model, and so on. You could even use a
movie, which plays during the animation of the scene.

The other texture types are called
, which means the textures
are generated according to algorithms built into Blender itself. These
can be useful for simulating various effects when you don't have an
image of the real material handy; they can also be applied to augment
the appearance in various ways. For example:

-   using a "cloud" texture to "dirty-up" a material

:   or

-   using one texture as a stencil to create an amalgam of two other
    textures.

## Additional Resources


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Quickie Material

|previous=Materials and Textures
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
In this module, you will create a new material called \"Green Ooze\".
Along the way, you will learn how to alter the diffuse, specular, and
mirror colors of a material.

## Your First Material

!**Figure 1:** The Materials context in the Properties
window.{width="180"}

The cube in the default scene (which you get from *File → Load Factory
Settings*) has a simple grey color. Now click on the Materials context
![](materials_button.png "materials_button.png") in the Properties
![](Blender269PropertiesIcon.png "Blender269PropertiesIcon.png") window.

The materials context contains various menus, but for now you only need
diffuse, specular and mirror. The material is named and linked in the
panel above the preview window.
( is a feature that allows
materials to be shared between multiple objects (or datablocks).
Changing a material affects the appearance of everything it is linked
to.)

The first row of the window above the preview window indicates that:

-   there is one material assigned to this object and its name is
    \"Material\".

The second row of controls indicates that:

-   The current selected material\'s name is \"Material\".
-   This material will only be saved if it\'s in use.
-   It is not a \"Nodes\" material.
-   Instead of being linked directly to an object, the current material
    is linked to a datablock.

To rename the material, click  on the
name and enter the name you want.

To unlink the material, click  on the
**X** button to the right of the material name (\"Material\"). Do this
now. This deletes the link to the datablock, removing the material from
the mesh. As a side-effect, most of the panels in the Material context
disappear. You will see in a moment, however, that the material still
exists. It hasn\'t been deleted; it is simply no longer in use.

At this point, you could click  the
\"New\" button to create a new material, but instead we are going to
reapply the old material:

1.  Click  on the
    ![](Next_new_button.png "Next_new_button.png") button to the left of
    the \"New\" button.
2.  You\'ll see a nifty drop-down list containing all materials you\'ve
    created so far. Choose *0 Material*.

Materials whose names are preceded by \"0\" in this list are not in use.
By default, Blender doesn\'t save such materials when it saves the
scene. Thus, you can delete a material from the list by saving the scene
and then reopening it. You can override this behavior by toggling the
\"F\" button \"on\" for unused materials you want saved.

Your materials will be much easier to find and manage if you give them
brief, descriptive names you can recognize at a glance. Change this
one\'s name to \"Green Ooze\". In addition, naming of your materials and
other objects in your scene is useful when such components of your scene
will be appended in another scene of a different Blender file. Naming
your materials and other stuff in the scene will enable you to choose
the right objects and materials you need whenever you wish to append
just a portion of a whole bunch of work you did. For instance, you\'re
working on a new Blender project, but felt the material you used in this
Blender file is worth it. Instead of going through the pain of creating
a new material (of course you guessed in the initial one in getting the
right material appearance), you just append the material to your new
work. Pretty simple! Make naming a habit, as it\'s much used in a
production environment.\
\

## Specifying Colors

Simple materials are specified by three colors: diffuse, specular and
mirror. Rectangular patches (*swatches*) of the colour in their own
panel in the Material context allow you to see and change each of these.
Diffuse color is the basic underlying color of the material, rendered by
the . Specular color is
for highlights (small bright spots on a shiny surface) as rendered by
the . Mirror color is
for true reflections rendered using ray-tracing.

There are many ways to define colours. Blender supports three:

-   RGB: By specifying relative amounts of red, green and blue *primary
    colours*, by giving a number from 0.0 to 1.0 for each component. For
    example, (R, G, B) = (0, 0, 0) specifies black (no colour at all);
    (0, 1, 0) is full green; (1, 1, 0) (full red + full green) is
    yellow; (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) is 50% grey, and (1, 1, 1) is full white
    (maximum intensity of all components). Note that this is *additive
    mixing* of colours, which is what happens when you shine lights of
    different colours onto a white screen, not the *subtractive mixing*
    that takes place when you mix different-coloured paints or inks on
    paper or canvas.
-   HSV: By specifying a *hue* (colour position on the rainbow) together
    with a *saturation* (strength of colour, from garish down to pastel,
    with zero giving shades of grey) and *value* (brightness). This is
    generally considered to be easier to use than RGB notation when you
    are trying to create new colours (as opposed to copying a colour
    spec from somewhere else), since it is easier to predict what the
    likely result will be. HSV is commonly represented on a *colour
    wheel*, where the hue is the angle around the circle, saturation the
    distance from the centre, and value controlled by a separate
    brightness slider (as shown below).
-   By specifying a 6-digit hexadecimal number. This is just an
    alternative form of RGB notation, commonly used for colour
    specifications in Web pages.

framed\|**Figure 2:** Blender's colour picker
popup If you click on any
colour swatch, the colour picker will pop up, allowing you to change the
values. This is the most intuitive way. The window that appears will
look like this and will include the following (Figure 2):

1.  A color wheel to change the color as you want. In HSV mode, H
    corresponds to angle around this wheel, while S corresponds to
    distance from the centre.
2.  Three color sliders that will change if you change the color in the
    colorwheel. You can also change the values with the sliders.
3.  A slider that controls the intensity of the color. This corresponds
    to the V in HSV.
4.  A pipette capable of sampling colors from any Blender window or
    render window.
5.  Buttons that can change it to \"HSV\" or \"HEX\" mode.

-   Alternatively you can specify hue, saturation and value components
    by clicking  on the \"HSV\" button
    and pushing the sliders around accordingly.

```{=html}
<!-- -->
```
-   You can also press the last button and enter the hexadecimal (or
    HEX) code. This is simply a different representation for RGB, where
    the hex digits represent *rrggbb*.

HSV is probably the most easily understandable way of specifying and
experimenting with colours. However, as is common with most computer
systems, all colours in Blender are represented internally as RGB.

If you want to get rid of the window just click
 anywhere else.

The most used method of creating a color of your own is using the color
wheel, but because we want to be sure you will get the exact same color
as us we will use the sliders. Use the above methods to set the diffuse
color to R=0.149, G=1.000, B=0.446 (or use the HEX code: 6CFFB2). If you
look in the \"Preview\" panel, you will see that the material is now
bright green.

Most real-life materials (other than metals) don\'t alter the color of
specular light. For this reason, Specular and Mirror are usually left at
their default values (white). For green ooze, however, you\'ll disregard
this rule-of-thumb:

1.  Click  the sample rectangle below
    the Specular window.
2.  Use the color selection dialog to adjust the specular color and
    watch the Preview panel to see how this color affects the sample
    sphere\'s highlight.
3.  Set the specular color to R=0.640, G=0.990, B=0.566 (or use the HEX
    code: D1FEC6).

With these values for Color and Specular, you should be able to get a
good ooze later on. The Preview, Diffuse and Specular panel should now
look like this:

![](Green_ooze.png "Green_ooze.png")
![](Green_ooze_props.png "Green_ooze_props.png")

As you can see, there are many other material buttons. Many of these
will be explained in later modules. Suggestions for creating specific
materials may be found in
.

Save this scene before proceeding. You will need it for
, in which you will
perfect your ooze.

## Additional Resources

-
-
-


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Multiple Materials Per Object

|previous=Quickie Material
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
!The finished render.
In this module, you\'ll create a beach ball with two alternating
colours. Along the way, you\'ll learn how to apply multiple materials to
a single object.

Many real-life objects have parts which are different colours, or are
even made of different materials. One way to model such objects is to
make each part a separate Blender object. However, Blender also allows
you to assign different materials to parts of a single object.

## Set the Scene

Begin by opening Blender and removing the default cube.

Now create a mesh for the beach ball:

1.  With the 3D View window active, press
    +)
    and choose *Add → Mesh → UV Sphere*.
2.  Expand the \"Add UV Sphere\" panel in the bottom left of the screen,
    then specify 8 segments and 4 rings.

    :   The initial result will be crude, but meshes with fewer vertices
        are easier to edit.

Make the mesh rounder and more organic using automatic subdivision:

1.  In the \"Properties\" editor, select the \"Modifiers\" context
    (wrench icon).
2.  Select \"Add Modifier\" and click *Generate → Subdivision Surface*.
3.  For the number of subdivisions, set both the \'View\' and \'Render\'
    count to **2**.

Get rid of that blocky look:

1.  Ensure you\'re in Object
    Mode.
2.  Click the object button at the top of the viewport.
3.  Select \"Shade Smooth\" from the list of options.

The ball is now round, but a bit prolate. To make it more spherical,
scale it by about 1.1 along the X and Y axes. To select the X-Y plane,
you select ′*not* **Z**′, by using the key combination
. The complete sequence is, then,
, ,
.

## Colorize Time

Now you\'re ready to begin adding colors to the object:

1.  Press  to put Blender into Edit
    mode.
2.  In the Properties editor, select the \"Material\" button
    ![](Materials_button.png "Materials_button.png").
3.  Press \"+ New\".

    :   A new material appears in the material slot list, and several
        additional panels appear below to edit the created material.
4.  In the \"Surface\" panel, click on the default white base color and
    change it to a nice yellow.

    :   At this point, the entire ball is yellow.

![](Blender259BeachBall_Yellow.png "Blender259BeachBall_Yellow.png")

In the \"Materials\" panel click the \"+\" button (indicated by the red
box in the picture, below) next to the material slot list to create a
new blank slot. The \"+ New\" button will reappear (indicated by the
blue box, in the picture below).

![](Blender259ObjectAddSecondMaterial.png "Blender259ObjectAddSecondMaterial.png")

Click the \"+ New\" button and a new material will be created and
assigned the empty slot in the materials slot list. Ensure that the new
material is selected, then change the base color to blue. Nothing will
happen to the beach ball, yet.

Now make a single blue stripe on the ball:

1.  All the vertices should still be selected from before; make sure the
    3D view is active, then hit  to
    deselect them.
2.  Switch to front view with , and to
    \"Face Select\" mode by selecting the face select button. Which is
    to the left of the \"view\" button in the top left of the viewport.
3.  Select a column of four faces that will make up one stripe of the
    beach ball (using , or
     depending on your selection
    key, on each face):

    :   ![](Blender259BeachBall_Selected.png "fig:Blender259BeachBall_Selected.png")
4.  In the \"Material\" property window, select the blue material slot
    in the list, then click the \"**Assign**\" button.

Rotate the view (e.g. ) so you can skip
past a yellow stripe adjacent to the blue stripe, and select the second
column that will become a blue stripe. Work your way around the ball to
do this three more times. (Remember we made the sphere with 8 segments;
four of these are yellow, and four are blue).

Now you see the benefit of making a sphere with only 4 rings: more rings
would have meant more faces in each stripe, and more clicking to select
them.

For help with rendering your beach ball, see our Noob to Pro/Render
Settings and Noob
to Pro/Quickie
Render


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Metal Versus Plastic

|previous=Multiple Materials Per Object
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
There are different kinds of shiny materials. Consider the difference
between a shiny metallic object, and one made out of a glossy
nonmetallic material (like plastic or ceramic). This page will explain
some simple techniques for (approximately) mimicking the appearances of
these materials using shader settings in the Blender Internal renderer.

For all the following manipulations, start a new Blender document, get
rid of the default cube, and replace it with a UV sphere. Set it to be
smooth-shaded. Change the lamp falloff to be inverse linear, just to
make the scene brighter. Assign the sphere a new default material. It is
the settings of this material we will now proceed to play around with.

## Making It Plastic

![](PlastickyMagentaBall.png "PlastickyMagentaBall.png") For a plastic
or glossy effect, give the material a diffuse colour, but leave the
specular colour at white. Increase the specular intensity to something
like 0.9.

(In this and the following examples, I used a diffuse colour of
#E7398B.)

## Making It Metal

![](MetallicMagentaBall.png "MetallicMagentaBall.png") Now change the
specular colour to be the same as the diffuse colour. (The easy way to
do this is to bring up the specular colour picker, click on its
eyedropper icon, and use the eyedropper tool to click on the swatch
showing the diffuse colour.) Also lower the specular hardness from its
default value of 50, to something like 25 or even 12. This will spread
out the specular highlight, giving the impression of a surface that is
shiny, but not perfectly smooth. Also lower the diffuse intensity, to
something like 0.05.

To make the metal more convincing, you may want to choose a more typical
metal colour, like grey, copper or bronze.

## Making It Ceramic

![](CeramicMagentaBall.png "CeramicMagentaBall.png") Let's try for a
glazed-ceramic look, or perhaps some dark, shiny stone like obsidian.
Set the specular colour back to white (the easiest way to do this is to
switch to HSV view in the colour picker and set the S(aturation) value
to 0). Increase the hardness to something like 200 to narrow and
intensify the specular highlight. Leave the specular intensity high and
the diffuse intensity low.

To get an even more sharply-focused highlight, change the specular
shader model from its "CookTorr" default to "WardIso". The "Hardness"
parameter gets replaced with a "Slope" instead; leave this at the
default 0.1.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Texture Settings

|previous=Metal Versus Plastic
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
!Material texture
settings In
the Properties
![](Blender269PropertiesIcon.png "Blender269PropertiesIcon.png") window,
you will find the Texture
![](Blender255TextureContextButton.png "Blender255TextureContextButton.png")
context, which looks like at right.

At the top you will see a row of three icons
![](Blender268TextureCategoryIcons.png "Blender268TextureCategoryIcons.png"),
which indicate texture settings to view and change:

-   ![](Blender268TextureIconWorld.png "Blender268TextureIconWorld.png")
    World Texture --- a texture to use for the sky backdrop
-   ![](Blender268TextureIconMaterial.png "Blender268TextureIconMaterial.png")
    Material Texture --- a texture associated with the
    currently-selected material
-   ![](Blender268TextureIconBrush.png "Blender268TextureIconBrush.png")
    Brush Texture --- a texture used for some other purpose.

There are two main types of textures in Blender:

-   Image/Movie textures
-   Procedural textures (all other types in the Type menu).

An image/movie texture allows a two-dimensional image (which might be
static or moving) to be wrapped around the surface of a
three-dimensional object in some way. Alternatively, a procedural
texture directly maps a predefined three-dimensional mathematical
function to the surface coordinates of the object.

The "Coordinates:" popup menu defines how positions on the object
surface are mapped to positions within the texture coordinate space. All
of these options specify automatic mapping algorithms, except one: the
"UV" option. This one lets you work within the UV/Image Editor, where
you *unwrap* the surface of the mesh onto a flat rectangle showing the
texture image (this really only works with Image/Movie textures), and
then move sections of the mesh around to make them show corresponding
parts of the texture.

The "Projection:" popup menu further controls how the two-dimensional
surface of the object is mapped to a two-dimensional Image/Movie
texture. It seems to have no effect for procedural textures.

The "Offset:" and "Size:" X, Y and Z values allow simple adjustments of
the position and scaling of the texture. Note that the size values work
the opposite way to what you might expect: larger values here make the
texture *smaller* along the corresponding dimension.

The image at right shows the common settings panels for all material
texture types. Additional panels will appear depending on the chosen
texture type; the settings shown are for the "None" texture, which is
the same as having no texture at all.

## Material Textures

A material may have more than one texture associated with it. At the top
of the material texture settings (see above), is a list of the *texture
slots* associated with the material. Slots may be empty (unused), and
slots containing a texture may be enabled or disabled, by checking or
unchecking the box at the right of the list item. Disabling a texture
slot stops it having an effect on the material, which is the same as
deleting the texture from the slot altogether, except it is easier to
revert. This can be useful when trying to debug the effect of a
combination of textures on the material.

## World Textures

![](Blender268TextureContextWorld.png "Blender268TextureContextWorld.png")
You previously saw how to set up colours for the sky in the World
Settings; you can also add a sky texture
as well.

World texture settings look similar to texture settings: again there are
a number of slots, and there are mapping and influence options. But the
mapping coordinates types are different (and there is no UV option), and
the influence types are more limited.

If you're wondering why your texture definition here is making no
difference to your sky, either make sure the "Blend" checkbox is checked
in your World
![](Blender255WorldContextButton.png "Blender255WorldContextButton.png")
settings, or check the "Horizon" Influence box here if you don't want a
sky gradation.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Image Textures

|next=Procedural Textures
}}
```
## Image Texture Settings

!Simple
checkerboard{width="100"}
To understand how the texture settings apply to image/movie textures,
start with an example texture. A nice simple one is this checkerboard at
right---don't forget to download it in (or convert it to) PNG format, as
Blender cannot use an SVG file as a texture.

![](Blender268TextureTypeMenuImage.png "Blender268TextureTypeMenuImage.png")
Start a new Blender document. Note the default cube already has a a
default grey material, called "Material", and this already has a single
texture, called "Tex", of type "None", which means it has no effect.

![](Blender268TextureContextImagePanelNone.png "Blender268TextureContextImagePanelNone.png")
Under the Texture
![](Blender255TextureContextButton.png "Blender255TextureContextButton.png")
context of the Properties window, with Material Texture
![](Blender268TextureIconMaterial.png "Blender268TextureIconMaterial.png")
selected, change the texture type to "Image or Movie". You will
immediately see some new panels pop up in the texture context. Look for
the Image panel, as at right. This initially contains a popup menu icon
for selecting from any previously-loaded images (this will start out
empty), a "New" button for using one of Blender's predefined test
textures, and an "Open" button for loading an image from a file.

Click the "Open" button, and select your previously-downloaded or
converted PNG version of the example checkerboard texture.

![](Blender268TextureContextImageSettings.png "Blender268TextureContextImageSettings.png")
Now a whole lot more settings will become visible. From the top, the
panels are:

-   Preview --- gives you a simple display of how the texture looks.
-   Colors --- lets you make simple adjustments to the image brightness,
    contrast etc.
-   Image --- lets you choose from any already-loaded images, and shows
    you the pathname of the file the image was loaded from. Note the two
    arrows in a circle to the right of the pathname display: clicking
    this will tell Blender to reload the image from the file, which is
    useful if you make changes to it in an external image editor.
-   Image Sampling --- controls how the image can be interpreted in a
    different way from straight pixel values.
-   Image Mapping --- lets you crop the input image, and apply fixed
    numbers of repetitions to it along each axis, even before it goes
    through the usual texture-tiling repetition process.
-   Mapping, Influence --- these are more general panels that apply to
    all types of textures. They will be discussed in more detail
    shortly.

!Projection: flat; axes: X→X, Y→Y,
Z→Z
If you render  now, you should end up
with an image like this. Notice in the Projection menu (*Texture* →
*Mapping*) the initial selection is "Flat": this means that the texture
X and Y coordinates go straight to object X and Y coordinates. Thus, the
texture only appears on the top (and also bottom) of the cube, not on
its sides. See also the three little popup menus just below the
Projection menu, each containing the items X, Y and Z. These let you
rearrange the object coordinates that the texture coordinates map to. If
you change the first two, you can get the texture to appear on other
pairs of sides of the cube, other than the top and bottom. The third
menu (corresponding to the Z axis of the texture) has no effect (yet),
because a flat image texture is only two-dimensional.

!Texture size increased to
3.
Now try changing the three "Size" fields in the Mapping panel: give them
all a value of 3. This will uniformly shrink the texture pattern to
one-third of its original size. Or alternatively, it will require three
times the number of texture repetitions to span the same distance as the
original.

!Texture projection set to
Sphere
Now let's try the other Projection types. Here's what "Sphere" looks
like. Imagine the texture pattern as a flat sheet stretched and curved
around, and its edges joined to form a sphere surrounding the actual
object; then the sphere is shrinkwrapped down onto the object.

Note the top and bottom edges of the sheet shrink down to single points
at the north and south poles; this is why the squares of the
checkerboard pattern turn into triangles next to these points.

!Texture projection set to
Tube
Here's a Tube mapping. Here the texture pattern sheet is rolled round
into a cylinder, with only one pair of edges joined together, the top
and bottom left open.

!Texture projection set to
Cube
And lastly, here is a Cube mapping. Here 6 copies of the texture pattern
are arranged parallel to the faces of a cube, before being shrinkwrapped
onto the actual object. Which in this case, happens to be a cube.

Cube mappings are very commonly used in game engines, because they are
just about the simplest way to wrap a texture around an entire object.

!"Mapping" versus "Image
Mapping"

## Making Your Own Texture

Procedural texturing is very powerful; however, sometimes it is
difficult or impossible to generate the desired realism with them. Image
texturing is there for you when you need it. To review, the basic idea
is to take an outside image and wrap it around your model. You can use
any texture, or a seamless one if you want it to repeat to get a tiled
effect. The following shows how you create a seamless texture, and then
how to apply any texture (seamless or otherwise) to an object.

### The difference between \'tiled\' and \'seamless\'

In many cases a simple material will just not cut it for an object, and
you will want to apply a texture to it. However, depending on the
object, you may want to apply either a seamless or tileable texture. A
seamless texture is an image that will, when applied to an object,
spread evenly across the surface of the object without any visible
borders or \'seams\' even if the object is many times larger than the
resolution of the image (also called \'procedural textures\' in
Blender). These can be useful in many situations; such as when you want
a texture for a carpet to seamlessly repeat itself without having a huge
resolution.

A tileable texture on the other hand, is an image that will repeat
itself across an object, but with noticeable seams. Any image can be
used as a tileable texture, but often they will only be used in specific
instances such as a vinyl floor with a tiled pattern on it.

See Using Textures
for more details on applying images as textures, and using them to
affect many other surface attributes such as luminosity, reflectivity,
translucency, displacement etc.

### How to make a tileable texture with the GIMP

![](MakeSeamlessSample.jpeg "MakeSeamlessSample.jpeg")

It is easy to create a tiling texture image with the
GIMP. Start with the photo you want to use. Crop
out any part you don't want. Here's an example random photo of some
plants in my garden:

![](MakeSeamlessSampleAfter.jpeg "MakeSeamlessSampleAfter.jpeg")

Go to Gimp's "Filters" menu, and find the "Map" submenu. In here you
will find the entry "Make Seamless". Select it. That's it:

![](MakeSeamlessSampleUsage.jpeg "MakeSeamlessSampleUsage.jpeg")

Just to prove it works, here's a (scaled-down) use of the result as a
tiled fill pattern:

### Other Image Texture Editors

-   Wood Workshop A
    free utility (Requires Operating System: Windows 2000/XP) that
    generates surprisingly high quality tiling wood texture images.
    These textures can be exported as standard image files for use
    within Blender.
-   MapZone A free utility for Windows
    (works perfectly in Wine) that generates node
    based procedural texture maps. Mapzone can export diffuse, normal
    and alpha texture maps as standard image files. It can also import
    SVG regions created with Blender\'s UV mapping tools.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Procedural Textures

|next=Quickie Texture
}}
```
**Procedural Textures**

Texturing objects can be broken down into two categories: procedural and
image texturing. Procedural texturing makes use of mathematical formulas
to generate textures. This is nice because it can be used to make
relatively nice looking textures without external images which are very
temperamental where you put them. Procedural Textures are all stored in
the .blend file. These textures are obviously generated within Blender
itself. Image texturing uses images created or captured outside of
Blender, either from an image manipulation program such as the
Paint.NET, GIMP or Photoshop, or captured on a camera. We have already
learned about image texturing, so let\'s move on to procedural
texturing.

**Current Procedural Textures**

Blender currently supports many procedural textures, including: Clouds,
Marble, Stucci, Wood, Magic, Blend, Noise, Musgrave, Voronoi and
DistortedNoise.

## A Simple Wood Texture

Let\'s define a simple wood texture:

-   Start a new Blender document containing the default cube.
-   Select the cube (and nothing else).
-   In the Properties window, go to the World tab
    ![](Blender255WorldContextButton.png "Blender255WorldContextButton.png")
    and turn on Environment Lighting (you can leave its default energy
    at 1.0).
-   Go to the Materials tab
    ![](Blender255MaterialContextButton.png "Blender255MaterialContextButton.png"),
    and rename the default \"Material\" to \"Wood Material\".
    Alternatively, delete the default material using the X to the right
    of the name field and add a new material.

Let\'s add some color and texture. You can see the results at any time
by pressing F12 to re-render the scene.

Start by painting the cube a base color using the Wood Material\'s
\"diffuse\" color:

-   In the "Material" tab,
-   Scroll down to the "Diffuse" properties panel and choose a darker
    brown color e.g. #A57E3F.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV> for where brown fits in
the color wheel.

Next, let\'s add a texture to give the material some highlights.

-   Switch to the "Texture" properties tab
    ![](Blender259_Texture_Button.png "Blender259_Texture_Button.png"),
    and again rename the default \"Tex\" to \"Wood Texture\" or create a
    new texture. Notice at the very top of the \"Texture\" tab \"Cube \>
    Wood Material \> Wood Texture\"
-   Change the Type of the material to "Wood" using the pop-up menu.

The texture sample will show parallel alternating black and white bars
that don't look very woody at all. Never fear! The black regions will be
the material\'s base \"diffuse\" color. The white regions are like
\"highlights\" that will be painted over the base.

Let\'s make some improvements to the texture:

-   While still in the "Textures" tab,
-   Scroll to the "Wood" properties panel that appears, change the
    waveform from "Sine" to "Saw".
-   In the next row of buttons down, change the type from the default
    "Bands" to "Ring Noise".
-   Increase the Noise Size to 1.0.

Now the texture sample should show something resembling wavy tree-rings.
If you hit F12 to render now, you will see these rings covering your
cube, except a) the colour is wrong, and b) normal wood patterns aren\'t
so nearly circular.

To make the pattern more elongated:

-   Scroll to the "Mapping" properties panel,
-   Change the Size X value to 2.0 and Y to 0.4. This squishes the
    pattern down along the X-axis, and stretches it out along the
    Y-axis, giving the elliptical tree-ring shapes you commonly see on
    wood planks and boards.

Hit F12 to render again, and the shape of the texture should be looking
a lot more woody now.

The final step is to color the highlights in the texture:

-   In the "Textures" tab,
-   Scroll to the "Influence" properties panel further down,
-   Click on the color swatch, and choose a nice brown colour.

For a nicer effect, I chose a very light brown e.g. #DEB887.

The result should look very woody indeed!

![](Blender259WoodTextureSample.png "Blender259WoodTextureSample.png")

-   Remember that you need to Render to see the wood grain on your
    object.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Quickie Texture

|previous=Procedural Textures
}}
```
**Textures** are laid on top of materials to give them complicated
colors and other effects. An object is covered with a material, which
might contain several textures: An image texture of stone, a texture to
make the stone look bumpy, and a texture to make the stone deform in
different ways.

A texture may be an
image
or a computed
function. What
the texture does and how it is mapped onto your object is set in the
material buttons. Some commonly used texture types are shown on the page
Using Textures.

This tutorial uses the file from the **Quickie
Material**
tutorial. If you didn\'t do it before, go back and do it now.

## Making It Mottled

!Texture Context with all the relevant
panels.{width="809"
height="809"}

##### Step 1: Adding Texture to the Material

-   In a Properties window, switch to **Texture**
    ![](Blender255TextureContextButton.png "Blender255TextureContextButton.png")
    context.
-   A default texture, **Tex**, should already be available and set to
    *Type: **None***.
    -   If not, click one of the **Texture Slots** (the ones with
        chequered icons) and click the **New** button.
    -   Set the *Type* to ***Clouds***.
-   The Texture **Preview** panel will now reflect this change. However,
    said change will not be reflected in the 3D view window.
    -   You can do a quick render (**F12**) to see the change. However,
        you\'ll have to re-render every time you change a setting to see
        its effect.
    -   Otherwise you can click the **Material** button in the Texture
        **Preview** panel to see the changes to the material. (Click
        **Both** to see them side-by-side.)
    -   A better, albeit more resource intensive option would be to
        change the **Display Mode** to *Rendered*. (**Shift**+**Z** in
        the 3D view window or Selecting the Display mode from the 3D
        view Header.!Viewport Shading menu highlighting the
        **Rendered**
        option.

##### Step 2: Refining the Texture

-   Once you use one of the ways to preview your work, you\'ll see Green
    and Magenta mixed in resembling a polished granite texture.
    -   This is the default colour for any generated texture. Now all
        you have to do is change it to **black**.
    -   But before that scroll down to the **Mapping** panel and make
        sure that *Coordinates* is set to ***Generated,
        Global***or***Object*** (for best results).
    -   Scroll down to the **Influence** panel, and click on the colour
        swatch and drag the reticule in the bar to the right all the way
        down.
-   Now the texture should look more or less like green granite!Render
    result in 3D
    view.

## Making It Bumpy

!Final
render{width="723"
height="723"}

##### Step 1: Adding a second Texture to the Material

-   In a Properties window, switch to **Texture**
    ![](Blender255TextureContextButton.png "Blender255TextureContextButton.png")
    context.
-   The **Cloud** texture you just created will be listed in a slot.
    -   To create an additional texture click a second texture slot and
        then click **New** button.
    -   Change the texture *Type* to ***Stucci***.
-   Now if you preview this texture you\'ll only notice a bit of magenta
    mixed in with the previous texture.

##### Step 2: Making the texture a Bump-Map

-   Scroll down to the **Mapping** panel and make sure the *Coordinates*
    is set to ***Generated, Global***or***Object*** for best results.
-   Scroll down to **Influence** panel uncheck *Color* and check
    *Normal* under **Geometry**, then set it to **4**.
-   If required, set the *Method* under Bump Mapping to a higher
    Quality.

The render result should look like the one on the right.

Now mess around with the various settings we discussed, Particularly the
settings in **Clouds**/**Stucci**, **Mapping** and **Influence** panels.
Also try the whole tutorial (**Quickie Material** & **Quickie Texture**)
with a sphere and other shapes.

## Some Closing words

The downside of bump-mapping, as you may have noticed, is that it only
provides an illusion of depth/bumpiness. The edges will still be
straight as in the render. For curved surfaces the outline will still
look spotless while the centre looks deformed, plus shadows will still
render smooth compromising the illusion. An alternative technique is
displacement-mapping which actually deforms the mesh as per a texture to
produce depth in the mesh, with the downside of creating a higher poly
mesh.

With bump-mapping in general, you will get a greater effect on smoothly
curved surfaces with high specularity as compared to flat surfaces with
low specularity.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Halo Materials

|previous=Quickie Texture
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
## Introduction

Halos are a neat effect. Instead of giving a colour/texture to the faces
of a mesh, like normal Surface materials do, the Halo material ignores
the faces and renders representations of the vertices instead. This can
produce all kinds of ethereal, even ghostly, fantasy effects, of objects
that look like they're made out of light rather than ordinary solid
matter.

A halo material can also produce a *flare* effect. This is the "lens
flare" that happens when a physical camera is aimed at a very bright
light source; the spillage of light bouncing around inside the optics
produces coloured rings and other interesting artifacts on top of the
image. This has become such an accepted part of photography that
computer graphics programs like Blender, which do not suffer the
imperfections of physical lenses, go to a great deal of trouble to offer
a realistic flare effect.

Flare effects can also be achieved using compositing node and a material
with an \"emit\" value, such flares may in some circumstances render
faster and be simpler to control. This works for the Blender internal
render engine, as do flares generated with halos. This is done by
opening the node editor (switching the 3d viewer tab to one of these for
example) then clicking \"compositing nodes\" and \"use nodes\",
\"filters\" can then be added to produce these effects.

This tutorial will show you how to create an image representing a flare
effect in a picture of the Sun.

## Setting The Scene

Open a new default Blender document. Get rid of the default cube. Insert
a new UV Sphere mesh in its place, and set the number of segments and
rings to 24 each. Also set Smooth shading. This will be your Sun. Create
a new material for it, set the Diffuse colour to a suitable yellow.
Under the Shading panel in the material settings, look for the "Emit:"
slider and give it a value of 1.0 to make it look bright. Since the Sun
emits its own light, you don't need the separate default light, so get
rid of that.

Go to the World properties tab
![](Blender255WorldContextButton.png "Blender255WorldContextButton.png").
In the "World" sub-header, click on the colour swatch labelled "Horizon
Color" and assign a nice deep blue colour for your sky.

If you do a render now, you should see your bright yellow orb, but
without any flare effect.

## Adding The Flare

Now add a new Circle mesh; the default 32 vertices should be enough. By
default it lies in the X-Y plane, which again is fine. Move it along the
Y-axis a little closer to the camera (negative-Y direction), until it
lies outside your Sun sphere, but still close to it. Scale its size down
by 0.5. (It will probably be invisible when first created, because it is
initially inside your Sun sphere, but it will be initially selected, so
you can immediately press
 and start moving the mouse without
pressing any buttons, and make it appear from inside the Sun). Create a
new material for it, and set the type to Halo.

In the Halo panel in the Material settings, increase the size to
3.0---this is the size of the fuzzy image that is rendered around each
vertex, and this value is sufficient for them all to run together into a
continuous ring. Reduce the Alpha to 0.05 to avoid overpowering the
image with the halo effect.

Go further down the halo Material settings, and find the Flare panel (in
Blender 2.75 you can check \"Flare\" but what settings you do, nothing
will work). Check the title box to enable this. Set the number of
Subflares to, say, 8 (this controls the number of separate halo
reflections that will be generated, though you probably won't be able to
distinguish that many). Set the Boost to 10 to make the subhalos
brighter than the original parent halo.

The Seed value in the Flare panel controls the particular flare pattern
that you see; each number produces a different effect. I chose the value
3 for this example.

**Where did the circle go?** Like any object with a halo material, the
circle object can be quite hard to see when it's not selected. If you
lose track of it, there are a couple of ways to find it again:

-   Select everything with . Now you
    can look for the ring of dots and
    on it to select it exclusively.
-   Use the  window at the
    upper right. You should see it listed here under its default name of
    "Circle"; click with  to select it,
    and you should see the ring of dots appear in the 3D view.

If the circle object is still inside the Sun, then wireframe
 or bounding-box view modes may be
helpful to find it again.

## The Final Result

Now hit  to render, and you should see
something like this (the flare effect may not appear immediately with
the rest of the image, give it a few more seconds to appear):

![](HaloFlareSunExample.png "HaloFlareSunExample.png"){width="800"}

**Exercises:** Try different positions for the circle mesh; move it near
to the Sun (even partly in it), far from it, move it around to different
sides. How does this affect the flare pattern? Also try changing the
size of the circle mesh.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Blender Memory Management

|previous=Halo Materials
|subcat=Background
}}
```
## Datablocks And Users

It is helpful to understand how Blender manages memory. Just about
everything in a Blender document---objects in scenes, scenes themselves,
materials, textures, whatever---is stored in a *datablock*. Each
datablock has a name, which must be unique among datablocks of the same
type. Each datablock may be referenced from one or more places, mostly
in other datablocks---in Blender parlance, it has one or more *users*.
For example, several different objects might share the same material, so
when you change the characteristics of the material, it automatically
changes the appearance of all those objects.

If the number of users of a datablock drops to zero, it still stays
around in memory, but *it will not be saved when the document is saved*.
Thus, if you save and reload the document, all the datablocks with zero
users will disappear. (In some cases you may need to save and reload a
couple of times before all zero-user datablocks disappear.)

But up until that point, the datablock will continue to appear in the
relevant popup menus, so you can reassign it to more users.

You can also assign a *fake user* to a datablock; this is what the "F"
button is for in the popup menus that list datablocks of that type. This
ensures that the user count never goes to zero, so the datablock always
gets saved in the document even if it has no real users. This is useful
for "library" documents, which can contain collections of useful
materials and textures, say, that can be linked or imported into other
documents, without also having to include dummy objects in the library
just to ensure those materials and textures get saved.

For example, here is the widget that lets you choose the material for an
object:

![](Blender259ObjectMaterial.png "Blender259ObjectMaterial.png")

The main part shows the name of the current material, which is editable.
The **X** button breaks the link to this material and decrements its
number of users by one, while the **F** button assigns a fake user to
this material. The **+** button lets you create a new material.

The material symbol on the left pops up a list of existing materials to
choose from, plus a search box to search all existing materials:

![](Blender259ObjectMaterialMenu.png "Blender259ObjectMaterialMenu.png")

Note the entry with the **0** symbol next to it; that currently has a
user count of zero, and will disappear when the document is saved and
reloaded, if it is not further used.

The widget also displays the current user count if it is greater than 1:

![](Blender259ObjectMaterialUsers.png "Blender259ObjectMaterialUsers.png")

In this case the count was incremented because the **F** button was
selected.

This is the basis of the (slightly confusing) distinction in Blender
between *object datablocks* and *object **data** datablocks*. Object
datablocks contain the information common to all the *types* of objects
in the 3D scene, regardless of whether they're mesh objects, lamp
objects, camera objects or whatever; whereas the object *data*
datablocks contain the information specific to that *instance* of the
type of object, e.g. the vertex, edge and face definitions for this
particular mesh you might be using, or the colour and energy of a lamp
you\'ve set up for your project, or the field of view of a camera you
have.

That leads us to the difference between the two object duplication
commands,  and
: the former duplicates both the
object datablocks and the object *data* datablocks (though this can be
controlled in your User Preferences), while the latter only duplicates
the object datablock. That means that in the first case the two objects
are truly independent, but in the second case the new object continues
to share the same object *data* datablock so a change in one will result
in a change in both of them. So, for instance, if you use
 on a mesh object and edit the
vertices, edges or faces on one copy, the other copy will also be
affected.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Bones

|previous=Blender Memory Management
|subcat=Basics
}}
```
Bones are a modeling tool that are especially important for animating
characters. Bones allow you to move characters\' limbs in a way that is
much simpler than trying to re-arrange the vertices every time.

It works by associating a bone with particular vertices, causing them to
move along with the bone when the position is changed in pose mode.
Using bones is fairly simple once you get the hang of it, but, like many
things in Blender, can be a little daunting at first sight.

Bones don\'t do much on their own; in fact, they turn invisible at
render time. For this following module we\'ll use the character that we
had made by the end of the module Putting Hat on
Person. You
will have to have completed all the modules in Section
2B.
Note that while we will be using bones on a simple person, the process
can be used with any creature or body type you imagine!

## Laying down bones

![](Bones_Tutorial_-_Setup.png "Bones_Tutorial_-_Setup.png"){width="400"}

*Note: This just shows the basics of adding bones to an object. Go to
the advanced
animation
page for a more comprehensive guide on this.*

First of all, we\'ll need a model to put some bones on! For this
tutorial, we\'re going to use a humanoid model. Open the model that you
had created by the end of the Putting Hat on
Person
tutorial, or download a pre-made model from
here.

Here\'s our setup, with Block Dude standing on a plane. You can add a
plane by pressing  → *Mesh* →
*Plane*. Scale the plane to an appropriate size and move it so that it
is approximately underneath the person.

**Noob note:** You will be placing armatures (\"bones\") inside your
humanoid, so you must work in \"wireframe mode\", not \"solid mode\".
Otherwise, you will not be able to see the armatures when you place
them. To toggle between \"solid\" and \"wireframe\", press
. You may find it helpful to make the
wireframe less complex by hiding the subsurface mesh. You can do this by
going to the Modifier context panel
![](Blender255ObjectModifiersContextButton.png "Blender255ObjectModifiersContextButton.png")
of the Properties window
![](Blender_2.59_Properties_ico.png "Blender_2.59_Properties_ico.png")
and deselecting the eye button.

**Note:** An alternative to working in \"wireframe mode\" is to turn
\"X-Ray\" on for the armature. To do this, select the armature. In the
properties panel under *object* there is a display menu. Click \"X-Ray\"
in the second field of buttons. This will allow the armature to show
through other objects.

## Add a bone

![](Bones_Tutorial_-_First_Bone.png "Bones_Tutorial_-_First_Bone.png"){width="400"}

Now, let\'s put some bones on Block Dude! In Object Mode press
 *→ Armature → Single Bone*.

What we are looking at is an armature. This is a single bone. Now, we
need to put the bone in Block Dude! Move and rotate the bone so that
it\'s in the middle of Block Dude\'s chest. If your bone does not have
the correct length, then change the size of the bone by moving one of
the ends of the bone: switch to Edit Mode, select one of the ends of the
bone, then move it using . Alternatively,
you can scale it using

## Extrude a second Bone

![](Bones_Tutorial_-_Finished_Skeleton.png "Bones_Tutorial_-_Finished_Skeleton.png"){width="400"}
To create a second bone starting from one of the ends of the first bone,
switch to Edit Mode with the bone selected, select the end of the bone,
then extrude  the end. A second bone
appears, with its start point on the selected end of the first bone.
Move the mouse to position the end point, then press
, , or
. Scale the bone as needed to fit it
in his body, and continue adding bones by extruding the end points.
These operate much the same way as vertices: you can extrude, rotate,
move, and even subdivide. Your finished result should look something
like this:

## Name the bones

![](Bones_Tutorial_-_Naming_Bone.png "Bones_Tutorial_-_Naming_Bone.png"){width="400"}
Now, just to make things easier, we\'re going to name the bones. For
example, my bones are named \"Right Forearm\", \"Left Forearm\", \"Right
Upper Arm\", etc. While in Edit mode, select the bone you want to
rename. In the Outliner
![](Blender_2.59_Outliner_ico.png "Blender_2.59_Outliner_ico.png"), the
bone you have selected will be visible with a circle around it
![](Blender_Armature_Bone_icon_(selected).png "Blender_Armature_Bone_icon_(selected).png").
You may need to expand the Armature Object
![](Blender_Armature_Object_icon.png "Blender_Armature_Object_icon.png"),
Armature Data Object
![](Blender_Armature_Data_icon.png "Blender_Armature_Data_icon.png") and
any parent bones before being able to view the selected bone. In the
Bone context panel
![](Blender270BoneContextButton.PNG "Blender270BoneContextButton.PNG")
of the Properties window click the name field to edit the name.

**Noob Note:** When you are naming the bones remember that if you are
looking at the person from the front, your left is the person\'s right.
To make the naming easier switch to viewing the person from behind using
.)

## Parent the bones

Now, we need to parent the bones to the mesh. Go back into Object Mode
and select Block Dude (and the Hat, assuming you made one). Now, select
the Armature as well, so that it is the last object selected, and press
. The Parenting Menu will pop up.
Select *Armature Deform* → *With Automatic Weights*. The person (and
hat) are now children of the armature.

**Noob Note:** The selection order is important in defining which object
is the parent, so you cannot select both objects at the same time. You
must select the armature last to make it the parent. Also please note if
you have problems with deformation you need to rest the rest position of
the bones this is easily achieved by going to pose edit mode select all
bones and CTRL -A then apply pose as rest position .

## Moving the Bones

![](Bones_Tutorial_-_Finished_Render.png "Bones_Tutorial_-_Finished_Render.png"){width="400"}
To move individual bones, you have to go into Pose Mode. Select the
Armature in Object Mode and switch to Pose Mode by pressing
 or selecting the mode in the mode
selection menu of the 3D Viewer. Try moving a bone around by pressing
 (sic) to select it, and then hitting
 or  to move
it.

If you\'ve done everything correctly, your mesh should move when you
move the bones! If this doesn\'t happen, scale the bones up so that they
fit better in the mesh, and scale up the bones until they do what you
want (read comment in the parenting section above on adjusting the bones
envelopes if you do not get an effect while moving/rotating the bones).
With the bones now, you can put Block Dude into a lot of different
positions without moving individual vertices.

To the right is an example of how you can move Block Dude with the
bones.

Also while in pose mode if after a
click you can\'t move bones with  or
, check the \"Move Object Centers Only\"
button (just to the right of the Rotation/Scaling Pivot button).

## In-Depth Info on Selected Bone Topics

### Add/remove mesh from bone control

![](Bones_Tutorial_-_Vertex_Grouping.png "Bones_Tutorial_-_Vertex_Grouping.png"){width="400"}
**Noob Note:** If you\'ve been adding bones to your simple person from
the previous lessons, you will have likely noticed that the hat seems to
stretch when you move the arms in pose mode. To fix this, you will need
to remove the hat from the forearm vertex groups created in the
Parenting step.

To manually change the mesh areas that the bones control, go to Object
Mode and select the object you want to add/remove (if the mesh is inside
the same object, then select only the areas of the mesh you want to work
with in Edit Mode).

In this case, select the Hat.

Switch to the Object Data context panel in the Properties window and
scroll to the \"Vertex Groups\" submenu.

Now pick the bone group from the dropdown above the Assign/Remove
buttons, and then hit Assign (or Remove) as necessary. Usually vertices
will be assigned to one group, but can be assigned to multiple groups.
In this case, we want to remove the Hat from the Forearm vertex groups.
Select the Forearm vertex groups and press the remove button, as
pictured. With both of the Forearm vertex groups removed from the hat,
it should be able to move properly with the rest of the armature.

#### Mesh deforms like it\'s far away from the bones

If the mesh is properly assigned to the bones they will move regardless
of whether the bones are inside the volume of the mesh or not (HOW they
deform WILL be affected however). The most common mistake in this step
is creating and (more importantly) parenting the mesh to the armature
while the armature is outside the mesh, which causes Blender not to
assign vertices to any bone groups at all.

You can check this by editing the object (i.e. select the mesh and
switch to Edit Mode, then un-select all vertices by pressing A until
nothing is selected). Pick the *Object data* context then select a
vertex group in the *Object data tab**, press**Select*\'. This will
select the vertices associated with the bone group. If the wrong
vertices appear selected, you need to assign them manually as explained
above.

If there is no effect, in Edit mode select that bone (or bones) and
choose Envelope display mode (**Properties** window
![](Blender_2.59_Properties_ico.png "Blender_2.59_Properties_ico.png"),
*Armature context panel → Display → Envelope*), then press
 and increase its area of
influence to cover all faces that should be influenced by the bone.

\
\


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Mountains Out Of Molehills

|previous=Bones
}}
```
Now that we\'ve created our simple person, it\'s time to give him
somewhere to go. In this tutorial we\'ll create a mountain range using a
few simple, and handy tools.

## Creating a simple plane

![](Blender3DNoobToPro-SimplePlane.png "Blender3DNoobToPro-SimplePlane.png")
First we need a clean area to work with.

-   Start off with a new project, using *File → New*, or hit
    . If you have a default cube or
    plane just delete them now (select them with
     and press
    ).

Our first step is to create a large grid plane that we\'ll use for the
ground and grow our mountains out of.

-   Press to enter top view. This way
    our grid plane will be lying flat when we create it.
-   Press . This sets the 3D cursor
    to (0,0,0) which will be the center of the grid we will add (or
    use -  → *Cursor to Center*).
-   Now add the grid with  → *Mesh*
    → *Grid*. This will be our canvas.
-   Now add more vertices to the grid. In the bottom of the toolbox
    window, change the number of X and Y subdivisions somewhere from 15
    to 20.
-   Change to Edit Mode using
-   Scale the grid plane up by about 15

:   First put the mouse close to the center of the grid plane and press
     and drag the cursor away and watch
    the numbers in the bottom left of the 3D View. Hold
     while dragging to increment by 0.1
    for a more precise measurement. Alternatively, to enter the exact
    amount yourself, press , then
    simply type **15** and hit .

## First mountain

Now that we have the ground, it\'s time to start growing our mountains.

-   Make sure you have nothing selected
    .
-   Select a random vertex with . I
    usually start at the one that is 4 down from the top and 4 in from
    the left (the 4th vertex if you count the edges).
-   Change to the side view with .

![](Blender-Noob-to-Pro_Proportional_Menu.png "Blender-Noob-to-Pro_Proportional_Menu.png")

-   Press  to change to proportional edit
    mode or use the button which shows a grey ring on the header of the
    3D View. The button will change its color to blue. You can also use
     → *Transform→Proportional Edit*
    (By default this button is located just below the 3D view).
-   Once you\'ve turned proportional edit mode on, another button
    appears to its right, the falloff button. Select Smooth Falloff
    here. Alternatively you can use the menu on the header of the 3D
    View (*Mesh → Proportional Falloff → Smooth*) or, using
     will cycle through all of the
    different falloff types while using the Proportional editing tool.
-   Press  to grab the vertex. We should
    now have a circle surrounding the vertex, this is our *radius of
    influence*. Basically any vertices inside this circle will be
    affected by any changes to the vertex itself.

**Noob Note:** If you\'re having trouble seeing or changing the radius
of influence, try saving your scene and restarting Blender.

-   Use  or
     and
     to adjust the radius of
    influence to include just over 2 vertices on each side of our
    selected vertex. (Depending on your version of Blender, you may need
    to use  to adjust the radius
    of the influence. On Mac, use
    and ).

![](Blender3DNoobToPro-FirstMountain.png "Blender3DNoobToPro-FirstMountain.png")

-   Move the vertex up about 8 units on the Z-Axis. Do this by dragging
    the cursor up a little, and press the
    ; this should restrain the movements
    along the Z-axis. Now use  to move
    it precisely. Alternatively you can use
     to restrain movements to the Z-Axis,
    type  and hit
    . In older versions of Blender you
    may need to hit  before typing
    .

Congratulations, we just created our first mountain. Now it\'s time to
see what other things we can accomplish with the proportional editing
tool.

## Peaks vs. hills

![](Blender3DNoobToPro-Sharpfalloff.png "Blender3DNoobToPro-Sharpfalloff.png")
The 2.37 and onward releases offer at least 6 types and 2 modes of
proportional editing. The previous release only has 2 of these types:
Smooth and Sharp Falloff. We\'ll take a look at the difference between
these two now.

-   Change to top view again with .
    You\'ll notice that now your \"mountain\" looks like a few
    differently shaded squares in the grid; you\'re looking down on
    shaded tiles, but in the Z axis, they\'re all still perfectly
    aligned with the original grid.
-   Select another vertex away from the first. Let\'s say 4 from the
    bottom 4 from the right (counting the vertices on the edges).
-   Change back to the side view with
-   Select Sharp Falloff from the menu on the bar of the 3D View.
    Alternatively, using  will
    switch from one to the next of the 6 proportional editing modes
    while using the Proportional editing tool.
-   As before, move the vertex up 8 units on the Z-Axis (*Note: The
    radius of influence will still be the same size as when we last used
    it*).
    -
    -
    -   Type  and hit

![](Blender3DNoobToPro-SharpVsSmoothFalloff.png "Blender3DNoobToPro-SharpVsSmoothFalloff.png")
Now we can see the differences between the sharp and smooth falloff. The
same number of vertices are affected in both cases; only the degree to
which they are affected is different.

The different proportional editing modes can be selected from the box
immediately to the left of the proportional editing type box. The mode
box contains four options: Disabled, Enabled, Connected, and Projected
(2D). \"Disabled\" means that proportional editing will not be used.
\"Connected\" means that only vertices linked to the selected vertices
will be affected by the radius of influence. \"Enabled\" means that all
vertices will be affected.

## Shaping the world

![](Blender_proportional_smooth_before_rotation.jpg "Blender_proportional_smooth_before_rotation.jpg"){width="300"}
Now that we\'ve created a couple of Mountains, it\'s time to see how we
can use proportional editing to shape them.

-   First make sure we\'re in side view
    ().
-   Then on the smooth falloff mountain, the first one we created,
    select the vertex that is immediately down and left from the topmost
    point.
-   Press  to rotate, scroll the
     to change effective radius so it
    includes other points. Your screen should look like the photo to the
    right.

You can see the size of the proportional editing circle, and that there
is only one vertex on the mountainside selected.

-   Next hold  and rotate everything by
    -90. Alternatively, use ,
    , and type **-90** and press
    . Your mountain should now look
    like this:

**Noob note:** be careful about the range of affected vertices. If the
range is too small, then rotating will affect just the selected vertex.
If the range is too large, it will rotate everything together. You can
adjust the range by using .

![](Blender_proportional_smooth_after_rotation.jpg "Blender_proportional_smooth_after_rotation.jpg"){width="300"}
Notice that the vertex itself did not move; since it is at the center of
the circle it had no effect. The adjoining vertices within the edit
circle were rotated around it in decreasing amounts the further from the
center they are. Try doing it again with a larger proportional editing
circle. Feel free to play around with scaling or rotating from different
view points (don\'t forget that you can also use
 to move vertices vertically or
horizontally).

Try viewing your world from top view while rotating with a large
effective radius. You will see the nearby vertices move close to the
full amount while vertices further away move less.

## Smoothing things out

![](Blender3DNoobToPro-RoundedMtns.png "Blender3DNoobToPro-RoundedMtns.png")
Now that we have a couple of budding mountains, you probably think they
look kind of choppy. Sure they would be good if we were making an 8-bit
console game, but we\'re working with 3D here, we want things to look
sharper (or maybe smoother) than that. There are a couple of approaches
to this. The first is to use more vertices when we create our plane. And
I won\'t lie, it works. But it\'s also a HUGE resource hog. It would
take your home computer hours of work just to keep things updated, let
alone run it. So instead, we fake it. The easiest way to do this is to
turn on *SubSurfaces* (we saw this in Detailing Your Simple Person
1.)
For our purposes, let\'s set the subdivision (*Levels*) to 2. Also,
ensure our SubSurf algorithm is set to *Catmull-Clark* (this is the
default setting).

Now, you\'ll notice that with SubSurf on, we lose a lot of hard edges
that we had, essentially we have no sharp corners any more. I don\'t
know about you, but to me that doesn\'t make for a very interesting
mountain range. So to restore our corners, we are going to use *Weighted
Creases for Subsurfs*.

-   First turn off proportional editing with
     , and ensure we\'re in side view with

-   Next, while still in edit mode, change to *Edge Select* mode with
     and select *Edges*.
    Alternatively press *Edge Select Mode* button at the bottom of the
    object window.
-   In the Tool Shelf at left, select the Options tab, then under Edge
    Select Mode, choose Tag Crease.
-   On our Sharp Falloff mountain, the second one we did, select the two
    edges on the right. *(see image
    below)*![](Blender3DNoobtoPro-SharpMtnCreasing.PNG "Blender3DNoobtoPro-SharpMtnCreasing.PNG")
-   Press  or
     → *Edit → Edges → Crease
    SubSurf*, then move the mouse away from the edge until the edge
    *Crease* reads 1.000 in the 3D viewport header. If moving the cursor
    there seems to be impossible, just hit 1 and enter.

As you move the cursor away from the edge you will notice two things.
The first is that the edge becomes thicker as we move from it; this is
showing how much of a crease we have (with *Draw Creases* turned on).
The second is that you will notice the subsurfed mesh moving closer to
the edge as the sharpness increases.

## Naturalness

Press  to enter Edit Mode and
select vertices. Then go into front view
. Select the second vertex from the top
in the centre of our Sharp Falloff mountain, then go into side view
. Hold
and drag the vertex inwards, not too far or your mountain will come out
of itself on the other side. Just bring it in enough to make a small
indent.

Then grab the top vertex and pull it down a small amount. You will
notice that there is a small \"crunch\" in your mountain.

Don\'t forget to select all with , then
 *Shade Smooth* button to smooth
everything out.

OK, so your mountains are starting to shape up. But they still look a
bit too neat. You could spend time moving each individual vertex but the
chances are your model will still lack the natural feel. What we need is
some chaos. Thankfully this is quite easy to accomplish. Firstly select
the vertices that make up your mountains, all of them and a few around
the base (box and circle select will make this easier). Select a few
vertices between the mountains too. Next we use something called
fractals. Fractals are chaotically (i.e. randomly) generated variables.
In short you can use these variables to give your mountains a \"wobbly\"
look.

!Fractal option in
2.72 In
the Tools tab of the Tool Shelf, press Subdivide (under Mesh Tools),
then look at the Subdivide submenu below. The value in the Fractal box
is the strength of the fractal. 1 is very low and will barely change
your model. 10 is very high and will twist your models into very odd
shapes indeed. Have a play with different values until you find one that
you like. Around about 4.0 should do it. Hit OK and presto, your
mountains have been transformed from clinical neatness, to lumpy chaos.

-   If you make too many fractals, your computer will slow down.
    However, the more you add, the more bumpy and realistic it looks!

Repeatedly using the fractal tool seems to rapidly multiply the amount
of vertices on your canvas. I suggest using the tool once, and if the
result isn\'t satisfying, undo the result
() and try it again with a different
fractal strength. Helpfully, even after undo, your selected vertices
remain selected.

Now go back into Object mode and view the result.


# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Modeling a volcano

|previous=Mountains Out Of Molehills
}}
```
In this module, you will create a volcano using the proportional edit
fall-off tool. You should be comfortable with deleting and adding
meshes.

\_\_TOC\_\_

## Adding a Plane

Delete the basic cube. Add a plane, and
cale it up by 10. Rotate it so you see it
in top-view (make sure it\'s in Orthographic view too).

Enter Edit mode and subdivide (with ) 5 or
6 times. More subdividing will give you a \"smoother\" volcano, but it
also needs more CPU power.

\"Subdivide\" divides every square in the plane into four new squares.
So every time you press \"Subdivide\" you will have four times as many
squares as before. \"Subidivide Multi\" will make x horizontal and x
vertical lines through your existing squares, so the new number of
squares is: (squares_old)\*(x+1)^2^, where x is the number you
enter.\'\'

## Making the Mountain

In top view, select one of the points in the middle of the plane. With
this point selected change to side view. Press the
, which enables the \"Proportional Edit
Falloff\" tool in the Menu-Panel beneath the 3-D-Window. As seen in the
previous tutorial Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Mountains Out Of
Molehills
when you move a vertex while edit falloff is enabled, all vertices in a
defined radius of the selected vertex will align with the selected
vertex when its position is altered. How they are adjusted can be chosen
in the tab on the right of the yellow dot. I propose using \"smooth
falloff\".

![](Blender_Smooth_fallof.jpg){width="400"}

Now grab the vertex with . You will now
see a gray circle. You can change its size with the mouse wheel. Every
vertex inside this radius will be affected by the falloff. Change the
size of the circle so almost the whole plane is in it.

![](blender_circle_size.jpg){width="400"}

Now move the vertex a bit upwards, as seen in the picture. Optionally
you can lock the z-axis to make the volcano go straight up by pressing
.

![](Blender_grab_1.jpg){width="400"}

As you can see all the other vertices will shift upward. We could keep
moving this vertex at the same rate, but that would cause the plane
itself to rise and bend, and that\'s not very good. So press
 to apply the changes, grab the same
vertex a second time and repeat the previous exercise as before, except
now choose a smaller radius for the circle, about half the diameter of
the plane ( →
 → scroll
).

![](Blender_grab_2.jpg){width="400"}

Repeat this two or three more times and you will get something like
this:

![](blender_grab_last.jpg){width="400"}

## Forming the Crater

Now we\'re going to create the \"hole\" on the volcano. First change the
falloff to \"root\". Grab the vertex one more time, change the size of
the circle so it\'s more or less as seen in the picture.

![](blender_grab_down_circle.jpg){width="400"}

Grab this vertex down a bit, apply, grab it one more time with a smaller
circle. You now should have something like this:

![](blender_grab_down_last.jpg){width="400"}

Just leave the border jagged and just smooth (Subdivision Surface) the
whole volcano cause it is much more realistic. Go to Object mode, select
the volcano, go to the \"Modifier\" menu in the \"Properties\" Header
and just click on \"Add Modifier\" -\> Subdivision surface (you can
leave \"view\" on 1). Do not apply these settings yet.

![](blender_2.75a_subdivision_surface.jpg){width="400"}

First we\'ll do a test-render. Still in \"Object mode\" Delete the
default Lamp point with \"X\" or \"Delete\" and place your 3D cursor
behind the camera and press
+ -\>
\"Lamp\" -\> \"Point\". With the Lamp Point still selected Click on The
Lamp point Properties (\"Data\") in the \"Properties\" Header then
change \"Energy\" to \"10\". Press **F12** to enter Render, after
adjusting the camera.

![](blender_2.75a_subdivision_surface_Rendered.jpg){width="400"}

## Finishing the crater

You can very easily make a nice looking crater. Just go into \"Edit
Mode\", touch \"Num1\". Make sure \"limit selection to visible\" is off
and \"proportional editing\" is on and set it to \"sharp\" falloff.
Select about the upper vertices with \"border select\" (Press \"B
key\").

![](Selection_Upper_Vertices.jpg){width="400"}

After that, scale (press \"S key\") it \'till it\'s a nice crater with a
circle as large as mine.

![](Selection_Scale_Vertices.jpg){width="400"}

And that\'s it, you just created a nicer looking crater.

![](Crater_done.jpg){width="400"}

![](Crater_done_Rendered.jpg){width="400"}

## Adding Magma

Let\'s add some \"magma\" using lighting.

1.  Make sure you\'re in \"Object Mode\"
2.  Press
    +
    and choose *Cursor to Center*.
3.  Press
    +
    and choose *Lamp → Point*.
4.  In the Properties window, click the Data tab.
5.  In the colour box (white by default) in the Lamp section, change the
    color to reddish-orange. (Red: 1, Green: 0.1, Blue: 0)
6.  Set the Energy to around 7.
7.  Raise the light until it\'s just above the bottom of the crater
    (rab along the
     axis).
8.  If the ground level of your plane is reflecting light from the lava
    lamp this is because the bottom of your crater is above ground level
    of the plane you created; you\'ll need to turn on ray-tracing. in
    the object data menu for the light, open the Shadow menu and click
    \"Ray Shadow\"

-   Alternate 1: Spot Lamp

1.  Change the light\'s type to *Spot*.
2.  Raise the light until it\'s covering most of the crater. If the
    light is not pointing down, otate and
    angle it downwards.You can also scale the radius of the light by
    press  to fit the rim of the crater.

-   Alternate 2: Area Lamp

1.  Change the light\'s type to *Area*.

2.      otate along the  axis: 180 degrees.

3.  Set Gamma to 2.

4.  Set Distance to around 5.

Experiment with the values and positioning to get something that works
with your volcano.

It should now look like this:

![](blender_volcano_magma.jpg "blender_volcano_magma.jpg"){width="400"}

## Varying the Terrain

Next, let\'s set the volcano\'s material.

1.      on the volcano plane.

2.  Select the \"Material\" button
    ![](Materials_button.png "Materials_button.png") and press New.

3.  Change the Diffuse color to ashen gray. (Red: 0.260, Green: 0.230,
    Blue: 0.230)

4.  Select the \"Texture\" button and press New.

5.  Change the Type to Stucci.

6.  In the Influence panel, uncheck Color, and check Normal. Set the
    Normal slider to 0.5. This will render the texture as a bump-map.

(Note: In version 2.77 you may need to change the texture Mapping -\>
Coordinates option from UV to Generated before you see bumps appear.)

(Note: In version 2.78c you may need to change the texture Mapping -\>
Coordinates option from UV to Global or Object before you see bumps
appear.)

**Older versions:**

Select the volcano and press F5. Keep Pressing F5 until the Materials
Buttons (symbolized by a red ball) is highlighted. Then add a new
material. You do this by clicking the Add New button in the Links and
Pipeline Panel. Once you\'ve done that, set the settings similar to the
picture below. Now press F6, then add a new texture to the material.
Choose a stucci texture, set the noise size to 0.15. Now switch back to
the materials-window (F5) and click on the \"map to\" tab. Deselect the
\"col\" button and select the \"nor\" button. This will render the
texture as a bump-map on the volcano. Set the \"nor slider\" to 0.5,
which should be the default. Switch to the \"map input\" tab and choose
\"tube\".

![](blender_material_volcano.jpg){width="400"}

If you now render you should get something like this:

![](blender_volcano_stucci.jpg){width="400"}

This looks really smooth, like clay pottery. To get a more rough-looking
volcano, try out these options:

-   Option 1: Subdivide and increase the fractal. 5 should do the trick.

![](blender_volcano_fractal5.jpg){width="400"}

-   Option 2: Decrease the texture\'s basis size (in the \"Stucci\"
    panel when you select the \"Texture\" button).

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-   Option 3: Proportional edit tool.
    1.  Press  to turn on Proportional
        Editing mode. Select Random fallout.

    2.          rab the center vertex, and raise it along the
         axis.

**Older versions:**

Go into Edit mode, select all Vertices, and use the fractal (set from 15
to 30) to really get things looking rocky and mountainous. **TAB** (Edit
mode) → **F9** → **AKEY** to select all → Mesh Tools → Fractal → 15 - 30
(15-low, 30-high) → OK → **TAB** (Object mode) In Blender 2.5 you can
use the random proportional edit tool: use **NUM7** to switch into top
view, grab the central vertex of your volcano using a large-radius
random proportional edit, and pull it slightly into Z-direction.

(A note: Seems there is no need in subsurf at all since fractal tool
will dramatically increase vertex quantity.)