Beginners Blender 3D: Tutorial 8 - Using Materials (2.78 HD Update)
Channel: bpwebmedia
Date: 01/03/2017

How to apply materials and colours to your objects and individual faces in Blender. In this example, we make a colourful Rubik's Cube.

1. In this tutorial we are going to learn how to add colour and materials to objects in Blender.
2. First of all, select the cube by right clicking on it, making sure that you are in Object Mode.
3. In the properties panel, select the Materials Tab, which looks like a chequered sphere.
4. Click the ‘Add New Material’ button, represented by a ‘+’ sign. 
5. To change the colour, click on the white box under the heading ‘Diffuse’. Diffuse light is the oridinary, everyday light that we are used to seeing before it is affected by external factors.
6. Select a blue colour from the colour picker and the cube turns blue. This is how easy it is to change the colour of an entire object. To change individual faces, you must be in edit mode.
7. In reality, a blue coat looks different than a blue car or a blue wall. Many factors must be considered when applying materials to objects and each one affects its appearance. Some of these are the texture, shininess and reflectivity of the surface of the object, all of which can be controlled separately in Blender.
8. Still under the ‘Diffuse’ heading in the properties panel, we can click on the increase/decrease intensity slider to make the colour stronger or weaker. 
9. Under the ‘Specular’ heading, we can increase or decrease the shininess of the object.
10. Using the ‘Hardness’ slider, you can make the object’s surface appear harder or softer.
11. Scroll down the material properties panel until you can see the ‘Shading’ heading.
12. Increasing the ‘Emit’ slider makes the object look more cartoony and less realistic, which is great for cell-shaded style animations. The higher the ‘emit’ value, the less the object is affected by shadows and highlights and the more cartoony it looks. Maximum Value is 2.0
13. Scroll down to the ‘Transparency’ heading. Tick the box to apply transparency. From here you can increase or decrease the opacity of the object by changing the Alpha value. 1=100%
14. The next heading in the Material Properties tab is the ‘Mirror’ heading. Turn this on by ticking the box and then render your image by clicking ‘image’ under the render tab. 
15. We don’t see any mirror reflection at the moment as there’s nothing else in the scene but the cube. If there were backgrounds and other objects, they would be reflected. You can increase the amount of relfection with the ‘Reflection’ slider. 1.0 is the maximum value.
16. Press Escape to go back to 3D View. Press Tab to go into edit mode. 
17. You can apply separate materials to individual faces of any object in Blender. 
18. Select one of the faces and create a ‘New Material Slot’ by clicking the ‘+’ icon on the top right of the Material Properties panel. The ‘New Material Slot’ and ‘New Material’ buttons are different. So once you’ve created a material slot, click the ‘new material’ button below.
19. Change the colour to red. The face does not change colour yet. Click ‘Assign’ to apply colour.
20. Press ‘w’ to open the specials menu and then choose ‘subdivide’ and choose ‘2’ cuts to make a rubiks cube. Create new material slots for green, yellow, orange and white.
21. Assign different colours to each face of the object. To apply a material that you’ve already created before, just click on the material from the list and then click ‘Assign’. You should also rename your materials so it easier for you to keep track of them all later.
22. Move your camera and render your image.
23. This has been a quick overview of how to apply colours and materials to objects and individual faces of objects in Blender.