Creating Textures - 3D for Graphic Designers - page 71

settings), and Special Effects such as stretched (anisotropic) reflections. Figure 3-21 shows the effect of tex-
tures in various channels individually and their combined effect in a finished material.
Figure 3-21: Texture maps set to (from left to right) Diffuse Color, Bump, Reflective Fresnel, and all three
combined
Practice: Texturing the Water Bottle
Now that you have a model to work with, let's take a look at the application of textures to the water
bottle created in the practice section of the previous chapter. If you have not created a model and would
like to practice the texturing process, an untextured model is included on the DVD for this chapter
( Bottle_Texture_Start.lxo ). The water bottle model will need several textures to complete its look. You
will need opaque texture for the cap, transparent textures for the bottle itself and liquid inside, and an image-
based texture for the label. You will also need to create a UV map for proper placement of the image on the
label.
Setting Basic Materials
The first thing you'll need to do in order to set up textures for the scene is to assign individual materials to
each section of the model. You'll need individual textures for the transparent bottle, for the opaque cap, and
for the label, which will be placed on the bottle later. The liquid inside is placed on its own layer so it will be
easier to assign any material to it. To assign materials to each of the individual sections of the model, follow
these steps:
1. While in Items mode, select the Liquid mesh item.
2. Press the M key and enter a name for your liquid material.
3. Move to the bottle mesh item and enter Polygons mode.
4. Double-click on the cap to select it, press the M key, and assign the material.
5. Double-click on the bottle itself, press the M key, and assign a name for your clear plastic material.
6. Finally, double-click on the label and assign the material as with the previous sections.
Now you're ready to begin work on the material values themselves. To make material selection more
intuitive, you can simply click on a section of your model in the Render Preview window, and its corres-
ponding material will become highlighted in the Shader Tree. In a simple scene like this one, using Render
Preview can save a significant amount of time. In a complex scene with dozens of materials, this can be an
absolute lifesaver.
Start by clicking on the cap in the Render Preview window to access the cap material. This is a simple
white plastic material, and the default settings are close to our desired finished result. The main difference