Creating Natural Materials in Cycles - Blender 2.6 Cycles: Materials and Textures - page 94

Creating a simple ground material

using procedural textures

In this recipe, we will create a basic raw ground material.

Getting ready

The first step is to start Blender and switch to Cycles. Delete the default cube and add
a plane. In edit mode, scale it nine times bigger (18 units per side) and then follow
these steps:

1. Go in the Object Modifiers window and assign a Subdivision Surface
modifier to the plane. Switch from Catmull-Clark to Simple and set the
levels of Subdivisions for both View and Render to 2 .
2. Assign a second Subdivision Surface modifier. Again, switch to Simple
and set the levels of Subdivisions for both View and Render to 4 .
3. Assign two Displace modifiers. In the first one, assign a Voronoi texture,
increase the Size value to 1.80 , and set the displacement strength to
0.400 . In the second one, assign the default Clouds texture, increase
the Size value to 0.75 and the Depth value to 5 , set the displacement
strength to 0.400 as well.
4. In the Object Tool panel, under Shading , set the plane smooth.
5. Go to the World window and click on Use Nodes , then click on the little
square with a dot to the right-hand side of the color slot. From the menu,
select Sky Texture . Set the Strength value to 0.250 .
6. Select the lamp, go to the lamp's Object Data window and click on Use
Nodes . Then, change the Lamp type to Sun , set the Size value to 0.100 ,
and the Strength value to 1.400 . Change the light color to R 1.000 , G
0.935 , B 0.810 . In orthogonal top view, rotate the Sun lamp to a degree of
90° .
7. Place the camera to have a nice angle on the plane and switch the 3D
view to a Camera view (press 0 from numpad).
8. Split the 3D window to two horizontal rows and change the upper one to a
Node Editor window.
9. Set the Camera view mode to Rendered .