Important Materials Theory - Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp - page 235

Chapter 7. Important Materials Theory
While in the final analysis, the truly important consideration regarding material cre-
ation is that, things look the way we want or need them to. There is still no denying
the fact that being able to understand how real-world physics causes object surfaces
to look the way they do, can go a long way towards helping us produce more realistic-
looking materials and so in the end more photographic-looking final renders. One nice
side effect of such insight is that we will find ourselves able (generally speaking) to
create materials in a much shorter time frame than would otherwise be the case.
Because of this, we are going to spend some time in this chapter taking a look, albeit
in a fairly brief manner, at some of the more applicable aspects of light and object
interaction that have a bearing on our current project and hopefully in the process
garner some important insights that will help us advance our skills as V-Ray render
artists.
Defining our goals
As the introduction of the chapter has to a large extent already set out what we want
to accomplish here, we can very quickly define our goals for this stage of the project,
noting really that they are twofold at this point.
First, we want to increase our personal understanding of just why it is that objects
we see in the real world look the way they do. And secondly, we want to stir up in
ourselves a desire, a thirst if you like, for gaining ever deeper insights into the work-
ings of the world around us. This will then hopefully stimulate and cause us to make
further investigation and experimentation a part of the typical approach we take to all
of our lighting- and material-based projects. In fact, this secondary objective should
really be considered a critical element in the ongoing development of any 3D artist.