Creating Man-made Materials in Cycles - Blender Cycles Materials and Textures - page 172

Creating a wood material with procedurals

In this recipe, we will create a generic wood material—a shader that can be easily adapted to
different situations—as shown in the following screenshot:

The procedural wood material as it appears in the final rendering

Getting ready...

Start Blender and load the 9931OS_Suzanne_start.blend file. Then perform these steps:

1. Go to the World window and click on the button with a dot icon to the right of

the Color slot under the Surface subpanel. In the pop-up menu, select the
Environment Texture item.

2. Click on the Open button and browse to the textures folder to load the

Barce_Rooftop_C_3K.hdr image.

3. Set the Strength value to 0.300 . Then go back to the Material window.

4. Go to the Camera view and add a Cube primitive to the scene. Place it

leaning on the Plane, to the right of Suzanne. Move it up by 1 Blender unit.

5. With the mouse arrow in the Camera view, press Shift + F to enter Walk

Mode. Adjust the Camera position to center the two objects in the frame.

6. Select the Cube, go to Edit Mode, and scale it to at least twice its current size. Exit

Edit Mode, and using the 3D manipulator widget (which can be enabled in the 3D
view toolbar), move the Cube upwards to stay nicely on the Plane. Press N , and in
the Properties panel, select the Lock Camera to View item. Then adjust the
Camera position framing the two objects.

7. Assign a Bevel modifier to the Cube, set Width to 0.0450 , and set the

Segments value to 4 .

8. Press T to call the Tool Shelf panel. Set the Cube shading to Smooth.