Silo Modeling Tools - 3D Modeling in Silo - page 40

Silo Materials

Materials are one of the few things in Silo controlled exclusively from an editor
side menu. The editor can be accessed using the drop-down menu Editors/
Options > Material Editor or UVs/Materials > Material Editor or by pressing
Control Alt M . When you i rst start a project, your palette will come with
just the one default material we've used throughout this chapter, but it's easy
to add more, and you have the option of creating materials that are either just
color or based on an image.

Here we focus on simply adding color, and to get a feel for the tool we'll create
a shirt, hair, and skin for the primitive base bust. Feel free to select any colors
you like, just make sure they are distinct enough to be noticeable.

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To start, open a new project and insert the base bust ( Create > Custom
Primitive > Base Bust ).

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Now open the Materials Editor using one of the methods listed previously
and create a new material using the New button.

You will notice four color options: “Dif use,” “Ambient,” “Specular,” and
“Emissive.” “Dif use” is the main setting we'll be working with here. The rest
deal with how coloring reacts to dif erent kinds of light.

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Once you have created the new material, click on the colored square
next to the “Dif use” setting and change the color to one appropriate
for hair. Name this new material setting, and then create two more new
materials—one for the shirt and one for the skin, in whatever colors
you like.

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Now enter face selection mode and select the areas for the hair. Then, in
the materials editor, select the appropriate material and press Apply .

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Repeat the process for the shirt, and you should get something like
Figure 3 26a .

Rather than trying to select each of the remaining faces individually for the
skin, we'll use one of the great features of the Material Editor : Select By .

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Select the default material in the editor, press Select By , and you should
see all of the remaining polygons selected (as in Figure 3.26b). Select your
skin material, press Apply , and you're done.

U V B asics

UV tools are some of the most dii cult to understand in the Silo toolset
because they involve new vocabulary, a new viewing style, and a new way of
thinking about your model. In addition, unlike some of the other concepts
we've discussed, working with UVs doesn't involve as much iteration—it's
more like a recipe of small steps—so it's important to catch them all. This
section includes a mini project: creating a T-shirt UV map to help you
understand the l ow and process.