Materials - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 186

tab (Figure 12-5), without having to start from
scratch. Notice in the figure that all of the materi-
als assigned to the active object are in the panel at
the top of the tab. Below, in the Preview panel, is
a preview of the active material, followed by other
panels containing the Materials settings. I'll discuss
the relevant panels in the Materials tab (when using
Blender Internal) here.

Diffuse This panel contains the settings for the
diffuse color and shading of a material. The
color picker (see Figure 12-5) allows you to set
the diffuse color of the material, which is then
multiplied by the intensity value. The drop-
down menu to the right lets you set the diffuse
shader model, which affects the falloff of the
material's diffuse color from light to dark at
different angles. The default Lambert shader
model is usually fine, though the Oren Nayar
shader model can be used to mimic surfaces
with a rougher microscopic structure, like clay
or stone. The other shader models here are
more exotic and rarely useful.

Active
material

New
material
Delete
material

Specular The settings in the Specular panel are
similar to those in the Diffuse panel, except
that they control an object's specular shading (a
loose approximation of specular reflection, as
discussed earlier in “Reflection” on page 184).
The hardness entry determines how broad or
tight these reflections are (see Figure 12-6).
Materials with a high hardness value have
sharp, bright highlights, while those with a
low hardness value have softer, more spread
out highlights.

Color pickers

Diffuse
shading

Shading The following options affect a material's
overall shading:

Specular
shading

Emit This causes an object to appear bright
even when it is not lit and can even cause an
object to cast light on other objects when it
is used with certain World settings.

Shading
options

Ambient This determines whether an object
receives ambient illumination (using
the Ambient Color setting in the World
Settings tab).

Translucency This causes an object to appear
lit on both its front and back, making it look
translucent, like thin paper or a leaf.

Shadeless This completely eliminates the
effect of light on an object; the object will
get its color and brightness entirely from its
diffuse color and textures.

Miscellaneous
options

Tangent Shading This alters the shading of
a surface to more closely resemble that
of brushed metal or other materials with
a “grain” or directionality to their micro-
scopic structure. The direction of the grain
is taken from the object's UV coordinates,

Figure 12-5: The Materials tab when using
the Blender Internal renderer