Materials.. Part 2

Constructing your own materials

1. Blending 2 materials

It is possible to mix two materials that are from the material library using the following state.

Choose Blend

Notice that this says Blend instead of Standard.

We mix the two materials that we want here. When this is clicked on we can go back to the material library and choose built in materials

The mix amount determines the balance between the two materials

You can discard the old material if you want…….

Clicking Standard will let you select the MTL Library and choose one of the built in materials.

These two little arrows here are very important. They tell us that we are at the Sub Material level. Its just like being in a file folder inside a file folder… We are looking at material 25 and will now select it

I have chosen the Yellow bricks at this point for Sub Material 25.

Notice that we are still at the submaterial level

Click the Up arrow to take us to the top material level.

Notice how the bricks have taken the place of Material 25

Lets get a material in the next slot.

I decided on the Space Jupiter material

Changing the mix amount will then determine how much Space Jupiter is mixed with the bricks

I’m going to try 50. Obviously different amounts will give different effects.

Here is a rendered picture of a brick wall. With my 50 50 mixture.

2. Using a Composite Material.

Feel like mixing more than two materials Take a look at this menu

and check this out

Look at all the choice you have here. Each of these buttons leads to a submaterial where you can use a premade material or construct something of your own.

3. Getting materials off the internet.

There are lots of texture libraries on the internet. In fact at www.3dcafe.com there is an entire texture library in the free stuff

Looking inside this item we can find textures that we might want to use. Use Save Target As to save them as .jpg files

I found a cool looking fire one.

By clicking on this button and choosing

New Bitmap I can choose the file that I just saved.

New

Bitmap

After this I just choose the file that I want.

Wow cool looking textures

So could I Mix two textures from the internet. But of course.

Just do a blend just like we did at the top of this tutorial but when you get to the sublevel material. Put in a new bitmap instead.

Here is the fire texture above mixed in with a little bit of a motorbike