Computer Animation Surface Materials

Color You may apply color directly onto the surface of an object But to create realistic and sophisticated visual appearance, you need to tweak many parameters The visual apparence of an object, when rendered, depends on many settings: Lights Surface material settings Textures Camera (viewing angle) obstructions and transparent occlusions and a lot more …

Lights and surfaces

Create a new material Blender will automatically create a new material for the default cube For any new object, you need to create a new material Click on “Shading” icon or F5, then select “Material Buttons”

Link material with object You can change the name of any material You can link one material with multiple objects Multiple objects share the same material Ctrl + L Link all selected objects to the material of the “active object” (i.e. the last selected object)

Base color In the Material panel, you can set the base color for the material in Color Picker Applet Can preview the material settings

Shaders For any object, the question is: what is the color of the light that gets reflected into the camera? This is calculated based a lighting equation The lighting equation describes the light-surface interaction The light-surface interaction is divided into two components: diffusion and specular reflection

Diffuse shaders Calculate the diffuse component (color) of the light-surface interaction Light is reflected equally in all directions

Diffuse shader A diffuse shader calculates the diffuse component in the lighting equation Different people have proposed different equations to calculate the diffuse component Therefore there are different diffuse shaders

Diffuse shaders Diffuse shader types Lambert Oren-Nayar Toon Minnaert Fresnel

Specular shaders Specular shaders calculate the specular component of the light-surface interaction Create the bright highlights that one would see on a glossy surface, mimicking the reflection of light sources

Specular shaders

Specular shaders Again different people have proposed different equations to calculate the specular components Therefore there are different shader types CookTorr Phong Blinn Toon Wardlso