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Basic Editing

Materials and Textures

In Blender, the Materials and Textures form separate blocks. This approach was selected to keep the interface simple and to allow universal integration between Textures, Lamps and World blocks.

Materials and mapping

You can view the Material settings in the ButtonsWindow, press F5. To display the Texture, press F6.

The relationship between a Material and a Texture is called the 'mapping'. This relationship is two-sided. First, the information that is passed on to the Texture must be specified. Then the effect of the Texture on the Material is specified.

The MaterialButtons on the right-hand side are reserved for the mapping.

Each Material has eight channels to which Textures can be linked. Each channel has its own individual mapping. By default, textures are executed one after another and then superimposed.

Textures

A distinction is also made between 2D textures and 3D (procedural) textures.

"Wood", for example, is a procedural texture. This means that each 3D coordinate can be translated directly into a colour or a value. These types of textures are 'real' 3D, they fit together perfectly at the edges and continue to look like what they are meant to look like, even when cut; as if a block of wood has really been cut in two.

The Image texture is the only 2D texture and is the most frequently used and most advanced of Blender's textures. Because pictures are two-dimensional, the way in which the 3D texture coordinate is translated to 2D must be specified in the mapping buttons.