CH05- Textures

01-Textures

02-Texture Mapping

03-Displacement Mapping

04-UV Texture Mapping

05-Selective UV Mapping

06-Unwrapping with Seams

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Textures

In the Materials section we considered the effect of light reflecting off a smooth
surface. Textures are the physical characteristics of a surface such as the surface of
bricks, carpet, woodgrain etc.

Before you can add a Texture to a surface you must first add a material since by
default, Blender textures are set to influence the material. See Influence tab.

Textures are applied to an objects surface using the buttons on the Properties Window
– Texture button. Clicking the Texture button displays a panel where you can add a
new texture .

Blender comes with a series of built in Textures from which to chose or you can use
any photo image stored on your computer. Blender can also place movies on a surface
and you can animate the textures.

To demonstrate the placing of a Texture follow this example:

Open a new Blender scene and replace the default Cube with a Plane. Scale the Plane
up by five. Add a Material R: 0.800, G: 0.767, B: 0.495.
Properties Window Texture button

Go to the Properties Window – Texture button and

click 'New'.

The texture buttons display with a default texture type 'Clouds' shown in the 'Preview
tab' panel. With a 'Clouds' type texture a 'Cloud' tab has displayed. This tab contains
settings for altering the characteristics of the texture. The tab will change depending
on what texture type is selected.
 Texture type drop
Down

Click on the texture

type drop down and
select type 'Magic'.
Tab.

Clouds

Magic

'

Magic tab
The Cloud texture is replaced by the Magic texture and the Cloud tab is replaced by
the Magic tab. This tab contains only two values for altering the characteristics of the
texture, Depth and Turbulence.

Note the 3D Window does not show the

texture on the object. This is where
Blender conserves memory. Render,
press F12, to see the texture.
Change the Depth value to 4 and render again to see the alteration.

Go back to the texture type drop

down selection and select 'Image
or Movie'.

An 'Image' tab displays instead if

'Magic' and the preview shows a
black window. We haven't told
Blender what image to use.
Render with Depth: 4

In the Image tab click open. The File Browser window displays. Navigate to a file
containing a picture. I have a picture named 'Street.jpg' in my Documents folder.
Click on the picture file then click 'Open' (Top RHS of screen).

You will see your picture in the preview

panel ( probably multiple images). Render to
see your picture displayed on the surface of
the plane.
Mapping the Texture

Weather you use one of Blenders built in textures or an image you may want to adjust
how the texture is positioned on the object. The 'Mapping' tab is the place to do this.

Offset and Size are self explanatory. Either can be controlled on the X, Y and Z axis.
The Coordinates drop down gives you a selection of coordinate systems and the
Projection drop down has a choice of mapping options to suit the shape of your
object.

Flat Cube

Tube Sphere

There are a lot of buttons and settings to experiment with in the Texture buttons and
the best way to find out what they do is play around and record results for future
reference.
Displacement Mapping

Displacement Mapping is using a Texture to deform a mesh. You can make a Cube or
a Sphere et. Look wrinkled without having to move verticies around.

Start a new Blender scene with the default cube. Make sure the Cube has a material
then in Edit mode subdivide the Cube a number of times. The texture is going to
displace vertices so you need a whole bunch of vertices to work with.

Put a Cloud Texture on the Cube then go to the Influence tab. Leave the Diffuse
Color ticked and under the Geometry heading tick 'Displace'. Render to see the effect.

Moving the slider next to the Displacement tick varies the amount of displacement.
The 'Blend' drop down displays options which influence the Material. Try 'Add' and
'Subtract' and render to see the difference. Another example is shown below. This
time a black and white image texture has been used on a plane. Don't forget to
subdivide the plane. Negative Displacement values raise the surface up positive
values depress the surface.

Black and White Image

Rendered Image with Negative Displacement Value

Experiment with other features and record the outcome for future reference.
UV Texture Mapping

For complex models regular Cubic, Cylindrical or Spherical texture mapping is not
sufficient to accuratly place the texture on the surface or part of the surface. This is
where UV Mapping can help.

The coordinates U and V are used simply to destinguish from the XYZ coordinates
used in the 3D Window.

UV Mapping is accomplished by taking the surface of an object ( Model ) , peeling it

off as you would a skin from an orange and laying it out flat on a 2D surface then
superimposing an image as a texture over the flattened surface (Mapping). The suface
for laying out the flattened object is the UV/Image Editor Window.

As with every basic instruction in Blender it is best to begin with something simple.
Although the process we are describing is for complex surfaces anything other than
simple is going to be confusing at first.

Start with a Cube object in Blenders default 3D Scene but first delete the cube that is
loaded automatically and add a new cube.

The default cube comes pre loaded with a material and a texture channel. In our
previous discussion on material and textures it was stated that before a texture could
be applied an object had to have a material. Adding a new cube to the scene which
does not have a material or a texture will demonstrate that neither are necessary when
applying UV Texture Mapping.
Properties Window – Material Button

New Cube added – no material applied

With the new cube added divide the 3D Window in two and change one half to the
UV/Image Editor. In the 3D Window zoom in on the cube. When you divide the
window the cubeis a bit small.
Change the 3D Window to Edit
mode and select 'Textured' as the
Viewport Shading Type.

Selecting 'Textured' will allow

you to see the superimposed
texture in the 3D Window while
in Edit mode.

In the 3D Window Tools Panel under 'UV Mapping' click on

'Unwrap' to display a 'UV Mapping' unwraping type selection
menue. These options allow you to unwrap the surface of the
selected object in a variety of ways. Some of the unwrapping
methods aredifficult to visualise so I will let you play with them
and figure out the results for yourself. I'm still scratching my
head.

To keep things simple select the 'Follow Active Quads' method for unwrapping the
cube. This method should lay out the surface of the cube as if you had unfolded one
of those post office mailing boxes. The
surface should consist of six squares.
The UV/Image Editor window will
probably require you to zoom out to see
the whole arrangement ( Num Pad –
Key, the same as the 3D Window).
Now the flattened surface is displayed
it's time to load a texture image.
In the UV/Image editor Window header click on 'Image' and select 'Open'. This will
display the File Browser Window where you can navigate and find an image to use as
a texture. Once you have located your image file click on it to select and then click on
'Open'.
File Browser Window Click to display files as thumbnail images.

In my case I have selected a picture file named 'WinterLeaves.jpg' in my

C:\Users\Public\Pictures\SamplePictures\ directory.

The image displays in the UV/Image editor window.

Zoom out again if the image is too large.
The image shows in the center face but you
will see that it is mapped to each surface of
the cube in the 3D Window. Go ahead and
rotate the cube to
see if I'm right.

With the curser in the UV/Image editor press the A Key to

select all the surfaces then G Key (Grab) and move the
selected surfaces around. As you move the surfaces you will
see that the image is repositioned on the surfaces of the cube in the 3d Window.
The outline of the surfaces in the UV/Image Editor can be scaled and rotated the
same as you would edit a mesh in the 3d Window. Indavidual vertices on the mesh
may be selected then grabbed and moved also. As you see by manipulating the
surface outline in the UV/Image editor you can accuratly position the texture image
on the surfaces of your object.

If you were to render an image of the object (F12) at this

stage you would be dissapointed to see that the image
texture does not render.

To render the image texture you have to activate 'Face

Texture' ( Tick ) in the 'Options tab of the Materials
buttons in the Properties Window. OK, now you have
to apply a material. The default dull grey color will
do.

Default Grey

Now press F12 to see the rendered image.

Selective UV Texture Mapping

So far the image texture has been mapped to all the surfaces of the object but
Suppose you wish to place the texture only on one face of the object.

Create a new scene and leave the default cube selected. Divide the 3D Window as
before and set up the UV/Image editor. In the 3D Window tab to Edit mode and select
'Textured' Viewport Shading.

In the 3D Window change from Vertex

Select mode to Face Select mode.
Deselect all faces then select only one
face ( Right click on the face ).

One face selected Face Select

Mode
In the UV/Image Editor select and enter an image for your texture as before.

You will see the image mapped to the face you selected in the 3D Window. The other
faces display a white.

In this case we didn't do any unwrapping but as soon as the image was entered in the
UV/Image Editor Blender automatically mapped the single face.

With the cursor in the UV/Image Editor

pressing the A Key will select the face. The
white outline turns red.

You can then manipulate the face map to

position your image the way you want.

G Key - grab, R Key – rotate, S Key –

scale.

Grab – Move

Rotate

Scale
Note the face map in the UV/Image Editor is in Vertex Select mode. There are also
the options to select Edge and Face modes similar to the selections in Edit mode in
the 3D Window. There is also a fourth option which is 'Island Select' mode. Some
unwrapping operations seperate the face mesh into seperate parts and Island Select
allows selection of these parts.

Island Select Mode

By selecting different faces on the cube and adding different images to the UV/Image
Editor you can place the different image textures on the indavidual faces. You can
also shift select multiple faces or shift select edges or vertices to tell Blender which
part of an objects surface you want the image texture placed.

Let's go back and consider the mesh unwrapping. Pressing the Unwrap button gives
you different options. Again I will opt out of trying to explain what results these
unwrapping methods produce but a further method is available where you mark a
seam on the surface of the object which tells Blender how to unwrap that part of the
mesh on which you wish to place your texture.

Unwrapping Using Seams

In a new Blender Scene add an Isosphere. An Isosphere is chosen since by default it

comes with just enougth vertices for us simpiltons to play around with.

Set up the UV/Image Editor Window as we did previously. Seam

In the 3d Window with the Isosphere selected

tab to edit mode then press A Key to deselect
all vertices. Change to Edge select mode and
shift select edges dividing the surface of the 1
sphere into three parts. It's best to zoom in on
the sphere and rotate the view while selecting 2
the edges. With the edges selected press 'Mark
Seam' in the tools Panel. The selected edges
will turn red showing that a seam has been
marked. 3
The next trick is to select all the edges of the faces
of the sphere not just the edges marked as the seam.

A Key to deselect the seam edges then A Key to

select all edges.
All edges selected

Having done, press 'Unwrwap' in the Tools Panel then in the drop down select
'Unwrap'.

The seperated parts of the spheres surface will be mapped in the UV/Image Editor.
You can now go ahead and open an Image as a texture. In the 3D Window in Edit
mode with 'Textured' viwport shading you will see the image on the surface of the
sphere mapped to the three parts you set up with the seam.

Part 3 of the Sphere

Island to be selected

In the UV/Image Editor select 'Island select' mode in the header.

This will allow you to select seperatly each of the three surface parts. With a part
selected you can manipulate it to position the texture on that part.
Selected Island scaled down and
positioned over grey blue part of the
image.

Blue grey part of the image applied

as texture to Part 3 of the Sphere

This has been a very brief introduction to UV

Texture Mapping. The possibilities are endless
therefore it is over to you to experiment and
discover the capabilities of the procedure.