Blender part 10 – Textures

Now that the GameDev course is complete – I even got a certificate! – I can have a look at other tutorials and find out more about what can be done with Blender.

Textures featured in the previous course, not only in getting Steve’s skin and clothes looking good, but also in the mech when I added glitter. More interesting textures can be downloaded for use from several websites and the uses for these are only limited by your imagination.

To keep this blog post short and to show some of the things you can do with textures, below are a few spheres with added textures. Despite their appearance in the rendered image, they are just spheres and can be edited and shifted around as such. Using these textures instead of trying to sculpt your own lava flow or mossy stone reduces the load on the computer and is a lot quicker. The downside is that you are restricted by what is available.

You can make your own textures, but that’s way too advanced for me. What’s interesting is that the shadows agree with the textures. The jagged rock (middle back) casts a jagged shadow. And also the hollow plastic red ball is see-through, the holes act as they would in real life.

For further mucking around, I downloaded an anvil model and decided that it would be nice if the blacksmiths didn’t have to put up with all the noise of hammering metal all day. So I made an anvil with a soft furnishing texture – a Chesterfield anvil.

You could also have a glass anvil, for those extra-delicate jobs. Or as the focus for a strokey-beard discussion about the juxtaposition of use and material as a Dadaist/surrealist concept¹ , or as a satire on the impermanence of the permanent and the transparency of the solid.

Or an inflatable anvil, for the blacksmith on the move.

I think I’ll step away from the artistic discussions, it’s well above my pay grade and makes my head hurt. I’m only a simple scientist!

Next, more work with Steve, trying to get him to earn a living.

1. See also Man Ray’s “Cadeau”, an iron with 14 nails glued to the base. ↩︎