# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Quickie Material

|previous=Materials and Textures
|subcat=Basics
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In this module, you will create a new material called \"Green Ooze\".
Along the way, you will learn how to alter the diffuse, specular, and
mirror colors of a material.

## Your First Material

!**Figure 1:** The Materials context in the Properties
window.{width="180"}

The cube in the default scene (which you get from *File → Load Factory
Settings*) has a simple grey color. Now click on the Materials context
![](materials_button.png "materials_button.png") in the Properties
![](Blender269PropertiesIcon.png "Blender269PropertiesIcon.png") window.

The materials context contains various menus, but for now you only need
diffuse, specular and mirror. The material is named and linked in the
panel above the preview window.
( is a feature that allows
materials to be shared between multiple objects (or datablocks).
Changing a material affects the appearance of everything it is linked
to.)

The first row of the window above the preview window indicates that:

-   there is one material assigned to this object and its name is
    \"Material\".

The second row of controls indicates that:

-   The current selected material\'s name is \"Material\".
-   This material will only be saved if it\'s in use.
-   It is not a \"Nodes\" material.
-   Instead of being linked directly to an object, the current material
    is linked to a datablock.

To rename the material, click  on the
name and enter the name you want.

To unlink the material, click  on the
**X** button to the right of the material name (\"Material\"). Do this
now. This deletes the link to the datablock, removing the material from
the mesh. As a side-effect, most of the panels in the Material context
disappear. You will see in a moment, however, that the material still
exists. It hasn\'t been deleted; it is simply no longer in use.

At this point, you could click  the
\"New\" button to create a new material, but instead we are going to
reapply the old material:

1.  Click  on the
    ![](Next_new_button.png "Next_new_button.png") button to the left of
    the \"New\" button.
2.  You\'ll see a nifty drop-down list containing all materials you\'ve
    created so far. Choose *0 Material*.

Materials whose names are preceded by \"0\" in this list are not in use.
By default, Blender doesn\'t save such materials when it saves the
scene. Thus, you can delete a material from the list by saving the scene
and then reopening it. You can override this behavior by toggling the
\"F\" button \"on\" for unused materials you want saved.

Your materials will be much easier to find and manage if you give them
brief, descriptive names you can recognize at a glance. Change this
one\'s name to \"Green Ooze\". In addition, naming of your materials and
other objects in your scene is useful when such components of your scene
will be appended in another scene of a different Blender file. Naming
your materials and other stuff in the scene will enable you to choose
the right objects and materials you need whenever you wish to append
just a portion of a whole bunch of work you did. For instance, you\'re
working on a new Blender project, but felt the material you used in this
Blender file is worth it. Instead of going through the pain of creating
a new material (of course you guessed in the initial one in getting the
right material appearance), you just append the material to your new
work. Pretty simple! Make naming a habit, as it\'s much used in a
production environment.\
\

## Specifying Colors

Simple materials are specified by three colors: diffuse, specular and
mirror. Rectangular patches (*swatches*) of the colour in their own
panel in the Material context allow you to see and change each of these.
Diffuse color is the basic underlying color of the material, rendered by
the . Specular color is
for highlights (small bright spots on a shiny surface) as rendered by
the . Mirror color is
for true reflections rendered using ray-tracing.

There are many ways to define colours. Blender supports three:

-   RGB: By specifying relative amounts of red, green and blue *primary
    colours*, by giving a number from 0.0 to 1.0 for each component. For
    example, (R, G, B) = (0, 0, 0) specifies black (no colour at all);
    (0, 1, 0) is full green; (1, 1, 0) (full red + full green) is
    yellow; (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) is 50% grey, and (1, 1, 1) is full white
    (maximum intensity of all components). Note that this is *additive
    mixing* of colours, which is what happens when you shine lights of
    different colours onto a white screen, not the *subtractive mixing*
    that takes place when you mix different-coloured paints or inks on
    paper or canvas.
-   HSV: By specifying a *hue* (colour position on the rainbow) together
    with a *saturation* (strength of colour, from garish down to pastel,
    with zero giving shades of grey) and *value* (brightness). This is
    generally considered to be easier to use than RGB notation when you
    are trying to create new colours (as opposed to copying a colour
    spec from somewhere else), since it is easier to predict what the
    likely result will be. HSV is commonly represented on a *colour
    wheel*, where the hue is the angle around the circle, saturation the
    distance from the centre, and value controlled by a separate
    brightness slider (as shown below).
-   By specifying a 6-digit hexadecimal number. This is just an
    alternative form of RGB notation, commonly used for colour
    specifications in Web pages.

framed\|**Figure 2:** Blender's colour picker
popup If you click on any
colour swatch, the colour picker will pop up, allowing you to change the
values. This is the most intuitive way. The window that appears will
look like this and will include the following (Figure 2):

1.  A color wheel to change the color as you want. In HSV mode, H
    corresponds to angle around this wheel, while S corresponds to
    distance from the centre.
2.  Three color sliders that will change if you change the color in the
    colorwheel. You can also change the values with the sliders.
3.  A slider that controls the intensity of the color. This corresponds
    to the V in HSV.
4.  A pipette capable of sampling colors from any Blender window or
    render window.
5.  Buttons that can change it to \"HSV\" or \"HEX\" mode.

-   Alternatively you can specify hue, saturation and value components
    by clicking  on the \"HSV\" button
    and pushing the sliders around accordingly.

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-   You can also press the last button and enter the hexadecimal (or
    HEX) code. This is simply a different representation for RGB, where
    the hex digits represent *rrggbb*.

HSV is probably the most easily understandable way of specifying and
experimenting with colours. However, as is common with most computer
systems, all colours in Blender are represented internally as RGB.

If you want to get rid of the window just click
 anywhere else.

The most used method of creating a color of your own is using the color
wheel, but because we want to be sure you will get the exact same color
as us we will use the sliders. Use the above methods to set the diffuse
color to R=0.149, G=1.000, B=0.446 (or use the HEX code: 6CFFB2). If you
look in the \"Preview\" panel, you will see that the material is now
bright green.

Most real-life materials (other than metals) don\'t alter the color of
specular light. For this reason, Specular and Mirror are usually left at
their default values (white). For green ooze, however, you\'ll disregard
this rule-of-thumb:

1.  Click  the sample rectangle below
    the Specular window.
2.  Use the color selection dialog to adjust the specular color and
    watch the Preview panel to see how this color affects the sample
    sphere\'s highlight.
3.  Set the specular color to R=0.640, G=0.990, B=0.566 (or use the HEX
    code: D1FEC6).

With these values for Color and Specular, you should be able to get a
good ooze later on. The Preview, Diffuse and Specular panel should now
look like this:

![](Green_ooze.png "Green_ooze.png")
![](Green_ooze_props.png "Green_ooze_props.png")

As you can see, there are many other material buttons. Many of these
will be explained in later modules. Suggestions for creating specific
materials may be found in
.

Save this scene before proceeding. You will need it for
, in which you will
perfect your ooze.

## Additional Resources

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