# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Fluffy Material

## Spherical Blend Texture

This technique maps a spherical blend texture to the outsides of an
object.

Create a new material and name it something intelligent. Create a new
texture for this material, change the texture type to Blend, and then in
the texture properties, change the blend shape to \"Sphere\".

![](BNTP_img1.png "BNTP_img1.png")

Back in the material buttons, go the \"MapInput\" tab and change the
texture coordinates to Blank-Blank-Z and Nor and as demonstrated in the
next screenshot: ![](BNTP_img2.png "BNTP_img2.png")

Finally go the \"MapTop\" tab, and depress the Emit button and set the
Texture Blending Mode to \"Add\": ![](BNTP_img3.png "BNTP_img3.png")

That\'s all there is to it, and here is how it looks:
![](Render_SphericalBlend.png "Render_SphericalBlend.png")

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## Backlighting

This is a technique that a rather famous blender user called \"@ndy\"
uses. Very simple and effective.

All you need to do is place a Hemi light BEHIND the object you want to
light in respect to the active camera.

Breakdown: First add a Hemi lamp to your scene:

![](BNTP_img10.png "BNTP_img10.png")

Next, Select the lamp THEN press and hold down the Shift key, and select
the Camera. Press Control-C to bring up the copy attributes menu, and
copy location AND rotation.

![](BNTP_img11.png "BNTP_img11.png")

Now select JUST your lamp, press R to rotate it, then press the X key
TWICE to rotate around the local X axis. Using your numpad, key in
\"180\" to rotate the object 180Degrees.

All that remains to do is to press G to grab the lamp, then press Z
TWICE to move along the local Z axis, and move the lamp until it is past
and behind the object of interest. your resulting setup should look
something like this:

![](BNTP_img13.png "BNTP_img13.png")

And here is the rendered result:
![](Render_Backlight.png "Render_Backlight.png")

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-   Color ramp
    with input set to normal.

Pretty straighforward, but many advise against it.

-   Minnaert shader

Available in 2.37, \"Darkness\"\<1 actually brightens edge. A cool
shader, but not very useful for this purpose.

