Over 80 great recipes to create life-like Blender objects Overview Master techniques to create believable natural surface materials Take your models to the next level of realism or artistic development by using the material and texture settings within Blender 2.5. Take the hassle out of material simulation by applying faster and more efficient material and texture strategies Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a logically organized according to the surface types with clear instructions and explanations on how these recipes can be applied across a range of materials including complex materials such as oceans, smoke, fire and explosions. In Detail Blender 2.5 is one of the most usable 3D suites available. Its material and texture functions offer spectacular surface creation possibilities. It can take you hours just to create basic textures and materials in Blender and when you think of creating complex materials and textures you are petrified. Imagine how you will feel when you overcome these obstacles. This book wastes no time on boring theory and bombards you with examples of ready-created materials and textures from the start, with clear instructions on how they were created, and what you can learn from them for making your own. It covers all core Blender functions you will ever need to easily create perfect simulation of objects from the simplest to the most complex ones. The book begins with recipes that show you how to create natural surface materials, including a variety of pebbles, rocks, wood, and water, as well as man-made metals, complete with rust. By utilizing some of the easiest-to-use animation tools available, you will be able to produce accurate movement in mesh objects. Familiarize yourself with a plethora of tools that will help you to effectively organize your textures and materials. You will learn how to emulate the reflective properties of natural materials and how to simulate materials such as rusted iron, which is difficult to make believable. Transparency and reflection are both tricky natural surface properties to simulate but these recipes will make it easy. Explore ways to speed up animations by using special painting techniques to significantly lower render times. By the end of the book, you will be able to simulate some of the most difficult effects to recreate in any 3D suite, such as smoke, fire, and explosions. What you will learn from this book Understand the new Blender 2.5 user interface that simplifies creation of materials and textures Explore the complex task of UV mapping of a human face Use the Sub Surface Scattering commands in Blender to create objects the way you want Confidently simulate materials such as smoke, flames, and explosions using the Blender 2.5 Smoke Physics module Create an entire ocean that animates and reacts with objects in the water by using the new Blender 2.5 features Employ simple repeating textures that can be applied with infinite variety without appearing to repeat Synthesize complex materials without complex mesh objects by using alpha transparency Create incredible moving textures and materials by using Blender 2.5 animation curves Create flexible materials that can curve around corners or apply themselves to complex winding meshes without unwanted texture distortion Manage Blender 2.5 materials and textures and effectively apply them to your Blender projects