How to Apply a Material or Texture in Blender

Last Updated: October 19, 2015

Materials and textures are what makes a model look more realistic and appealing. Here is how to make them in Blender, a free, open-source 3D modelling program. For this tutorial, a relatively complex model will be used, but you can do this just as well with a simple shape, such as a cube or sphere.

Part 1

Part 1 of 2:

Adding Materials

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3
Review the materials setting that appears. You can adjust the color and reflection (diffuse and specular) settings here. The intensity slider will adjust how prominent the reflection is, and the "hardness" slider will affect the sharpness.
- For this example, an orange material with a soft reflection will be used.
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It should have the selected material applied to it.

Part 2

Part 2 of 2:

Adding Texture

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You can find it right next to the "Materials" tab, then click the "New" button.
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This will allow you to select a texture. The "Clouds" option will be selected for this example.
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3
Adjust the size and detail of the texture using these sliders.
- For this example, a size of 0.1 and a depth of 6 will be used.
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5
Adjust the color. If you don't want the texture to be a very saturated pink color (when will you need to use that?) go down to the "Influence" panel in the Textures tab and click on the color swatch.
- Change the color to something more reasonable (for this example it will be a dark brown).
- The updated texture will show in the Preview panel.
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The texture has appeared; however it's a little stretched out.
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Since the texture is stretched vertically here, the Z value will be changed to 3. This will squish the texture so it appears normally.
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Question

Do I have to do this differently in the latest version of Blender?

Mroshak

Community Answer

The setup of where different functions are is different, however, the steps are still the same.

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Tips

Try using other textures. Some good options are Musgrave, Voronoi, Stucci, Wood, and Blend.

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If you want to use an image texture, choose the Image or Movie option.

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How to Apply a Material or Texture in Blender

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Adding Materials

Adding Texture

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