Texturing

In the fifth in our series of Blender 3D Basics classes, Ethan Davis shows you how to use texturing to make your 3D CGI models look more photorealistic.

The textures Ethan illustrates include fingerprints, scratches, and dust, as well as a variety of surfaces ranging from rough to glossy.

Some of the properties he demonstrates include Roughness, Metallic, Specular Tint, Anisotropic, Sheen, and more.

As he moves between Shading and Editing mode, he shows you how to use normal maps and bump maps, and demonstrates UV unwrapping.

This comprehensive texturing tutorial will boost your Blender skills significantly.

You may also find it useful to refer to the Bump Map, Emission, Index of Refraction, Node, Normal Map, Normals, Texture Mapping and UV Map entries in our 3D CGI Terminology A-Z.

NOTE: The specific texture Ethan uses for the lipstick is available to download here.

For other textures (free and paid-for), Ethan recommends the following resources:

Please note that this page contains affiliate links. While we only recommend products and resources that we believe in, we may benefit financially from any purchases you make via these links.

Comments

  1. When I switch to “Shading” the object gets extremely small (I thought that it had disappeared at first). I can zoom in to some extent, but still it appears very small. Any help would be appreciated!

  2. bleavitt

    This is the lesson where Ethan is losing me. I’ve watched all the terms lessons and while they do tell a bit about what they mean, they don’t really give many examples to help me understand what they mean. With this specific lesson, it seems like Ethan is simply doing the work and assuming I know what he’s talking about. It’s missing the fundamental explanations of these tools and why we use them, how they work, etc. It feels more like he’s winging it by explaining his thoughts as he goes along, but it doesn’t feel catered to a beginner. Why are you unwrapping geometry? I don’t have a clue what makes an unwrap good or bad. How does unwrapping work? What are these nodes? How do nodes work? What are the limitations of nodes? Why would you use nodes rather than some other method?

    1. I’m so agree with you, this is going really fast, I have the same questions as you. To add a bit of complexity, things seems to have change in the newest version of blender…. I ‘m lost !

  5. Mofe Koloh

    Hi, when you first introduced UV editing I was so lost because I saw nothing on my UV editing window, I had to search youtube to find out what was wrong. I think there are a lot of things you’re skipping over in this process, and I don’t feel like I’m being carried along

  6. Mofe Koloh

    Hi Ethan, i really do not understand what you’re doing with the mix shader and geometry node, and why it does what it does, please can you explain better

  7. garystasiuk

    Karl & Ethan – small suggestion on these videos.
    I’m learning blender and actually modelling a product I need to create for a client. It just worked out that I had created all the images for their new product line for their website and this particular product cannot be photographed because it is new, they have not gotten the bottle and the finished packaging yet. I suggested putting the images together with 3D. A very simple product.. a capped bottle with similar textures to all their others.
    Because I need to solve a problem and then find help within the videos, like setting up the camera, setting up the render, applying different node solutions for materials, and on and on… I am constantly searching the videos for that little snippet where I can find to solve a certain sub menu or creating the appropriate chain of nodes.. honestly, I think I have watched the videos 6x over trying to find those little tidbits of information, and to be honest, they go by very quickly. (Ethan does a brilliant job but he runs through things at a good clip). My suggestion is a list of time links to sections in the videos. It would make revisiting this process heavy software a touch easier to learn and apply.

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