Planes and Materials

During todays tutorial we learnt the importance of planes and how to use the material editor to apply an image to any given shape and give it some texture. Planes can be used as a flat surface to plant an image on, which is useful for creating a floor or a far away landscape. We used the compact material editor to choose an image from our library using the diffuse option to map it to our object. After clicking 'show material in viewport' we could instantly see the impact it had on the plane. Cloning the plane and rotating it so that it intersected with the first plane shows us how to create a simple background using images with the material editor.

After doing this we were taught how to use photoshop to edit an image that we then applied to the plane, giving it transparency. The image we used was a leaf, and since we wanted it to look like an actual leaf, we had to manipulate the plane so that it wasn't perfectly flat. Converting the plane to editable poly enabled us to move the vertexes around, and using soft selection we could get a more smooth result. I enjoyed learning about materials as this is a very important aspect of 3d modelling - adding textures to objects allows for much more depth and allows you to create much more appealing designs.