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In this tutorial you will be taken into the Material Lab to help you understand how it works and to help you get control of one of Bryce's most powerful features. There is a discussion of the interface and what each item does, a step by step texturing tutorial, and finally a test to see if you can remember what you've learned. The animation controls for materials will not be covered in this tutorial. The following part of the tutorial will make reference to the Alpha channel of a material. This will be discussed in full detail later in the tutorial.
Click here for a quick rundown of what the controls are in the Material Lab.
| First we'll start with a basic flat gray colored object so that the changes in the Material Lab will be evident when they are made. The settings indicated to the right are the basis of this part of the tutorial. Notice that all of the color swatches are the same color of gray and that all of the sliders are set to 0 except for refraction. |  |
| With the settings indicated in the above lab settings, a flat uninteresting black sphere is the result of the render. |  |
| Now that a basis has been established let's tackle each element in the Material Lab in turn until we finish. We will start with Diffuse and Diffusion. |  |
| A short definition
of Diffusion is necessary to help understand what it is. When light hits a rough
object it is reflected in all directions which produces the flat/unshiny surface.
Think of the unshiny appearance of a flat white paint. It has no noticeable
highlight therefore light is reflected evenly over the surface it is applied to.
This property is referred to as Diffusion and it is the color primarily visible when the
object is in direct light. When a texture is assigned to the Diffusion channel, the texture's alpha channel determines which areas of the surface have high diffusion and which have low diffusion. Bright areas in the alpha channel have high diffusion and darker areas have low diffusion. |
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| Notice in the above Material
Lab setting that the color of the diffusion is set to gray. Why is the object
black instead of gray then? Well that's where the slider in Diffusion plays a part.
Notice it is set to 0. However if you change it to 100, the gray color is
then applied to the object.
Of course, you could set this value to any number between 0-100 for varying degrees of diffuse color. |
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| By changing the diffuse color, you can change the color of the object. Notice that the diffuse color was changed to red and now the sphere is a flat red color. |  |
| Next in the Material Lab is
ambience. An ambient object is self-illuminating and simulates the effect of light
hitting the object from all directions. The ambience controls the amount of light
that is reflected off the surface uniformly. In fact if you move the slider to the
higher numbers, it will glow. Shadows will not affect it. The ambient color will be the color primarily seen in shadow and tints the entire object. It will provide a better result when it is set to a darker color than the diffuse color. Of course there is no law that says it must be darker than the diffuse color. That is up to you and your eye.
Different values of ambience. |
 The ambient value of a material is directly affected by the ambient values set in the Sky and Fog palette.
The ambient color from this palette will be added to the ambient value of the material. |
| Notice here that ambience is
set to 100. See that the sphere does not have a shaded area? This is because the
extreme setting is producing the self-glow effect and an object that glows doesn't have
shadows. (Think of a light bulb.) By changing the value to a number between
0-100 you can determine how your material will behave in the shadows. A little tip dealing with ambience: Many of preset materials will exhibit a more "realistic" appearance if you adjust its ambience, especially if you decrease it. |
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Of course if you change the
color value of the ambience, the "glow" color will change.
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| Next up is
Specularity.
Different values of specularity. |
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| Specularity is the highlight
seen when light reflects off of a polished or semi-reflective object. It is the
"shininess" of the object.
See the gray highlight on the sphere? That's a result of the gray specular setting and the 100 specularity setting. This highlight will add to the realism of your textures when applied properly. |
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| One additional feature is
"specular halo", this is the color of the object between the specular highlight
and the diffuse color of the object. Notice the red color between the highlight and the diffuse color. |
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| By now you should know that
changing the color swatch's color will change the color of the particular effect you are
working with. Tip: Alt + Click the swatch for a different color palette selection.
Where would the ambient color be? Pick it out if you can. |
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| Look at the image to the right,
can you pick out the different areas of the sphere that represent: Diffuse, Ambient,
Specular and Specular Halo?
Remember that changing the numerical values of these will change the appearance of your object. |
 In case you forgot, the ambient color is in the shaded area of the sphere. |
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Material Lab Interface | Paint by the Numbers | Test Me
This is not meant to be an all inclusive instruction on every possible way to have made the final image or produce the desired results. Bryce offers zillions of wonderful ways to replicate, multireplicate, reposition, etc. in its powerful interface. Experiment!
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