In this lesson video we are going to discuss about material and some general concepts about shader and texture also. In 3d computer graphics, there are several terms related to how 3d objects look when being rendered material shader and texture. As a general guideline, the term material is a collection of data or parameters, which determine how 3d objects look. Next is shader shader is actually a program or a piece of codes. It is a set of rules and logic to control how objects we look against different condition. So essentially, to create a shader you actually need to write some codes.

The good news is there are many visual tools that we can use to create shader as the replacement of writing the actual codes. This can greatly help artists or non programmers To create custom shaders, and the last one is texture, texture is basically an image that we place on the surface of 3d models. Okay, so that is the basics. Again, material is a set of parameters. shader is a program, and textures are basically images. Now, the way these three things work together is like this material is the hub for shaders, and textures and 3d objects.

So in order for a 3d object to use shader and texture, it needs a material. Inside our material, we can define the shader that we want to use and also the textures. In a single material. We can have multiple shaders, and also multiple textures, but at minimum, a material needs at least one shader for it works. It is impossible to have material without any shader, but in terms of texture, texture, is actually not a mass. I mean, you can have a material without any texture.

Okay? In practice, 3d artists treat materials like materials in the real world. So we can create a material called wood for example, and assign that material to any object that we want to make it looks like wood, such as wooden tables, wooden doors, wooden bridges, etc. Then we can create another material called rubber. For example, we can apply that rubber material to 3d objects such as car tires, earphone buds, certain furniture, components, etc. We can create material for gold, Chrome, wall, fabric, glass, water, etc.

Basically, for every type of material we see in the real world, we should have a material in a 3d scene to represent it. Let's discuss how we can apply a material to a 3d objects inside blender. But before we do that, go to the properties editor and open the render property step in here. Just make sure that you set the rendering engine here to Eevee. So we all have the same parameters to work with. Okay.

Now if we select the existing cube, then go to the properties editor. Notice we have this icon that looks like a sphere. This is the material properties panel where we can access all of the parameters related to material. Notice that our default cube object already has a material applied to it. And the material has a name material, as we can see here, we can rename the material by either clicking here or by double clicking in here. Let's change this to let's say, plastic dot white, just for example.

Okay, now if I create a new object, let's say a monkey head object, you can see that the material is empty. So essentially, when you create new mesh objects in blender, they will not have any materials applied to them. Now, I want you to look closely at the top area of the material panel. This list is the material index, you can think of it as a set of slots or drawers where we can put material, each of the slots can have one material assigned to it. To add a slot, you can click on this plus button. Clicking again will give you more slots.

If you want to remove a slot. First, you need to select the slot and then hit the minus button in here. Currently, these slots are empty, there are no materials on them. To add a material, you need to select the slot first, and then click this new button in here. Now we can see a new material in the slot. We can see these parameters down here because we have this slot selected.

If we select this empty slot, they're not is shown down here. So basically what you see down here depends on which slot you select up here. If the slot doesn't have any material, then there is nothing to see down here. Okay, we are going to discuss more about multiple materials later. For now let's remove all of these slots, so we have an empty material index. When you don't have any material slot like this, clicking the new material button down here will actually cause two things to happen.

First Blender will create a new material slot up here for us automatically. And second Blender will feel that material slot with a new material. Okay, let's rename the material to metal dot read, for example. Now, if you wonder which part of this material are called shaders, well this default material uses a surface shader principle be SDF. This shader was originally developed by Walt Disney to achieve physically correct rendering results, but at the same time giving the ease of use to 3d artists. If you click here, you can see that Blender actually comes with many different shaders.

Previously, we need to mix and match different shaders to achieve a certain result. But since bender adopts the principle be SDF shader as the default shader, 3d artists now almost never need to touch the other shaders anymore. This is because almost all of the materials you can find in the real world can be recreated using only the principle be SDF shader? Well, you do need to use other shaders for special cases commonly for creating things that do not actually exist in the real world. So if you want to become a visual effects artists, you will need to learn and experiment with different shaders. Available in blender.

But if you are doing only architectural projects or basically things that exists in the real world, then using the principle be SDF shader is really more than enough. Okay, now what about game artists as well This will be a more complex topic to discuss, because game engines use their own materials or shaders by default.