The fifth part of the Blender Basics series is finally here. Part 5 attempts to educate in the fundamentals of the materials panel. Now this is a huge tutorial, timing out at 1 hour and 45 minutes. Hopefully you’ll find it worthy of its length…
Blender Underground’s video tutorials now are as long as some feature length films. Some will undoubtedly find the lack of texturing instruction off-putting, but that’s all coming in Part 6 which will cover much/most of the mapping panels and the texture buttons. If you’re serious about mastering the materials panel, this is exactly what you need.
Here’s a breakdown of the contents:
- About Shaders – 01:38
- Shader Types – 16:18
- Material Settings – 30:18
- Pipeline Settings – 39:15
- Raytracing – 50:23
- Ramp Shaders – 1:22:40
- Multiple Materials – 1:38:36
LINKS:
Due to hosting issues, you’ll need a username and password to access the AVI and ZIP files.
user: theman
pass: hasfoundus
XviD AVI 222MB 1 hour 45 minutes
- Blender Underground: Blender Basics Part 5 (AVI)
- University of Hawaii: Blender Basics Part 5 (AVI)
7-Zip archive 70.5MB available in 2 parts — Part 1:
- Blender Underground: Zipped First Part (AVI)
- University of Hawaii: Zipped First Part (AVI)
7-Zip archive 94.5MB available in 2 parts — Part 2:
- Blender Underground: Zipped Second Part (AVI)
- University of Hawaii: Zipped Second Part (AVI)
MOV Format:
- Available at River Valley Video Tutorials Page
Demo Blends:
- Part 5 Demo Blends (Zipped)
Related Posts:
- Blender Basics Part 1
- Blender Basics Part 2
- Blender Basics Part 3
- Blender Basics Part 3 Supplemental
- Blender Basics Part 4
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 3:14 am and is filed under Video Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.



Yee haaaa. I’m going to download this right now!
February 7th, 2008 at 10:15 am
[...] anticipated fifth installment of the Blender Basics video tutorials has just been release over at Blender Underground. This edition is all about materials in Blender. It’s a big one at well over an hour long but [...]
February 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Yeah it’s here!!! Thanks Apollos, downloading now
February 7th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Yes! The long and coveted materials tutorial. Thanks Apollo!
February 7th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Thx for the comments account Appolos. And congratulation for your well done tutorial.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:35 am
Finally! I can hardly wait to see it – downloading now!!! Big up to my man Apollos!
February 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Wow, this is a big one.
Aaaah! I don’t have sound…probably need to update DivX (XviD is not available for Macs) The other four tutorials worked perfectly!
It’s not a train smash, I can still access your flash version from your site.
Fantastic job! Thanks Apollos for all your hard work!
February 10th, 2008 at 12:36 am
@ Moz
I suggest to install perian.org, an opensource QuickTime component that adds support for many additional video codecs, including Xvid. With this you’re able to watch BlenderBasics5.avi. Kinda strange you can’t hear sound, its encoded as mp3.
VLC and MPlayer should also play it.
@ Apollos
Thank you! This one is amazing! You are very talented in explaining blender and I really appreciate your hard work!
February 10th, 2008 at 4:02 am
Thanks for your suggestion Klangfreund, unfortunately perian did not work either. VLC and Mplayer did not work as well. I have only noticed a moment ago that I downloaded a Quicktime movie and not an AVI. Strange! So my Mac is busy converting at the moment. If that does not work I will try to download again. Cheers.
February 10th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Hey Appllos you did a great work with your previous video tutorials i learned a lot out of them and you did it again thanks for sharing your work with us.
I going to download these tutorials right away.
February 10th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Thanks you guys! I’m glad this one is finished and out the door.
@Moz, sorry you’re having trouble with it. I think converting the format should straighten it out for you. It is encoded with XviD but in the end it’s just mpeg 4 video and mp3 audio.
If it doesn’t work try the 2 part download in 7z format.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
No worries Apollos, it’s sorted. The conversion did not work so I downloaded again…and the sound is there, perfect
A gremlin in my phone line I think!
Many Thanks.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Thanks a lot for all the tutorials you made so far!
They are great – and you are a good teacher
Very professionally made and presented with a little humor…fresnel…
sorry, what a name!
Please go on and dig deeper into blender.
I will watch out for future tutorials.
February 10th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Thanks! really good tutorial. 100% recommended.
keep the good job!
February 12th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Thank you!
These videos have been most helpful, you are an excellent teacher!
February 13th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Apollos,
Your Blender Underground tutorials just get better and better thus making it all the harder for the MAN to ever get a lock on the Underground…
February 15th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Apollos,
I’m just starting out with Blender – second or third attempt I think. Have shelved it everytime until coming across your tutorials.
I can only begin to imagine the time and effort you have put into these.
Absolutely fantastic work. I’m addicted. Have made your tin can, shaded it aluminium, then shaded it glass! then filled it with marbles, then made the beginnings of a coke can (not sure how to get the logo on it), then a pair of glasses with real big milk bottle lenses in them to exploit the refractive ray feature.
One of the things I think makes these so good is that the dry fundamental stuff is well balanced with seeing actual results. As a newbie I sometimes find my optimism getting strained after a while – at times it’s hard to accept you’re just not gonna model a very convincing Ferrari on your first day.
As for future tutorials, I’d really like to master how to map a JPEG onto a mesh, I’d like the lowdown on hair strands, and a revisory excersise would be nice – like a modelling tutorial that applies pretty much everything we’ve learned so far and creates a pleasing result.
I await chapter 6 with eagerness. In the meantime I’m gonna make a wine bottle, a desk lamp, a key and a dumbell , thanks Apollos.
February 18th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
@nkyg1: Well said. Join the forums if you want extra help
February 18th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
nkyg1, thanks very much for those words. Very encouraging to me. As Dave said, feel free to come on in to the forums if you have any questions or just want to hang out. Welcome to Blender Underground.
Thanks and welcome also to Matro, lewarcher, ivanegues, toodee, and anyone I might have missed. Your comments are very appreciated. Head on over to the forums if you have questions or whatever.
February 18th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Hi Apollo.
Congratulations for continuing your great work with these tutorials. I would have the usual question: is it possible to have the MOV version with chapters, as for the previuos parts?
Thanks.
Ciao
Antonino
February 25th, 2008 at 5:49 am
All of the blender basics tutorials are great. Thanks for putting so much time into teaching blender.
February 25th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Thanks Antlab!
I’ll see if I can get a Mov version together, but I don’t have QT pro so I’ll have to see if I can get chapters anyway.
darylk, you’re welcome, and thanks much. Welome to Blender Underground.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Antonino,
Kaveh from River Valley has posted a converted BBP5 here: http://www.river-valley.tv/video_tutorials/blender/
Many thanks Kaveh!!!
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Apollos,
. I think that they are more direct and informative than the big manual (that I purchased some years ago), and if carefully followed they allow to take quick confidence with many details of the Blender UI and workflow.
you are really kind, I am just now downloading the QT version of the Part 5. Believe me or not, I just spent a good part of my weekend by restudying your first tutorials
Thanks to Kaveh also from me
Ciao
Antonino
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Apollos,
I have, in the past, downloaded all of your Video Tutorials and would like to thank you for creating and posting them. I have been studying Blender since around 2002 and have yet to comprehensively create a project with it. Thanks to the inspiration of your tutorials and many other like them, I think I will create a short animation project in the near future just to get the hang of Blender from a production standpoint.
The only question I currently have, and I hope you won’t think me ungrateful for “jumping the gun”, is this: will you ultimately be making a tutorial on the use of the video sequence editor and how far down the line, base on your current endeavors, do you see that coming out?
I currently use a 2-monitor setup to go through your tutorials. One mac is playing your tutorial and the other has blender open. I’m coming to Blender from L*ghtw*v*, and the similarities between the two programs are striking; but I like the amount of baseline control I have in Blender and am currently trying to get it integrated into my day-to-day production workflow.
Thank You For all you do,
A converted Blenderhead,
the geek
March 4th, 2008 at 8:01 am
graphicsgeek, welcome to Blender Underground.
I’m really glad to hear that the tutorials helped. Thanks for taking the time to leave comments, I love hearing from you guys!
No I don’t think you ungrateful at all, but it might be a while until I get to that subject. I still want to finish the series, and that means producing installments on texturing, then UV mapping, then possibly another. I’m not sure the sequence editor fits into it all.
However, I also want to produced shorter, more focused tutorials in the future and the sequence editor might fit quite well. Honestly speaking however, it would be several months at the least.
You might check out http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com though, I seem to remember Kernon having a tutorial that makes use of it.
Please keep us updated on how you’re able to integrate Blender into your work, and if you need any help, make sure and pop into the forums.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Apollos,
As just starting out with blender, while some of the subject material I had figured out through trial and error, I must say it is refreshing to be able to watch a tutorial and either have functionality explained for things I knew the result of and learn new things, or shorter ways of doing them.
Just from the length of each video, I would estimate you had a great deal of time invested in the creation.
As tutorials are not for the creators benefit, but for others A GREAT BIG CHEERS to you mate!
March 18th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Colonel, Sorry I missed your post. Thanks!
Yes, the time investment is substantial, but I would say that I benefit in some way: I learn more about Blender by making the tutorials than I would have if I didn’t.
Thanks for taking the time to say something very nice. If you have any questions, let us know. Welcome to Blender Underground.
April 13th, 2008 at 11:04 am
For a few years I have used Maya 5.0-7.0 (Personal Leraning Edition – AKA FLA free, limiting and Annoying) to build mesh work for Unreal Tournament 2004. This got the job done but I would constaly come across roadblocks left and right due to the fact that it was after all the Learning edition and wile it claims to be fully funtional, it is hugely limited in what it can produse.
I finally chucked it after I finally acted on all my research of Open Source Modelers and Blender stood out to me as the clear choise. But the interface was very alien to me as a blender noob. It was so alien I’ve now have had 6 faulse starts and few perscriptions to help prevent panic attacks.
But then, after an exhaustive search and a few key nudging from a some of your underground recruiters. I aquired a few of you transmissions and The light of the underground has shown through the Dark Ilk of “THE MAN” devices. I am now a 3d artist again and I have prodused a whole host of smaller props along with almost a whole section of interior Cave structures for a map I want to build soon.
I’m still lacking UV mapping and Texture application but it seems that your next couple of target lessions on the list of transmissions lessions. So I wait for those and try and link up with a few other resources you listed here as well as the forums.
Your Tutorials are Easy, No Bull, To the point and repetitive enough in their context that by the end of the lession, you pretty much know how to do many of the basic modeling funtions needed to produse even a complex Subsurf cage for a character model. Sure it take practice, and if you’ve never modeled before in you life that may take a couple years to get a true understanding, but you work deffitly gets Newbies like me a jumpstart on Blender and gets this wourderful tool it due in a hurry.
Another thing you do that makes it very pleasent to watch is that most of the time you use plain english, no bull, and minimal unexplained tech terms. Alot of the Tech terms I do understand, but to others. These terms might as well be greek.
Thank you so much for you honest, gentle, tech term minimal approch to these tutorials.
I look forward to more tutorials from the Underground and may THE MAN always remain confounded by you…
April 15th, 2008 at 3:15 am
Ninja Krow, thanks for a great write up!
I had issues with Maya PLE too, but I like your acronym better (FLA: Free, Limiting, and Annoying
)
I’m really glad to hear your thoughts on BU’s video tutorials, very nice of you to say. Looking forward to seeing you on the forums.
The Man has nothing on us.
April 16th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Apollos, the MOV format videos with chapters are the best. They’re much sharper and brighter (at least on my monitor) than the other formats. That’s why I was pleased as punch to learn that Part 5 can be downloaded as a single MOV file (with chapters) from http://www.river-valley.tv/video_tutorials/blender/ .
Of course, my only problem is deciding on a good time to download it because (like you) I’m on dial-up. Methinks I’ll give it a go tonight around 8 O’clock after temporarily disabling call waiting, so it’s not interrupted. Hopefully, it completes by 6 tomorrow morning. Dial-up is the pits!
At any rate, it’ll be months before I get around to practicing the stuff featured in Part 5. I did a cursory run through of all the videos and they all look very interesting indeed. But I’m really still only at Part 1 and probably will be for weeks before moving on. I really want to soak in the concepts instead of rushing.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:00 am
abajan, thanks for reminding me — I need to upload that video while I have access to a fast connection.
Just to note, I recommend a download manager for dialup. I use IDA (Internet Download Accelerator) and it works great, allowing me to start and stop at will. It also has speed control, so you can set it to trickle, and you can download stuff in the background while still using the web.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Thanks for the tip on IDA, Appollos. Thus far, my experiences with download managers have been, shall I say, somewhat less than desirable! One memorable failed download was an attempt to get the 817MB Microsoft Flight Simulator demo: http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulatorx/downloads.html#trial . Everything went just fine for a few days, pausing and resuming flawlessly. I think I got as far as about 600MB then for some reason it wouldn’t go any further. AARGH!
Anyway, I’ll give IDA a go sometime and hope it works better than GetRight ( http://www.getright.com/ ) which is supposed to be quite good, judging from various reviews I read on it.
Gotta run now… need to start downloading Blender Basics Part 5! LOL
May 24th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Download successful! It took 10 hours and 25 minutes. Now I just need to chuck my Part 2 AVI and replace that with its MOV equivalent.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Wow that’s quick for dialup!
Hope you enjoy it.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:15 am
[...] Basics Part 5, is the fifth installment in a multi-part series covering the basics of Blender.http://blenderunderground.com/2008/02/07/blender-basics-part-5-material-foundations/ Blender – The History of the BlenderStephen Poplawski invented the blender in 1922. … The blender [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:41 am
This is just great! Just started off learning blender and these series has been a great help. Thanks for the tutes. Waiting for the sixth in the series..
August 9th, 2008 at 4:43 am
..::www BLENDERUNDERGROUND com::..
From today, thats my new description on any IM I’m using.
That’s all.
Realy THX.
BU RULEZ
September 11th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Apollos,
You are a wonderful teacher.
I’m very new to Blender, but I feel you got me swimming in the deep end already. Well, I’m still breathing anyway!
Thanks for those basics videos.
Invaluable.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
sourya_s7, erapu, wardropper,
Thanks so much. Welcome to Blender Underground.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:49 am
The blender basics tutorials are great thanks man.
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:27 am
Freeking awesome!
I need tutorial on how to output a video sequence. I can’t get any sound from the video sequence editor to build into my FFmpeg or avi or mov in Blender.
You da man!
June 18th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Great tutorials man! I’m a newbie to this stuff and you are curing my Buttons Overload to Brain lol
September 8th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Hey Apollos
Great job on the tutorials! Yesterday I finished the fifth. They where well explained and easy to follow. It just gave me a speedup in blender. Together with java monkey engine this will allow me to create awesome things.
Keep up the good work!
Patrick
September 30th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Hi Apollo,
I finished your 5 tutorials and I join the choir in singing your praises…not only do you spend a lot of time and thought in preparing for these tutorials, you deliver them with professioanlism so that the full power and potential of blender is costantly beckoning for us to jump in and create.
Thanks.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:31 am