Doc:2.6/Manual/Textures/Options/Map Input

Texture Mapping

Not only can textures affect the color of a material, they can also affect many of the other properties of a material. The different aspects of a material that a texture influences are controlled in the Influence panel.

Surface and Wire

Texture Influence panel for a Surface material

Texture options for Surface and Wire materials and in some cases also for Volume and Halo materials.

Diffuse

Intensity

Amount texture affects affects diffuse reflectivity

Color

Amount texture affect the basic color or RGB value of the material

Alpha

Influences the opacity of the material. See Use Alpha for Object Transparency. Also use Z Transparency for light and if combining multiple channels.

Translucency

Influences the Translucency amount.

Specular

Intensity

Amount texture affect specular reflectivity

Color

Influences the Specular color, the color of the reflections created by the lamps on a glossy material.

Hardness

Influences the specular hardness amount. A DVar of 1 is equivalent to a Hardness of 130, a DVar of 0.5 is equivalent to a Hardness of 65.

Shading

Ambient

Influences the amount of Ambient light the material receives.

Emit

Influences the amount of light Emitted by the material.

Mirror

Influences the mirror color. This works with environment maps and raytraced reflection.

Ray Mirror

Influences the strength of raytraced mirror reflection.

Geometry

Normal

Commonly called bump mapping, this alters the direction of the surface normal. This is used to fake surface imperfections or unevenness via bump mapping, or to create reliefs.

Warp

Warp allows textures to influence/distort the texture coordinates of a next texture channel. The distortion remains active over all subsequent channels, until a new Warp has been set. Setting the factor at zero cancels out the effect.

Displace

Influences the Displacement of vertices, for using Displacement Maps.

Blending

Blend

How this channel interacts with other channels below it. See Compositing Mix Node for information and examples on the effect of each mixing mode.

RGB to intensity

With this option, an RGB texture (affects color) is used as an intensity texture (affects a value).

Blend Color

If the texture is mapped to Col, what color is blended in according to the intensity of the texture? Click on the swatch or set the RGB sliders.

Negative

The effect of the Texture is negated. Normally white means on, black means off, Negative reverses that.

Stencil

The active texture is used as a mask for all following textures. This is useful for semitransparent textures and "Dirt Maps". Black sets the pixel to "untexturable". The Stencil mode works similar to a layer mask in a 2D program. The effect of a stencil texture can not be overridden, only extended. You need an intensity map as input.

DVar

Destination Value (not for RGB). The value with which the Intensity texture blends with the current value. Two examples:

• The Emit value is normally 0. With a texture mapped to Emit you will get maximal effect, because DVar is 1 by default. If you set DVar to 0 no texture will have any effect.
• If you want transparent material, and use a texture mapped to Alpha, nothing happens with the default settings, because the Alpha value in the Material panel is 1. So you have to set DVar to 0 to get transparent material (and of course Z Transparency also). This is a common problem for beginners. Or do it the other way round - set Alpha to 0 and leave Dvar on 1. Of course the texture is used inverted then.

Bump Mapping

Settings for bump mapping.

Method

Best Quality, Default, Compatible, Original

Space

Texture Space, Object Space, View Space

Volume

Texture Influence panel for Volume material

Special texture options for Volume materials

Density

Causes the texture to affect the volume's density.

Emission

Causes the texture to affect the volume's emission.

Scattering

Amount the texture affects scattering.

Reflection

Amount the texture affects brightness of out-scattered light

Emission Color

Amount the texture affects emission color.

Transmission

Amount the texture affects result color after light has been scattered/absorbed.

Reflection Color

Amount the texture affects color of out-scattered light.

Halo

Texture Influence panel for a Halo material

Special texture options for Halo materials

Size

Amount the texture affects ray mirror.

Hardness

Amount the texture affects hardness.

Add

Amount the texture affects translucency.