This tutorial is based on Blender 2.49.
In this tutorial I will show you how to create a simple object and then assign a material and a texture to it.
First delete the cube by hitting x, place the 3D cursor where you want the object to be created by left clicking the location on a viewport or leave the 3D cursor at its default location. To reset its the location at the center of the scene press shift + c (center).
Create the object you want by hitting the spacebar, select “add” then “Mesh” and for this tutorial I will create a cube.
It is always a good thing to name directly every object/mesh directly to avoid having a whole bunch of “cube”, “cube.001” and so on in the scene or file.
Now that we have our nice cube it is time to give it the material it deserves! In order to do so let’s go to the material panel a submenu of the shading button. Hit F5 several times to get to/circle through the submenus.
If no material has already been assigned to the object as shown in the screenshot below press “Add New”
The panel will now present you various options that affect the material. The standard properties are highlighted in the screenshot below such as the color, specular color, shininess, hardness etc. If you can’t see all the option i.e you don’t have a screen big enough, you can either middle button click a panel and drag it or you can hold ctrl while scrolling the mouse wheel to resize the whole panel.
Giving the material a more personal name is also a good idea.
By the way have you noticed the little car button usually next to a name box?
This button gives automatically a name to the connected textbox based on important properties of what it is referring to. In this example when I press it the material receive “Grey” as a name which suits it well since its color is grey. Grey-t feature isn’t it? (ok its lame… ._.)
Now to add a texture to the material click the texture button submenu of the shading menu (F5). Be sure that it is the “Mat” button which is pressed as opposed to “World, Lamp, Brush”.
Then you have to select a texture type among the texture type list, in this example I’ll use an image texture.
…then a bunch of options pops
For this example we are interested by the “Load” button at the right of the panel. Click it then select an image on your disk.
Now we have a material with one texture assigned to it. We can see what a render (F12) of the scene will produce!
As you can see the object has the material and the texture applied to it. It appears that the texture is projected on the cube from above (or below ^_^). This is what happens when we don’t apply specific mapping coordinates to the model. By default Blender assign some texture coordinate to meshes that you create, those coordinates are surprisingly named Original Coordinates abridged ORCO. You can define which type of coordinate you want to use in the material subpanel (F5) in the “Map input” Tab. Select the most appropriate texture mapping: ORCO if you want to use the default coordinate, UV if you want to use defined UVs coordinates (If you have imported a model for example) or in this example Cube. Be sure to check the mapping type if you have some weird texture placement when you render the scene (F12). You can set the tiling (the number of occurrence you want the texture to repeat over the surface) by changing the “sizeX, sizeY, sizeZ” values.
If you want to export your creation you must first apply UVs to it, otherwise no mapping infos will be exported. To do so press TAB to enter the edit mode select all vertices by pressing A a couple of time and pres U to apply UVs. You have to choose which option suits your needs best, in our case it will be “cube projection” (works also for a torus and other kind of shape). Don’t forget to enable UV in the map input tab of the model’s material.
which gives (in GeeXLab – an alpha version will be released soon…)
Select the model go to file then export and select the desired export format (here obj) and typically a parameter box will appear letting you choose some option depending on the format selected.
Next time we will see how to apply and customize UV coordinates.
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Your tutorial worked until I got to the render part. My image was selected but all I got for a render window was a blue rectangle.
There is no need to select your model when you want to render it. However it will use the active camera for the shot, so check if the camera is aiming at you model. To check you camera view press “numpad 0” then if it apears that you don’t see your model then move your view to the model (using the middle mouse button) then when you are satisfied with your view press “ctrl + Alt + 0” this will place the camera. Tell me if that solves your problem.