1. Computer Animation
Surface Materials

2. Color You may apply color directly onto the surface of an object
But to create realistic and sophisticated visual appearance, you need to tweak many parameters
The visual apparence of an object, when rendered, depends on many settings:
Lights
Surface material settings
Textures
Camera (viewing angle)
obstructions and transparent occlusions
and a lot more …

3. Lights and surfaces

4. Create a new material
Blender will automatically create a new material for the default cube
For any new object, you need to create a new material
Click on “Shading” icon or F5, then select “Material Buttons”

5. Link material with object
You can change the name of any material
You can link one material with multiple objects
Multiple objects share the same material
Ctrl + L
Link all selected objects to the material of the “active object” (i.e. the last selected object)

6. Base color
In the Material panel, you can set the base color for the material in Color Picker Applet
Can preview the material settings

7. Shaders
For any object, the question is: what is the color of the light that gets reflected into the camera?
This is calculated based a lighting equation
The lighting equation describes the light-surface interaction
The light-surface interaction is divided into two components: diffusion and specular reflection

8. Diffuse shaders
Calculate the diffuse component (color) of the light-surface interaction
Light is reflected equally in all directions

9. Diffuse shader
A diffuse shader calculates the diffuse component in the lighting equation
Different people have proposed different equations to calculate the diffuse component
Therefore there are different diffuse shaders

10. Diffuse shaders Diffuse shader types Lambert Oren-Nayar Toon Minnaert
Fresnel

11. Specular shaders
Specular shaders calculate the specular component of the light-surface interaction
Create the bright highlights that one would see on a glossy surface, mimicking the reflection of light sources

12. Specular shaders

13. Specular shaders
Again different people have proposed different equations to calculate the specular components
Therefore there are different shader types
CookTorr
Phong
Blinn
Toon
Wardlso