Displacement mapping allows a texture input to manipulate the position of vertices on rendered geometry. Unlike Normal or Bump mapping, where the shading is distorted to give an illusion of a bump (discussed on the previous page), Displacement Maps create real bumps, creases, ridges, etc in the actual mesh. Thus, the mesh deformations can cast shadows, occlude other objects, and do everything that changes in real geometry can do.

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Normal Maps and Bump Maps both serve the same purpose: they simulate the impression of a detailed 3D surface, by modifying the shading as if the surface had lots of small angles, rather than being completely flat. Because it's just modifying the shading of each pixel, this will not cast any shadows and will not obstruct other objects. If the camera angle is too flat to the surface, you will notice that the surface is not really shaped.

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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 Map To panel.

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Textures need mapping coordinates, to determine how they are applied to geometry. The mapping specifies how the texture will ultimately wrap itself to the object. For example, a 2D image texture could be configured to wrap itself around a cylindrical shaped object.

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A material can contain 1 to 10 Texture Channels, which are layered in a list. The relationship between a material and a texture is called 'mapping,' and this relationship is two-sided. Each texture channel can contain a texture, and each has individual options for how it is positioned on the object's geometry, and how that material affects the final shading.

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Learn about the textures' options with this Blender tutorial.

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Strands are the rendered path visualisations of a particle animation. There are two different strand methods available, so let's talk about them!

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Many organic and some inorganic skins are not totally opaque right at the surface, so light does not just bounce off the top surface. Instead, some light also penetrates the skin surface, and scatters around inside, taking on the color of the insides and emerging back out to blend with the surface reflection. Human/animal skin, the skin of grapes, tomatoes, fruits, wax, gels (like honey, or Jello) and so on all have subsurface scattering (SSS), and photo-realism really cannot be achieved without it.

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Raytracing is also used for simulating the refraction of light rays through a transparent material, like a lens. A ray is sent from the camera and travels through the scene until it encounters an object. If the first object hit by the ray is non-transparent, then the ray takes the color of the object. If the object is transparent, then the ray continues its travel through it to the next object, and so on, until a non-transparent object is finally encountered which gives the whole chain of rays its color.

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Raytracing can be used to make a material reflect its surroundings, like a mirror. The principle of raytraced reflections is very simple: a ray is fired from the camera and travels through the scene until it encounters an object. If the first object hit by the ray is not reflective, then the ray takes the color of the object. If the object is reflective, then the ray bounces from its current location and travels up to another object, and so on, until a non-reflective object is finally met and gives the whole chain of rays its color.

submitted: 5 years and 3724 days ago