Materials

Creating Materials

Creating materials in Cheetah 3D is fun and easy to do.

But… creating materials that do exactly what you want can be very difficult.

We’ll start by showing how to create a bunch of simple, typical materials from scratch. Going beyond the basics requires a combination of experimentation, imagination, and an intuitive grasp of 3D math and how rendering works.

Note: sections 10.12–10.18 (How Lights Work, Other Lighting Options, Shadows, Advanced Lighting, Caustics, Foolproof Shadow Catchers, Reflected Lights) are about lighting, not materials, and belong under 11 Lighting (a parent/order change in each page's metadata line). 10.10 and 10.11 stay here.

• Simple Materials Without Nodes
• Image-based Materials
• Transparent Materials
• Understanding Nodes
• Building Procedural Materials
• Reflective Materials
• UV Mapping
• How Materials Work
• Node Descriptions
• Faking It
• The Math of Material Nodes
• How Lights Work
• Other Lighting Options
• Shadows
• Advanced Lighting
• Caustics
• Foolproof Shadow Catchers
• Reflected Lights