# 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](/10.1_Simple_Materials_Without_Nodes/) - [Image-based Materials](/10.2_Image_based_Materials/) - [Transparent Materials](/10.3_Transparent_Materials/) - [Understanding Nodes](/10.4_Understanding_Nodes/) - [Building Procedural Materials](/10.5_Building_Procedural_Materials/) - [Reflective Materials](/10.6_Reflective_Materials/) - [UV Mapping](/10.7_UV_Mapping/) - [How Materials Work](/10.8_How_Materials_Work/) - [Node Descriptions](/10.9_Node_Descriptions/) - [Faking It](/10.10_Faking_It/) - [The Math of Material Nodes](/10.11_The_Math_of_Material_Nodes/) - [How Lights Work](/10.12_How_Lights_Work/) - [Other Lighting Options](/10.13_Other_Lighting_Options/) - [Shadows](/10.14_Shadows/) - [Advanced Lighting](/10.15_Advanced_Lighting/) - [Caustics](/10.16_Caustics/) - [Foolproof Shadow Catchers](/10.17_Foolproof_Shadow_Catchers/) - [Reflected Lights](/10.18_Reflected_Lights/)