Introduction

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 Influence panel.

Note

Texture options for Surface and Wire materials and in some cases also for Volume and Halo materials.

Surface and Wire Materials

../../../../../_images/render_blender-render_textures_properties_influence_introduction_surface.png

Texture Influence panel for a Surface material.

Diffuse

Intensity
Amount texture affects diffuse reflectivity.
Color
Amount texture affects the basic color or RGB value of the material.
Alpha
Influences the opacity of the material. Also use Z Transparency for light and if combining multiple channels.
Translucency
Influences the Translucency amount.

Specular

Intensity
Amount texture affects specular reflectivity.
Color
Influences the Specular color, the color of the reflections created by the lamps on a glossy material.
Hardness
Influences the specular hardness amount. A DVar of 1 is equivalent to a Hardness of 130, a DVar of 0.5 is equivalent to a Hardness of 65.

Shading

Ambient
Influences the amount of Ambient light the material receives.
Emit
Influences the amount of light emitted by the material.
Mirror
Influences the mirror color. This works with environment maps and ray-traced reflection.
Ray Mirror
Influences the strength of ray-traced mirror reflection.

Geometry

Normal
Commonly called bump mapping, this alters the direction of the surface normal. This is used to fake surface imperfections or unevenness via bump mapping, or to create reliefs.
Warp
Warp allows textures to influence/distort the texture coordinates of a next texture channel. The distortion remains active over all subsequent channels, until a new Warp has been set. Setting the factor at zero cancels out the effect.
Displace
Influences the Displacement of vertices, for using Displacement Maps.

Other Controls

Bump Mapping

Settings for bump mapping.

Method
Best Quality, Default, Compatible, Original
Space
Texture Space, Object Space, View Space

Volume Materials

../../../../../_images/render_blender-render_textures_properties_influence_introduction_volume.png

Texture Influence panel for Volume material.

Special texture options for Volume materials.

Density
Causes the texture to affect the volume’s density.
Emission
Causes the texture to affect the volume’s emission.
Scattering
Amount the texture affects scattering.
Reflection
Amount the texture affects brightness of out-scattered light.
Emission Color
Amount the texture affects emission color.
Transmission
Amount the texture affects result color after light has been scattered/absorbed.
Reflection Color
Amount the texture affects color of out-scattered light.

Halo Materials

../../../../../_images/render_blender-render_textures_properties_influence_introduction_halo.png

Texture Influence panel for a Halo material.

Special texture options for Halo materials.

Size
Amount the texture affects ray mirror.
Hardness
Amount the texture affects hardness.
Add
Amount the texture affects translucency.