Digital Art Zone

Here’s another newbie question:  Is there a quick tutorial on the various Surface/color setting controllers.  On occasion I want to change the look of an item, but am not sure what the various setting do.  There are, for instance, color settings for Diffuse,  Specular,  Ambient, Reflection, and Refraction.  I’d welcome a definition of what each does so I’m not just doing this by trial and error.  Thanks.

I’ll try this one. Your Diffuse is your base color, if you have a texture map, this is where it should go. Ambient is the color of the world surrounding, but for the most part, you’ll want to leave this black or pretty dark. Specular is your highlights. This will help define the material, hard and shiny or soft like cloth. Reflection is self defining, and refraction is distorted like looking through glass or water. Emission is only used if you’re model is supposed to glow, like a light bulb or fire.

Here’s an example from Wings3d, I only use it because the Material box is easier to understand.

dkutzera - 23 July 2012 06:41 PM

Here’s another newbie question:  Is there a quick tutorial on the various Surface/color setting controllers.  On occasion I want to change the look of an item, but am not sure what the various setting do.  There are, for instance, color settings for Diffuse,  Specular,  Ambient, Reflection, and Refraction.  I’d welcome a definition of what each does so I’m not just doing this by trial and error.  Thanks.

This might help. The different bits of the surface tab It is old but still relevant today.

Thanks.  Big help.

Good to hear.

If you are interested Jaderail (a fellow CV (Community Volunteer)) has set up this thread Daz Studio Basics 101. New Users help for starting with DS. So if you have some more questions pop along. But if it is a technecial issue then a thread of its own would probably be better.