How to change materials and add Hdri

milliethegreat

I'm still quite new to blender (though I'm slowly learning) but I have a question. Can someone give me step by step instructions on changing materials on objects and adding Hdri backgrounds in blender 3.6? I'd appreciate it greatly. Thanks in advance 

rorsdors

That is quite an ask!!   Would you not go onto YouTube and just look for tutorials there? There are literally tons.

milliethegreat

i looked. they were for more advanced users. at least the ones i found. have you found anything other than that? not trying to be snarky im asking a question for learning sake.

TheMysteryIsThePoint

Hi @milliethegreat

Welcome to the obssession :)

These are for the default Blender UI.

To change materials, left click on the object to selcet in. Make sure you are in Object Mode, by looking at the box in the upper left hand corner. You should see the object in the outliner, the panel on the upper right hand side turn orange.

Next, click on the materials icon on that vertical list of icons in the properties tab, which is just below the outliner, on the right. It is probably the last one at the bottom and looks like a red beach ball.

At the top of that tab, it will list all the material slots for your object in the large listbox. Select the one you want to change.

Then, right under that list, you'll see another drop down with another beach ball in it. Click that and select the material that you want to be in that material slot. But be careful, there's a long standing gripe about Blender: Material slots don't have names; they take the name of the material assigned to them. So it can be kind of difficult to remember which material slot corresponds to what part of the object.

That's all there is to it, in theory. But in practice, you'll maybe hit some small snags, like the material has a named normal map, but the object doesn't have a normal map of that name, and so the material doesn't display correctly. This is easily fixed, though. Let us know if the material you are trying to use needs a little massaging.

Oh, you'll also have viewport shading in a mode that will actually display your material. The four small circles in the upper right hand of the 32 viewport control this. The solid gray one just displays gray. The beachball looking one is misnamed Material Preview and it'll give you a stripped down version of EEVEE. The crystal ball looking one is render mode. It will display whatever rendermode you have selected in the Render tab, the one probably at the top of the vertical list where you found the materials tab, probably the first one at the top. You'll want either Cycles or EEVEE to see the material in all its glory.

 

 

barbult

TheMysteryIsThePoint you are an awesome forum member to go to this level in helping another user. We need more people like you here. Thanks for being so generous with your time and knowledge!

TheMysteryIsThePoint

Thank you, but I find that there are many such people... and you are one of them.

milliethegreat

Yes TheMysteryThePoint I greatly appreciate the help. I've been wanting to learn blender as it would open up new options for my rendering process and creating of my artworks and I love making photorealistic art in blender and unreal engine. While I love Daz Studio as it's what I started doing 3d graphics art for the first time doing many years back (I still remember when g8 was the hot new thing) but my art style has changed since then so while I occasionally still use Daz Studio for rendering I have all but outgrown it and ventured out to unreal engine both of which I'm self taught. Now I want to tackle learning blender so please bear with me if I ask a ton of questions. I'm just trying to learn :)