Material Components

A material's components describe its visual and optical properties. The components in a Standard material's include its color components, highlight controls, self-illumination, and opacity.

Standard material components vary depending on which shader you use.

A surface of a "single" color usually reflects many colors. Most Standard materials use a four-color model to simulate this:

Different Standard material shaders give you different ways to control specular highlights on the material. Most highlights are controlled by multiple components, such as Glossiness, Specular Level, and Soften for Blinn shading.

Warning: When you change the shading type of a material, you lose the settings (including map assignments) for any parameters that the new shader does not support. If you want to experiment with different shaders for a material with the same general parameters, copy the material to a different sample slot before you change its shading type. That way, you can still use the original material if the new shader doesn't give you the effect you want.

Self-Illumination simulates an object lit from within.

Opacity is the opposite of transparency. As you reduce the Opacity value, the object becomes more transparent.

You can assign maps to most components, including color components such as Diffuse, and value components such as Opacity. Maps can increase the complexity and realism of the material's appearance.