This tutorial looks at one of the most important aspects of ShapeShifter, namely how to produce a Material. It's easy to create a coloured bevel, and by default that's what you get when you launch ShapeShifter and give it a mask to play around with, but creating something a bit more complex (and realistic) takes more effort. Fortunately, it's not much more effort. These brief tutorials will show you how to produce a range of materials, and hopefully inspire you to play around with the methods described and produce even more.

So, what is a Material? Simply put, a Material is the stuff that something is made from. It's the 'chrome' in 'chrome sphere' and the 'glass' in 'glass block'. While the selection you give to ShapeShifter tells it what shape the result will be, the Material tells it what the stuff inside that shape will look like. Will it be glossy and reflective? Will it be transparent? Whatever you want it to end up being, a bit of attention paid to the details of creating materials can make a huge difference to the results you get.

Users of 3D graphics packages may be familiar with some of the concepts outlined in these tutorials. ShapeShifter Materials have a number of properties in common with 3D packages, though they are sometimes expressed in a manner that may not be familiar. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the terms used, or simply want to make sure you understand how ShapeShifter uses them, this section takes a brief look at some of the important things to know about the package, and which controls do what.

Some of the tutorials refer to the 'Sharp/Diffuse Highlight Button'. This button can be found on the 3D Lighting panel, and is used to control the type of highlight the light casts.

Lights do two things when pointed at an object: Light it up, and cast a highlight. Highlights can be either sharp edged or diffuse. Sharp highlights tend to make a surface look wet or highly polished, like a billiard ball reflecting the light. Diffuse highlights tend to make a surface look slightly rough, or smooth without the polish, like a concrete pillar that is slightly rough.

When you're thinking about whether to use Sharp or Diffuse highlights, consider how light behaves when it shines on the object you're trying to produce. Does it create a small pinpoint of light with sharp edges? If so, use a Sharp highlight. Or perhaps it creates a blurry, indistinct highlight? If so, use a Diffuse highlight.

Many polished or glossy objects reflect the things around them. Environment Maps simulate this effect by creating a reflection on the surface of the object, based on an image you can load. Environment Maps can be applied strongly or subtly, depending on the type of Material. Highly polished and reflective metal such as Chrome needs a strong environment map, while brushed metals might reflect only slightly, meaning a weak Environment Map can create the effect of ghosted reflections.

Environment Maps are best made using images that are reflecting off something, or images of spheres. An Environment Map alone can turn a bevel that has no particular Material in to a very close representation of a real world object. Making Environment Maps is a whole tutorial in its own right, so for now we'd advise using the ones included with the product which you can find on the KPT5 CDROM in the folder Goodies/Environment Maps.

The Environment Panel in ShapeShifter gives you a button labelled either 'Plastic' or 'Metal' depending on what state it was left in. This button controls the type of Material your object is made from. Plastic and Metal behave differently when you shine lights on them, and this is what the switch controls.

When you shine a light on a Plastic Material, it creates a white highlight, think of the spot of white when you put an orange billiard ball under a strong light. When you shine a light on a Metal Material, it shines the colour of the Material, think of a brass ball under a strong light. With Metal Materials, if you add enough light you will eventually get a spot of white (this is called 'blowout'), but it takes much more light.

In ShapeShifter we can use this toggle to simulate different types of Material. Naturally enough, you should use Plastic mode when you are doing a plastic object, and Metal when you are doing metal (with some exceptions noted in the tutorials). Some Materials such as glass use a Plastic mode, while other special effect Materials might use Metal. If you can ignore the names of the two modes, and remember that Plastic gives white highlights while Metal gives coloured highlights, you can use the toggle to great effect.

Take the 'Materials.kpt5' file that came with the tutorial download and place it in the ShapeShifter folder inside the Presets folder that you'll find in your KPT5 folder. This folder is probably in Photoshop's 'plugins' folder if you did a default install. This will give you access to the presets for all of the following tutorials.