Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Halo Materials

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This tutorial was designed for use with Blender v2.48.

[edit] Introduction

Halos are a neat effect that you can use in Blender. Instead of affecting the color/texture of a face, like normal materials do, when you use a halo material, it affects the Vertices. The particles with Point Visualization are rendered as Halos also.

Here is an example.

This is the standard Blender start file rendered as per normal, with a regular material:

This is the same scene, rendered with a basic Halo Material:

As you can see, it gives the verticies a 'star'-like appearance, and can be used to make some neat effects.

[edit] Applying a Halo Material

By now you should know how to basically use the materials panel. If not, please complete the Quickie Material tutorial.

To apply a halo effect, simply click the Halo button in the Links and Pipeline panel. The buttons highlighted below are what you need to click to get to this panel (plus the Halo button)

The Preview panel will now show the halo effect on the sphere:

It's as simple as that!

[edit] Adding/Modifying extra effects

Now you know how to apply halos, let's look at some of the settings for them.

Note that when you clicked the Halo button, the color panel to the right changed slightly

These settings will now allow you to change the colors of various aspects of the halos. Have a mess around with the Halo color and you'll see that it affects what you currently see in the preview panel. The other 2 buttons, Line and Ring, will affect other elements of the Halo we'll look at now.

Look over to the right of the bottom panels, and locate the 'Shaders' tab. By default, it should be next to the 'Mirror Transp' tab.

You can now see all the various options for the halos:

You can easily modify the size of the halos with the HaloSize box and the 'Hard' slider modifies the 'fuzziness' of the halos. The 'Add' slider controls how much the halo is 'added' to whatever is behind it - this is more used for textures to control how much of the texture you want to appear on the objects. An easy way to think of the 'Add' slider is as a transparency for all of the halos.

Here is a run-down on the buttons to the right:

Flare 

Adds lens flare - a technique which can add a sense of realism to an animation. By default it seems to just make the halos seem brighter, but if you modify some of the settings that appear down the bottom you can get some pretty wacky effects, especially if you have the verticies moving around in an animation.

Rings 

Adds rings around the halos. Number of rings can be modified in the 'Rings' number panel.

Lines 

Adds lines coming off the center. Number of lines can be modified in the 'Lines' number panel.

Star 

Gives the halos a star shape. The amount of points on the star can be changed to the right in the 'Star' number panel.

HaloTex 

Allows the Halos to be rendered with a texture. This can create some very cool effects

HaloPuno 

Lets the verticies' normals specify the size of the halos. Only becomes realy obvious on complicated meshes. For a good example, have a look at what it does to Suzanne the monkey

X Alpha 

intensifies the transparency effect of the halos.

Shaded 

Allows the Halos to be shaded and their color affected by light sources.

Soft 

Softens the Halos

You can now see where the other color selectors from before work. They let you modify the color of the lines and circles as well.