Visual effects

The appearance of the ball and the other meshes in your scene have been intentionally left very plain. You can think of the flat, white ball as a blank canvas, ready to be painted. First, a bit of vocabulary:

• Textures: Textures are flat, 2D images that are wrapped around 3D objects. Imagine wrapping a gift: the flat paper is folded around the package, conforming to its shape. Textures can be simple or complex, depending on the shape they’re designed to be applied to.
• Shaders: While textures determine what is drawn on an object’s surface, shaders determine how it is drawn. Imagine a wall with a texture that shows a pattern of bricks. How would it look if it were wet? The mesh and texture would be the same, but the way the light reflects from it would be quite different. This is the function of shaders – to alter the appearance of an object by altering how light interacts with it. Shaders are typically written in a specialized programming...