A grey object has no character. Materials define how it looks: colour, shine, metal, transparency and more.

Creating a material

Select the object, open the Material tab (the small sphere) in the Properties panel, then click New. Blender applies the Principled BSDF shader by default, which covers almost every need.

The key settings

• Base Color: the surface colour.
• Metallic: 0 for plastic, 1 for metal.
• Roughness: 0 for a shiny mirror, 1 for a matte surface.

To see your materials in real time, switch the 3D viewport to Rendered shading (the row of spheres at the top right of the viewport).

Key takeaway: with nothing more than Base Color, Metallic and Roughness, you can already simulate most everyday materials.