I'm sure this has been asked before, but I didn't find what I was looking for.

Is there some sort of guide for creating custom appearances from scratch for PV360?  Or even modifying existing appearances?  I don't have much experience in getting decent renders, or changing anything in the appearances really, but I'd like to learn.  In particular at the moment would be fabrics.  There's cottons in the appearance library, but it's a slim selection, and we are working with some suede fabrics at the moment, so cotton doesn't give the right texture.  Same thing would go for matching paint colors and finishes and getting them to look correct (I know there's some lighting issues as well when it comes to appearances).

I know there's the PV360 book, but at the moment that's a bit out of the budget, and with 2012 coming out soon, I'd imagine the book would be somewhat out of date relatively soon.

Any help would be appreciated.  Gives me something to play around with on those days where I'm not working on too much.