The sample slots display previews of materials. They are the most prominent feature of the Material Editor interface. Below and to the right of the sample slots are various tool buttons for the Material Editor. Below the tool buttons is a name field that shows the name of the material.

Tip: Always give a material a unique, intelligible name as soon as you begin to work on it.

By default, six sample slots are visible at once. The Material Editor actually holds 24 materials at one time. You can use the scroll bars to move among the sample slots, or you can change the number of sample slots visible at once to 15 or 24 slots. Seeing more slots at once can be helpful if you are working with a complex scene.

Important: While the Material Editor can edit no more than 24 materials at a time, a scene can contain an unlimited number of materials. When you are through editing one material, and have applied it to objects in the scene, you can use that sample slot to get a different material from the scene (or create a new one) and then edit it.

To increase the number of sample slots visible at once, right-click a slot and then choose 5 X 3 Sample Windows or 6 X 4 Sample Windows from the pop-up menu.

Note: The right-click menu also has an Options choice. This displays a dialog with various options for sample display. Exploring these options can help you learn to preview materials effectively. However, keep in mind that these settings affect the sample display only. They change nothing in the 3ds Max scene.

When more sample slots are visible, the images are smaller, but you can display a larger, floating, and resizable material sample by double-clicking the slot you want to see better.

Click a sample slot to make it active. Now you can design a new material from scratch, or you can load a previously stored material by clicking Get Material, which displays the Material/Map Browser. The Browser is a dialog that lets you choose materials and maps from a material library, from the scene, and so on.

You can also copy a material from one sample slot to another. Drag the slot with the material to another slot. To avoid confusion, rename the copy in the new sample slot before you begin to make changes to it.

If the \matlibs subdirectory contains a material library called medit.mat, the sample slots show the first 24 materials in this library file. If the library contains fewer than 24 materials, the remaining slots contain Standard materials of various colors, as they do if no medit.mat library is found.