Material Editor > Type button > Material/Map Browser > Standard
The standard material is the most widely used alternate to the Architectural material. It is suitable for scenes that use standard instead of photometric lights, where physical accuracy is not a goal.
The Standard material type provides a fairly straightforward way to model surfaces. In the real world, the appearance of a surface depends on how it reflects light. In Autodesk VIZ, a standard material simulates a surface's reflective properties. If you don't use maps, a standard material gives an object a single, uniform color.
This topic introduces the controls for Standard material, exclusive of mapping.
A surface of a "single" color usually reflects many colors. Standard materials typically use a four-color model to simulate this. (There are some variations depending on which shader you use.)
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Ambient color is the color of the object in shadow.
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Diffuse is the color of the object in direct, "good" lighting.
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Specular is the color of shiny highlights.
Some shaders generate the specular color, rather than letting you choose it.
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Filter is the color transmitted by light shining through the object.
The Filter color component isn't visible unless the material's Opacity is less than 100 percent.
Note: Raytrace material uses a different, six-color model to simulate surfaces. Several components are similar to those in Standard Material, but they behave differently in Raytrace.
When we describe an object's color in conversation, usually we mean its diffuse color. The choice of an ambient color depends on the kind of lighting. For moderate indoor lighting, it can be a darker shade of the diffuse color, but for bright indoor lighting and for daylight, it should be the complement of the primary (key) light source. The specular color should be either the same color as the key light source, or a high-value, low-saturation version of the diffuse color.
For more tips on choosing color components, see Choosing Colors for Realism.
Warning: When you change the shading type of a material, you lose the settings (including map assignments) for any parameters that the new shader does not support. If you want to experiment with different shaders for a material with the same general parameters, copy the material to a different sample slot before you change its shading type. That way, you can still use the original material if the new shader doesn't give you the effect you want.
A standard material's specular color appears in highlights. You can control the size and shape of the highlight. A polished surface has a small and strong highlight. A matte surface has a large, weak highlight, or no highlight at all.
Standard materials also have controls for making the object appear transparent, and for making it self-illuminating so that it appears to glow.
Along with the material's color components, components also refers to the parameters that control highlights, transparency, self-illumination, and so on.
The interface for a standard material is organized into several rollouts:
Shader Basic Parameters Rollout
Basic Parameters Rollout (Standard Material)