Material

Material Editor

The Materials Editor enables you to edit the properties of the materials used in your scene. To open the Material Editor, double-click a thumbnail in the Material manager. The Materials Editor is ‘non-modal’. In other words, there is no need to close it before you can edit another material. Simply click once on another material in the Materials Manager and its settings will appear in the Materials Editor.

The Material Editor is divided into panes. A preview of the material is displayed in the top left corner. There are also 15 pages of parameters, the settings of which are combined to form the material. You’ll find a list of these parameter pages — known as channels — in the left part of the dialog. Most of the time you won’t need to use all the channels. Use the option boxes next to the channel names to choose which channels (i.e. properties) are used by the material. To access a parameter page, click the desired channel’s name. Each page operates in a similar way and the control elements are in the same place.

Properties and what they control:

Material Preview
Texture settings
Basic Properties
Materials and XPresso
Color
Diffusion
Normal
Luminance
Transparency
Reflection
Environment
Fog
Bump
Alpha
Specular
Specular Color
Glow
Displacement
Illumination
Assignment