You can assign one material to an object in branch mode, and assign a second material locally. In this case, the locally assigned material is the one displayed in the object’s hierarchy.
Other Tools For Working with Materials
This section describes some of the miscellaneous tools you can use to manage and edit materials in your scene.
Viewing Materials in the Explorer
In the explorer, you can view materials in two different contexts: you can see all of the scene’s material libraries by setting the explorer’s scope to Materials or you can see individual materials in the hierarchies of the objects to which they’re applied. In either context, each material’s name and icon provide useful information about the material itself.
When viewed in an object’s hierarchy:
• A material’s name appears as materialname[libraryname]. For example, this material...
...is named “im_pores” and belongs to the “flesh” library.
• If the material is inherited rather than locally assigned, its name is italicized and the name of the material’s source appears in parentheses. For example, this object...
has inherited the “im_blotch” material, which is part of the “flesh” library, from the “sphere15” object.
• If the material is assigned to an object in branch mode and propagated to the object’s children, the material’s icon is marked with a B.
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You can assign one material to an object in branch mode, and assign a second material locally. In this case, the locally assigned material is the one displayed in the object’s hierarchy. |
When viewed in the material library hierarchy:
• Materials are displayed as children of the libraries to which they belong. Only the material names appear.
• If a material is not assigned to any objects, “Not Used” appears in angle-brackets next to the material’s name.
In both the material library hierarchy and the object hierarchy:
• A material’s icon indicates whether the material is assigned to one object, more than one object, or no objects at all.
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You can assign one material to an object in branch mode and assign a second material locally. If you assign the same material to an object twice, the material’s icon will be marked with an n, even though it may only be assigned to the one object. |
The Material and Texture Explorer
The material and texture explorer is a two-pane relational view where the left pane is an explorer and the right pane is divided into tabs for materials, textures, shaders, objects, and clusters.
The material and texture explorer is not available by default, but is added to the View > SDK Samples menu when you install and run the SDK workgroup examples, as described in Help > SDK Guides > XSI SDK Examples > Examples.
To open the material and texture explorer
• Choose View > SDK Samples > RV - Material and Texture Explorer from the main menu.
What you select in the explorer pane determines what you see in the various tabs, as outlined in the following table:
When you select this... |
The Materials Tab Lists... |
The Textures Tab Lists... |
The Shaders Tab Lists... |
The Objects Tab Lists... |
The Clusters Tab Lists... |
Object |
Materials applied to the object, and its clusters. |
Image clips used by the materials. |
Shaders used by the materials. |
The object’s thumbnail. |
The object’s clusters. |
Cluster |
The cluster’s material (local or inherited from parent object). |
Image clips used as textures by the cluster’s material. |
Shaders used by the cluster’s material. |
The object to which the cluster belongs. |
The cluster’s thumbnail. |
Material |
The material’s thumbnail. |
Image clips that the material uses as textures. |
Shaders used by the material. |
Objects to which the material is applied (directly or via cluster, hierarchy, etc....). |
Clusters to which the material is applied. |
Shader |
The material that uses the shader. |
Image clips used as textures by the shader. |
The shader’s thumbnail. |
Objects to which the shader’s material is applied (directly, or via cluster, hierarchy, etc....). |
Clusters to which the shader’s material is applied. |
Image Clip |
Materials that use the image clip. |
The image clip’s thumbnail. |
Shaders belonging to materials that use the image clip. |
Objects to which the materials using the clip are applied. |
Clusters to which the materials using the clip are applied. |
Model/Scene Root |
All materials in the scene/model. |
All image clips in the scene/model. |
All shaders in the scene/model. |
All objects in the scene/model. |
All clusters in the scene/model. |
Material Library |
All materials in the library. |
Blank |
Blank |
Blank |
Blank |
Image Clip Library |
Blank |
All image clips in the library. |
Blank |
Blank |
Blank |
SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.6.01