The Toolbox - Materials

The Materials tab of the Toolbox allows Materials to be created and assigned to groups of the model. The Materials tab of the Toolbox can be seen in the image below. Click on the part that you desire information for.

Material Selector

This list box is used to highlight the material you wish to operate on. One material is displayed per line of the box; the material is identified by its name.

Material Preview

This small area shows a sphere onto which the highlighted material is mapped. This serves as a Material preview. You can rotate the sphere by Left-Click and dragging, to see the whole Material.

Ambient

This button refers to the Ambient light of the environment the Material is in; this attribute affects the colour and the intensity of that colour that the material reflects. Pressing this button shows a colour picker window.

Diffuse

This button refers to the light that the material will directly reflect. This attribute has the most influence over the colour of the material. Pressing this button shows a colour picker window.

Specular & Specular Slider

This button refers to the Specular Highlight of the material. Basically selecting a bright colour will create a highlight on the material of the colour chosen. Moving the slider below it changes the focus of the highlight, the highlight can be made to be a small spot ranging to submergence in incandescent light. Pressing this button shows a colour picker window.

Emissive

This button represents the colour and the intensity of the light that the material emits. This attribute will appear as a glow around the material. Pressing this button shows a colour picker window.

Transparency Slider

This slider adjusts the amount of transparency that an alphamap applies to a texture and the faces that the texture is assigned to. You must press assign or click in the viewport to update the model to reflect your changes.

Texture Browse Button

This button allows the selection of a texture map to apply to the material. Pressing it will reveal a windows explorer browse box from which image files can be selected. A variety of image formats are supported as are shown in the Supported File Formats section of this help file. The 'None' button beside this button removes the texture file from the material.

Alphamap Browse Button

This button allows the application of an Alphamap to the material. A black and white image can be used to remove areas of texture where there may be holes. Black is fully occluded and white is fully visible, it is possible to use variations of grey to achieve semi-transparency. The 'None' button beside this button removes the alphamap file from the material.

New

The New button, when pressed will create a new blank material with default attributes, no texture or alphamap files and a default name.

Delete

To delete a material highlight it in the Material Selector, then press this button. This literally removes the material from the workspace so use this wisely.

Rename Button & Box

This button is used to rename a material. To rename a material highlight it in the Material selector box, then type the desired name in the box next to the Rename button then click the Rename button.

Assign

This button will assign the material highlighted in the Material Selector box to the selected group/s. Use the Texture Coordinate Editor to align the Material on the group if needed. The shortcut for this button is F10.