Setting Up Materials

This panel allows to organize and modify the materials and can be invoked by pressing the M key (for other materials hotkeys see Controls and Navigation ) or choosing Materials tab on the Editor interface panel.

Materials Editor consists of three parts: preview panel, material tree hierarchy list and data related to the selected material (material tabs).

Materials editor settings

The left part of the Materials panel consists of the following elements:

Preview panel — display the current material over the geometric figure, selected in the drop-down list: box, sphere or dodecahedron.
List of preloaded material libraries — set load order, add, save or remove material libraries from the list.
Save materials — save the material.
Clone material — clone the selected material to the library with specified name.
Inherit material — inherit the selected material in the library with specified name.
Rename/move material — rename or move the material in the library.
Remove material — remove material and all its children from the list.
Assign material — assign material to one selected surface of the selected node.
Library filter — show all material libraries in the hierarchy list or filter the specific ones for displaying.
Search — search material in the hierarchy list by name.
Materials hierarchy list — hierarchically structured list of the materials giving material names and parent-child links. It enables showing only the parent materials and hide the child ones if necessary.

The material-related data is grouped into four tabs:

The Common tab contains common material settings. These properties are the same for all materials.
The States tab contains a set of flags that will be used for a shader corresponding to the material.
The Textures tab contains paths to textures used by the material.
The Parameters tab contains parameters associated with the selected states.

Details on type dependent properties can be found in Material Class article.

Common Tab

The common tab has the following options:

Info

This section provides the information about the selected material:

Library	A library for the current material.
Name	A name of the material.
Parent	A name of the parent material.
Children	The number of child materials.

Blending

This section contains parameters used for alpha blending:

Src	Option used to scale the source color (the color of an overlaying material).
Dest	Option used to scale the destination color (the color of an obscured material).

Options

This section contains common material options:

Downsize	A downsize value indicating if a transparent surface should be rendered into a smaller buffer. The default value is none - to use a full-sized image.
Render group	An option, affecting opacity objects rendering; inside a group all the renderable objects will be sorted with the respect to material order.
Render order	Sort order used by rendering transparent objects with alpha blending. Transparent objects should be set lowest order numbers and thus rendered first, while opaque objects should be set highest order numbers to be rendered last. Notice In order to control the rendering order, you need to set Materials settings -> States tab -> Ambient pass to Transparent for the selected material.
Polygon offset	Polygon offset level used for the material.
Light	A light mask of the material. The material is illuminated by a light source, if they both have corresponding masks.
Viewport	A viewport mask that allows to selectively render materials and reflections from them. (See the detailed info).
Depth mask	Render material into the deferred depth buffer. Transparent objects will be written into Z-buffer only if Post deferred option is enabled. For opaque objects this option should always be enabled.
Glow mask	Use deferred buffer glow mask for the current material (alpha channel or emission texture is used).
Parallax mask	Use deferred buffer parallax mask for the current material.
Alpha test	Enable alpha testing for the current material (alpha channel of base diffuse texture is used). Material is rendered only if in a given pixel its alpha is 0.5 or higher.
Post deferred	Render a transparent surface with the current material into deferred depth buffer and thus override the depth. It allows to test the distance to the transparent object when rendering light scattering, but objects behind it will not be considered in calculations (will not have distance attenuation).
Post scattering	Render a transparent surface after the light scattering pass
Post refraction	Render a transparent surface with the current material after the refraction pass. It overrides the disabled Post scattering option (i.e. the material that should be rendered before the light scattering pass will still be rendered after the refraction pass).
Two sided	Render polygons, to which the material is applied, two times by lighting pass.
Light blending	For the material blending mode onto light rendering passes.
Cast shadow	Render polygons, to which the material is applied, casting shadows from omni, projected or cubemap light sources.
Cast world shadow	Render polygons, to which the material is applied, casting shadows from world light sources.
Receive shadow	Render polygons, to which the material is applied, receiving shadows from omni, projected or cubemap light sources.
Receive world shadow	Render polygons, to which the material is applied, receiving shadows from world light sources.
Cast translucence	Enable casting colored translucent shadows. Note that translucent shadow maps must be enabled (on the Tool bar click Rendering mode -> Features -> Translucence). The Translucent pass must be also enabled.
Receive translucence	Enable receiving colored translucent shadows. Note that translucent shadow maps must be enabled (on the Tool bar click Rendering mode -> Features -> Translucence). The Translucent pass must be also enabled.
Copy	Copy all material settings.
Paste	Apply the previously copied settings of the material to the current one.

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