The Groups, Tags section is located along the left side of the Material Editor. This section is further divided into two areas, as shown on the left in Figure 3–3.
• The Materials area contains a list of all of the materials that are present in the current scene, while the Tags area
contains the list of tags that are available in the scene materials. You can completely remove the Tags area by dragging the dotted divider to the bottom of the window. You can make the lower area visible again by dragging the divider back up. You can also increase or decrease the size of the both the areas by pulling the divider up or down.
• You can display Materials or Tags in either the upper or lower area, or in both areas by clicking next to the area name and selecting the required option, as shown on the right in Figure 3–3. This enables you to reorganize materials by moving them from one list to another, or from one node to another.
Figure 3–3
• The materials can also be organized into group nodes. You can create a group node and then drag and drop materials
Materials area
Tags area
• Any material or group node can be renamed by clicking on the name once to highlight it and then clicking again to change it into an edit box. Enter the new name in the edit box and press <Enter> to accept the new name.
• You can search and filter for a material in either section, by typing in the in Search box.The list of materials will
automatically be filtered as you type in the Search box, as shown on the left in Figure 3–4.
• You can also filter the list based on the material type. In the Search box, click (Filter), which displays a list that
contains the material types. Click on a type of material to limit the list to only those materials which belong to the selected type in the Materials area. For example, selecting Plastic and Triplanar filters the list to display only three materials used in the current scene, as shown on the right in
Figure 3–4.
Figure 3–4
Materials
By default, all of the materials that are used in the scene are displayed in this area. You can create a new material from a list of base materials provided, or convert existing materials into various Truelight materials. Right-click anywhere in the Materials area, or right-click on a specific material, to display the Materials shortcut menu, as shown in Figure 3–5. When you right-click in an empty space in the Materials area, some shortcut menu options are unavailable, such as the Convert>To Truelight material, Edit>Copy/Duplicate, Save Material(s), etc.
Figure 3–5 All of the options in the
Materials shortcut menu are also available in the Material Editor menu bar. Some of the options are also available in the Material Editor toolbar.
The options available in the Materials shortcut menu are as follows:
Create Material
Contains a list of Truelight materials that have attributes best for each type of material. These can be used as a base for creating your own materials, or you can edit the attributes to customize them for your own specific requirements. In addition to creating the Truelight materials, you can create measured materials, multipass materials, and material switches.
Some of the important Truelight materials provided In the Autodesk VRED Professional software include:
Chrome, Brushed Metal, Carpaint, Glass, Tire, and Triplanar.
Create Environment
Enables you to create a new environment, skylight, or an environment switch.
Create OpenGL Material
Enables you to create materials that can work well with OpenGL. The Simple and Phong OpenGL materials do not support any HDRI lighting and are visible when the scene is illuminated by a standard light source. It also has options for creating Chunk material, which is an empty node that enables you to create materials with additional chunk attributes. The CGFX scripts can be loaded into the CGFX material node.
Edit Enables you to Copy, Paste, Duplicate, Delete, Lock, and Unlock a selected material.
Convert Contains a list of all of the Truelight materials, enabling you to convert the selected material into a Truelight material, or a Truelight Phong material. Also enables you to convert a skylight to Sphere Environment, or vice versa.
Load Material(s)...
Opens a dialog box that enables you to load previously saved materials.
Tags
By default, all of the tags that are found in the scene are
displayed in this area. In this area, you can create a new tag or assign materials to a tag. By selecting a tag, the preview lists only the materials that are associated with that tag. You can assign tags to materials by dragging and dropping the materials onto a tag. Right-click anywhere in the Tags area, or right-click on a specific tag to display the Tags shortcut menu, as shown in Figure 3–6. By default, all of the materials in a scene are
assigned the Scene tag.
Figure 3–6
The options available in the Tags shortcut menu are as follows:
Create Group Creates an empty group node.
Create Group from Selection
Creates a new group node which contains the selected item(s) (e.g., materials, environments, skylights, etc.).
Create Switch from Selection
Creates a switch node with the selected item (material environment, skylight).
Select Nodes Selects the geometry nodes to which the currently selected material is assigned to.
Add Nodes to Selection
Adds all of the geometry nodes which has the selected material to the currently selected objects.
Apply to Selected Nodes
Assigns selected material to all of the selected geometry nodes.
New Tag Creates a new tag with the name Tag. Click on the new Tag to rename the tag.
Add to Selected Materials
The selected tag is applied to the selected materials.
Remove Tag from Material
Only available when you select a material. The tag is removed from the selected material.
Remove Tag Removes the tag from all materials.
Hint: Converting Materials
While importing a file, the materials assigned in the originating software are automatically converted into Truelight Plastic materials by default. This is controlled by the default settings in the FileIO tab of the Preferences dialog box. By default, the Convert Materials to Truelight materials option is selected, as shown in Figure 3–7.
Figure 3–7
You should convert each plastic material into a specific
Truelight material once it has been imported. For example, the car exterior is converted into a Truelight Plastic material when imported. Once in the Autodesk VRED Professional software, you should convert it into a Unicolor, Metallic, or a Flipflop Carpaint material by selecting the car exterior’s Plastic material in the materials list and selecting the required material from the Convert>To Truelight Material menu, as shown in Figure 3–8.
Figure 3–8