User manual

Maxwell Render 2.5 User Manual

Chapter 12. Maxwell Studio | 115

12.05.02 The Materials List

F.02 The Material List

All the materials currently loaded in the scene are listed in the Materials List, including

those that are not assigned to any object.

If a material has already been previewed in the material editor, a smaller version of the

preview thumbnail will appear next to it. If the material has never been previewed, an icon

with a N/A text will appear next to it.

Other than using the Materials List to list all the materials in the scene, it can be used to

assign materials to objects. To assign a material to an object, just drag the material name

over the object in the Objects List, over the object itself in the viewport, or over a selected

triangle group in the viewport.

You can access the contextual menu by right-clicking in the Materials List panel. Use this

menu to easily create, import, clone, rename, or remove materials. You can also create

emitters, select the object or triangle that has a material is assigned to it, add/ remove

assigned triangles, or automatically reload a preview of the selected materials. There are

also sorting order and icon size options.

You can even assign materials to your objects automatically using the Assign by Name

option, by right-clicking on the Materials List.

Use the combos to choose the material(s) to be assigned, and type in the blank elds the

name of the object(s) that will receive each material.

You can create you own rules like the one in the following example:

Assign by Name

In this example, the material “walls” has been assigned to all the objects in the scene

(notice the “*” notation), and the material “orange_tungsten” has been assigned to any

objects that have the word “lamp” in their names.

In this way you can perform massive material assignments with just one click.

You can save the rules you’ve created to a .mxrul text format, to be applied to another

scene, by using the Load and Save Rules icons.

Tip: To keep your MXS les tidy and clean we recommend you to remove unused

materials before rendering, using the Remove Unused option. This way Maxwell Render will

not spend time looking for textures of unassigned materials.