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1432 Chapter 16: Material Editor, Materials, and Maps
Sample Type
Material Editor > Sample Type
TheSampleTypeflyoutletsyouchoosewhich
geometry to display in the active sample slot (page
2–1420).Thisflyouthasthreebuttons:
•
Sphere (the def ault)—Displays the material
on a sphere.
•
Cylinder—Displays the material on a
cylinder.
•
Cube—Displays the material on a cube.
•
Cust om—Displays the material on a
custom object. This button appears only if you
have used the Material Editor Options dialog
(page 2–1436) to specify a custom object for
sample slots.
See also
Creating a Custom Sample Object (page 2–1425)
Propagate Materials to Instances
Material Editor > Options m enu > Propagate Materials
to Instances
When Propagate Materials To Instances is on, any
material assignment you make will be propagated
to all instances (page 3–957) of the object in your
scene, including impor ted AutoCAD blocks and
ADT style-based objects; these object ty pes are
common in DRF files (page 3–527). Assignments
are also propagated to instances of Revit objects
and of other instances that you’ve made in the
current scene.
When Propagate Materials To Instances is off,
materials are assig ned in traditional 3ds Max
fashion; each object has a un ique material
assignment.
Backlight
Material Editor > Backlight
Material Editor menu > O ptions menu > Backlight
Left: Backlight on
Right: Back light off
Turning on Backlight adds a backlight to the active
sampleslot.Thisbuttonisonbydefault.
The effect is most easily seen with the sample
spheres, where the backlight highlights t he
lower-right edge of the sphere.
Backlight is especially useful whenever you’re
creating metal (page 2–1481) and Strauss (page
2–1483) materials. Backlight lets you see and
adjust the specular highlight created by glancing
light, which is much brighter on metals.