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MATEDITORSTATE
Indicates whether the Materials Editor is open or closed.
Create New Materials
A material is defined by a number of properties. The available properties
depend on the selected material type.
Create a new material in the Materials Browser or the Materials Editor. Select
the type of material to create, or duplicate and modify an existing material.
After you set properties, you can further modify materials even more by using
maps, such as texture or procedural maps.
In the Materials Editor, define the following properties:
■ Appearance. Defines the material’s appearance. The appearance properties
are unique to each material. Use the Texture Editor to edit texture or
procedural maps assigned to the material. You can also rename the material.
■ Information. Defines or displays the keywords and descriptions associated
with a given material. Some information is read-only.
One material is always available in a new drawing, GLOBAL. This material is
applied to all objects by default until another is applied.
Materials Editor
The material type, Generic, has the following properties to refine your material.
Color
The color of a material on an object is different in different areas of the object.
For example, when you look at a red sphere, it does not appear to be uniformly
red. The sides away from the light appear to be a darker red than the sides
facing the light. The reflection highlight appears the lightest red. In fact, if
the red Sphere is very shiny, its highlight may appear to be white.
You can assign a color or a custom texture which can be either an image or a
procedural texture to the material.
Image
Controls the base diffuse color map of the material. The diffuse color is the
color that an object reflects when illuminated by direct daylight or artificial
light.
Create New Materials | 2209