User Manual

Table Of Contents
Material Viewer
When you view a node that comes from the 3D > Material category of nodes in the Effects
Library, the viewer automatically switches to display a Material Viewer. This Material Viewer
allows you to preview the material applied to a lit 3D sphere rendered with OpenGL by default.
The Material Viewer mode of the viewer.
The type of geometry, the renderer, and the state of the lighting can all be set by right-clicking
the viewer and choosing options from the contextual menu. Each viewer supports A and B
buffers to assist with comparing multiple materials.
Methods of working with the Material Viewer:
You can change the shape of the previewed geometry by right-clicking the viewer and
choosing an option from the Shape submenu of the contextual menu. The geometry
that the material is applied to is locked to the center of the viewer and scaled to fit. It is
not possible to pan or scale the Material Viewer.
The Material Viewer can be rotated to provide a different angle on the material
by holding Option while pressing the middle mouse button and dragging to the
left and right.
You can adjust the position of the light used to preview the material by dragging with
the middle mouse button. Or, you can right-click the viewer and choose an option from
the Lighting > Light Position submenu of the contextual menu.
You can also toggle lighting off and on by right-clicking the viewer and choosing
Lighting > Enable Lighting from the contextual menu.
You can choose the renderer used to preview the material by right-clicking the viewer
and choosing an option from the Renderer submenu of the contextual menu.
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