The Material Editor first opens in its Simplified Version. It is designed for users wishing to quickly create a material using the minimum of parameters.
The Extended version of the Material Editor is used to create custom and more complex materials. It will also allow you to save your materials as separate files so you can use them in other scenes.
Check the “Extended Editor” box if you want the Material Editor to automatically open in its Extended Version.
If you check this box, the modifications applied to a material through the Material Editor will be displayed in real time in the preview window.
NOTE: This option is really useful only if you have a fast system.
Check this box to see the whole scene displayed in the preview window of the Material Editor.
NOTE: This option slows down the display only when opening the Material Editor. It is particularly useful when applying effects such as transparency, reflection, or refraction to elements of the scene.
As explained in paragraph User Manual/Tools/Modeling/Smoothing, Amapi 3D allows you to smooth objects. The display of those objects with smoothing applied is optional so as to optimize display speed. However, the smoothing information is kept in memory by Amapi 3D and the smoothing is applied when the object is rendered.
When working on a smoothed object with the smoothing not displayed, you can render it in the preview widow of the Material Editor smoothed or not. Activate the Geometric Smoothing option to render the object smoothed.
However, if this option is deactivated, the rendering speed will be greatly improved.