Amapi 3D automatically opens the Catalog of Materials when you enter the Material Editor. It looks for all the material files on the hard drive. You can assign one of those materials to the current object, and save the materials you create in the directory of your choice.
q Browsing the Catalog
The Catalog of Materials follows the exact same principles as the Catalog of Files described in the chapter User Manual/File/Catalog.
¨ Primary materials directory
The default directory is the “Primary Materials” directory. You can use these materials as the basis for new materials.
¨ Pre-made materials directories
You can browse through all the materials to select a material that you will use as is or modify.
q Assigning a material from the Catalog to the current object
You can assign a material from the Catalog of Materials to objects or groups of objects in the scene.
Proceed as follow:
1. Choose a material in the Catalog and click on it (do not release the mouse button).
2. Drag the cursor on top of the preview window.
3. Release the mouse button.
Each material assignment will create a new item in the list of materials used in the scene.
If you assign a material N times to N different objects, the Scene Manager’s material list will include N different materials with the same name. Then, if you modify the material of one of those objects, only this object will have its material modified, as the other objects refer to different materials (even though they have the same name).
If you want to assign the same material to different objects in the scene and you want material modifications applied to all of those objects at once, group the objects beforehand. Material modifications will affect all of them even if the objects are ungrouped as the same material was applied to all of them.
q Saving a material in the Catalog
Once you have created a material and want to save it for use in other scenes, you must store it in the Catalog of Materials. See next paragraph on how to proceed: See The Editor’s Main Window/Assigning a material to the current object.