- [Voiceover] In Chapter 3,
we'll look at material editing in VUE.
As I mentioned before with the Terrain Editor,
I recommend that you save the scene
before you open the Material Editor,
and this is because of an issue
with the undo/redo system in VUE.
If you edit something, such as a material,
and then close the window,
if you choose to undo at that point,
then you cannot redo to get your changes back,
and for that reason, it's a good idea to save out a version
of your scene before entering the Material Editor.
We can see a summary of all the materials in the scene,
and there's a button on the control bar
to open up the Material Summary
or we can use the keyboard shortcut, which is F6.
And we have a list and thumbnails
of all the materials in the scene.
In VUE, each object starts out with a separate material.
If I select something in the Summary,
then the corresponding object is selected
in the main Viewports.
If I click on this other one labeled Default,
then now we have our procedural terrain selected.
And it's a bidirectional process.
If we select something in the Viewport
or in the World Browser, then its corresponding material
is selected in the Materials Summary.
So, for example, I select one
of these Mediterranean Cyprus trees,
then the Cyprus bark is highlighted in the Material Summary,
and over here in the Object Properties Aspect tab,
we see that there is more than one material assigned
to that object, and we can page through those
using these arrows, or we can use the dropdown list
to choose the appropriate material by name.
Let's load a material from the Stock Library.
We'll select the Procedural terrain in the World Browser,
and then its material is displayed in the Aspect tab
and again, in the Summary.
In either location, we can right click
and choose Load a Material,
and the Material browser opens up.
We'll go to the Rocks tab, and look for pebbles,
and you'll see it's here on the first page,
and it's actually two materials in one.
The lighter color is above the sea level,
and the darker color is below.
Click on Pebbles.
And that now replaced the sample slot that we saw here.
That may not necessarily happen.
Garbage collection in VUE is not the greatest,
and you may actually see some leftover materials
in this summary that are not actually
in your scene any longer.
When you save this scene,
then there will only be one material named Default,
and the other one has actually been erased completely.
But again, it may show up, spuriously in this window.
The only way you'll know if something is in your scene
or not is if you close it and reopen it.
Because of the way that VUE assigns materials per object,
if you replace a material on an object,
then the old material no longer exists,
and you can never get it back.
It's been destructively removed.
So, if you have a need for that material in the future,
there's no way to store it here in the Summary.
If it's not assigned to an object,
it's not gonna get saved.
So, your only workaround really is to create a primitive,
such as a sphere or a cube, assign your working material
to that object, and then hide the object
or put it on a hidden layer.
Okay, that's a basic introduction
to the Materials Summary in VUE.