Compound (or complex) materials let you create a material consisting of two or more sub-materials.

House on right uses a compound material.

(House on left uses the default standard material).

The real power in using compound materials is that each sub-material can be as complex as any standard material

The Multi/Sub-Object compound material lets you assign different materials to different sub-objects, at the sub-object level of your geometry.

You load or create compound materials using the Material/Map Browser.

For more information about the types of compound materials you can create, refer to Compound Materials.