About material properties

Each default material has its own distinct parameter settings for a variety of properties such as color, reflectivity and surface characteristics such as bump. Adjusting these parameters will tune the look of an existing material to your preference.

To start from a neutral material instead of an existing material, select the Generic material under the Miscellaneous category, add it to your scene and edit it.

Change material properties

With an object selected, choose Materials > Material Properties (or pressCtrl+M) to change its material properties. The Material Properties window appears.

The Material Properties window contains some or all of the following types of properties. (Click on the links for more information.)

• Color parameters (change the color)
• Highlight parameters (modify the way that bright light reflects off a surface)
• Clear Coat Highlight parameters (provide an extra level of shininess to an object, applicable for car paints)
• Reflectivity parameters (determine how objects reflect their surroundings)
• Transparency parameters (create levels of transparency)
• Bump parameters (create the illusion of surface relief)

Material editing display settings

At the top of the Material Properties window is the name of the current material, and below it are two display settings checkboxes.

• Hide selection highlighting: turns off the selection highlight for the selected objects (with the material being edited) so that changes to the material can be easily evaluated.
• Disable Anti-aliasing: turns off progressive video antialiasing to improve performance while the scene is static. Some video cards will increase antialiasing of the scene once interactive motion stops, and changes to materials may not update interactively.

Related links

These topics tell you how to use some of the material parameter controls:

• Change colors
• Apply image maps
• Apply environment lighting overrides