530 Part V: On a 3D Spree

Figure 23-10: The Sun Properties palette gives you the power to control day and night.

Creating and Applying Materials

Materials can bring your model to life. Materials can be as simple as paint — matte or glossy or anywhere between. You can apply representations of realistic, real-world materials like stone, marble, glass, polished metal, fabric . . .

the list is almost endless. They can be opaque, transparent, reflective, or nonreflective. AutoCAD 2013 comes with a material library of literally thousands of different material types, and assigning them to objects can be as simple as dragging from a palette and dropping on an object. Or it can be as complex as you care to make it.

Prior to AutoCAD 2011, you created and stored materials in individual drawings, which made them difficult to manage. AutoCAD 2011 introduced the Materials Browser, which makes managing materials much easier. Material definitions now live in a central repository and are attached to each drawing as an external reference. In addition, all Autodesk products that use material

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definitions use the same central library, so a model rendered in AutoCAD will look the same as one done in Inventor, Maya, or in 3ds Max.

Partnered with the Materials Browser is the Materials Editor, accessible from a tool button in the Materials Browser.

The material libraries introduced in AutoCAD 2011 took up vast amounts of hard drive space. That was seen as wasteful for people who never did renderings, so as of AutoCAD 2012, most of the material libraries are online. The first time you click the Render button in AutoCAD 2013, AutoCAD asks

whether you want to go online to install the Medium Material Library. If rendering looks interesting to you, go ahead and install the library.

Use the MATBROWSER command to display the Materials Browser palette (see Figure 23-11), from which you can create, edit, and manage in the current drawing or material libraries. You add materials to your drawing by using a preconfigured material or creating a custom material.

Follow these steps to create and manage a new material:

1.On the Render tab, choose Materials Browser from the Materials panel.

2.On the Materials Browser palette that opens, click Create a Material (in the upper left) and then choose the material template you want to start with. For example, choose Metallic Paint.

The Materials Editor palette is displayed (see Figure 23-11).

3.On the Materials Editor palette, click in the Name field located below the preview of the material and enter a name.

4.Enter new values in the appropriate attributes for the material.

The attributes that you can edit vary, based upon the type of material template that you choose to start with. When you finish editing the material, you can close or hide the Materials Editor palette. The material is automatically added to the current drawing.

5.(Optional) Save the material in a library to use it in more than one drawing. On the Materials Browser palette, at the bottom, click Manage, and then select Create New Library.

The Create Library dialog box is displayed.

6.Enter a name and location for the new library. Click Save.

7.On the Materials Browser palette, drag the custom material you created onto the name of the new library.

Now you can access the material from any drawing. You can create categories if you want to manage multiple materials within a library. In the Materials Browser, right-click the library name, choose Create Category,

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and then enter a name for the new category. After the category is created, simply select the material from the right side of the Materials Browser and drag it to the new category.

Figure 23-11: Adding color and texture to a 3D model with the Materials Browser palette (at the left) and the Materials Editor palette (to the right).

You can open the Materials Editor directly from the Ribbon by clicking the Materials panel launcher (the little arrow at the right end of the Materials panel label).

Which materials you use in a model depends on what you’re trying to represent. For example, you might choose to make a material semitransparent to communicate an idea rather than a true material selection. After you create a material, you can apply it to the objects in your 3D model. You can apply materials to objects in the following ways:

By Layer: Globally assign materials to all objects on a particular drawing layer by assigning a material to the layer. To assign materials by layer, open the Materials slideout on the Render tab and choose Attach by Layer.

By Object: Assign materials to an object by selecting the object and then right-clicking the material you want to assign in the Materials Browser palette. From the menu that appears, choose Assign to Selection. You

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can also drag and drop a material from the Materials Browser palette onto an object in a drawing or change an object’s Material property by using the Properties palette.

By Face: Assign materials to individual faces of a 3D solid. Select a face using Subobject filtering by holding down the Ctrl key and selecting the face you want to apply a material to. Right-click the material you want to assign in the Materials Browser palette and then choose Assign to Selection from the menu that appears.

Defining a Background

While your model might now be looking a little more realistic with some user-defined lighting and custom materials assigned to it, its setting might look a little, well, empty. You can assign backgrounds to fill that empty space beyond the 3D model in your scene. A background is a property of named views, and you can set them up in the View Manager dialog box. (We cover the VIEW command and View Manager dialog box in Chapter 12.) You can define a background as a solid color, a gradient (two or three colors), a raster image, or a sky with a sun (available only when using photometric lighting).

Follow these steps to create a new named view and assign a background to it:

1.On the Views panel of the View tab, click Named Views.

The View Manager dialog box appears.

2.Click New to display the New View/Shot Properties dialog box.

For a refresher on creating named views, see Chapter 12.

3.In the Background area, click the Default drop-down, choose an option to override the default background, and then click OK.

Choose Solid or Gradient if you want a studio-type scene, or choose Image if you have a suitable raster image to highlight your model. Any of these options displays the Background dialog box where you make your settings (see Figure 23-12). Choose Sun & Sky if you want to place your model in the great outdoors (and it’s always fair weather in AutoCAD!). Choosing the last option displays the Adjust Sun & Sky Background dialog box, as shown in Figure 23-13.

4.After the background is defined, select the view from the Views tree and click Set Current.

5.When the View Manager closes, the new background should be displayed.

For more information on the View Manager, see Chapter 12.

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534 Part V: On a 3D Spree

Figure 23-12: Painting the canvas of the drawing window.

Figure 23-13: Here comes the sun.

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