Materials

The information, which defines how an object will appear in shaded rendering methods, is specified by its material. A material may be assigned to any number of objects simultaneously.

With shaded rendering methods, the appearance of an object is basically derived from four independent shaders:

• color source

• reflectance model

• transparency source

• displacement function

Shaders that make up a material are known as its components.

This model provides a highly flexible and versatile environment for the specification of material properties. Each component makes an independent contribution to a material's appearance, and consequently, each performs a specific function. Combining simple shading functions into each material can represent complex properties.

See also:

• Creating Materials.

• The Materials Library.

• Assigning Materials.

• Merging Materials.

• Editing Materials.