Tutorial: How to Create and Assign Materials from the Material Editor

Transcription

1 Tutorial: How to Create and Assign Materials from the Material Editor This tutorial walks you through the steps to create and assign a new material to an object in the Lumberyard Editor. To do this we will breakdown the Material Editor UI, create a new Material, assign the Material to an object, convert our material into a Multi-Material, and finally assign Sub-materials per object face. At the end of the tutorial you will have a general understanding of the Material Editor workflows and how they can be applied to your own designs. You will learn how to do the following: Understand the Material Editor UI Create and Assign a New Material Convert Materials into Multi-Materials Prerequisites This tutorial requires that you have successfully downloaded, installed and configured Lumberyard for your computer, and assumes (but does not require) that you have been following along with the Getting Started Tutorial Series. You must have the following before starting this tutorial: Lumberyard Downloaded and Installed An understanding of the Editor Interface, selection and movement controls. Step 1: Understand the Material Editor UI The first step in the tutorial is to open the Material Editor so that we can identify the Editor areas and start understanding how we can use the Material Editor in our work. To Open the Material Editor 1. In the Main Menu click Tools -> Material Editor or by clicking on the Icon in the Editor Toolbar. Once the Material Editor is open let s break down the UI. The Material Editor contains the following Menus and Sections:

2 1. Main Menu Contains commands related to assigning and creating materials. 2. File Browser Lists all folders in the current project that contain Materials. 3. Material Preview Preview window of the currently selected material, can be navigated using general editor nav controls. 4. Texture Preview Preview of the textures assigned to the current material. 5. Material Parameters Listing of the various parameters used to define the rendering qualities of the currently selected material. 2. In the Parameters section of the Material Editor it is possible to switch the UI style to a more compact version by right clicking on a parameter and selecting Switch UI. We will be using the default UI for this tutorial. Now that we understand the Interface a bit better, let s start making Materials and applying them to objects.

3 Step 2: Creating and Assign a New Material Now that we know what we are looking at let s get to making materials. In this step we will create a basic material, name it, and assign some placeholder textures in order to render the material. To create your first Material: 1. Right-Click in the Browser section of the Material Editor and click Add New Material. This will open the Save As dialog where we will give our Material a name. You may use any naming convention that you wish but we will use My_First_Material for this tutorial. 2. With the New Material created we can see the preview render at the top of the Material Editor is currently screaming at us to replace the texture so let s do that. In the Texture Maps menu of the Material Parameters click on the ellipsis ( ) next to the Diffuse Channel to open the File Browser.

4 3. In the File Browser navigate to Textures -> Styletown and choose a texture to map to the Diffuse Channel. You may use any texture you wish but we will be using _dev_brown_dark.dds for this tutorial. 4. In the Material Settings section of the material parameters click the drop-down menu next to Surface Type, this is where we designate the type of surface for the current material. In this case, set the Surface Type to Wood.

5 5. Now that we have a Material, let s assign it to an object. First create a simple box using the Designer tool, if you have not been following along with the Getting Started Series then more information on the Designer Tool can be found here. 6. With our shape created we are ready to apply the Material. Select your designer object and then select My_First_Material in the Material Editor. Right-click to bring up the context menu and select Assign to Selected Objects. You have now applied your first custom-made material to an object! Next, we will add a bit more complexity by adding geometry to our designer object and creating a Multi-Material to assign Materials per object face.

6 Step 3: Converting Materials to Multi-Materials Many times during the development process we need to assign multiple materials to an object, for example a car model with a windshield, metal body and racing slicks would naturally need to use a different material for each surface type (glass, metal and rubber). Multi-Materials allow us to create multiple materials that can be applied to an object per selected faces and still only have a single draw call. To Convert a Material into a Multi-Material 1. In the Material Editor right-click on My_First_Material and select Convert to Multi Material. Next, right-click on the new Multi-Material and click Set Number of Sub-Materials. In the dialog, set the number of sub-mats to In order to avoid confusion, rename the my_first_material sub-mat to Dark_Wood and the new sub-mat to Light_Wood. In the Material Editor select the Light_Wood sub-mat and assign a texture to the Diffuse channel. For this tutorial we will use the _dev_brown_light.dds file.

7 3. In order for the Multi-Material to work we will need some more geometry on our designer object, so let s use the Offset and Extrude tools from the Designer Tool to add some recessed faces on every side of the cube. 4. Once we have some more faces to work with switch to face select mode in the designer tool. Select the recessed faces and then right-click on the Light_Wood sub-mat and click Assign to Selected Objects. Congratulations! You have successfully Created and assigned Materials using the Material Editor. In the next tutorial we will be taking a look at the Asset Browser and how to use it to find Assets from within the Editor. Congratulations! You have successfully completed this tutorial. You moved a new game object into an existing slice, and instantiated that slice. You have learned how to hide and lock slices in your level, and finally, you have learned how to work with slices in a team setting. Want to learn more about Lumberyard? Visit the complete Lumberyard Tutorials Page. We d love to hear from you! Head to our Tutorial Discussion forum to share any feedback you have, including what you do or don t like about our tutorials or new content you d like to see in the near future.