Rayfront User Manual

Material Assignment and Editing

This dialog is where you decide how the current variation of your project is going to look like.

The dialog has two main parts. To the left, the object list shows all geometry objects currently present in your variation, together with their material assignments. To the right, the materials and modifiers that are available for the project are listed, one category at a time, as selected in the drop-down menu at the top.

Below of each list, a number of buttons offer to manipulate the entries in the respective list. The buttons between the lists make the connection between the two sides, allowing to assign modifiers to objects.

The Object List

The object list allows to manipulate the properties of the geometry objects in the current variation.

The Modifier List

The modifier list allows to view, select, and modify the modifiers available in the project.

Assigning Modifiers

The three buttons in the center column allow to assign materials, patterns, and textures to the objects selected in the object list. There is no limit of the number of modifiers that can be assigned to any object in Rayfront, though Radiance will assume a modifier loop on runtime, if it sees a really excessive number of nested modifiers for a surface.

Assign New Pattern
Assign New Texture
This button is active when there is exactly one object and exactly one pattern or texture selected. If the object has no modifier of the same type yet, then it will be assigned normally. If there already is an assignment, then the new modifier will be added to the old modifier, and displayed on a new line like in the following example:

 I Objects    Materials    Paterns         Textures
___________________________________________________________

   object     material     first_pattern   first_texture
                           second_pattern  second_texture
                           third_pattern

It is not possible to assign the same modifier several times to the same object.

Assign Material
Assign Pattern
Assign Texture
This button is active if there is one or several objects and one material, pattern, or texture selected and assigns the selected modifiers to all objects, possibly replacing an existing assignment. If an object has several modifiers of the selected type already assigned, then the one on the selected line in the object list will be replaced (or the first one, if there are several selected).

Empty
This button is active when either the foreground or the background line of a mixed material assignment in the object list is selected. It removes the assignment, so that you can mix a material with "nothing". This is useful to define procedural transparency distributions like perforations. It is not possible to remove both the foreground and the background material, or to remove the foreground or background modifier in a mixture of patterns or textures.

Buttonbar

Ok - use the entered values and close the dialog.

Cancel - discard the entered values and close the dialog.

For technical reasons, there is no "Revert" button in this dialog. If you want to reestablish the values of when you opened the dialog, press "Cancel" and reopen it.

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