Thoughts on workflow for material assignments and interaction

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So, I decided to sit and figure out a nice workflow for assigning materials to material slots and bind them to groups of polygons.

Following is the result after binding materials to slots for the polygons in the Mesh. (More about it -> Manual/Materials/Options)

If you want Blender to automagically display the active material (that material assigned to the selected face) you must switch to Face select mode (in Edit mode) and then Select a face.

• I am making use of the Object Property Chart add-on to visualize the selected material and its index in the View3D properties panel.
• In order to select all the faces sharing the same material, SHIFT+G to bring up the "Select Similar" Menu and choose material.

Alternatively, you can select any face and then press SPACE key to bring up the Operator Search dialog and type "Select Material Slot" and press ENTER

The Object Property Chart add-on is pretty useful. Here I am using it to have some material setup properties readily available in the 3D View properties panel.

I am currently working on a script that enables me to assign properties to a group of materials (lookGroups) and then automatically assign shaders (Surface, Displacement) based off on existing LookGroup NodeGroups. Following is a quick glimpse.

In the example below, instead of creating a custom panel, I modified the actual UI python script

It is so much fun!

References

• http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Materials/Options
• http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Materials/Multiple_Materials

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satishgoda at gmail dot com