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PROGRAM BASIC: Saving Custom Materials
By Jeri Ingalls 2005
Sep 29, 2005, 02:01

Do you like to make adjustments to the material of an object by using the material box?  You can change the color, bevel, texture, shadow, border, and light with this option, or even make adjustments to a preset material you have loaded from the Easy Palatte.  Have you ever gotten a real nice result or effect that you would like to use again and again on other objects and wondered how you would recreate it?  There’s a place to store these custom materials in the Easy Palatte, and by doing so, its quick and simple to pull them up again any time you want to apply them to an object.

First, while you’re in the Material box, choose Add.  A box will pop up asking if you want to save all the settings you have made, or just part of them.  If you choose “partial” there are boxes beneath where you can select the parts of the material you want to save, such as the texture.  I’ve chosen to save all the settings for this example, which includes the color, bevel, border and texture that I’ve added to my object.

Next, as in the graphic shown below,  give the material preset a name.  Choose okay, and  it will save this onto your Easy Palette.

Now, anytime you want to give a shape or object this particular texture, all you have to do is go into your Easy Palette, find your Custom Groups, choose the preset that you made, and the material will be applied.