Re: Materials Question

Hi Dan,
> I have used Lightwave 7.5 rather extensively for the past few years but am
> intrigued by Blender and am currently working through the tutorials 
> found in
> the manual and the ones found at
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro.  So far I am very
> impressed with the power, functionality, and ease of use this open-source
> software has. One problem I am running into right now deals with 
> materials.
> In Lightwave when you want something to have a material applied to it, you
> select the polys and create a surface name.  Then you can edit the surface
> (same as material) in a similar fashion to Blender.  The problem I am
> running into is when I select one object and apply a material to it, it
> applied the same material to a number of different objects in the scene.
> Case in point, if you open the Blender Documentation Volume I file and try
> to follow the "Materials and Textures" section, one material will be 
> applied
> to all of the spheres, not the eyes, mouth, and buttons separately.  I 
> feel
> like I'm missing something obvious and simple here.  Can anyone shed some
> light on applying materials or point me to a decent link?  Thanks
I started Noob to Pro and the materials tutorials over there, tho I 
never finished those tutes, and I'm glad you brought this up, because 
its something that should be covered.

When you create a material on one object, and you then apply the same 
material to another object, it's still the same material... in other 
words, if you apply the grass material to object 1 and then the same 
material to object 2, both objects share the same material, so when you 
change the material on one, it will change the material on all objects 
that share that material.

How, then, do you change the material object?  I want you to take a look 
at the # right next to the material's name.  If you hold your mouse over 
that number, a tooltip will pop up that says something like "Number of 
users.  Click to make single user."  If the number is 3, that means that 
three objects are using that material.  If you click the button with the 
number on it, it will make a brand new copy of the material (and give it 
a .001 extension), and then you will be able to edit that material 
independent of other materials.

PITFALL:
Textures operate the same way.  Even if you make the material a single 
user, if it had textures assigned to the material, the same textures 
will be applied to the new material.  You'll need to go into the texture 
buttons and make each texture a single user to only that material as well.

David Millet aka spiderworm