Re: Materials Question

Dan Hutchins wrote:
> Thanks for the quick responses!  I think I understand the principle behind
> how materials work, but I'm still running into problems.  First of 
> all, if I
> hover my mouse over the name of the Material, it says something like
> "Displays current Datablock Name.  Click to change."  I don't see any
> numbers that correspond to the Material.  Maybe I'm looking in the wrong
> spot.  There is a Button to the right of the Material name with an "X" 
> in it
> that says "Deletes link to this Datablock." if I hover over it.  Is that
> what you are referring to?  The only areas with numbers that I think you
> might be referring to is the area below that that read "1 Mat 1"  but from
> what I've come to understand is that the selected object has 1 material
> attached to it.
The button with a number on it that I was referring to appears between 
the name of the material and the X button you mentioned, when and only 
when the material is on multiple meshes.  If you apply the same material 
to other meshes in your scene, you'll see the number I'm referring to 
come up

> Also, if I am in Object mode and right click on one of my Gingerbread Mans
> eyes, it not only selects that eye, but this other eye, the spheres that
> make up his mouth, and the spheres that make up his buttons.  I 
> believe that
> is why it is applying one material to all of them.  They are all connected
> somehow, but I don't understand why, aside from the fact that I made them
> all one after another.  I think If I could select them separately, I'd be
> able to apply Materials to them separately as well.  Even f I select the
> faces of the spheres in Edit mode and change the material, it changes the
> material for all of the other spheres.
Ah, now we're getting somewhere.  Let's go over the differences between 
object mode and edit mode.

1) Object Mode - when you're in object mode, you cannot move the 
vertices, lines, and faces of the mesh you're working on... you move and 
manipulate the objects that contain the meshes you're working on.  If 
you're in object mode and you do Add > Mesh, it will add a *new *object 
to your scene and enter edit mode of that object.

2) Edit Mode - when you're in edit mode, you cannot move the object that 
you're editing.... instead, you move the vertices, lines, and faces of 
the mesh you're working on.  If you're in edit mode and you Add > Mesh, 
it will add mesh data to the mesh that you're currently in edit mode 
with.  make sense?  you've been doing Add > Mesh while in edit mode and 
expecting the meshes to be added as seperate objects, but they're being 
added to your current object / mesh instead.  To get around this, always 
do Add > Mesh while in object mode when you want a new, seperate object 
to be added.

Luckily for you, all is not lost.  It is possible to seperate the eyes, 
buttons, and other misc. extra objects from your object in question.  In 
object mode, select the offending object, enter edit mode (remember, TAB 
switches back and forth between edit mode and object mode), select one 
of the buttons that you want to seperate, and press the P key.  it will 
confirm that you want to seperate that part of your current mesh and 
create a new object with it.  Confirm it and repeat for all buttons, 
eyes, etc that you want to seperate.
> Thanks again for taking the time to explain things the first time around.
> If my problem made any sense to you, hopefully you can help me out.   
> Thanks
> in advance!
NP.  I'd recommend going through Noob to Pro, beginning to end, if you 
haven't already.  It goes through some of the basics that I think you 
might have missed out on.  Good luck to you, and let us know if you have 
more questions.

David Millet aka spiderworm
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