Tutorial request on materials

[ewa]

Hello everyone!

Can any one explain how to use the materials.
I downloaded a material from this site- BTW there all very nice!
But I don't know how to use it in blendigo on my mesh?
Can someone explain how to upload a material into blendigo.

Thanks Ewa

[Headroom]

Well..... I won't be writing a tutorial but here are a few hints on how to approach the material database.

Download of the material can be achieved in several ways:

1. Your exporter may allow you to download directly. I am not sure if that's possible with Blendigo. I've never tried. SkIndigo, the exporter for Sketchup can access the MatDB directly.

2. The Indigo Material Editor also can directly access the Mat DB and you can actually see how they are "written".

3. You can download them through the web interface, which is what I have done a few times.

What you download through the web interface has the file ending .pigm which is an acronym for "packed indigo material". They are zipped files and can be un-packed as such.

For use in Blendigo on a Mac you don't have to do that. Once you have assigned a blender material to your object(s) go to the "materials" tab/button in Blendigo and select "EXTERNAL" as Indigo material type. You then have to point Blendigo to the pigm file that you downloaded.

Of course there are still a few things that can go wrong. The material can for example require a UV map, and the naming in Blender and Indigo need to be consistent (which they are by default, but you could have more than one UV map per object). If you have not UV mapped your object Blendigo, or Indigo will return an error message.

Also some materials are older and don't work with newer Indigo versions while some mats are newer and don't work with older Indigo versions, so start with something simple. I would recommend to use the Indigo Material Editor to for a first look. You'll quickly be able to see if it works with your version of Indigo and if it's what you are looking for.

[Borgleader]

I'm just expanding on what Headroom said, things to watch out for:
a) The material name inside blender must match the material name from the .pigm/.igm file (which is why you'll need to open it with the indigo material editor)
b) By default when you UV unwrap a mesh in Blender it names the UVset "UVTex" most materials will look for a set called "default" so either take a chance and change the UVset name to "default" or while you're looking for the material name take a look at the UVset name it's expecting to find.

[ewa]

Thanks Headroom & Borgleader,

Thanks for the tips, I was trying to those things the wrong way, and first I got some Phyton errors, and than the UV error.
Thanks again it all starts too look easer

ewa