Tell me I'm wrong

[rtd]

This is how I thought that Twilight would work.

1. Assign a color other than the default to Sketchup objects.
2. Open the TW material editor.
3. Select the surfaces that I'd like to apply TW materials to.

It doesn't appear to work that way. When I open the material editor I am provided with a eyedropper with which I am to select an object having a material.

It appears that I am then editing the material for all objects in the scene that have that SU material.

Since I intend to modify the materials in TW, there's no point in assigning separate materials to every object or surface that will have different materials in the finished rendering. I thought that one could assign a non-default material and then get serious in TW.

Am I missing something, or must I do all but the final tweaking in SU?
For example, if I have a 'flat' finish color and a glossy version of the same color in the scene, must these be different colors in SU?

[Chris]

You're wrong.

When you edit a material, that's what you are doing, editing a material, not a surface. If you apply the same material to other faces, that doesn't change the composition of that material, simply because it's on a different face.

Imagine if there was a separate material for every single face. That would add up to a huge number of materials. And do you seriously want to edit the material on every single face? Wouldn't it be much, much easier to edit a material for 'Wood Floor' and have it work for every single face where you've applied that material? Glass, walls, concrete, etc... I don't think most people would want to have to edit the material for every single surface. I don't know of any renderer that acts any different.

[Fletch]

Hi rtc

please watch the video tutorials - you will be FLYING in Twilight in just a short time.

[rtd]

Thanks for you replies.

What I wanted to do was assign a simple color to all the objects, then select the, for example, roof surface group, and using the templates, etc., apply the roof material in TW, editing the basic color. It turns out that each different color has to be applied to its object set in SU first.

I have created colors such as 'shingles' and 'siding' which are applied to the groups in SU. I then select these from the 'in scene' list and edit them in TW. This is not a problem as all the differently colored or textured objects have to separated at some point. I wasn't clear as to how TW worked.