Materials are used to define how your design will look in a 3D view.
Materials can be simple solid colors or complex texture materials.
Home designer comes with a large selection of materials available to you in the
library.
Additional materials can be downloaded from the 3D library on the Home Designer
website. For a truly individualized plan,
you can create custom materials by importing texture images or making copies of
existing materials and editing them.
These techniques will give you unlimited options for your design plans.
Let's go into the program and take a look. To begin,
open the library browser by clicking the library browser button at the top of
the menu bar.
You can create custom materials by importing an image file.
To begin the import process right click on the user catalog,
click on new, then material to open the define material dialog.
Name the material,
then go to the texture panel and find a texture file by browsing to an image on
your computer.
If you are using Home Designer's Suite, check texture,
then click the select button to browse to an image on your computer.
Let's make a custom wallpaper, choose the image and click open.
Notice that in the preview your image repeats in a scalable pattern.
This is the length and width of an image as it repeats across an object and is
an important detail to adjust when creating custom fabric,
tiled backsplashes, or wallpaper.
There is also an option to stretch an image across an entire surface,
to do so check the box stretch to fit.
This option is valuable when importing images for use as artwork in your
designs. This is a repeating wallpaper pattern,
so leave the box unchecked.
Once you click okay the new material now displays in the user catalog.
Select it then click on the object to update its material.
You can create a custom material by copying an existing material from the Home
Designer library. Browse for a material in the library.
In this case,
I want to create custom wood flooring while keeping the materials existing
texture.
Browse to a wood material in the library by expanding the core catalog file,
followed by materials, click on flooring, then wood flooring,
and select a wood flooring material. Once you've found a wood flooring material,
right click on the material name and click copy.
Scroll down to the user catalog file,
right click on the user catalog file and click paste.
The copied material now appears in the user catalog.
To customize the material in Home Designer Pro and Architectural right click and
select open object.
This will open the define material dialog where you can adjust the material.
First I will rename the material, then the color.
Select a grey tone by clicking in the material color box.
This opens the select color dialog where I can choose a specific color for the
floor,
click okay.
Under pattern you can choose a pattern type to reflect how the material will
display in orthographic or vector based views.
Here we will select hatch because this is wood flooring and we want to represent
each row of the wood flooring material. Under scale,
adjustments can be made to accurately represent the custom flooring you are
creating. We are making flooring with eight inch planks,
so we set the width to eight inches.
Under the offset and angle section, you can rotate the direction of the pattern.
In Home Designer Pro and Architectural,
if you want the material to go at a 45 degree angle first place a check mark
next to keep pattern and texture in sync,
enter 45 degrees as the angle.
Doing so will change the angle of the material in both plan and 3D views,
the change will be reflected in the preview panel.
In the texture panel check the box to blend with texture,
a check mark here will update the color of the wood flooring without eliminating
the wood texture.
In the properties panel further adjustments can be made for brightness and how
shiny the floor will appear using some rendering techniques like physically
based render. Transparency adjusts material's opacity,
the higher the percentage, the more transparent a material will become.
Emissivity adjusts the light a material gives off.
A small percentage will slightly brighten an object or a room.
While higher percentages will create a glowing effect like a light bulb.
If you are using Home Designer Suite,
the define material dialog looks slightly different but will still allow you to
make similar adjustments.
To update the color of the wood flooring in Suite first place a check mark next
to blend color and texture,
then click the select color button to choose a specific color for the floor.
You will notice the Suite define material dialog has more of the same controls
as Pro and Architectural and they can be adjusted the same way.
When you are satisfied with the adjustments that you have made to the material,
click okay to lock them in. The material will update in your preview panel.
Select it by clicking on the preview image which will activate the material
painter. You will notice the active toolbar has updated.
Here you can choose how the material painter works,
room mode updates all matching floors in the room.
Since I plan to change all the floors in this room to grey,
I will choose room mode.
Click on the floor in the plan to apply the custom material.
In 3D views customize materials with an adjust material definition tool.
It is important to remember that all matching materials in the plan will change
when you edit with this tool.
If changing matching materials in other areas of the plan is a concern,
it is best to make edits to a copy of the material.
Click the adjust material definition tool in the upper toolbar.
Click on the material that you plan to customize.
Let's change the brightness of our wallpaper,
in the properties panel of the Pro and Architectural define material dialog
change the brightness from bright to medium,
click okay to see the changes.
To achieve these results in Suite use the same steps to open the define material
dialog, then click medium in the option section.
To learn more please see the built in help menu and our support articles
available on the Home Designer Software website.
And thanks for watching the video.