Materials in 3D models

How you assign materials to your 3D objects matters.

Materials in 3D models is a very complex subject that far exceeds the scope of this guide. Here, we will go just through some basic steps of setting up your materials inside Blender.

Good to know: Materials inside Your 3D model determine the content mapping options available in LightAct.

Good to know: If you use one material throughout your 3D model, you will be able to assign only one media source to the entire 3D model in LightAct. If you use several materials, you will be able to apply different media sources to one 3D model.

Please note, in most cases, you should always use one material per a single object inside your 3D model.

Removing Redundant Materials

The objects in a 3D model have very often different materials assigned to them. One example is shown below:

Redundant materials should be removed

If possible, you should remove these redundant materials as they will get ignored by LightAct (and could, in the worst case, make it behave unexpectedly).

One material per object

If you prepare your 3D model correctly, it is possible to map different content to different parts of your 3D model. The way to do that is to assign different material to different objects of your 3D model inside your 3D software.

Good to know: In most cases, materials should be as simple as possible (basic solid color without any transparencies etc.) because they will get replaced by LightAct's content anyway.

Organizing the Materials

3D models that might be sent to you, will quite often include dozens if not hundreds of different objects. In a lot of cases, and especially, if you want to apply different content sources to different objects within the same 3D file, you will need to organize the objects inside your 3D model.

Good to know: Make sure your collection and object have the same name and only one assigned material.

An example of a disorganized scene collection, which has too many separate objects with hard-to-understand names:

An example of a nicely organized scene collection:

Nicely organized 3D model in Blender

The same objects appear in LightAct

If the objects in your 3D software are organised as described in this guide, LightAct will recognize them and you'll be able to map different sources to every one of them.

An in-depth guide on how to map textures to different parts of 3D model here.