If you're a 3D designer, you know how time-consuming it can be to create materials from scratch for every project. That's where the new custom material library feature from Vectary comes in handy. This feature offers a quick and easy way to access frequently used materials and customize them to meet the requirements of your projects. With this feature, you'll save time, maximize your output, and improve your efficiency.
How to create a custom material library
Create a material from scratch:
- Create a new project.
- Add a sphere or any basic shape to the scene and upload your texture maps. Start by adding a color map, followed by any other texture maps such as roughness and normal map.
- Right-click on the sphere and select "Add material to the library." This will create a new material project in the workspace, marked with the letter "M". You can move materials between folders and workspaces freely.
- In the project details, you can change the project name and add descriptions or tags to improve the search functionality. You can also upload your custom cover image for the material to make it easier to recognize.
Save a material that already exists:
To save a material that already exists in the scene, you need to select the object that you want to save the material for. After selecting the object, right-click on it and choose the "Add material to library" option to save the material.
Watch the tutorial:
Why you should set up a material library
Overview of benefits in a design process:
- Consistency: Designers can be sure that the materials used in their designs are consistent across all products. This can help to create a cohesive brand identity and maintain the required level of quality.
- Time-saving: Save time by providing a pre-defined set of materials to choose from, eliminating the need to spend time searching for, or testing new materials for each project.
- Cost-effective: This set up in your design workflow is also cost-effective. By using a set of materials that are known to work well for a specific products, reduces the need for costly prototypes and material testing.
- Easy collaboration: Multiple teams, designers, or departments can be responsible for different stages of production: from creating material pre-sets, to final product modeling.
- Flexibility: Offer designers the ease of flexibility to create new materials quickly or modify existing ones to fit their specific needs.
How to make the most of a custom material library
In any company, one designer may be responsible for finishing a product, while another creates a material library database. By combining this collaborative aspect of product design creation in a single Vectary workspace, your company's 3D design workflow is even more streamlined.
The custom material library lets you take full advantage of your Pro or Business accounts. With an unlimited number of projects, you can create an unlimited number of materials. However, with the Starter workspaces, the material library can quickly exhaust your free projects, so we strongly recommend upgrading to Pro or Business for teams.
