Creating and Using MATERIAL LIBRARIES in Blender

Показать описание

In this video, we talk about how to set up a material library file, as well as how to use the add-on Material Library VX to quickly access those materials from inside other files!

MATERIAL LIBRARY DOCUMENTATION

STORED VIEWS ADD-ON TUTORIAL

Рекомендации по теме

Комментарии

Hi everyone! Let me know how you're managing your materials in Blender in the comments below! :)

TheCGEssentials

I love your I used to do it the way you do it on the video, but now I use the "connecter addon" It works really well for me and I can have large screen view of the thumbnails since my eye sight is not like it used to.

rotce

As a former 3ds Max user I find Blender's lack of material library management really baffling. In 3ds Max you could save any material, from any file to a single universal library that's always available for use with no extra steps needed to be taken. Why aren't they at least keeping Material Library VX add on activated by default? I ended up getting the Extreme PBR Combo add on, which comes with a library of PBR materials and it gives the option to save any new materials to a user library, which is just as easy to access as the main one. When saving a new material it gives the option of which model to use in saved file (defaults are sphere, cube, plane, monkey, special shader ball and you can add a custom one I believe) and then it also saves a preview image of that object with material applied for the library thumbnail. At this point I can't imagine using any alternative which doesn't provide that level of speed and comfort.

douchymcdouche

Well I don't know if it is an update, but I was able to directly save the material in the designated folder while I was working on a project. In that way you don't need to do a lot of steps to save the materials in an specific Blende file.

MrtnX

For now I prefer just using the append, that way I can also see the previews really fast

hugoantunesartwithblender

Thanks for the tut. I am new to Blender and have been using 3dsMax for more than 15 years.
I have learnt using materials in blender yesterday from various videos on Youtube.
Below is what I have tried and it has worked as of now :
1) I m used to use a basic setup file which will load as startup file.
2) In this file I selected the default cube and setup some 10-15 materials which I usually need. Like walls ( in 3 colors), wood, glass, grass, stainless steel etc.
3) Then with the cube still selected in Outliner I a) Disabled selection, b) Hide in viewport, c) Disabled in viewport, d) Hide in render
So though the cube is not visible nor it is render-able all the materials are there for future use.
I don't know if this is a correct method.
Please consider that I am new to blender :-)
Thanks.

abuji

The simple asset manager add on is quite good.

carpgianedossantos

How dare you!! Now i have no excuse for not having my materials organized! :D Great tips!!

katyb

nice addon, thank you. But I fall in RAGE when think about how work with materials is organized in Blender... it's 2021 and I still can't export materials or have a native library system for this.... Can't understand why the devs don't want to make it, it is an obvious feature.

Andredy

can someone tell, how to add multiple paths for different blendfiles ?

StudioNicomedia

I know im a year late commenting on this video. It's just the last video I saw of yours. But you have a tutorial for everything o wished there was a tutorial on. How do you do it? Keep up the great work.

jasonoliverdsouza

Great tip, sadly it doesn't have material previews but i'll take it.

GiulianoGarau

Im sure somebody has solved the issue already but I will show you what I have done.

I have some custom libraries built with different materials in them and saved Material Library VX.

I found the easiest way to move the materials assets from one machine to another is to just copy the “matlib” folder and then copy it to the new machine into the same directory and that’s it. All my custom made materials that I had saved on my old machine are now available in Material library VX on the new machine.

Foundation/Blender/matlib”.

Also be sure to save all your textures to the same folder as the previous machine too.

Example I have a folder /CGI/Materials/ on my desktop so I found I need to also have the same folder on the new machine, in the same spot.

Basically I just copied thst folder and placed it on the new machine.

I found this is the easiest way for myself. I’m sure there are better ways but this worked for me and was really quick.

You can also do the same on other OS’s including MacOS.

fotofx

Hello! Thanks for the video!! I have a quick question
Does this add ons (BlenderKit and Material Library VX) slow down blender? Or they are just a faster way to access materials from the Internet, in the case of BlenderKit or from a folder in the case of Material Library VX

nuwanda

"Add to Library" work fine, it's allow you to add new materials to your stored library, just open your blend file contain the materials, or create new one and save it to work, and append the material you want to add to the library or create new material, assign it to an object and than click on "Add to Library" to add it to your collection, of course the blend file must be in the location where you picked it first one in setup of the add-on.

mustaphamaxlogo