From the course: Modo 2019 Essential Training

The Shader Tree, applying materials, and polygon tags - MODO Tutorial

From the course: Modo 2019 Essential Training

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The Shader Tree, applying materials, and polygon tags

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- [Instructor] This video is going to be an introduction to materials in Modo. So let me switch to the Shading tab. Modo uses a material system known as the Shader Tree, and this is a layer-based system, similar to Photoshop. And so the order of your layer stack in the Shader Tree is important. If one layer is above another layer, it's going to override it, just like it would in Photoshop. And that also gives you the opportunity to make use of this layering system in very powerful ways, which is something we'll look at in this series of videos. But let's start with the basics. How do you apply a material to a mesh in Modo? Well, the simplest approach is to use what are known as polygon tags. First select a mesh in my viewport, and them I switch to polygon mode. Let me just double-click on this mesh item to select all of the connected polygons, and I'm going to hit the M key to assign a material. I'm going to give this material a name. Let's call it Plain wood, and then I'm going to hit OK to assign the material. So at first glance, nothing much has changed. But let's take a closer look. I'm going to click an empty space to deselect those polygons and I'm going to select the material itself in the Shader Tree. If I come over to the diffuse color and click, that's going to open a color picker, and I can set a light-brown in order to create a basic kind of wood. And having created this material, I can now apply it on other parts of mesh. So, for example, if I decide I want to have this material on the base, let me double-click to select all the connected polygons in the base, and I'm going to hit the M key to bring up the Polygon Set Material dialog again, and I can select the material in the dropdown and click OK. If I deselect everything, you can see that material's now been applied to the base. And I can carry on applying this material wherever it's needed. So, for example, I'm going to double-click on the chimney, double-click on this part, also double-click on the cabin, hit the M key to bring up the Polygon Set Material dialog and click OK, and you can see that that material has now been successfully applied. But let's say I want to have a different material on the roof, a painted wood, for example. Well, let me double-click to select all the polygons in the roof, and once again, hit M to bring up the Polygon Set Material. And all I have to do is just type in a new name. So let's type in Roof. And I can actually set the color directly here in the dialog box, so let's do that. Let's make it sort of bright red. Click OK and OK. And you can see that material has now bee applied. And now if I want to apply another material to the wheels, well, I have to select those. So I'm going to come out of Polygon mode, enter Item mode, I'm going to select this wheel, return to Polygon mode, and I don't need to make a selection, because remember, when nothing is selected, everything is selected. So I'm going to hit the M key. And this time, I'm going to call my material Wheels, and I'm going to set it to sort of a green color. So let's select this dark green, click OK, and OK, and you can see once again the material has been applied. There are several other ways to apply materials in Modo. However, using polygon tags is the most straightforward. So if you want a simple workflow, then this is the one that I recommend.

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