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Create and modify user-defined materials

Tekla Structures
2021
Tekla Structures

Create and modify user-defined materials

You can create your own customized materials in Trimble Connect Visualizer with the material editor. The customized materials can be used in Trimble Connect Visualizer material mapping in the same way as pre-defined materials.

Note:

User-defined materials are not shared to other users with Tekla Model Sharing. Any objects that use user-defined materials appear with their class colors to other users.

To create or modify user-defined materials:

  1. Visualize the model.
  2. To open the material editor, click on the Trimble Connect Visualizer side pane.

    The material editor contains the following elements:

    (1) List of user-defined materials

    (2) Material name box

    (3) Texture picker

    (4) Scaling or tiling of the selected texture

    (5) RGB color values

    (6) Transparency

    (7) Roughness

    (8) Metallic look

    (9) Bump strength

    (10) Preview of the material

  3. Do one of the following:

    • To create a new material, type a name in the material name box.

    • To modify an existing user-defined material, select the material in the list of user-defined materials.

  4. In the material editor, do any of the following:
    To Do this

    Add a texture

    1. Click the texture picker.

    2. Click the texture that you want to use.

      Note that you can only use textures that are saved in the C:\Users\<user>\Pictures\TrimbleConnectVisualizer\Textures folder as .png or .jpg images.

    To reset the material texture, click X at the upper-right corner of the texture picker.

    Adjust scaling or tiling of texture, RGB colors, transparency, roughness, metallic look, or bump strength

    Either drag the related slider, or type the desired value in the related box.

    Preview all objects with the current user-defined material settings

    Click .

    To reset the objects to use their original materials, click .
  5. To save the material, click .

    User-defined materials are saved in the C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\TrimbleConnectVisualizer\CustomMaterials folder.

    Each user-defined material is defined using the following files:

    • <Material name>.xml

    • <Material name>_DiffuseMap.png

    • <Material name>_NormalMap.png

    • <Material name>_RoughnessMap.png

    Note that the name of the material file and the material name in the .xml file need to be the same.

    To avoid issues, do not modify any of the material files manually.

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