Alpha

General

The Material Node controls the appearance of the surface of each rendered Object placed as a child in the Hierarchy. It consists of several options that can be added to its list of properties to overwrite the according options. The options are available under Material Node's Tabs that are represented by the button bar on top of the Material Definition in the Property Editor.

Generally these tabs exist:

	Standard	Alpha Options	affects the overall transparency
		Lighting Model	changes how light affects the color of a surface
		Material Stages	adds textures and material stages that change the shading
	Shadow Options	Shadow Options	changes the shadow related behavior
	Drawing Style	Draw Mode	applies a draw mode for geometries (lines, solid, sprites etc.)
	Blending	Color Write	changes the write mode to specified color channels
		Alpha Blending	adjusts the blending of geometries onto the background
	Testing	Alpha Testing	applies a custom test against the object's alpha
		ZBuffer	defines a custom occlusion test for the geometry

To show the options of a tab simply  click on the according button. You can insert options by clicking on the Property Group's entry and choosing the wanted options from the dropdown.

All options that you do not adjust in a Material node are inherited by the Default Material or the Material node in front.

Icon and Decoration

In general the Icon rendering can be changed by switching between Sphere, Quad and Torus at the bottom of the Properties Editor or via .

Based on the Property Groups that are used inside a Material Node the Icon may change.

	Rendered Preview	if only Property Group's in the Standard or Shadow Options tab are used.
	Rendered Preview with light blue decoration	if Property Group's in the Standard or Shadow Options tab are used together with any other Option like a certain Draw Mode or a certain Blending
	Dedicated Option Icon	every Material Option has it's own dedicated Icon, that is shown whenever no other Property Group in any other tab is used.

Extraction

Material Definition

A Material node is a Hierarchy Node by nature. But it can serve as a Material Provider as well. This is useful whenever you want to use the same material in different locations of your hierarchy or once you have Hierarchy Nodes that need more materials than one applied to it (e.g. the Particle System Node). The below image shows both a Material Node and an extracted Material Node Provider together with a receiving Material Node.

You can either place the Material node in the Content Editor to create an unbound Material Provider node. Or you can use the extract button on any node that hosts a Material Definition to extract it to a provider that can be re-used on other nodes.

Material Options

Since a Material consists of several options sometimes you want to extract some of them to a seperate Hierarchy Node. This way you can apply single Material Options to other parts of the Hierarchy Tree when already added to the Material. Just use the extract buttons next to the Material Options.