Texture
Table of Contents
 | Texture | This node maps a texture from images, movies or live video on geometries. |
The Texture Node is an Alias of the Material Node providing a single Material Stage that is loading a texture file by default. See its Material Stages section for more details.
By changing the LightingModel Property Group to e.g. a NoLight Lighting Model you can change your Node to be unaffected by any light source. This is espiecially useful for showing Images or Movies.
A Texture node is a quick way to add an image or texture to an object without the need for creating a Material node and add the desired Material Stage. Lastly, you can add Material Stages to the Node to add more Textures. For an in depth description of the Material Stages see the Material Node page.
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 | affects the overall transparency | |
|---|---|---|---|
changes how light affects the color of a surface | |||
adds textures and material stages that change the shading | |||
| Shadow Options | changes the shadow related behavior | |
| Drawing Style | applies a draw mode for geometries (lines, solid, sprites etc.) | |
| Blending | changes the write mode to specified color channels | |
adjusts the blending of geometries onto the background | |||
| Testing | applies a custom test against the object's alpha | |
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.