How to use the Corona Material Library? - 3ds Max
What is it?
The Corona Material Library was introduced in Corona Renderer 1.7 as a part of the installation package. It is downloaded automatically during the installation, but can be also installed manually in offline mode.
It provides hundreds of ready to use materials, each with a high quality preview. The library in is mainly intended for beginner users and those having problems with setting up basic materials, but may be as well useful to advanced users. The most common uses of the material library include:
- Quickly painting scene objects with realistic materials (this can greatly speed up your workflow!)
- Using the material presets as bases for creating own ones (great for users inexperienced with material creation and introducing variation in the scene)
- Using the material presets as references for creating new materials from scratch (great if you are having trouble setting up a specific material)
How to open it?
You can find the Material Library:
- In the Corona Renderer Official Toolbar:
- In the Scene tab of the Render Setup dialog:
What are its features?
- View materials by category
- Set and view only favorites
- Drag and drop materials into the viewport, Slate and Compact material editors
- Assign a material to the objects selected in the scene
- Select all objects in the scene that use a certain material
- Most of the materials are using the Real-World Scale mapping so you do not have to worry about the correct scale and tiling
- Many of the materials don’t need UV mapping, as they use the Corona Triplanar map
- It can be installed in offline mode
Material Library updates in Corona 8
- 33 new materials in Nature category
- 9 new materials in Plastic category
- 13 new materials in Glass category
Future improvements
As with other features of Corona Renderer, we are planning to improve the material library in the upcoming versions. This mainly includes the ability to add your own material presets and categories, and to organize them according to your needs. Further ideas include:
- Ability to easily scale textures and material properties (scale of the triplanar map, displacement, absorption,...)
- Indication whether a material is using Real-World Scale UVW mapping or Triplanar mapping
- Easier way to store the material library data on a network drive
- More material presets
- UI improvements
Why are some of the materials using the Real World Scale option, and others the Corona Triplanar Map?
Materials using both of those solutions should be used in slightly different situations. For more information, see this forum thread: [link]
Help, I am having some issues with the Corona Material Library!
If you are having some issues using the Corona Material Library (it does not start, shows an error message, crashes, etc), try following the below troubleshooting steps:
- Uninstall Corona from the Windows "Programs" list
- Go to C:\Program Files\Corona and remove the whole "materials" folder
- Install Corona again along with the Corona Material Library file which will install it in offline mode - how to: [link]
- Go to C:\Program Files, select the "Corona" folder, right-click on it, select "Properties", uncheck the "Read-only" checkbox and save the changes.
- Check if the issue remains.
In case of any issues with the material library, please contact us.