Creating Custom Materials in AutoCAD 3D
AutoCAD® has a large library of materials, but you can create your own custom material or import materials from other drawings. If you have a specific material requirement with specific properties, then you can create a custom material.
In this article, I will demonstrate by making three different type of materials with totally different properties. Let’s start with a wood type material.
Wood Type Material
To make this material I will use the texture image as shown in Figure 1. You can use your own texture as well.
Figure 1: Wood texture
Type RMAT on the command line and press Enter to open the Materials Browser palette. Select the Global material from the Document Materials panel and name it Wood. Double-click on this Wood material to open the Materials Editor palette.
From the Generic tab, click on the Image panel and select the Wood texture. Again double-click on the Image panel of the Materials Editor palette to open the Texture Editor palette. Locate the Scale panel and set the scale of this texture to 12 inches in both the length and width fields. Select Tile from the Horizontal and Vertical fields of the Repeat panel.
Close all open palettes except Materials Browser and make a 3D geometry in the drawing area to test the material. I made a simple cube of 8 inches along length, width, and height. To see the effect of this material, change the Visual Style to Realistic. Now drag and drop the material from the Materials Browser palette to the object in the drawing area. After applying the wood material, the object will look like the image shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Material with wood texture applied on an object
Translucent Glass
In the next example, I will make a simple translucent glass type material, generally seen in window panes and curtain walls. To make this material, make another copy of Global material from the Document Materials panel of the Materials Browser palette. Name it Glass.
Double-click on the Glass material to open the Materials Editor palette and click on the Color field from the Generic panel. Select a color from the color swatch—I have selected 170 index color for the material. Also change the Glossiness value to 100 from the Generic panel.
Click on the Transparency check box in the Materials Editor window to make its options active. Change the Transparency value to 40 and Translucency to 70. You can also experiment with slightly dissimilar values of transparency and translucency. Also, select Glass from the Refraction drop-down menu.
Click on the Tint check box to make its options active. Select Index color 252 for the tint and close the Materials Editor window. Now drag and drop this material on a 3D solid. The final object after applying material looks like the image shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Translucent glass material applied on an object
Tree with Material Map
You can also make a material in AutoCAD that looks like a real-life object such as a tree, person, or vehicle using Material Mapping. To use the material map, you need to use an image with a white background and its alpha or opacity map, which is the black and white part of the image. In the alpha, the black part represents transparent while the white part represents opaque portions of the image. For our example, I am using image and alpha as shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Image and its alpha used for creating tree material
Start with duplicating the Global material and name it Tree. Now double-click on Tree Material from the Document Materials panel and expand the Generic tab.
Click on the image box and select the tree image with the white background. For my example, I have selected an image that is 10 inches in length and width. Double-click on the image in the Materials Editor palette and expand the Scale panel in the Texture Editor palette. Set the scale to 10 inches in width and height and select None in the Horizontal and Vertical fields of the Repeat panel.
Click on the Cutouts check box of the Materials Editor palette (Figure 5) and select Tree Opacity Map. Here, also change the sample size to 10 inches in height and width in the Scale field. Select None in the Horizontal and Vertical fields of the Repeat panel.
Figure 5: Materials Editor palette
Close all open palettes except Materials Browser and make a rectangular surface that is 10 inches in length and width. Drag and drop the tree material on this surface and change the Visual Style to Realistic if it is not already selected.
After applying the material, the tree looked like the image shown in Figure 6. In renderings, the shadow of the tree will also take the shape of the visible portion of the image and it will appear realistic.
Figure 6: Rendering with tree material
Conclusion
Apart from these three materials, you can also make other type of materials with very different properties such as an illuminating material that can be used as a light source. In addition to making the materials, you can export them to other drawings. To export the material, copy any object on which the material is applied to the drawing and the material will also be copied to it. Make sure you also transfer the images used for creating these materials, keeping these images in the same folder that contains the drawing.
Jaiprakash Pandey is a Mechanical Engineer currently working as a CAD Corporate trainer. He is an AutoCAD Certified Professional and an Autodesk Expert Elite member. He provides training in AutoCAD, CATIA, and other CAD products to corporate clients. He is a regular contributor to AUGIWORLD magazine and also develops AutoCAD video courses for Pluralsight and his own platform, SourceCAD. You can reach him on his blog: www.thesourcecad.com
