When would I use material on a mesh surface? When on a material slot?

system · February 6, 2020, 5:15am


	Attention	Topic was automatically imported from the old Question2Answer platform.
	Asked By	gumbomasta

What are situational cases where one or the other makes more sense?

Thanks!

Comparison:

system · February 6, 2020, 8:06am


	Reply From:	wombatstampede

The surface materials are those who are usually assigned when you import a mesh from a 3D editor. Surfaces define the areas of a mesh for which you can assign different materials. If the 3D model was designed well, then those surfaces relate to logical parts of the model. (On a car i.e. the material of: wheels, hubcaps, windows …)
You can use the same Mesh in different MeshInstances. If you change a surface material of a mesh then it will be changed for all MeshInstances (unless you use copies of the Mesh).

The MeshInstance Material slots override the surface materials. So you can use the same mesh but replace/redefine selected materials of the mesh in a different way for each MeshInstance.

Thanks for the clarification!

gumbomasta | 2020-02-06 13:43