To Choose a Material Type

Every material has a type. In general, you choose a material type based on what you are trying to model and how accurate (in terms of real-world, physical lighting) you want the model to be.

Your choice of a renderer also affects the materials you can use:

Physically accurate rendering with the Autodesk ART, mental ray, iray, or Quicksilver renderers

For physically accurate rendering, we recommend that you use materials from the Autodesk Materials group. These are commonly used materials (ceramic, concrete, hardwood, and so on) that have accurate real-world properties.

Autodesk Materials are based on the Arch & Design material. Arch & Design is a general-purpose material that also has real-world properties, and a large number of options.

When you grow familiar with mental ray rendering, you might choose to use some of the special-purpose mental ray materials that are also available.

Physically accurate rendering with the Scanline renderer

You can use the scanline renderer to create accurate lighting by using radiosity. In this case, we recommend you use the Architectural material.

An alternative when you use radiosity is to set up the scene with standard materials, but then apply physical characteristics to them with the Advanced Lighting Override material..

Imaginary rendering with the Scanline renderer

If physical accuracy is not a concern, you can use the scanline renderer and the Standard material along with other non-photometric materials. These give you a wide variety of effects.