To Apply a Material to an Object

You use the Material Editor to apply a material to objects.

To apply a material to an object, do one of the following:

• If the material is selected in the Material Editor (either the Slate or the Compact interface) and the object is selected in the scene, click Assign Material to Selection.
• In the Slate Material Editor, drag from the material node’s output socket into a viewport, and drop the wire over the object.
• Drag a material from a library in the Material/Map Browser and drop it on the object.

Applying a material overrides any previous material assignment the object might have had. Once the material is applied, while the sample slot is active, the material is "hot" and changes you make to it affect the object automatically. The page "Material and Map Nodes in the Active View" has a section that describes "Hot and Cool Materials."

The Undo command works for material assignment.

You can apply only one material to an object. To overcome this restriction, use a Multi/Sub-Object material. This is a container for various sub-materials that correspond to specified sub-objects such as different faces in a mesh, NURBS surfaces in a NURBS model, and so on.

You can apply the same material to multiple objects in the scene.