When working with materials in the V2 API, it is important to understand the difference between a material and a material node. A vrdMaterial is not derived from vrdNode; therefore, it cannot appear in a scenegraph.
This is different from lights or cameras, which both derive from vrdNode. This difference is not directly visible in the UI. The Material Editor presents materials in a hierarchical graph structure. But, this visual representation does not reflect the true structure.
The Material Editor graph holds vrdMaterialNodes. These nodes hold the real material.
To illustrate this, the next example creates a group and a plastic material, then moves the material under the group. We could also create the group first and use it as the materialGroup parameter in createMaterial().
Move a material under group
# Create the material
mat1 = vrMaterialService.createMaterial("plastic1", vrMaterialTypes.Plastic)
# Create the group (it will automatically get a unique name, but we rename it afterwards)
group1 = vrMaterialService.createMaterialGroup()
group1.setName("matgroup")
# Access the vrdMaterialNode that has been automatically created for the plastic material
mat1Node = vrMaterialService.findMaterialNode(mat1)
# Hierarchy modifications on vrdNodes are done by manipulating it's children class member
group1.children.append(mat1Node)
# Now the material will appear under the group. We can also move it back out to the top level
vrMaterialService.getMaterialRoot().children.append(mat1Node)Hierarchy operations on a group node can be performed by manipulating its children class member. See also vrdNodeList for further documentation.