Custom Materials

You can save the custom material you configured, so it appears in the Assets panel on the left. You can save as many materials as needed and keep them in different folders, exactly as the built–in ones.

Let’s Setup a Material

Make a new scene in Boxshot and add a shape. We’ll be using a sphere here, but it doesn’t really mater.

Add the sphere and open its materials panel on the right:

Now lets make some changes to the sphere material to make it looks so different, so we want to save it for the future:

It doesn’t really matter what exactly was done to the material, the thing is that it looks different and we want to re–use it in other projects.

So how do we save it?

Saving Custom Materials

Saving custom materials is very simple in Boxshot. You grab the material from the right panel and drag it onto the Assets panel on the left.

It doesn’t really matter if the Assets panel displays textures when you drop the material, the only important thing is you need to drop it into the Assets panel, as other panels will not work. You can move the material across the Assets panel button in the toolbar to activate it.

Once you drop the material onto the panel, you’ll see the saving popup panel:

The panel shows the material preview and two options to configure. Sure, they are pretty much the same as when you saving custom shapes, as both features are pretty similar.

The Name field speaks for itself and defines the name that will be displayed in the materials list. The Category field defines the “folder” of the material in the Assets panel. There are some built–in folders you can see with the drop down button, but you can type your own if you like.

Let’s type “Blue Checkers” for the name and “My Materials” for the category, then click Save.

Nothing is changed as we have a different category selected, but if we switch to the right one, we’ll see the custom material added.

That’s it, you can now use the material exactly as the built–in ones.

Managing Custom Materials

Exactly as custom shapes, custom materials are stored inside your user profile, next to other Boxshot items like loft elements, etc.

You can visit that storage by right–clicking the custom material and selecting Reveal in Finder/Explorer… in the popup menu.

You see the “materials” folder next to the “shapes”, “jobs” and “presets” and inside that folder, there is subfolder named “[My Materials] Blue Checkers”. Boxshot uses square brackets for the category and the rest — for the name.

Inside the folder, there is a file called “_material.boxshotMaterial” — that’s the material file itself, “_preview.png” — the thumbnail you see in the Assets panel, the other files are textures used by the material.

Yes, Boxshot saves all the artwork with the material, so you don’t have to worry if something is missed. On the other hand, if you want to update the material, you might need to update that artwork, as well.

You can rename or delete that folder and Boxshot will update the Assets panel. You can also delete the material using the right–click menu in the Assets panel, but renaming is only possible in Finder or Explorer.

Transferring Materials

When you use a custom material, Boxshot uses the artwork stored in that “materials” folder above, so if you want to transfer the project to another computer, you need to have the same material there.

The obvious solution is to simply copy the material’s folder to the same subfolder on the new computer, then you can use projects that use this material.

Another option is to use File → Collect Resources… for exporting projects, this way all the resources are collected into the target folder and the project no longer depends on the custom materials.

More Tutorials

Rendering

• Realistic Rendering — improving scenes visual appearance;
• Lighting — control environment and directional lighting;
• Saturated Reflection — make "rich" colorful reflections;
• Floor Reflection — reflecting scene objects in the floor;
• Job Manager — rendering jobs later;
• GPU Rendering — rendering scenes faster on GPU;
• Rendering Time and Quality — getting more control on rendering;
• Simple and Realistic Lighting — speeding up scene rendering.

Materials

• Texture Slots — how to use texture slots in Boxshot;
• Glass Materials — how to make semi–transparent objects look attractive;
• UV–Spot — how to make a UV–spot effect easily;
• Foil Effect — how to add foil–finishing to your shapes;
• Bump — adding relief to your materials;
• Copying Materials — how to copy materials to other shapes;
• Custom Materials — extend the materials library with your own ones;
• Semi–Transparent Labels — making semi–transparent and partial labels;
• Boxshot Materials — more details about Boxshot materials.

Features

• Decals — applying decals and configuring them;
• Bump Decals — applying bump where it is needed;
• Depth Of Field — adding more realism to your renderings;
• Tools — read more about Boxshot tools;
• Managing Images — how to manage image files used by Boxshot projects;
• Shapes Instances — creating lightweight copies of other shapes;
• Model Editor — edit embedded models in many ways;
• Shrink Wrap — heat–shrink film simulation for objects wrapping;
• Physics Simulation — applying gravity to your scene;
• Palletize — arrange scene objects for the pallet;
• Snapshots — save scene state to re–use it later;
• Translation — teach Boxshot to speak your language;
• Vector Artwork — how to maintain the quality of vector artwork.

Shapes

• Lathe Objects — making symmetrical objects using revolving curves;
• Loft Objects — making custom objects with 2D cross–sections;
• 3D Text — making 3D text objects in Boxshot;
• Extruded Objects — how to make thick 3D object of your flat 2D curve;
• Conical Labels — making conical labels with distorted artwork;
• Dieline Box — a very realistic dieline–based box;
• Custom Shapes — adding custom shapes to the left panel;
• Third Party Shapes — importing third party shapes to Boxshot.