Total Newbie Question about materials.

[mc1773]

Hi,

I've been trying to get into Revit for sometime now... just haven't had the chance to jump headfirst into a project... I'm finally giving it a shot.

Anyway, I'm having a problem with materials, I'm not sure if it is something to do with my setup or if Revit is functioning as it should.

I'm running Revit 5.1

I've produced a model of an apartment... almost none of the walls/windows or doors have any texturing on them when I render. By using the paint function I can apply a material to a wall, which is fine... but for something like a sliding door, it's a bit harder. It consists of a frame and then glazing I suppose, I would have thought the default setup would set up some standard materials? But it is completely gray.

I managed to change the frame of the sliding door by selecting Default Frame from the materials setup and assigning it an accurender material, but I can't get the glass panels to change from the gray at all.

Does this make any sense?

I guess what I'm asking is how much setting up of materials is required for Revit, is my software installed and configured correctly, am I just clueless?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[beegee]

Firstly , go to View Properties and play with the different settings for the Phase Filter. You may be using a phase setting that shows previous phases in grey.

Secondly, if you have the materials set to default, (floor, wall, roof, etc ), you will not get textures in the rendered scene. To see this, go to Settings, Materials and you can see the shading and texture that are assigned to a different material. From memory, textures are not assigned to default materials. Those materials are just there for a quick initial model.

Its very easy to choose other materials from the extensive list in the library. Just go to the element's properties, edit, structure and you can reassign materials.

At this stage, I suggest you do not reassign textures to existing materials. You may want to keep them as they were. Its also easy to create new materials when necessary, basically as you're already done with the default frame, except you would duplicate the material, rename it, then asign new textures.

If you have not done the excellant tutorials yet, particularly on rendering, now's the time.

[hand471037]

A 'Material' in Revit doesn't mean a *rendering* material. This is probably the point of your confusion. When you define materials under settings within Revit, you're defining materials to be used within the model objects within your project, not rendering materials. So, for example, if I say that the exterior of a wall is an EIFS system, that just means that Revit will make that wall use whatever standards for elevation & cut hatching, as well as allowing me to schedule and tag that wall and have it show up as an EIFS wall. It has nothing to do with Rendering at all.

What you have to do for rendering is tie a Material to an Accurender Rendering Material. It's a shame they have the same name, for it is rather confusing. What's worse is some of the Materials in the default template are already tied to Accurender Materials while others are not, so at first it seems random.

So, on the Materials window, you'll notice that in the middle of the window there is a slot for 'Accurender Material'. If this is empty, then that Material within Revit will render as grey, no matter what it's called or what it's settings are for projection & cut & color fill. To set an Accurender material to a Revit material, just click 'browse' next to this slot, the Accurender material window will pop up, and then pick the *render* material you want to tie to the Revit Material.

Then it should render. If not, or if I'm assuming too much and you already know all of this, then turn to the phasing and other good advice that beegee posted.

good luck!

[mc1773]

Thanks a lot for the help...

I tried going to the structure of the element, I don't have this option under the element properties for my sliding door though... I don't see how without this I can change the glass panels to be clear?

[beegee]

I'm assuming you're using a standard family ? ( ie not one that you made )

The glass will ( or should ) have been assigned as clear glass in the family. It should render as clear.
Open the slding door family and go to say, the exterior elevation or the 3D view. Using a shaded view may help - select the (blue) glass panel ( called glass extrusion ) and click on properities. It should show as sub category = glass and material = glass. If not, change it to that.

Usually the only selectable material parameters in these sorts of standard families are the door panel and door frame.

[mc1773]

Thanks... I loaded up the family by itself... the glass in the door had a material of Default-Screen... this was the problem. Thanks.

[Phil Palmer]

Revit really could do with a way of finding out what materials definitions have been given to a family you have loaded into a project.

It can be a pain going back to the original family file and interogating the extrusions etc. to find this information out.