Hi everyone

I'm trying to get a handle on Cycles materials and thought that if I could use some of the many materials folk share, I could dissect and get a better understanding.  I would really appreciate it if someone would be kind enough to explain in layman's terms how I go about saving from the downloads, what file structure is needed, if there is anywhere special to keep them and how to go about getting them onto a surface in Blender.

Any particular download sites recommended?

Thank you in anticipation :)

Hello Roygee 

Here is a link to a material library that I found with in the Blender Online manual that are materials that are cycles based http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Material/Online_Material_Library  Another source of materials that you can use as learn from is from http://www.blendswap.com/ which you do have to create an account for to be able to download materials as well as Blend files of many types and much more. As far as saving materials you yourself create they would be saved as normal blend files with in blender and you can call them back up with in Blender using "File> append" and add a previous saved material from another blend file. I am sure someone else will chime in with more information that will be useful.

Good Luck 

Thank you - managed to figure it out, with your help:)

Now to work out how to set up my own library of materials in a wy that makes sense for fast recovery of the materials!

Glad I was of some help materials and texturing in Blender I think has so much potential learning it all is well worth the time 

keep all the "mat" blends with a quick thumbnail of the mats it contains ;-)

don't forget disconected mats will disappear on saving if you haven't set as fake user  (hit the F next to mat name)

My apologies for not answering sooner - didn't get notification of a response.  Good suggestion, heddheld.  Now you set me another puzzle - what are "disconnected mats" ?

if you set up a mat on something then delete the something the mat will stay until you end the session (close blender or start something else) then it will be deleted unless its set as fake user ..... handy trick if your like me and mess with a lot of textures ;-) then cant make up your mind which is best rofl

Aah - thanks for the explanation - I'll be sure to hit F :)

if you set up a mat on something then delete the something the mat will stay until you end the session (close blender or start something else) then it will be deleted unless its set as fake user ..... handy trick if your like me and mess with a lot of textures ;-) then cant make up your mind which is best rofl

Thanks for that - was wondering why that was happening! Proper material management is still a bit meh in Blender... hope the Gooseberry project delivers on that aspect of Blender as they said they would. 

Some further questions regarding materials libraries..I downloaded a set from Blendswop http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/4364 and now know how to append and get the material on the object, but...

There are dozens of entries under both materials and textures.  When I append one and look in the node editor, all I ever get are a diffuse and an output node.  I have quite a lot of experience mixing etc. in Carrara, so know there must be at least a bump and a colour ramp to go with it, and sure enough there are quite a few bump mats.  How do I go about getting these into the node editor and how do i know which goes with which?

This is very much an aside, and not meant to answer your question.

As you must realise, working in Carrara (and Poser, which I'm more familiar with) and Blender are significantly different, all the while being aggravatingly similar.

The default nodes in Blender are: "Diffuse BSDF" and "Material Output". If you wish to add more nodes, press [Shift] [A] which brings up a Add... dialogue. I go back and forth between Poser and Blender and hit [Shift] [A] in Poser and right-click in the Material room in Blender and expect something like Poser's Add Nodes dialogue to come up.

lucky I saw this in BA ~ how came they get a screenshot an we don't ;-)

blender internal and cycles are completely different (is an addon to convert but never used it so cant say too much), can be a bit odd if your not used to multiple render engines but they all need some tweaking OR rebuilding to get same effects

pick if you want to use BI or cycles then append the right mat for the renderer ~ note you can bake textures from cycles now ~apart from displacement!! that has to be done in BI at the mo'

hope that helps  

Firstly, my apologies for not responding earlier - i never received a notification that that there were any responses.

I have now, with your and the help of others, figured out how to append and link mats - there was one question left unanswered, perhaps ypou can help me out here.

The screenshot is of a collection of BL mats - how would I go about using one of them in a Blender file?  i.e. Isolating one, somehow exporting and then then appending/linking - something like that :) 

no need to export anything    just go to  file ~ append then pick the file you want to append from ~  open the materials folder ~  click the mat you want then click append from library

 now that's got it into your blend but it hasn't assigned it to anything, so now go to materials tab and on the little flippy arrows next to name click and you'll see a list of all the mats in that file find the one you just appended and your good to go ......... now I rarely use BI but I think its just the same method but beware of appending a cycles mat to a BI file (or visa versa, think you already got that bit lol )

can you can use link in much the same way BUT if you alter the mat in one file its reflected in other so I'd advise use with caution !!

hope that helps  

Aah - now I get it!

 What puzzled me is that there are 25 objects in the scene, with 25 mats in the Blend file - obviously one per object - but 43 textures, with names that don't clearly identify with the object - such as bump1.  Taking a closer look at the Blend, I see, when selecting one of the objects, a name for both the mat and texture.  What I couldn't figure out is how to associate a mat with it's accompanying texture.  What I eventually worked out was you simply append the mat file and the texture also loads.  Pic a different texture and you can mix and make different mats.  Very flexible with endless variations.

Got so used to expecting very complex actions in Blender, I couldn't see the wood for the trees :)

Thank you for putting me right :)

I have recently installed the "matlib" addon

it seems to work well for storing materials as click&apply presets