Hahaha...  I bet you're going to be seeing a lot of activity here after more folks get the 3D World mag deal. Which is why I'm here now. :laugh:

Anyhow, back to the question as the subject specifies:
How to change a master shader to something else? Basically the deal is that I imported a .obj which I made in Wings3d, and now I want to change the included mats which are listed under the shaders listing (the bottom right window.) These mats are pretty generic, since when I model in Wings I use materials as placeholders which can be later assigned with better stuff in whatever rendering environment. (Besides, most material values are handled a bit different once they show up in rendering programs anyways. Trying to perfect them in Wings OpenGL environment is probably a wasted effort.) What I'd like to do is replace one of those generic master shaders that came from the .obj mat with a much nicer shader preset from the browser. I tried dragging one from the browser on top of one on the list, but all it did was add it to the list instead of replacing the old one...

So is what I'm trying to do even possible? Or do I have to move around my model dragging the mats to every single piece? (Which seems fairly time consuming.)

(And once I get some rendering stuff worked out, expect to see animation questions pop up. I think I'll be able to tread into areas where I'd hit a brick wall with Bryce - even though I like that program for the most part.)

   Welcome to Carrara,

  What you could do is drag the shader from the browser right onto the object it self, the differenet shading domains should become active when your cursor is over different parts of the model. Make sure you have your model hierarchy expanded in the sequencer tray or list if your object contains individual objects instead of one mesh.

 Have fun with Carrara.

Cheers
Mike  

Hi Paul. I really think you will like Carrara. I usually use the "drag and drop" procedure described by Mmoir in assigning or trying out various Carrara shaders on the different "domains" on my imported Wings models. I'm looking forward to issue #100 hitting my local newstand. I've got a friend who wants to learn Carrara as well.

I found the trick to it...  Pick a master shader from the right lower corner and double click. Then when it goes to the texture screen, pick wizard. A second browser comes up, and then you can replace the existing master with a preset shader. Which is the effect I was looking for...

Carrara still has a learning curve, but I am finding it's on the faster side. I can actually get what's going on half the time by experimenting a bit.