Materials Library

[jburickJUFQ4]

Hi there!  A quick question - I have the educational version of Fusion 360 and when I go to apply a birch material to my design, I see that there is only a grey orb in the thumbnail - when I apply it it just turns the design grey.  I'm assuming I'm either limited by the educational version or I have to download the material - yet when I right click on the thumbnail there is no option to do so.  Any help is appreciated!  Thank you!

[ryan.bales · Accepted solution]

It really means there is no bump or appearance map for that material. Only a handful of the wood materials even have it. Normally when i use birch as a material, i'll use 3D maple as the appearance and tweak the color/grain/rings etc. to get it to look more like birch - which isn't all that hard since they already look quite similar. 

[jburickJUFQ4]

Ah ok thank you!

[ryan.bales]

Of course! 

[rmfolsom]

If I correctly understand the solution reply, Fusion 360 has very limited materials and appearance options and there is no current plan to address that. Is that correct? In older online posts there appeared to be a download arrow. That seems to have been removed. Does Autodesk at least have a recommendation where to get materials and configuration guidance such as a community share of materials perhaps? Is tweaking existing materials an option? If so how?

[ryan.bales]

Not really, this was specific to 3D birch and to that point, it more has a limited number of 3D wood materials and appearances. It has probably close to 200 appearances and likely fewer materials, but i've never really counted. They are designed both as a launching point to make your own/modify existing ones and they cover the bulk of what is used.

Nothing has been removed, you can still download and apply appearances no problem. And the materials library should be preloaded last i checked and applied as such. They are two very distinct yet intertwined things.

The material is the base part and can be applied with our with out an appearance modifier.
Likewise an appearance can be applied to anything regardless of the material.

You can modify materials from the Materials manager under Modify from within Fusion.

[rmfolsom]

Thx for the prompt response.

I think I understand that the materials library will have fewer options
than the appearance library since one material can come in many colors
and appearance is also much easier to add because there are no
mechanical properties.

Regarding your second paragraph, I need some help because I don't see any
means of downloading anything.

I am also hoping for answers to my other questions. Thx much.

[ryan.bales · Accepted solution]

I'm not sure which questions still need answered but i'll go into some depth with screenshots. One quick note, the materials are not downloadable from 'Physical Materials' because they are pre-loaded in Fusion. 

For Materials:

One a material is added to the design it can be modified. Those materials in the library that are provided by us are not editable in the materials manager within their folders and locations. However you can add any material to favorites and edit them there:

Once added to favorites you can rename and modify anything you'd like:

Lastly you can create a new material at the bottom left corner:

I would advise that these are placed in a different directory or a new directory to keep them separate from the provided materials. 

For Appearances:

The same applies for materials manager, you can add to favorites and modify:

And the option to download an appearance should be here from the appearances dialog:

Again, once added to a design it should be editable.

The best option for editing either one is to add to favorites then make modifications. Additionally for appearances you can add to 'my appearances' to have them upload to the cloud.

 

[rmfolsom]

Ryan,

Thx much. Your explanation is very helpful and I am getting a better understanding. Do you know if there is a place where others have shared their edits to either materials or appearances? I tried to edit an appearance using an image and it looks like little square patches of wood.

[ryan.bales]

You could post a new thread in the Design, Validate & document sub forum. There are plenty of rendering minded experts in there that have done this.