#Materials & Looks

Paint once, see it everywhere — and swap the whole look of the room in a click.

EVT3D's material system is built for how event designs actually work: hundreds of chairs that all need to be the same color, a brand palette that has to stay consistent across every surface, and design reviews where the client asks to see "the gala version" right after "the keynote version." Family-based materials, a project-level palette, and named Looks make all of that fast.

#What it does

#Material families

Every prop in the library belongs to a family. When you change the color of one chair, every chair in that family updates. Duplicate a chair, the duplicate joins the family. Need a single chair to be different? One click (Make Unique) breaks the link — that chair becomes a unique sibling, and the rest of the family stays untouched.

#Project Palette

A per-project library of reusable named materials. "Brand Blue," "Brushed Chrome," "LED White," "Black Velour" — name them once, organize them in folders, reuse them across every prop in the project. It lives in the Library's Materials tab, as the PROJECT PALETTE pane beside the Material Library. The palette saves with the file.

#Linked Materials

Bind any prop's material slot to a palette entry. Now the palette is the source of truth — edit "Brand Blue" in the palette, and every chair, table, and signage panel linked to it updates together across the scene. A chain-link badge on the slot in the prop's Materials section (tooltip Linked to palette) tells you a material is linked; in the palette, an entry's link badge turns gold once something uses it. Click Unlink any time to break the chain.

#Per-prop overrides

For one-off changes, edit a single material directly: Base Color, Metalness, Roughness, Emissive, plus texture maps on the map chips (Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metalness, Emissive). Drop a logo, fabric swatch, or graphic onto the prop to use it as a custom texture.

#Make Unique

For shared instances of the same prop, Make Unique (in the prop's Instancing section, shown when other copies share its group) forks one off into its own family — color it differently without affecting the rest. The shared edit pattern stays the default; the override is opt-in.

#Looks (scene snapshots)

Save the whole moment — not just materials. A Look captures material families, palette entries, which props are visible, every light's settings, the environment and background, post-FX, prop positions, and builder configurations. "Day Rehearsal." "Gala Night." "Keynote." "Cocktail Hour." Flip between them with one click and the room becomes that moment: the lighting changes, furniture moves to where it was, the signage re-skins. Expand any Look in the Look Manager to see exactly what it carries — and re-capture or remove any part of it independently, so a Look can be "just the lighting" or the full scene.

#Looks on Viewpoints

Every Viewpoint marker can be bound to a Look. When a client enters that viewpoint — or the viewpoint tour (Play viewpoint tour on the toolbar in View mode, once there are two or more viewpoints) glides to it — the scene blends into its Look along with the camera move: lights and positions glide, materials switch mid-flight. Walk a client from the daytime rehearsal at the back of the room straight into gala night at the head table, in one motion.

#Environment & reflections

Real-world lighting and reflections from photographic panoramas, set in Settings → Environment. Background Source sets what's behind the scene (None, Gradient, Solid Color, an image, or a 360 panorama from the Library). Reflection Source sets what surfaces reflect: a stock panorama (apartment, city, dawn, forest, lobby, night, park, studio, sunset, warehouse), your own HDR or EXR file from the Library, Use Background Source, or Use Reflection Probe for a capture of the room itself.

#Custom texture upload

Drag an image file (PNG, JPG, WebP) from your desktop onto a prop in the viewport to use it as a base color, logo, fabric, or graphic. The prop's Image Drop setting picks which material it lands on and whether it replaces the base map or the emissive map (Replace Base Map / Replace Emissive Map). Click a map chip to open its settings window (for example Base Color Settings) — Tiling U/V, Offset U/V, Rotation, and Wrap (Repeat, Clamp, Mirror) — so the texture lands at the right scale.

#How you use it

#Painting a prop

1. Select a prop. The Materials section of the properties panel shows the slots that prop's geometry exposes (e.g., "Body," "Legs," "Cushion").
2. Pick a slot, change the values. Base Color, Metalness, Roughness, etc. The change applies immediately to every prop in the family.
3. Want just this one to change? Click Make Unique first. The selected prop forks into its own family, and your edits stop affecting the others.

#Building a project palette

1. Open the Library's Materials tab. The PROJECT PALETTE pane is the per-project library you fill up as you design.
2. Add materials. Drag materials in from the Material Library pane, or create a new one from scratch: New Material in the pane's ⋯ menu (or right-click empty space) opens New Palette Material.
3. Name and organize. "Brand Blue," "Floor Carpet," "VIP Cushion." Folders are supported — turn on the folder view, then New Folder.
4. Reuse anywhere. Drag a palette entry onto any material slot in the scene to apply it.

#Linking materials

1. Drag a palette entry onto a slot in a prop's Materials section. That slot is now linked — the chain-link badge appears.
2. Edit the palette entry (double-click it in the palette). Every linked slot across the scene updates together. Edit it from the prop panel and the same thing happens — the change routes through the palette and fans out.
3. Unlink when you need divergence. Click Unlink: the current appearance stays; the link just breaks.
4. Delete a palette entry? Linked slots fall back to a placeholder material and the slot warns that its linked palette entry was removed — pick a new material or re-link to restore it. Unlink first if you want a slot to keep its look.

#Saving and swapping Looks

The Look Manager sits in the properties panel when nothing is selected.

1. Set up the scene the way you want it. Paint materials, aim and color the lights, place the props, hide what shouldn't be visible.
2. Capture a Look. Click Capture Current Look — it's saved as "Look 1," "Look 2," and so on; double-click the name to rename it. The whole moment is saved — materials, palette, visibility, lighting, environment, post-FX, positions, and builder settings.
3. Build a few more. "Gala Night," "Keynote," "Sponsor Reception."
4. Switch between them. Click a Look and the room becomes that moment; click Active State to return to the scene as it was before. Use these in client walkthroughs to show the same space across multiple moments of the event. To overwrite the active Look with the scene as it is now, use its update button (tooltip Update look with current state).
5. Fine-tune what a Look controls. Expand a Look's row (tooltip Show look contents) to see its contents, then click Edit. Re-capture just one part (say, Lighting) after a tweak, or remove a part so the Look leaves it alone — a lighting-only Look won't touch your materials.
6. Bind Looks to Viewpoints. Select a Viewpoint marker and pick a Look under Look in its panel (No Look change clears it). Entering that viewpoint (or touring to it) blends the scene into the Look as the camera travels.

#Why it matters

Most 3D tools force you to paint every chair one at a time. EVT3D treats material work the way an event designer thinks about it — chairs come in families, brand colors come from a palette, and the same room has to look like four different events depending on the time of day. The system is built around those patterns so the obvious things stay fast and the careful things stay controllable.