In this exercise we will learn how to create new rendering materials by accessing the Asset Browser material library to import rendering materials into the current project for use in your renderings. We will do this by duplicating existing materials and editing shading colors, replacing render appearance assigned to materials by using the settings that Revit exposes, down to just tweaking values to customize a material that is pretty close. It sounds more complicated than it is.

Getting Started

Make sure you have the source files downloaded for this exercise. You can get them with the links above.

Create new materials for the Eames Chair

1. Open Revit file Lab07_E2_Creating New Materials.rvt.
2. Open the Living Room Interior 3D view.
3. On the Manage Tab click on the Materials button.
4. Right-Click on the frame material in the Material Browser and then Duplicate.
5. Name the new material Eames Chair Frame and select it.
6. Next open the Asset Browser and search for the material Wood - Teak
7. Double click on Wood - Teak to assign it to the Eames Chair Frame material.
8. Close the Asset browser.
9. On the graphics tab of the Material Browser change the surface pattern to Wood 3 as shown.
10. Click OK to save the material.

Note this will not reflect changes on the chair yet, we will do that at the end

11. Repeat steps 3 through 8 twice to create a Eames Chair Leather material using the Creased - Black asset and a Eames Chair Metal material using the Chrome - Polished asset.
12. Click OK to save the materials.

Assign Materials to Eames Chair

1. Open the Living Room Interior 3D view if it's not already and zoom in on the Eames Chair.
2. Select the Eames Lounge Chair by clicking on it in the view.
3. In the properties palette replace the Materials and Finishes instance properties with the new materials. Set Seat Fabric = Eames Chair Leather, Metal Parts = Eames Chair Metal, and Wooden Shell = Eames Chair Frame.
4. You may notice that everything is now brown, which is odd. To fix this you need to enable the Use Render Appearance checkbox in the Material Browser. This finds the average color of the material and uses that for the shaded views instead of a manually set color which we inherited from the frame material by duplicating it.
5. Your chair should now look better, see results below:

Save your file

Save your file as Spring2024_3262_firstinitial_lastname_LAB07_EX02.rvt

Cover Image Credits: archdaily.com