Changing how an object looks

3rd.sin.entertainment

When i put down a wall using a modular pack(lets say something that comes out as a wood panel wall) can i use a material editor pack to say turn it into a brick wall or do i need to use an asset that is an actual brick wall?

Gordig

Not materials, but shaders, and which shaders you use will depend on your render engine of choice. Select the wall, open up the Surfaces pane and select one of the surfaces. Now you can apply a shader to that surface. You'll want MDL shaders for Iray, or RSL (or any number of custom shaders) for 3Delight.

hansolocambo

Any 3D object can be assigned any shader AND/or any material(s).

Load your modular piece in the scene. Go to the Surface tab.

You can see on the left of the Surface tab all the surfaces for this object. You can now select one of those surfaces :

1-  Check which textures are loaded into diffuse, normal, bump, etc. And change those images by your own. By doing so you keep the shader as it is and only change bitmaps assigned to diffuse, bump, etc. manually. 

2- Or you can go to your content library and double click on any shader preset. This will replace the surface you selected in the Surface Tab by the one you clicked on.