Are these expected behaviors for materials?

[colin]

Here are two videos that show things that seems wrong with the way materials work.

The first video shows how when you rotate an object the material doesn’t rotate. I know I could make it be a unique texture, or a group or component, to work around the issue. But what is the use case where having the material keep its direction is desired?

The second video shows that after changing the axes materials orient themselves to the original axes, not the new one. Again, what is a use case where that would be a good thing?

[g.h.hubers]

Hi Colin, this is normal behavior. Material applied to a face comes into modeling space according to The systems axes. You can then apply ‘Texture’ > ‘Position’ and rotate its direction for that single face. No need to make the texture unique. It had always been like this.

p.s. Once rotated (positioned), the texture’s direction is fixed to that face and rotates with it.

[oliver.windows10]

The issue is if you rotate your entire model to line up with imported geometry from Google Earth (or for any reason) then you will need to adjust every surface in your model, which could be hundreds.
Is there a way to change the system Axis to line up with a building or surface?

[Wo3Dan]

Is there a way to change the system Axis to line up with a building or surface?

The system’s axes can’t be changed, only the drawing axes.

If you group multiple faces and immediately explode the group again, the texture directions for each of these faces will be fixed to their faces.

[oliver.windows10]

Thank you Wo3Dan. I have a drawing that I drew aligned to geo location. I am now having trouble as I have to manually adjust every material when I put them in.

[colin]

You are right about the rotated thing, which leads to a potential solution. You could, every time you apply a texture, do a Texture/Position - Done action, making no changes at all, and now you have a texture that behaves how I would want it to.

That doesn’t solve the axes change variation of the problem though.

[Forestr]

The first example can be used as a way to position textures by positioning the geometry. I can’t think of a use for the second example (maybe positioning all future textures?), but you can reset the axes by right clicking on an axis.

[colin]

The second example would be where you’re creating new models on top of a location whose streets are not straight up or across, and so you have adjusted the axes to make modeling easier. The geometry knows to align to the new axes, but the materials don’t.

A related symptom is that the regular rectangle preview is also based on the original axes, and not the adjusted one.

[Forestr]

In the second example, I think it might possibly be better if the materials matched the axis. But perhaps there’s a reason why it’s like that… I’m curious to know.