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There are several ways to apply appearances to your 3D models and specific faces. Learn how to effectively use the “In this design” section of the appearance tool and edit appearances to get the exact look you need for your render in Autodesk Fusion.

Opening the appearance tool in Autodesk Fusion

T apply appearances, open up the appearance tool. There are two places you can find this in: the Modify menu of the Design Workspace or press ‘A’ on your keyboard.

Exploring the Fusion material library

Look for the appearance tool in the main toolbar. Once you click on it, there will be a box displaying a few different sections that will help us apply our materials. The main one is the Fusion Library of Materials. Fusion has an enormous number of materials that you can apply to your model, categorized by material type such as metals or wood. However, you can upload as many of your own materials as you want.

When searching through the library, your Favorites will appear at the top and all other options will be listed below. You can also search for materials by color.

Apply appearances to specific faces

To apply a material, click and drag the material of your choosing onto the model. Each material you use will automatically be added to the In This Design section of the appearance tool.

There will be many instances where you want to use specific materials for certain faces of your model. In the Apply To section of the appearance tool select Faces. When you are about to add a material when individual faces have already been altered, you will see a warning asking if you want to replace the originally applied material or if you want to keep the materials on individual faces and change everything else on your body.

Editing and managing materials

Be aware that adding many kinds of material can start cluttering the In This Design section, making it hard to keep track of what materials were used where. Especially because overriding existing materials will not remove them from the In This Design section either.

To avoid this problem, drag the desired material directly over the one you want to replace in the In This Design section rather than onto the model itself. This will replace any instance of that material used on that body no matter the number of faces it was applied to.

You can also further customize a material’s color or name by right-clicking and hitting Edit. Click the Advanced button to get even more control over a material’s appearance by editing things like roughness and reflectiveness.

Using in-canvas lighting for a better render

Being in the render workspace will give you good lighting conditions to understand your materials, but doing an in-canvas render will give you a better insight into its appearance. By beginning the render process you will see detailed shadow and lighting materials that will allow you to refine materials even further.

Keep in mind that rendering will update every single time something changes such as the position or the material used. You can also change your render settings to be Fast or Advanced. A fast render will allow you to easily change the material and appearance. Ultimately, once you’ve applied all your materials, you can play around with the settings before sending the design off to be used.

Now you know how to apply appearances to a model and specific faces in Autodesk Fusion. Visit our Youtube Channel for more learning content.