In the tab called Edit textures, you will notice two material windows named P0M0 and P0M1. They both contain slots for material/.xrf files, actual texture files, texture file name, material ID, a delete button, an add texture to this body part button and a whole lot of check boxes.

Each Material panel contains a series of check boxes that affect how the texture is seen in IMVU. The first of these, Use Blending, tells the material that the opacity map supplied (if you supply an alpha map) should use full opacity as opposed to rough cutout. Full opacity means that all 255 levels of gray are factored into creating the final alpha image. Cutout means that only black and white are taken into consideration - with all of the grays being turned into either white or black.

Directly to the right of this check box is the Mode drop down menu. If you checked the Use Blending checkbox, the Mode drop down tells the full opacity map whether it can be an Additive blend or just stay a composite blend. Additive blending literally takes the texture and “adds” light values to it based on values in your opacity map. The more additive textures you have in front of one another, the brighter and brighter they get. COOL! This is handy for things like shafts of light.

The second check box, Two Sided, tells the material to render no matter what side of a polygon you are looking at. Handy for draping hair and the like.

The third checkbox, Self Illuminated, makes the material unaffected by the Head's lighting. This is handy for things like fire or anything that you want to stay bright.

The fourth checkbox, Fog Override, makes the material unaffected by fog. This is VERY handy for sky textures.

The fifth checkbox is Vertex Colors. If you have exported a mesh that contains vertex colors, you can view them on a per-material basis by checking this box in each material.

3.i.2 Browse for new textures

In the material window named P0M0, browse for the Material/.xrf file that corresponds to the first material in your MAX file. This Material/.xrf file would contain the sub-material with the [0] in its name. Next, delete the texture names underneath the texture images. This wipes the texture slate clean and allows your pending texture change to take effect. Next, click on the actual picture of the texture and browse for your new texture. Make sure the Material ID is set to 0 (zero) and hit apply changes. The most noticeable change in the previewer should be that an icon of your texture has replaced the original texture.

3.i.3 Adding Materials

As you add Body Parts and materials to those Body Parts, the name of the material panel will procedurally change. P0M0 translates to Part Zero Material Zero. So, as you add parts, the P# increases and as you add Materials the M# increases.