HD Pro Materials

[Alfiejay08]

Does anyone know where I can get a lacquer finish? I have it on some contemporary cabinets but only under Urban Chic/Contemporary style. I tried to move them to my new plan and it changes the finish. I tried searching for the finish, but it says not available for Pro 2021. I would really appreciate it if someone can tell me where to find a white lacquer finish.

 

I also want to find a wall finish that mimics a shipping crate. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. I am willing to pay if someone knows where I can buy the finishes.

 

Thank you.

Alfreda

[davidstvz]

Short version: search for a material called "milk glass" in your library.  It seems to look identical to this Laquer Finish you found in the Urban Chic template.

 

Long version: plan files can contain materials which aren't in your libraries. In fact, every material used in a plan is copied from the libraries and stored in the plan file. So, there can be many materials in a plan or the templates which aren't in the libraries.

 

Best thing to do in this case is look for an alternative which might have a similar finish to what you desire.  You can then change the color or texture and the "sheen" will stay the same.

 

Note that there are properties of materials which can only be edited by Chief Architect users, though HD Pro will put them to use and display them properly. This allows you to purchase or download catalogs of fancy materials that couldn't be created from scratch in HD Pro.  The properties of this Laquer Finish rely on some of these hidden properties which also seem to be shared by Milk Glass.

 

You can tell hidden properties are being used if on the properties tab none of the radial dial buttons are activated for "brightness" or "shininess".  If you do click any of those buttons, you will inactivate the advanced settings for that material and instead use the basic settings afforded by HD Pro.

 

EDIT:

 

For the shipping crate finish, you'll want wood obviously, but a rough wood without any kind of stain or sheen to it.  If you can't find wood with the correct finish, you might find some non-wood material and then change the texture association to wood.

 

 

 

[DavidJPotter]

22 minutes ago, davidstvz said:

Long version: plan files can contain materials which aren't in your libraries. In fact, every material used in a plan is copied from the libraries and stored in the plan file. So, there can be many materials in a plan or the templates which aren't in the libraries.

 

Teaching and using Home Designer and Chief Premier software since 1994. Your above statement is not truein the sense that unless the materials and their related texture (image) files are manually embedded into the plan file when sharing it with another user. The plan file contains the "LOCATIONS"  of material texture files on YOUR COMPUTER ONLY. So if you share a plan file with another user without also sharing each associated material texture file with them (by using the "File - Back-Up Entire plan" command to share your plan file with others). Just saying for clarity.

 

DJP

[davidstvz]

Solver: yes, my mistake.  Radio buttons....  I really butchered that term!

 

DJP: yes to be more precise, I should say that copies of material definitions are stored in the plan file, but as you say the definitions don't include texture data, only references to the texture files.  This doesn't seem to be a problem for anything using the core catalog texture data (I suppose that data is in the default search path or something), but is a problem for custom textures.