What Are Materials?

DirectX SDK

What Are Materials?

Materials describe how polygons reflect light or appear to emit light in a 3-D scene. Essentially, a material is a set of properties that tell Direct3D the following things about the polygons it is rendering:

How they reflect ambient and diffuse light
What their specular highlights look like
Whether or not the polygons appear to emit light

[C++]

Direct3D Immediate Mode applications written in C++ use the D3DMATERIAL7 structure to describe material properties. For more information, see Material Properties.

[Visual Basic]

Direct3D Immediate Mode applications written in Visual Basic use the D3DMATERIAL7 type to describe material properties. For more information, see Material Properties.