Setting materials to objects

[CallMeEclipse]

Now in DirectX you can set textures, and those allow for the use textures created in 2D art programs. But you can also set materials, here ill explain a bit:

A material serves the same purpose as a texture, but is much more versatile.
For, you can edit a material's parameters actively while the application is running.

Now alot of people like to just put al their params in DrawIndexedPrimitive, but i like to write functions to save us space, and make it clean, nd easy to handle.

i.e.

void CreateMat(IDirect3DDevice9 *Device, int Name, float Diffuse_Red, float Diffuse_Green, float Diffuse_Blue, float Diffuse_Alpha, float Ambient_Red, float Ambient_Green, float Ambient_Blue, float Ambient_Alpha)
{
    D3DMATERIAL9 Name;//declare your mat
    ZeroMemory( &Name, sizeof(D3DMATERIAL9) );
    Name.Diffuse.r     = Diffuse_Red/255;//set the diffuse red color
    Name.Diffuse.g     = Diffuse_Green/255;//set the diffuse green color
    Name.Diffuse.b     = Diffuse_Blue/255;//set the diffuse blue color
    Name.Diffuse.a     = Diffuse_Alpha/255;//set the diffuse alpha value
    Name.Ambient.r     =  Ambient_Red/255;//set the ambient red color
    Name.Ambient.g     =  Ambient_Green/255;//set the ambient green color
    Name.Ambient.b     =  Ambient_Blue/255;//set the ambient blue color
    Name.Ambient.a     =  Ambient_Alpha/255;//set the ambient alpha value
    Device->SetMaterial( &Name );
}

That is the function that im currently using for my materials.

let me explain how this works a bit, a diffuse color is the "TRUE" color of the material, an ambient color is the colr that the material is where the light hits it..

i.e.

The gray is the diffuse color, and the white is the ambient color. the black on this example does not pertain to the material, that is controlled by lighting (ill write another topic on that later)

Again, hope this helped.