Meshing Question Materials: Applying them to parts of a mesh

[Izack]

I'm messing around with the Carrier mesh from Liber's conversion in this post:
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=111366&postcount=4
Relevant section of mesh in question:

MATERIAL 01
0.800000 0.800000 0.800000 1.000000
0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 1.000000
0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000   0
1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
MATERIAL 02
0.800000 0.800000 0.800000 1.000000
0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 1.000000
0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000   0
1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
MATERIAL 03
0.800000 0.800000 0.800000 1.000000
0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 1.000000
0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000   0
1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
MATERIAL 04
0.800000 0.800000 0.800000 1.000000
0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 1.000000
0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000   0
1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
MATERIAL 05
0.800000 0.800000 0.800000 1.000000
0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 1.000000
0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000   0
1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
MATERIAL 06
0.800000 0.800000 0.800000 1.000000
0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 1.000000
0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000   0
1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
MATERIAL 07
0.800000 0.800000 0.800000 1.000000
0.200000 0.200000 0.200000 1.000000
0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000   0
1.000000 1.000000 1.000000 1.000000
TEXTURES 4
Hiigaran\Carrier\04C.dds
Hiigaran\Carrier\03C.dds
Hiigaran\Carrier\02C.dds
Hiigaran\Carrier\01C.dds

Unmodified, it is totally emissive and looks awkward. I understand that the fourth line in each Material properties near the bottom of the mesh file is emissivity, and lowered all values from 1 to 0. The carrier has stopped glowing, but there are parts I'd like to keep emissive (engines, hangar entrances.) Unfortunately the materials are not linked to the mesh in an intuitive way. Here is what I've found for which material is associated with which part of the vessel:

01 Resource module
02 Most things
03 Bridge, engine glow
04 Badge
05 Lots of panels
06 Bits of the bridge
07 Resource module bottom

How would one go about rearranging and applying the material groups to different parts of the mesh, and what tools would one need?

 

[dgatsoulis]

If you are working with .msh files, and you want to have a quick way of making changes to the materials and the groups that use them, i'd say that Meshwizard 1.9 is the way to go.
You can make changes "on the fly" -save- and then test, right away, how your mesh looks in Orbiter.