What You Should Know Before You Start

A default material library file is provided with the Real Time Rendering products. By default, this file is located:

Note: For languages other than English, a folder identified by the appropriate language contains the Catalog.CATMaterial.

  Would you need to open a specific library, you can do so interactively using the Library dialog box. See Applying a Material.

The environment variable CATStartupPath concatenates start-up directories. When applying a material, the library is looked for according to the user-defined path, and if no specific path has been indicated, the first occurrence of the Catalog.CATMaterial found in the directories listed in the variable is loaded.