How to Update Your Materials Library in Mozaik – Phill Anton Consulting

To update your materials library in Mozaik 14, import the new texture groups, switch your everyday materials to dynamic materials, lock any material that should never change its finish, and rebuild a small set of material and edgebanding templates around those dynamic materials. Done right, this collapses the giant list of one-off material templates you carried in version 13 into a handful of flexible ones, and your cut lists, labels, and pricing finally show the real material name instead of generic placeholders like "color 1."

This guide follows Mozaik's official walkthrough. Watch the original video on Mozaik's channel:

You can also reference Mozaik's official video directly.

Why materials changed in Mozaik 14

In version 13, the material and its texture (appearance) were two separate things. You'd have a material template saying a door is made of a paintable material, then apply a paint or pre-finished texture to it afterward. That separation was easy to get wrong — especially in pre-finished markets where the material and the finish really are one and the same thing.

It also forced a snowballing library. Because a pre-finished brand might offer many colors, people resorted to generic names like "color 1," "grain 1," and built a separate material template for nearly every combination. Templates also weren't editable, so any one-off change (like a thicker shelf) meant creating yet another whole template.

Mozaik 14 unites the material with the texture, lets you edit templates on the fly, and adds dynamic materials so a few templates do the work of many.

Step 1: Import the new texture groups

Start by bringing in fresh, well-built texture groups instead of building everything from scratch.

Tools > Import Updated Data > Material Texture Groups > select the ranges you want > Import

Anything you had in version 13.1 carries straight into version 14 — it loads into a "default" texture group (and "default tops" for countertops). The import doesn't only bring in textures; it also drops in some ready-made materials linked to those groups as a solid starting point, including edge-tape options. After it finishes, reopen the material library and you'll see the new groups listed.

If a brand you use isn't offered, you can still import individual categories (countertops, solid colors, wood) or create your own group later — see the last step.

Step 2: Understand dynamic materials (the big win)

A dynamic material automatically grabs the name of whatever texture you assign and spawns a separate, correctly-named material for it. So instead of a cut-list line reading "color 1 18mm," you get the real finish name flowing through to the optimizer, labels, and pricing.

You make a material dynamic by putting the word texture inside curly brackets in its cut-list name field (hover that field and Mozaik shows the available tags, including a texture-abbreviation tag). The default texture you pick barely matters — you're expecting to change it on every job.

The payoff: one dynamic material covers many colors. Five different door finishes become five named materials automatically, without you building five materials by hand.

Step 3: Use "grain by texture" so grain follows the finish

In version 13, grain was a property of the material — so a "color" material with grain turned off would optimize wrong even if you'd assigned a grain texture to it. This was one of the most common mistakes.

In version 14, turn on grain by texture on the texture group. Now Mozaik decides whether a part has grain based on the texture you assign, not a checkbox on the material. One material can be grain or no-grain depending on the finish.

On each texture you then pick one of three grain settings:

None — flat material, free to rotate any direction (not grain-dependent).
Grain — standard grain running along the length of the sheet (how you'd normally receive it from a supplier).
Cross grain — grain running along the short side of the sheet.

Important: cross grain does not rotate your parts or flip the grain direction of a component. It simply tells Mozaik you're ordering a cross-grain sheet, so the grain runs across the sheet while parts still optimize length-along-the-long-edge. If you order a material both ways, duplicate the texture and make a cross-grain variant.

Step 4: Lock the materials you never want to change

Some materials should stay put — your cabinet carcass board is the classic example. You don't want it changing finish when you change the job's texture.

Libraries > Materials > [select the material] > Texture Locked

Go through your fixed materials (carcass board, plywood cores, raw board for things like toe kicks) and lock each one to its correct texture. In a material template, any part set to a locked material shows shaded, and only the parts on unlocked (dynamic) materials change when you switch the job's texture. That single checkbox is what lets one template serve both the parts that should change and the parts that shouldn't — so you stop building separate templates for every carcass-plus-finish pairing.

Step 5: Rebuild your material templates

With dynamic and locked materials in place, build a small set of new material templates (the old ones become largely obsolete).

Libraries > Material Templates > Cabinet (or Door) > [duplicate an existing one as a base]

Inside a template, set your carcass parts (tops, bottoms, shelves, backs) to your locked cabinet material, and set the exposed parts (finished ends, finished backs, exteriors, skins) to a dynamic material so they follow the job texture. Tip: hold Ctrl, click several rows to select them, then change them all at once from the dropdown.

A few quality-of-life notes:

Templates are now editable on the fly — open one mid-job and change a part's material without building a brand-new template.
Templates are linked internally by an ID, not their name, so you can rename a template without breaking old jobs (this broke things in version 13).
You can expand a template to control base, wall, and tall cabinets separately, or collapse it when they're the same.
Organize the material library with headers (e.g. a "Dynamic Materials" header you move to the top) to make collapsible sections separating new from old.

Step 6: Rebuild your edgebanding templates

Do the same for banding.

Libraries > Material Templates > Banding > [create new]

Assign a dynamic edge tape (the import gives you thicknesses like a 1mm and a 2mm option set up dynamically) so banding follows the texture name, and lock any band that should stay fixed (e.g. a white or black PVC edge). Version 14 adds banding slots 5 and 6 on top of the usual four.

Edgeband assignments (Libraries > Edgeband Assignments) control which numbered band lands where — typically: 1 for front/exposed edges, 2 for internal edges, 3 for doors and drawer fronts, 4 for drawer boxes, with 5 and 6 free for your own use. Because you can change a band on the fly to match the doors or switch to a contrasting color, you no longer need a separate matching-edge template for every scenario.

Step 7: Override materials per job, room, or part — no new template needed

The biggest day-to-day advantage: you can change materials inside a project without creating a new template.

Per room/job: select cabinets > right-click > Override Material Template/Textures > pick or type the template/texture. (You can type to search the list.)
Per cabinet: right-click > override > edit the template on the fly (e.g. set adjustable shelves to a thicker material for one wide cabinet).
Per part: open the cabinet's parts list > select the part (e.g. left door) > Edit > assign a different texture. You can finish a single door in its own finish this way.

Two cautions when finishing an old version-13 job in version 14: cabinets that had material overrides in 13.1 are locked and won't auto-update — you must re-apply those overrides in 14. And on an override, an external/exposed material template only drives the external/exposed colors; your locked carcass material stays as-is.

When you do NOT want a dynamic material: paint

A dynamic material changes the name and nests each color separately. For painted work that's usually wrong — you might run three different paint colors but want them all to nest together on the same paintable sheet to save material.

So for a paintable material: leave it unlocked (you want the color to change) but not dynamic (you don't want each color nesting on its own sheet). Set the paintable material to "all textures" (not locked to one group) so you can freely pick any paint color, and all those doors keep nesting on the one paintable material in the cut list.

Step 8: Set a new default room template

Once your materials and templates are ready, bake them into a default so every new job starts right.

File > New > Settings > Materials > [set the room to your new dynamic materials, material template, and banding template] > Hamburger menu > Add new template ("create from current room") > name it > check Default

Now starting a new job loads your version-14 setup automatically. Consider removing the old room templates you no longer need to keep the list short.

Bonus: import textures/graphics for better rendering

Tools > Import Updated Data > Textures and Graphics

Pull in the metal, glass, and finish graphics (gold metal, brass metal, chrome, clear/frosted/fluted glass, mirror, porcelain, etc.). Grounding a finish in a real texture with the right sheen level makes version 14's 3D viewer and rendering far more convincing than a flat image. On import, Mozaik flags anything that already exists and lets you choose whether to override it.

Bonus: show the texture name on your labels

File > Print > Print Labels > [pencil/edit] > add a texture variable

You can show the texture name (and/or its abbreviation) on labels. By default a texture variable can print the entire file path — fix that by right-clicking the field and using fit to bounds (and editing text alignment/rotation) so it shows the clean finish name (e.g. the paint color a part should be painted) instead of the path.

Bonus: create your own texture group

Material library > Texture Groups > Hamburger menu > Add new group > name it

Add textures by saving an image from your supplier, then importing it (you now import from wherever you downloaded it — no need to drop it in a specific folder first). Give it a name, abbreviation, and sheen, and enable grain by texture if needed. The fastest way to add the material itself is to copy an existing dynamic material (e.g. your imported one), paste it, rename it, and switch its texture group. Remember: each texture group also needs its own edge texture options added in, so locked groups still have edges to band with.

Related guides

Get it done-for-you

You can set this up yourself using the steps above. If you'd rather skip the setup, PAC's Mozaik training and done-for-you setup can help — phillanton.com.

Full disclosure: this guide is published by Phill Anton Consulting.

FAQ

What's the single biggest reason to update my materials in version 14?

Dynamic materials. One dynamic material spawns a separate, correctly-named material for every texture you assign, so five door finishes become five named cut-list materials automatically — no more building a material (or a whole template) per color, and no more generic "color 1" names on your cut list, optimizer, and labels.

My grain stopped optimizing correctly after upgrading to 14 — why?

Check the texture group. Grain is now driven by the texture, not the material. Look at the texture assigned to the part and make sure it has grain enabled, ideally with "grain by texture" turned on. In version 13 a material with grain turned off would ignore a grain texture; version 14 reads grain from the texture instead.

Does setting a texture to "cross grain" rotate my parts?

No. Cross grain only tells Mozaik you're ordering a cross-grain sheet (grain running the short way), giving you horizontal grain without rotating components. Parts still optimize length-along-the-long-edge; rotation and optimization don't change. To actually rotate a component's grain you rotate the part itself (or use the horizontal-door option on doors).

I'm finishing an old version-13 job in version 14 and the materials look wrong — what do I do?

Any cabinet that had a material override in 13.1 is locked and won't auto-update to your new dynamic setup. Re-apply the override in version 14 (select the cabinets, right-click, Override Material Template/Textures). Also remember an override template only changes the exposed/external materials — your locked carcass material is meant to stay the same.

How do I keep painted doors nesting together instead of on separate sheets?

Don't make the paintable material dynamic. Leave it unlocked so the color can change, but keep it non-dynamic and set to "all textures" — then all your paint colors nest together on the one paintable sheet, which saves material, while the color name can still appear on your labels.