Scene editor guide. Page 7

Material properties

Checking Use material properties enables the setting of this page, if unchecked the objects uses the current settings (the parent group ones or the ones of the object painted before this).

The ambient, diffuse and specular color determine the quantity of the respective light which the object reflects. So an object with (0,0,0) as ambient color will not be sensitive to changes of any ambient light, a setting of (0,0.5,0) will make it reflect only 50% of the green component of the ambient light.

Setting the emission color to anything different from (0,0,0) will make the object emit light, so it will be visible even when no light is turned on.

Shininess will affect the way specular light is reflected, increasing this value will make the object more sensitive to the position of the light.

The texture combo box selects which texure the object uses if any.
It can have two spacial values:
disabled Tells the object not to use textures even if the parent object does.
use parent's The object does what the parent tells.
0..19 uses the corresponding texture as defined in the Texture command page.