Materials
What an object is made of. Colour, roughness and metal, glass, glow, coats and flakes, your own texture maps, and a library to start from.
Select an object and press M, or click the material chip, the small live sphere in the bottom right corner of the editor that always shows the selected object's material. The Material panel opens with three tabs: Textures, Advanced and Library.
Facet materials are physically based: they respond to light and to the environment the way real surfaces do. Set up the environment first, then design the material.
Textures
The Textures tab is the whole surface in one list. Each row is a channel, with its value and a slot for a map side by side:
| Channel | The value | What a map does |
|---|---|---|
| Base colour | A colour | Paints the surface with an image |
| Roughness | 0 is a mirror, 1 is chalk | Varies the shine across the surface |
| Metallic | 0 is paint or plastic, 1 is metal | Marks which parts are metal |
| Normal | How deep the map reads | Fakes fine bumps and grooves |
| Height | How strongly the surface is pushed | Raises and lowers the surface |
| Opacity | 1 is solid, 0 is invisible | Cuts parts of the surface away |
| Emissive | A colour and a strength | Makes parts glow |
| Occlusion | How strongly it darkens | Darkens creases and corners |
Normal and Occlusion only mean something with a map, so their values stay dim until there is one.
Adding a map
Click the + at the end of a row. Choose an image of your own, or a pattern: Noise, Cells, Checker or Gradient. A pattern is built for you in the Node view, and the row's thumbnail opens it.
Click a filled slot to grade the map: brightness, contrast, gamma, black and white points, saturation, hue, tint and invert. A small dot on the thumbnail marks a graded map. The cross beside it removes the map.
Imported models arrive with their own textures, and they show in their slots straight away, a little faded. Click one to take it into the project and grade it, or import over it to replace it.
Mapping
Once there are maps, a Mapping section decides how they are laid on the object:
- UV uses the object's own texture coordinates. Scale X and Scale Y tile the maps.
- Cube projects from three sides, good for objects without clean coordinates. Adds Scale Z.
- Sphere wraps from the centre outwards.
Advanced
Every dial, grouped by what it does. One section opens at a time.
| Section | Settings |
|---|---|
| Surface | Base Color, Roughness, Metalness, Reflection, Surface Bump, and Surround, which lets the surface reflect nearby objects as well as the environment |
| Glass | Transmission, IOR, Thickness, Dispersion, and Tint Color with Tint Depth |
| Scatter | Amount, Scatter Radius, Scatter Color, for wax, skin, jade and anything light sinks into |
| Glow | Intensity and Emissive colour |
| Coat & Flakes | Clear Coat, Coat Roughness, Flakes and Flake Size, for car paint and lacquer |
| Iridescence | Iridescence and Iridescence IOR, for soap bubbles and oil film |
Making glass
- Pick an environment. Glass shows what is around it, and with nothing around it, it shows almost nothing.
- In Glass, raise Transmission towards 1 and lower Roughness in Surface for clear glass, or keep some roughness for frosted.
- IOR is how strongly it bends light: about 1.33 for water, 1.5 for glass, 2.4 for diamond.
- Dispersion splits light into rainbow fringes at the edges, like a prism.
- Tint Color with a shorter Tint Depth colours thick parts more than thin ones, the way coloured glass does.
For bright light patterns behind glass, turn on Caustics in the Studio Light panel.
Library
Everything you apply in one go.
- In this project lists every material in this project. A material stays here after it comes off the last object, so a look you made earlier is always one click away. Tuning a material updates its entry instead of adding a new one. Right click an entry to Duplicate, Rename or Delete it. Remove unused clears every material that is on nothing. Two materials can never share a name.
- Saved by you holds materials you saved with the book button in the panel header. It starts with a set of looks to try, such as Polished Gold, Brushed Steel, Crystal, Jade, Candle Wax and Clay. Double click or right click to rename, and point at one to delete it. Saved materials are kept in this browser.
- Texture sets are complete, photographed materials: marble, metal, organic and more, each with all its maps. Choose a resolution before applying for sharper detail.
Click a tile to apply it to the selected object, or drag it onto any object in the scene.
Different materials on one object
A model or a vector made of several parts can wear a different material on each. Drag a material from the Library onto the part you want: the part under the pointer lights up before you drop. A vector's parts are the separate colours of the original artwork.
Generate a material
Press the sparkles in the Material panel header and describe what you want, such as brushed copper with fine scratches or frosted blue glass. Facet builds the material, and can borrow maps from the texture library, for example a cut glass pattern on a clear glass. Keep talking to refine it. See Generate in the editor.
Cloners and materials
Select a cloner and press M to edit the material of the object it repeats. Every clone follows.
Per screen size
Materials can be overridden per breakpoint.