mesh_base
A mesh_base material creates realistic coverings for meshes, dynamic meshes and skinned meshes.
States
Rendering passes and options available for the material.
Passes
Specify if the material is rendered during the following rendering passes:
- Deferred - deferred rendering pass.
- Auxiliary - auxiliary rendering pass.
- Refraction - refraction rendering pass.
- Velocity - velocity rendering pass.
- Ambient - ambient rendering pass.
- Light prob - light prob rendering pass.
- Light spot - light spot rendering pass.
- Light omni - light omni rendering pass.
- Light proj - light proj rendering pass.
- Light world - light world rendering pass.
Deferred
Specifies if the material is rendered during the deferred rendering pass:
- Skip - not rendered.
- Default - rendered.
Auxiliary
Specifies if the material is rendered during the auxiliary rendering pass:
- Skip - not rendered.
- Default - rendered.
To modify parameters of the auxiliary rendering pass use an additional Auxiliary field in the Parameters tab.
Refraction
Specifies if the material is rendered during the refraction rendering pass:
- Skip - not rendered.
- Default - rendered.
To modify parameters of the refraction rendering pass use an additional Refraction field in the Parameters tab.
Velocity
Specifies if the material is rendered into the velocity buffer to create a motion blur effect for moving physical objects:
- Skip - not rendered.
- Default - rendered.
Ambient
Specifies, how the material should be rendered during the ambient light pass for the opaque objects:
- Skip - not rendered.
- Opacity - diffuse colors are blended with the ambient color.
- Transparent - diffuse colors are are not modulated by the ambient color.
- LightMap - rendered lit by a light map. Material diffuse colors are multiplied by the light map and the ambient color.
To create and automatically set a light map for an object, use a Lightmap Generation Tool.
To modify parameters of the ambient rendering pass use an additional Ambient field in the Parameters tab.
Light Spot, Light Prob, Light Omni, Light Proj and Light World
Specify if the material is rendered illuminated by the spot, probe, omni-directional, projected and world lights during the light and shadows rendering passes:
- Skip - not rendered.
- Default - rendered.
- Phong rim - rendered with a Phong-rim shading. This shader creates a rim of the object depending on the light source direction (for example, to create a wax effect).
Shading is applied only if the Phong-rim option is enabled (by a set Use phong-rim option or a render_use_phong_rim console command positive value).
To modify Phong-rim shading parameters use the Phong rim width and Phong rim scale parameters in the Shading field of the Parameters tab.
- Anisotropy - rendered with anisotropic shading. This shader creates surfaces with elliptical (anisotropic) specular highlights (for example, reflections from the brushed metal).
To modify anisotropic parameters use the Anisotropy angle and Anisotropy scale parameters in the Shading field of the Parameters tab.
Options
- Detail - detail material rendering mode.
- Parallax mapping - parallax occlusion mapping.
- Ambient emission - ambient emission and post processing glow.
- Shadow shafts - volumetric shadow shafts.
Detail
Specifies the blending mode for the detail material:
- Skip - not rendered.
- Overlay - depending on the base material color, the base and detail material colors are either multiplied (for dark color pixels) or screened (for light color pixels), which leads to the contrast increase while preserving highlights and shadows. Grey pixels are not effected at all.
The blending is applied according to:
- Overlay first - the first UV coordinates of the mesh.
- Overlay second - the second UV coordinates of the mesh.
- Multiply - the base material color is multiplied by the detail material color, resulting in darker colors. White pixels are not effected.
The blending is applied according to:
- Overlay first - the first UV coordinates of the mesh.
- Overlay second - the second UV coordinates of the mesh.
If a detail material is not visible enough in the resulting material, try increasing its Diffuse parameter.
For example, we have base and detail materials with the following diffuse textures:
Base diffuse texture |
Detail diffuse texture |
After we apply the material to the mesh with two UV maps in the Overlay mode we will get the following result:
Overlay first mode |
Overlay second mode |
After we apply the material to the mesh with two UV maps in the Multiply mode we will get the following result:
Multiply first mode |
Multiply second mode |
Parallax mapping
A parallax occlusion mapping is a cheap way to create surface displacements by using a height map instead of generating a new geometry. The method is usually used on flat surfaces, but sometimes can be applied to other types of surfaces.
Disabled Parallax mapping |
Enabled Parallax mapping |
Enabling this option activates an additional height texture and Parallax parameters.
Ambient emission
An ambient emission effect simulates glow from extremely bright surfaces, therefore imitating real light sources and highlights. It can be used, for example, to simulate a glow of distant objects.
Enabling this option activates an additional emission texture and Emission parameters.
Shadow shafts
A Shadow shafts effect simulates visible volumetric shadows, arising when a bright world light source is partially obscured by the object.
Textures
Textures available for the material. All of the textures fields have set default textures, which can be replaced by your own ones. Availability of some textures depends on the set States values.
Base
A set of the textures for a base material:
Diffuse
A diffuse map is a texture storing a color information and either a transparency value or a detail mask. It is lightened according to a Lambertian lighting model (light intensity is permanent regardless of the camera motion and rotation and depends solely on the angle between the surface and the light direction).
Color Model
A texture is 4-channeled: RGB values store color information, an alpha (A) value stores either transparency value (if an Alpha test option is enabled) or a detail mask.
Normal
A normal map is a texture storing height information required to achieve an effect of Normal Mapping (a technique creating the illusion of depth for adding details without using more polygons). When calculating lighting of the surface, the mesh geometry is overridden by the normals value.
Color Model
A texture is 2-channeled: RG values store two components of a surface normal, a B component's value is calculated based on the given components in run-time.
Specular
A specular map is a texture storing the light reflectance information. It defines shininess and a highlight color of the surface. The lighting is calculated as a Lambertian lighting model plus a surface angle, light angle, and viewing angle dependent specular highlight (Blinn-Phong lighting model).
Color Model
A texture is 4-channeled: RGB values store reflection color and intensity (black color means no reflection), an alpha (A) value specifies the specular power: 256 means specular highlights are very bright and intense, 0 - specular highlights are dull.
Detail
A set of the textures for a detail material:
- Diffuse - detail material diffuse texture.
- Normal - detail material normal texture.
- Specular - detail material specular texture.
Additional
A set of additional textures:
- Parallax - parallax (height) texture.
- Emission - ambient emission texture.
- Ambient - environment modulation texture.
Parallax
A parallax map is a texture storing information about per-pixel parallax displacement.
Color Model
A texture is a single-channeled: R value stores height data (white areas correspond to the neutral value, such pixels are not displaced; black areas correspond to pixels that will be depressed farthest away).
Emission
An emission map is a texture storing information about the light emission. It is blended additively over a texture, so areas which do not glow at all should be pure black on the glow map, and any brighter colors will appear to be emitting light.
Color Model
A texture is 4-channeled: RGB values store a glowing color, an alpha (A) value stores glow mask: black is for non-glowing areas, white - for glowing ones.
Ambient
A ambient map is texture modulating the global environment illumination, for example, when an object is lighter at the top from sky above, darker at the bottom from the ground below etc.
Color Model
A texture is one-channeled and uses the second UV map channel.
Lightmap
Parameters
Parameters available for the material. All of the parameters have set default values, which can be replaced by your own ones. Availability of some parameters depends on the set States field values.
Material Editor, Parameters tab. |
Transform
- Base - base material coordinates transformation.
- Detail - detail material coordinates transformation.
Texture cordinates transformation
Texture coordinates transformation parameter. A vector of four float components, consisting of two pairs of vector elements:
- Scale texture coordinates, along X and Y axes.
For example, by the scale of 2;2 the texture will be repeated four times on the surface. See the second picture below.
- An offset of the texture respectively to its initial position along X and Y axes.
For example, by the offset of 0.5 along X axis the texture will be repositioned to the right (so the left edge of the texture will be rendered in the center). See the third picture below.
Auxiliary
Auxiliary rendering pass parameters:
- Color - auxiliary rendering pass multiplication color.
Color
A color picker to choose a color multiplier to be used in the auxiliary rendering pass.
Detail
A set of the shading parameters for detail material textures:
- Diffuse - detail diffuse texture intensity scale.
- Normal - detail normal texture intensity scale.
- Specular - detail specular texture intensity scale.
Ambient
Environment texture parameters:
- Environment - environment texture lighting scale.
Environment
An environment texture lighting scale is a coefficient to scale how much the global environment texture illuminates the surface. The higher the value, the more the colors will be corrected (lightened or darkened) according to the environment component.
Lightmap
Light map parameters:
- Scale - a light map texture scale.
Scale
A coefficient to scale the intensity of the light map illumination. The higher the value, the brighter the illumination is.
Parallax
- Height - a parallax texture displacements scale.
Height
A coefficient to scale the power of the parallax texture displacements. The higher the value, the bigger the normals are.
Emission
Emission parameters:
- Color - ambient emission color picker.
- Scale - ambient emission texture intensity scale.
- Glow - post-processing glow intensity scale.
Color
A color picker to choose a color multiplier for the emission texture.
Scale
A coefficient to scale emission texture intensity. The higher the value, the lighter and brighter light areas of the emission texture are.
Glow
A coefficient to scale the intensity of the emission texture glow post-process component, which creates a halo around an object surface. The higher the value, the larger the halo and the brighter the material.
Refraction
Refraction parameters:
Scale
A coefficient to set the light refraction area. By the value of 0 there is no light refraction for the material at all. The higher the positive value, the more distorted the image behind the refracting material is. Negative values invert the direction of distortion: the higher the negative value, the bigger the inverted distortion is.
Power
A coefficient to set the refraction post-processing power. The lower the value, the more powerful the refraction is.
Shading
- Diffuse - diffuse texture color.
- Diffuse - diffuse texture scale.
- Normal - normal texture power.
- Specular - specular texture color.
- Specular - specular texture power.
- Glossiness - specular texture scale.
- Phong rim width - width of Phong rim shading.
- Phong rim scale - scale of Phong rim shading.
- Anisotropy angle - anisotropy shading angle.
- Anisotropy scale - anisotropy shading scale.
- Fresnel bias - Fresnel term level bias.
- Fresnel power - Fresnel term power.
Diffuse
A color picker to choose the color tint for the diffuse texture. It can be used for specifying different colors for one texture or modifying the texture color on the spot. Use white for no tint.
Diffuse
A coefficient setting the brightness of the diffuse texture. The higher the value, the brighter the diffuse texture is.
Normal
A coefficient to scale the intensity of the normals (provided by a normal map). The higher the value, the higher the normal texture effect is.
Specular
A color picker to choose the auxiliary specular color for the specular texture. It can be used for specifying different specular colors for one texture or modifying the texture color on the spot. The specular color of the texture and this color will be blended.
Specular
A coefficient setting the brightness of the reflections (provided by a specular texture). The minimum value of 0 means no specular reflections at all. The default value of 1 grants the correct color. The higher the value, the brighter the specular reflections are.
Glossiness
A coefficient modifying the size of the highlight (Phong shading). Low values imitate wider highlights, typically appropriate to create diffuse reflection from mat surfaces. High values imitate pinpoint highlights, typically appropriate to create uniform reflection of light rays from glossy surfaces.
Phong rim width
A coefficient modifying the width of an additionally lightened rim at the edges of an object, where incident light is perpendicular to the surface being lit. By the minimum value of 0, there is no additional lightning at all. The higher the value, the bigger area is lightened.
Phong rim scale
A coefficient setting brightness of the additionally lightened rim at the edges of an object, where incident light is perpendicular to surface being lit. By the minimum value of 0, there is no additional lightning of the Phong shading rim at all. The higher the value, the brighter the edges are lightened.
Anisotropy angle
A coefficient modifying the main angle determining direction of the anisotropy reflective highlight. The angle in range from 0 to 180 degrees determines a clockwise rotation of the reflective highlight.
Anisotropy scale
A coefficient controlling the anisotropy strength and thus the shape of the reflective highlight. By the minimum value of 0, the material shows no anisotropic properties. Phong shading is applied instead. The higher the value, the higher the material anisotropy and reflections from the surface are narrower.
Fresnel bias
A coefficient to compensate for the Fresnel effect and set the minimum necessary reflectance level. By the minimum value of 0, there is no compensation for the Fresnel effect. Increasing the value leads to more prominent overall reflections. By the maximum value of 1, reflections are at their maximum and the Fresnel power parameter does not influence the rendered image.
Fresnel power
A coefficient to scale Fresnel effect that defines the amount of reflectance depending on the viewing angle. Low values provide good reflectance even at a large viewing angles. High values provide the reflectance only at a small viewing angles. When looking at a large viewing angle, from above, there are no reflections rendered.