mesh_base

A mesh_base material is a physically based material featuring PBR (physically-based rendering) and SSR (screen space reflections) technologies. It provides the realistic reflections and lighting model. The material is available in the Materials list and is used as the default one.

Options available in the States tab enable different features thus activating additional textures and their parameters.

The main thing about the PBR material is a workflow. There are two workflows for Unigine PBR materials: Metalness and Specular. The specular workflow works with the old standard of textures that was used in the mesh_base material (diffuse, specular, gloss). Metalness works with the new standard of textures (albedo, metalness, roughness).

We've kept the Specular workflow to make it easier to upgrade your projects that have the old texture standard.

We strongly recommend to use the Metalness workflow for creating materials in new projects as it uses a less number of texture channels, and material parameters of the Metalness workflow are more similar to material parameters of the real world.

By using the Workflow field you can specify the workflow of the material:

• Metalness — with the new standard of textures.
• Specular — with the old standard of textures.

Deferred Buffers option specifies if deferred buffers of the material should be filled.

Multiple Environment Probes option specifies if several environment probes affect a transparent object and map their cubemaps to this object. This option should be enabled for a transparent object to be affected by baked voxel GI.

Multiple Environment Probes is on	Multiple Environment Probes is off

Terrain Lerp allows marking material to make objects be covered by projected textures of the ObjectLandscapeTerrain or ObjectTerrainGlobal.

Terrain Lerp is off	Terrain Lerp is on

Emission 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 the option activates an additional emission texture.

Emission Texture#

Emission map stores 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.

Emission state disabled	Emission state enabled, with emission texture

The texture is 3-channeled.

• RGB values store information about a glowing color.

Emission Parameters#

Cross Section enables rendering of cross-sections of an object to which the material is applied (can be useful for complex CAD models).

A cross-section of the object is created by the near clipping plane of the camera (player) viewing frustum that cuts this object. If the camera's near clipping plane is oblique, you can change its obliqueness and, therefore, change transformation of the cross-section. All plane sections are highlighted with a color.

Cross Section Color#

Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) is a real-time imitation of the diffuse indirect light and its shadows.

Enabling the option activates the Ambient occlusion field that specifies which UV coordinates of the mesh will be used for textures.

Ambient Occlusion Texture#

Ambient occlusion (AO) texture modulates the global environment illumination, for example, when an object is lighter at the top from sky above, and darker at the bottom from the ground below.

Without AO texture	With AO texture

The texture uses only R channel.

Ambient Occlusion Parameters#

Auxiliary activates the auxiliary texture and parameters.

Auxiliary Texture#

Auxiliary Color#

The vertex color is a color assigned to each vertex of the 3D model in any third party 3D editor. After being imported to Unigine, such model can be used in a number of ways allowing you to reduce the amount of used texture and broaden the diversity of the final materials.

The Vertex color checkbox enables an additional Vertex color options field used for per channel modulation of the albedo, AO, emission, detail and auxiliary textures.

For the AO and detail textures, you can choose which texture channel (R, G, B or A) to use. For albedo, emission, and auxiliary textures, RGB channels are used simultaneously.

For example, using the vertex color of the albedo texture allows you to create a detail material. At the pictures below there is a model containing vertex colors (brown spotted). Left to right:

1. No texture is used, Vertex color is disabled.
2. No texture is used, Vertex color is enabled, the Albedo RGB mode is used.
3. The diffuse texture (light wood) is assigned, Vertex color is enabled, Albedo RGB mode is used.

The mesh_base material features a dynamic planar reflection technique for transparent materials (Alpha Blend, Additive, Multiplicative transparency presets). The reflecting power of the material depends on two parameters: metalness and roughness.

By using planar reflection options, you could create flat mirrors and flat dynamic reflective surfaces: parquet, flat varnished surfaces, etc.

The engine renders dynamic reflections for planar reflection by computing the position of the reflection camera. Reflection camera represents a camera on the other side of the reflective surface: the distance from reflector to camera is the same for real camera and reflection camera.

Planar reflections don't reflect each other: they render environment cubemap instead. Also, planar reflections miss post-effects.

To enable planar reflections for the transparent material, click the Planar Reflection checkbox (available for Alpha Blend, Additive, and Multiplicative transparency presets). After enabling the option, the additional Planar Reflection group becomes available. Ensure that the material has dynamic reflections. If not, tune the following parameters: Metalness and Roughness for metalness workflow, Microfiber and Gloss for specular workflow.

Map Size#

Two Sided#

Show Pivot#

Blur#

The Blur option enables blurring of the planar reflection texture making reflections look more plausible.

Blur disabled	Blur enabled

Planar Reflection Parameters#

The mesh_base material allows creating materials for vegetation foliage and stems. Enabling the Vegetation checkbox activates a set of additional animation and geometry parameters.

Animation#

Leaves#

Leaves specifies the way to render the leaves geometry:

• Disable — leaves are not rendered.

• Billboard — leaves are rendered as billboards that always face the camera. This is the most performance-friendly way of animating distant vegetation. Animation uses UV channel 2 of an object as follows: in the UV grid, [0,1] is the pivot point for the billboard's movements, and the billboard's size can be changed by scaling the polygon in the UV channel.

  If a billboard object uses the below UV map for animation, it would be represented by three objects rotating around their centers.

• Geometry UV-based — leaves are rendered as standard polygons. Animation uses UV channel 2 of an object as follows: in the UV grid, [0,1] is the pivot point for the object's movements and the stiffest part of the object, and towards [1,0], the object becomes more flexible.

  In the diagram below, the stiffest part of the object is against the white background, and the most flexible — against the blue background.

• Geometry Vertex Color based — leaves are rendered as standard polygons; vertex colors are used for animation. Vegetation movements are configured using RGB channels as follows:

  	Red channel is used for animation of smaller or peripheral parts of vegetation (leaves). Bright parts are animated, and dark parts are not animated.
  	Green channel is used to define the movement order for branches in order to desynchronize them. The movement sequence starts from the brightest element to the darkest.
  	Blue channel is used to define which parts of branches can be bent. Brigher parts indicate bendable portions, and darker parts — stiff portions.

Notice

If leaves are rendered, their animation is controlled by the animation parameters.

Examples#

Animation -> Enable Leaves -> Billboard	Animation -> Enable Leaves -> Geometry UV-based	Animation -> Enable Leaves -> Geometry Vertex Color based

Shadow Offset#

Vegetation Velocity#

Vegetation Parameters#

Animation Parameters#

Animation parameters are available on the Parameters tab if the Animation option is enabled.

Animation parameters, Parameters tab

• Stem Noise Scale — a coefficient to scale spatial noise that diversifies the movement direction of vegetation stems. This coefficient should be identical for the stem and the leaves that are related to this stem to synchronize their movement.

  

  Stem Noise Scale: 0.0, 0.5, and 1.0

• Stem Offset — a coefficient to scale an amplitude of horizontal movement for the vegetation stem. This coefficient should be identical for the stem and the leaves that are related to this stem to synchronize their movement.

  

  Stem Offset: 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5

• Stem Radius — a coefficient to scale an amplitude of vertical movement for the vegetation stem. This coefficient should be identical for the stem and the leaves that are related to this stem to synchronize their movement.

  

  Stem Radius: 0.0, 5.0, and 10.0

• Stem Animation Speed — a coefficient to scale the speed of stem movements. This coefficient should be identical for the stem and the leaves that are related to this stem to synchronize their movement.

  

  Stem Animation Speed: 0.0, 4.0, and 8.0
• Field Mask — a mask that specifies an area of the animation field to be applied to stems and leaves (if rendered). This mask must match the field mask of the animation field.
  Notice

  The Field Mask parameter is available only if the Animation state is set to Field.

If leaves are rendered, the following animation parameters are also available:

Animation parameters, Parameters tab

• Leaves Noise Scale — a coefficient to randomize the orientation and direction of rotation for leaves (seen only on several nodes with the same material). By the minimum value of 0, all leaves are synchronized in their movement. Higher values make leaves randomly move in different directions.

  Leaves Noise Scale: 50.0	Leaves Noise Scale: 1.0, 10.0, and 20.0	Leaves Noise Scale: 0.0 and 3.0

• Leaves Offset — a coefficient to scale leaves rotation amplitude. By the minimum value of 0, leaves do not move at all. Higher values make leaves move with a greater amplitude.

  Leaves Offset: 1.785	Leaves Offset: 0.06, 0.08, and 0.1	Leaves Offset: 0.05 and 0.1

• Leaves Animation Speed — a coefficient to scale the speed of leaves rotation. By the minimum value of 0, leaves do not move at all. Higher values make leaves move faster.

  Leaves Animation Speed: 0.765 and 2.287	Leaves Animation Speed: 0.0, 1.0, and 4.0	Leaves Animation Speed: 2.0 and 5.0

• Branch Offset — a coefficient to scale the rotation amplitude for a whole branch. Available for the vertex color based geometry only.

  

  Branch Offset: 0.1 and 0.3

• Branch Animation Speed — a coefficient to scale the rotation speed for a whole branch. Available for the vertex color based geometry only.

  

  Branch Animation Speed: 3.0 and 8.0

Shadow Offset#

Shadow offset, Parameters tab

The parameter sets an offset of leaves shadows. Available in the Parameters tab when the Shadow Offset option is enabled.

Shadow offset = 0.0	Shadow offset = 0.1

Mip bias activates an additional Mip Bias parameter. It is used to adjust MIP mapping.

Mip Bias Parameter#

2D noise enables a spatial color noise based on a 2D texture. Enabling the option activates the following texture and parameters:

2D Noise Texture#

2D Noise Parameters#

2D noise parameters

Intensity#

Noise texture intensity. By the maximum value of 1, the color noise is fully visible.

Intensity = 0.0	Intensity = 0.5	Intensity = 1.0

UV Transform#

Noise texture native coordinates transformation represented by a vector of the four float components.

3D noise specifies if additional spatial noise and color gradient textures will be added. These textures add a random color variation to leaves.

Disabled 3D noise	Enabled 3D noise

Enabling the option activates the following textures and parameters:

3D Noise Textures#

3D Noise Parameters#

Intensity#

Noise texture intensity. By the maximum value of 1, the color noise is fully visible.

Intensity = 0.0	Intensity = 0.5	Intensity = 1.0

UV Transform#

Noise texture native coordinates transformation along X, Y and Z axes. A vector of the three float components:

• By high values, color blobs are small in size (for example, several blobs per leaf). Tiles of the spatial noise texture are small and repeat often
• By low values, color blobs are big (for example, several blobs for the whole tree). Tiles of the spatial noise texture are big and repeat a few times

UV transform = vec3(0.1)	UV transform = vec3(0.01)

Detail rendering activates a set of textures (diffuse, normal, specular for the Specular workflow; albedo, normal and shading for Metalness workflow) to form a material layer. It is applied for bringing detailing to the material.

Available options are (when the state is enabled):

• Blending — the type of the detail material blending.
  • Alpha blend — an alpha blending mode.
  • Overlay - depending on the base texture (diffuse or albedo) color, the base and detail textures 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.
  • Multiply — the base texture (diffuse or albedo) color is multiplied by the detail texture color, resulting in darker colors. White pixels are not effected at all.
    Notice

    If detail textures are not visible enough in the resulting image, try increasing its color scale parameter (Diffuse or Albedo).

  Alpha blending mode	Overlay mode	Multiply mode

• Angle fade — detail angle fade.
  • Disable — disable overlapping of the base material.
  • Object transform (overlap) — overlap the base material by using the object transformation (detail textures will be rotated with the mesh). This option can be used to create stone material with moss, rust and corrosion atop.

    Base albedo texture	Detail albedo texture

  • World transform (overlap) — overlap the base textures by using the world transformation (no matter if you rotate the object, the detail textures will always be projected atop). This option can be used to create stone material with moss, rust and corrosion atop.

    Base albedo texture	Detail albedo texture

    Notice

    These two overlap options (Overlap (object transform) and Overlap (world transform)) replaced the old mesh_overlap_base material.
• Mask — a flag indicating that a texture mask is used for blending base and detail materials selectively (the detail textures will be shown according to the mask).
  Notice

  This option replaced the old mesh_layer_base material.
  Enabling the mask activates the Detail mask field that specifies which UV coordinates of the mesh will be used for the detail mask.
• Normal Substitute — enabling this flag makes the detail normal texture overlap the base normal texture. If disabled, the base and detail normal maps are combined.

  

Enables use of procedural effects: SSBevel and SSDirt.

SSBevel enables rendering of the screen-space bevels for the material.

Procedural Texture#

SSBevel Parameters#

SSDirt enables rendering of the SSDirt effect for the material, allowing you to simulate worn scratched edges and accumulation of dirt and dust in cavities.

This effect uses the Procedural texture described above.

SSDirt Parameters#

Normal map specifies the type of normal mapping that is used for a model.

• Object space normal maps are characterized by their full spectrum (rainbow-colored) appearance. They are used for meshes vertices of which cannot be deformed (the model must remain in its original orientation). Object space normals are best for things that can move, but cannot be deformed, like walls, doors, cars, weapons, etc. It's easier to generate high-quality curvature because object space normal map completely ignores crude smoothing of the low-poly vertex normals.
• Tangent space normal maps are easily recognized by their mostly blue appearance. Tangent Space normal maps can be rotated and deformed, therefore they are ideal for characters or objects that need to have vertex deformation, like water or tree limbs.

Opacity map indicates the alpha channel of which texture to use:

• Main - use the alpha channel of the main (albedo or diffuse, depending on the current workflow) texture.
• Normal - use the B channel of the normal map.

Lightmap Cubic Filtering enables cubic filtering for the lightmap assigned to the surface, if any. If disabled, linear filtering for the lightmap is used.

Specular map enables using a specular texture channel of the shading texture as a specular multiplier.

Specular AA enables anti-aliasing of specular highlights. This anti-aliasing is performed by increasing roughness at places where normals change their orientation. Geometry of the model is used, the normal map is not required.

Specular AA Parameters#

When the Metalness workflow is used, the Microfiber state activates the microfiber texture channel in the shading texture.

When the Specular workflow is used, the Microfiber state activates the microfiber texture.

In the example below, on the first picture, only a part of the mesh is napped according to the microfiber texture. On the second picture, the whole mesh is napped as the microfiber texture doesn't define otherwise.

Microfiber state enabled	Microfiber state disabled

Translucent map activates an additional translucent texture.

Translucent Texture#

Translucent texture stores information on material's translucency. For example, by using this texture, it is possible to specify parts of the object that aren't translucent (the Translucent parameter won't affect them).

The texture is single-channeled.

In the example below, the following texture is used:

Translucent texture

Translucence is disabled	Translucent = 1.0, no translucent texture is used	Translucent = 1.0, translucent texture is set

The texture can be used, for example, to specify non-translucent areas of vegetation:

Translucence is disabled	Translucent = 1.0, no translucent texture is used	Translucent = 1.0, translucent texture is set

Translucence is disabled	Translucent = 1.0, no translucent texture is used	Translucent = 1.0, translucent texture is set

Displacement includes the following options:

• Parallax Occlusion Mapping
• Tessellated Displacement
• Tessellated Vector Displacement

Parallax Occlusion Mapping#

Parallax Occlusion enables the parallax effect that provides a convex relief based on a parallax (height) texture.

Disabled Parallax Occlusion	Enabled Parallax Occlusion

Available options are:

Parallax options

• Depth cutout - apply the depth cutout effect that provides smooth connection of the object with the real mesh. The option enables to make a plane looks like real geometry. Also, the depth cutout effect improves the SSAO calculation on surfaces with parallax maps.

  Disabled Depth cutout	Enabled Depth cutout

• Cutout - apply the cutout effect that provides smooth edges between the opaque and transparent areas.
  Notice

  This effect works correctly only when mesh edges match the UV edges.

  Disabled Cutout	Enabled Cutout

Parallax Texture#

Parallax map stores information about per-pixel parallax displacement.

The texture uses only R channel:

• White color indicates that the pixels are not displaced.
• Black color indicates that the pixels will be depressed farthest away.

Parallax Parameters#

Parallax parameters

Parallax Height#

Height is a coefficient to scale the power of the parallax texture displacements. The higher the value, the bigger the normals are.

Height = 0.01	Height = 0.03	Height = 0.05

Min Layers#

Min layers parameter specifies the minimum step of the parallax mapping.

Max Layers#

Max layers parameter specifies the maximum step of the parallax mapping.

Noise#

Noise parameter specifies the size of the noise used for parallax mapping. The higher the value, the less visible the layers.

Cutout UV Transform#

Parallax texture coordinates transformation.

Notice

The parameter is available if the Cutout option is enabled.

Tessellated Displacement#

Tessellated Displacement provides a true convex relief by enabling Adaptive Hardware-accelerated Tessellation that subdivides lower-polygon surfaces into finer meshes, which are displaced along the local surface normal based on a Displacement (height) texture.

Disabled Tessellated Displacement	Enabled Tessellated Displacement
Disabled Tessellated Displacement (wireframe)	Enabled Tessellated Displacement (wireframe)

Authoring Tips#

Tessellation is intended to add extruded details (spikes and indentations, fine embossed details) rather than drastically change the relief of the coarse mesh. Tessellated Displacement does not affect vertex normals and texture coordinates, so extreme extrusion makes it prone to noticeable visual artifacts, such as texture stretching and inaccurate lighting.

Notice

Please note that tessellated polygons do not take part in intersection and collision detection.

The displacement is applied along the surface normal so tessellated meshes composed of separate parts with hard edges are prone to cracking. To avoid such artifacts, it is recommended to make sure the portions share vertices and edges and have smooth or matching tangents. Another solution would be to create additional polygons that will cover cracked areas from the inside.

Cracking on a box with separate faces

Also, displacement applied to polygons from divergent UV shells results in small yet noticeable inconsistency. A decent solution is to paint similar color values on adjacent pixels of divergent UV shells to make sure the Displacement texture doesn't change on junctions.

Displacement map cracking

The Displacement effect is bound to the scale of the node, so be careful when dealing with meshes that have different scale but share the same material with Tessellated Displacement enabled. Once combined for optimization purposes, the tessellation scale on such meshes may become significantly different. So such meshes are to be treated separately.

The same displacement scale on combined scaled meshes

Tessellation Options#

Available options are:

Tessellation options

• Shadow - enable shadow casting from tessellated polygons. This option doubles the number of rendered tessellated polygons, so it is recommended to use it carefully.

  Disabled Shadow	Enabled Shadow

• Density Map - enable tessellation density control based on the Tessellation Density Map texture. Lighter pixels of the Density map indicate polygons that should be tessellated more densely.
  Notice

  The Density Map is sampled at vertices of the control mesh. If the darkened area is too small to cover control mesh vertices, it will not affect the final result.

  Disabled Density Map	Enabled Density Map

Displacement Texture#

Displacement Texture (height map) stores information about per-pixel Tessellated Displacement.

The texture uses only R channel:

• White color indicates that the pixels will be extruded farthest out.
• Black color indicates that the pixels will be depressed farthest away.

Best Practice

For better quality, it is recommended to use a normalized displacement texture, so black pixels correspond to the most depressed areas and white pixels correspond to the most extruded areas.

Unnormalized displacement texture	Normalized displacement texture

Tessellation Density Map#

Tessellation Density Map stores information about areas that should be tessellated more densely.

The texture uses only R channel:

• White color corresponds to the maximum tessellation density.
• Black color corrseponds to the minimum tessellation density.

An example of density map

Tessellation Displacement Parameters#

Tessellation Displacement parameters

Smoothness#

Smoothness is a coefficient of Phong smoothing of tessellated polygons to get rid of blocky look. Note that normals of vertices are not modified.

Smoothness = 0.0	Smoothness = 1.0

Scale#

Scale parameter specifies the intensity of displacement in units.

Scale = 0.1	Scale = 0.4

Mid Point#

Mid Point parameter defines the origin color value of the Displacement texture. For example, the value of 0.5 means that grey pixels will not be affected and lighter and darker pixels will be displaced.

Texture Exponent#

Texture Exponent parameter specifies the gamma of the Displacement texture.

Shadow Offset#

Shadow Offset sets an offset of shadows for fine-tuning.

• Higher values move shadow polygons farther from the light source.
• Lower values move shadow polygons closer to the light source.

Tessellation Density Parameters#

Tessellation Density parameters

Factor#

Factor is a coefficient of tessellation intensity. The higher the value, the more dense the mesh will be.

Factor = 0.1	Factor = 0.5

Density#

Density is coefficient for subpixel reduction of polygons. The value of 1 corresponds to the highest mesh density defined by the Factor parameter.

Notice

Although lower values help significantly reduce the number of polygons and improve the performance, be careful as visual artifacts may appear when the camera moves. To get rid of wiggling and keep the small number of polygons, it is recommended to increase the Density and decrease the Factor values.

Density = 0.1; Factor = 0.5	Density = 1.0; Factor = 0.5

Shadow Factor#

Factor is a coefficient of tessellation intensity for shadow polygons. The higher the value, the more dense the mesh will be.

Notice

The parameter is available if the Shadow option is enabled.

Shadow Density#

Density is coefficient for subpixel reduction of polygons. The value of 1 corresponds to the highest mesh density defined by the Shadow Factor parameter.

Notice

The parameter is available if the Shadow option is enabled.

Tessellation Distance Falloff Parameters#

Tessellation Distance Falloff

The following parameters define the tessellation falloff with the distance for optimization purposes.

Tessellation Distance Falloff parameters

Near#

Near parameter specifies the distance in units from the camera where tessellation falloff starts.

Far#

Far parameter specifies the distance of tessellation falloff. Thus, there will be no tessellation effect at the distance of Near + Far units.

Exp#

Exp parameter determines how fast the tessellation intensity decreases with the distance.

Max Mip#

Max Mip parameter specifies the maximum allowed mipmap level of the Displacement texture to avoid losing tessellation details with the distance.

Tessellation Culling Parameters#

The following group of parameters determines the operation of backface tessellation culling optimization.

Tessellation Culling parameters

Near#

Near parameter specifies the distance in units from the camera where tessellation culling starts working.

Back Face#

Back Face parameter determines the angle between the camera and a polygon of the control mesh, at which this polygon is not tessellated.

Back Face = 0.0	Back Face = 1.0

Screen Border#

Screen Border parameter specifies the screen border offset to prevent undesired culling of tessellated polygons outside the screen.

Shadow Back Face#

Shadow Back Face parameter determines the angle between the camera and a shadow polygon of the control mesh, at which this polygon is not tessellated.

Notice

The parameter is available if the Shadow option is enabled.

Shadow Screen Border#

Shadow Screen Border parameter specifies the screen border offset to prevent undesired culling of tessellated shadow polygons outside the screen.

Notice

The parameter is available if the Shadow option is enabled.

Tessellated Vector Displacement#

Calculate tangent space enables calculating the tangent space in the shader. It can be used for materials applied to geometry with incorrect tangents or to geometry without tangents.

If enabled, Normals Rotated to Camera makes all normals of the surface oriented towards the camera ignoring the geometry normals. This option can be used for vegetation to make the fact that leaves and grass blades are composed of polygons less noticeable.

Backside Normal enables you to choose the orientation of normals for the back sides of polygons.

Available options are:

• To Back Side - when seen from the back, the polygon is lit normally according to the normal of the back side.
• To Front Side - the back side of the polygon is lit the same way as the front side, creating an effect of a thin translucent material.

Geometry inflation allows you to apply an additional visual effect without real geometry changing. By using this option, you can create wires and balloons by specifying the type of inflation.

Available options are:

• Disabled - disables geometry inflation.
• Wire - wire type. It will bloat the geometry normals to provide more realistic wire depending on the distance to the mesh.
• Balloon - balloon type. It bloats the geometry by specified constant.

Geometry Inflation Parameters#