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.

All lights influencing opaque objects are computed by means of deferred shading (and a forward shading for transparent objects only). The only rendering pass that can come separately from deferred is Auxiliary that is used for writing the contour of object with the specified material into an auxiliary color buffer. Detail information on the pass can be found here.

To enable the pass, check the Auxiliary option in the Options field of the States tab. This would enable the auxiliary texture and parameters.

You can optionally disable filling of the deferred buffers by disabling the Deferred buffers checkbox.

Emission is used to 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.

Without emission texture	With emission texture

The texture is 4-channeled:

1. RGB values store information about a glowing color.
2. An alpha (A) value stores a glow mask:
   • White color indicates that the area will be glowing.
   • Black color indicates that the area is not glowing.

Emission 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, metalness, roughness, AO, light map, emission and auxiliary textures.

For metalness, roughness and AO textures you can choose which texture channel (R, G, B or A) to use. For albedo, light map, emission and auxiliary textures RGB channels are used simultaneously. Besides, use can choose whether to use the environment cube map or not.

For example, using 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 has a dynamic planar reflection technique. The reflecting power of the material depends on some different materials 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 the planar reflections for the material, click Planar reflection checkbox. To come to effect, please ensure that the metalness shading parameter is not set to 0. After enabling the option, the additional Planar reflection field becomes available.

Map Size

TwoSided

Show Pivot

Planar Reflection Parameters

The mesh_base material allows you to create materials for vegetation crowns and trunks. Enabling the Vegetation checkbox activates a set of additional animation and geometry parameters.

Animation

Leaves

Angle Fade

Angle fade fades leaves by their alpha channel when the polygon is viewed from the side. When viewed from the front, it is rendered in its full color.

Disabled Angle fade	Enabled Angle fade

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

2D Noise Texture

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

Disabled Color noise	Enabled Color noise

Enabling the option activates the following textures and parameters:

3D Noise Texture

Color Gradient

Intensity

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

Transform = vec3(0.1)	Transform = vec3(0.01)

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

Available options are:

• Disabled - disables detail blending.
• 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).
• Lerp by mask - 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.
• Overlap (object transform) - 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

• Overlap (world transform) - 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.

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. The are used for models can be moved, but the vertices of the mesh cannot be deformed. Object space normals are best for things that can move, but cannot be deformed, like walls, doors, cars, weapons, etc.
• 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:

• Diffuse or albedo - use the alpha channel of the main (albedo or diffuse) texture.
• Normal - use the alpha channel of the normal map.

Light map activates an additional light map texture therefore specifying that the material will be rendered lit by it. Material color (diffuse or albedo) is multiplied by the light map and the ambient color.

Parallax mapping activates an additional parallax texture to obtain the parallax or cutout effect.

Available options are:

• Disabled - disabled.
• Default - apply a parallax effect that provides a convex relief based on a parallax (height) texture.

  Disabled Parallax mapping	Enabled Parallax mapping

• Silhouette Cutout - apply a cutout effect that provides hard edges between the opaque and transparent areas.

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.

These options specify which UV coordinates of the mesh will be used for textures.

Base Map

Detail Map

Ambient Occlusion Map

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.

Metalness Wokflow: Base Textures

Material window, Textures tab.

Albedo Texture

Albedo texture specifies the color of the surface.

Without albedo texture	With albedo texture

The texture is 4-channeled:

1. RGB values store color information.
2. An alpha (A) value stores transparency information:
   • White color indicates that the area will be visible.
   • Black color indicates that the area will be transparent.

Normal Map

Normal map stores height information required to achieve an effect of Normal Mapping (a technique creating the illusion of depth for adding details without using additional polygons). When calculating lighting of the surface, the mesh geometry is overridden by the normals value.

Without normal map	With normal map

The texture is 2-channeled:

1. RG values store two components of a surface normal.
2. B value is calculated based on the R and G values in run-time.

Metalness Texture

Metalness texture stores information about material's metalness and roughness in different channels:

1. R value stores information about material's metalness:
   • White pixels indicate that material is metal.
   • Black pixels indicate that material is dielectric.

   The whole applied texture channel is white	The applied texture channel is partially white (reflective areas) and black (non-reflective white splashes)

2. G value stores information about material's roughness:
   • White pixels indicate that material is rough.
   • Black pixels indicate that material is smooth.

   Without the applied texture channel	With the applied texture channel

Notice

Both Microfiber and AO textures are available in metalness and specular workflows.

Specular Wokflow: Base Textures

Detail Textures

Additional Textures

Microfiber Texture

Microfiber texture creates an effect of napped surface. The lighter the pixel, the more napped material will be.

Without microfiber texture	With microfiber texture

The texture uses only R channel.

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.

Lightmap Texture

Lightmap is a texture storing pre-computed light information. Usually is used for static objects. See the Lightmap article for more information.

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.

Transformation Parameters

The tiling and offset for the textures set are set in the Transform field of the Parameters tab.

• Base - base textures coordinates transformation.
• Detail - detail textures coordinates transformation.
• Detail mask - detail mask texture coordinates transformation.
• Parallax - parallax texture coordinates transformation.
• Balloon value - wire/balloon transformation coefficient.

Triplanar transform parameters:

• Base triplanar pow - a coefficient to scale the smoothness of interpolation between three projections.
  By the minimum value of 1, textures are interpolated as smoothly as possible.
  The higher the value, the more visible the line between projections and the narrower blended area is.
• Detail triplanar pow - a coefficient to scale the smoothness of interpolation between three projections.
  By the minimum value of 1, textures are interpolated as smoothly as possible.
  The higher the value, the more visible the line between projections and the narrower blended area is.

Texture Coordinates Transformation

Texture coordinates transformation parameter is a vector of four float components, consisting of two pairs of vector elements:

• Scale texture coordinates, along the 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 the 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.

Base Textures Shading Parameters

The group of parameters in the Shading tab contains options for base textures.

Metalness Workflow: Base Textures Shading Parameters

Albedo

Albedo is a multiplier of the base color of the surface provided by the albedo texture.

Different Albedo parameters for the white albedo texture

Metalness

Metalness is a multiplier of metalness.

Changing the Metalness parameter, from 0 to 1

Specular

Specular is 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.

Roughness

Roughness is a multiplier of the roughness of a surface.

Changing the Roughness parameter, from 0 to 1

Normal Intensity

Normal Intensity is an intensity of the relief of the normal map.

Changing the Normal parameter, from 0 to 1

Translucent

Translucent is a scale of the translucency effect, which permits light to pass through the object, but diffuses it so objects on the opposite side are not clearly visible.

Translucent = 0	Translucent = 1

Microfiber

Microfiber is a coefficient to scale the intensity of the microfiber (provided by a microfiber texture). The higher the value, the higher the microfiber texture effect is.

Decal Mask

Decal mask parameter specifies decal bit-mask. If the decal mask of the decal material matches the surface material, the decal will be projected.

Specular Worklow: Base Textures Shading Parameters

Diffuse

Diffuse defines the base color of the surface.

Specular

Specular is 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.

Gloss

Gloss is 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.

Normal Intensity

Normal intensity is 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.

Translucent

Translucent is a scale of the translucency effect, which permits light to pass through the object, but diffuses it so objects on the opposite side are not clearly visible.

Microfiber

Microfiber is a coefficient to scale the intensity of the microfiber (provided by a microfiber texture). The higher the value, the higher the microfiber texture effect is.

Decal Mask

Decal mask parameter specifies decal bit-mask. If the decal mask of the decal material matches the surface material, the decal will be projected.

Parallax

Parallax Height

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

Parallax Step

Parallax step parameter specifies the step of the parallax mapping.

Lightmap

Detail Textures Shading Parameters