Imported materials: every control

Table of Content

This page lists every control a material of an imported 3D object offers, with its range and the value it starts at. What the controls are for, and how to choose between them, is in Shaders and textures of an imported object.

Applies to BASIC, STUDIO, CINEMA · Needs the 3D Import add-on (included in the CINEMA trial).

Which groups each shader shows

A material shows the groups its shader has. A control that seems to be missing usually belongs to another shader.

Group Standard Transparent Cutout Hair Glass
Shader button yes yes yes yes yes
Refraction, Absorption – – – – yes
Color yes yes yes yes yes
Normals yes yes yes yes yes
Shine yes yes yes yes yes
Metallic yes yes yes yes –
Transparency – yes yes yes –
Threshold (inside Transparency) – – yes – –
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Every control

Group Setting Range Starts at What it changes
Shader the button in the Material group Standard, Transparent, Cutout, Hair, Glass Standard Which groups the material shows and how light behaves on it.
Shader Refraction on / off on Whether light is bent as it passes through the glass. Glass only.
Shader Absorption 0 – 4, logarithmic — How much colour the glass swallows per unit of thickness. Glass only.
Color texture any image in the colour shelf the map from the file, if there was one The colour of the surface.
Color Scale any number 1 How often the map repeats across the surface.
Color Color colour swatch white, or the colour written in the file Tints the map; with no map it is the colour.
Normals texture any image in the normals shelf the map from the file The small bumps of the surface.
Normals Scale any number 1 Tiling of the normal map.
Normals Intensity 0 – 2 1 How deep the bumps read.
Normals Invert Y on / off off Flips the vertical direction of the map.
Shine texture any image in the gloss shelf the map from the file Where the surface is shiny.
Shine Scale any number 1 Tiling of the gloss map.
Shine Texture Type Smoothness, Roughness Smoothness How the map is read. The two run in opposite directions.
Shine Shine Texture 0 – 1 1 How strongly the map is weighed.
Shine Shine 0 – 1 0.25 The overall gloss of the material.
Metallic texture any image in the metal shelf the map from the file Which parts behave as metal.
Metallic Scale any number 1 Tiling of the metal map.
Metallic Metallic 0 – 1 0, or 1 when the file brought a metal map How metallic the material is.
Transparency texture any image in the opacity shelf the map from the file The mask that decides what you see through.
Transparency Scale any number 1 Tiling of the mask.
Transparency Transparency 0 – 1 0 How much of the surface you see through. 0 is opaque.
Transparency Threshold 0 – 1 0.1 The grey value at which a Cutout mask cuts. Cutout only.

Absorption runs on a logarithmic scale, so the slider position has no unit to print and it starts outside its own range. Set it by eye: move it to the middle and judge the edge of the glass, where the light travels through the most material.

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What a fresh import sets

A material that brings nothing with it arrives as Standard, with Shine at 0.25, Texture Type on Smoothness, Shine Texture at 1, Metallic at 0, Transparency at 0 and Threshold at 0.1. Every Scale starts at 1.

Four things in the file change that:

What the file carries What the import does
An opacity map The shader is set to Cutout.
A gloss or roughness map Shine is set to 1, so the map alone decides the gloss.
A metal map, including the metal half of a packed map Metallic is set to 1, so the map alone decides it. A metallic value written in the file overrides that.
A map whose file name contains rough or smooth Texture Type is set accordingly — unless the file already says which it is. A packed map is always read as Roughness.

So a PBR model from a marketplace usually arrives with Metallic at 1 and a map in the slot, not at 0.

A packed file that keeps roughness and metal in one image is unpacked into the two slots: the green channel becomes the gloss map, the blue channel the metal map.

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How a texture is stored

Images are accepted up to 8192 px on an edge and are then reduced to the size of their slot and compressed. Gloss, metal and opacity maps are kept as grey values; a coloured image is averaged down to one.

Slot Accepted Stored at Kept as
Color up to 8192 px up to 4096 px colour
Normals up to 8192 px up to 4096 px colour
Transparency up to 8192 px up to 4096 px grey
Shine up to 8192 px up to 2048 px grey
Metallic up to 8192 px up to 2048 px grey
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What does not come across

  • Self-illumination. A material that glows in your modelling program arrives unlit, and there is no slot or slider for it.
  • Shape animation (morph targets or blend shapes), animated materials, and parts that appear and disappear over time.
  • The original interpolation of animation keys: everything is played back in straight lines.
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The settings of a placed copy

A material lives in the library, but each copy standing in a set carries its own Color and Shine. Both are filled from the library material at the moment the copy is created, and they stay with that copy afterwards — so a colour you correct in the importer later does not reach a set that was built before. Set the two values on the copy, or place the object again.

Beside them, a placed copy has two settings of its own:

  • Width, Length and Height in the Size group — the size of this copy, in metres. They start at the size the import produced, and they can be linked so that the three keep their proportions.
  • Time in the Pose group — the moment inside the pose chosen there. It runs from the start of that clip to its end and is switched off while Base Pose is selected.

Neither of the two takes keyframes. Movement over a shot comes from clips on the timeline instead — see Pose and animate an imported object.

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Related

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Next step

To freeze an imported object in a pose or play its clips in a shot, continue with Pose and animate an imported object.

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