Change the surface of an object

A material decides how much of your light a surface sends back, how sharply, and in what colour. That is not cosmetics: a glossy black table under a beauty dish is a different instrument from a matte one. By the end of this page you can recolour any part of any object, judge Shine and Metallic by what they do to the picture, and match an exact colour.

Applies to BASIC, STUDIO, CINEMA · You need: a project open on the SETUP tab and an object selected.

Where to find it

Select the object; the group differs by what it is.

Object	Group
Prop	Settings, one block per material group
Basic shape	Color
Room	Color — Ceiling, Wall, Floor, each with Shine, plus Floor Texture
Background	Color
Floor object	Material
Wall element	Presets → Image Template, and Color
Picture wall	Material — see Use a picture wall
Imported object	in the importer — see Shaders and textures of an imported object

Three systems sit behind that list, and they do not offer the same things:

System	Controls	What can be keyframed
Prop material group	Color, and where the model allows it Shine, Metallic and a material list	Color only
Basic shape	Color, Shine, Metallic	all three
Imported object	five shaders with colour, normal, gloss, metallic and transparency maps	none of them

How to recolour part of a prop

A prop is split into material groups — the frame and the cushions of a chair, the body and the glass of a car — and each group appears on its own in Settings.

1. If the group carries a material list, open it first and pick the material. → Choosing one on a floor also writes that material’s own colour and shine, so doing it first saves work.
2. Click the colour swatch of the group and set the colour.
3. Set Shine, and Metallic where the model offers it.

A material list only appears where the model allows that slot to be swapped, which is rare: 25 of the 298 props have one. If you see a colour swatch and nothing else, that surface has no alternatives — change its colour and its shine instead. The eye button in front of a group hides that part altogether, and the fields of a hidden group grey out.

What Shine does

Shine (0–1) runs from dead matte to a mirror finish. Judge it by the specular highlight, not by the swatch: the size and the shape of the highlight is what tells a viewer whether a surface is lacquered, satin or matte. Almost all of the visible change sits above 0.5 — below it the highlight stays broad and dull, so work in the upper half of the slider.

What Metallic does

Metallic (0–1) turns a painted surface into bare metal. A metallic surface stops having a colour of its own and shows your light shapers instead, which is why a metal prop under a bare head looks dull no matter how much power you add. The fix is a bigger or better-placed source, not more light.

Walls and floors are lighting instruments

Every surface in the set bounces. A coloured floor tints everything above it, a bright matte wall on the shadow side is fill, and a dark one is negative fill — all of it correct behaviour that happens in your real studio too. Change the material of a wall or a table before you add another light to fix contrast.

Thirty materials are available for wall elements and forty for floors, where the list also opens with No Texture for a plain colour. Both carry a Scale (0.4–2.5) that sets how large the pattern is tiled; a wall element adds Rotation.

Wall materials

Name
Basic 01
Bricks 01
Bricks 02
Bricks 03
Bricks 04
Bricks 05
Bricks 06
Bricks 07
Bricks 08
Bricks 09
Bricks 10
Bricks 11
Bricks 12
Bricks 13
Canvas 01
Concrete 01
Concrete 02
Concrete 03
Rust 01
Stone 01
Stone 02
Stone 03
Tiles 01
Tiles 02
Wood 01
Wood 02
Wood 03
Wood 04
Wood 05
Wood 06

How to pick an exact colour

Every colour swatch opens the same popup: a hue strip beside a saturation and brightness square, and under them a mode selector with three ways to type a value.

• Hex takes up to 7 characters, #RRGGBB — the field for a brand colour off a style guide.
• RGB takes three whole numbers from 0 to 255.
• HSB takes hue, saturation and brightness from 0 to 1.

Two swatches sit at the top left: the colour you started with and the one you are choosing. Click the left one to put the original back. Beside them are the four colours you used most recently.

Custom Colors at the bottom is your own palette: type a Name, click the add button, and the current colour is stored under that name for every project on this computer. Right-click a stored swatch and choose Delete Color to remove it.

Images you bring in yourself

Three image libraries take files of your own. What you may bring in and what the program keeps are two different things:

Library	What you may bring in	What is kept
Picture wall	JPG, JPEG, PNG, TGA, TIF, TIFF up to 8192 px per edge (BASIC: JPG and JPEG only)	at most 2048 px on the long edge
Projector slide	the same formats and limit	at most 2048 px on the long edge
Gobo mask	the same formats and limit	512 × 512 px, converted to greyscale

An image that a project already carries is re-limited to 4096 px per edge as the project loads. The note in the import dialog quotes the stored size rather than the file size you may pick, so bring in the best file you have and let the program scale it. (BASIC) Each library holds at most 7 images of your own, and gobos are not available at all.

Tips & limits

• On a prop, Shine and Metallic hold still through an animation; only Color takes keyframes. Use a basic shape when a surface has to change on camera.
• More props offer Shine in 3.1.14 than before, and the range often starts at 0.3 rather than 0 — a model-specific floor, not a bug.

Troubleshooting

• My floor colour reset itself. Choosing a material applies that material’s own colour and shine. Pick the material first, then adjust.
• The colour fields of a part are greyed out. The group is hidden. Show it with its eye button.
• A prop offers a colour swatch and no material list. That slot cannot be swapped.

More symptoms: Objects, rooms and measurement problems

Related

• Props, basic shapes and mirrors
• Build a room, a background and a window
• Use a picture wall
• Shaders and textures of an imported object
• How light works in set.a.light 3D