Materials

A material decides how a surface looks. Choose a material type, set up texture maps and reuse materials across your project.

Every field, with its range and default, is in the component reference. The texture maps each type accepts are listed in material maps.

Slots

A material component holds a list of slots, one material in each. On an imported model, the slots follow the model's parts (submeshes) in order: slot 1 paints the first part, slot 2 the second. That is how one chair can be both wood and fabric.

Objects you build from a primitive have one slot. That is usually all they need.

Moving a slot keeps its settings

You can reorder slots freely. A slot keeps its settings when you move it.

Choose a type

Type	Use it when
standard	you want a realistic look. Start with this one.
physical	you need glass, varnish, a clear coat or refraction
basic	you want flat colour that ignores lighting
toon	you want a cartoon look with bands of shading
normal	you are checking a surface for problems
chromakey	you have a video with a colour to remove, like a green screen
occluder	you want an invisible shape that hides things behind it
ref	you want to reuse a material saved as a resource

Each type has its own settings, so the panel shows more or fewer fields when you switch type.

Settings every type has

Setting	What it does
color	the base colour
opacity	0 to 1
transparent	must be on for opacity below 1 to have any effect
side	which faces are drawn: front, back or both
wireframe	draws the edges only
visible	whether it is drawn at all

Extra settings by type

Type	Extra settings
standard	metalness, roughness, emissive, emissiveIntensity
physical	all of the above, plus clearcoat, clearcoatRoughness, transmission, thickness, ior
toon	emissive, emissiveIntensity, and a gradient ramp
normal	flatShading, and no colour
chromakey	keyColor, similarity, smoothness, spill; transparent by default
occluder	only side

Start with roughness

If a surface looks wrong, change roughness first. Real surfaces are either bare metal or not, so metalness is usually 0 or 1. Values in between mostly look like a mistake.

Physical settings

• clearcoat adds a glossy layer on top: car paint, varnished wood, a phone screen.
• transmission with thickness and ior gives you glass and liquid. Light passes through the surface and bends instead of bouncing off.

They cost nothing until you use them

Left at their defaults, the physical settings add no work, so physical runs as fast as standard. Transmission does add real work, so use it only where it matters.

Texture maps

Each texture map is an image plus its options. Usually the image alone is enough. Use the options to fix a texture that repeats wrongly or looks stretched.

Option	What it controls
repeat, offset, center	how the texture repeats and where it sits
rotation	rotation, in degrees
wrapS, wrapT	repeat, clamp or mirror at the edges
magFilter, minFilter	how it looks up close and far away
anisotropy	1–16: sharpness when seen at a steep angle
generateMipmaps	smaller versions of the image for distance
colorSpace	how the image's values are read
channel	which set of texture coordinates (UV) to use, 0–3
flipY, premultiplyAlpha	orientation and transparency handling

Set the colour space correctly

Some images hold colour. Others hold numbers: roughness, a mask, a height map. The two must be read differently. With the wrong colour space on a roughness map, the surface looks slightly off, and it is hard to tell why. If a map is not a picture, treat it as data.

Reuse a material

Save a material once, then apply it to as many objects as you like.

1. Set up the material on one object and open it in Edit material.
2. Press Save to project. To use it in other projects too, press Save to team library.
3. On another object, click the two-arrows button on a material slot. The Material library opens.
4. Pick a tab — Project, Team or Creator Hub — and click a material.

Applying a material links the slot to it: the slot becomes a ref slot. A material from Team or Creator Hub is first copied into your project, and the slot links to that copy.

Change it once, and every object updates

All objects linked to one material look the same. If forty objects share it, you edit the saved material once, and all forty update. For an object that should look different, save and apply a separate material.

Occluder and chroma key

Occluder is an invisible shape that hides whatever is behind it. This is what makes AR content look like it is really there. Put an occluder where a real pillar stands, and your virtual content disappears behind the pillar.

Chroma key removes one colour from a video, like a green screen. A filmed person can then stand in your scene without a rectangle around them. To set it up:

1. Raise similarity until the background disappears.
2. Adjust smoothness to soften the edge.
3. Adjust spill to remove the green tint from the person's edges.

Material graphs

If no type gives you the look you need, build the material as a graph. The material you build yourself runs just as fast as a ready-made one — in the browser and in the app. → Material graphs

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Next: Physics — what makes objects solid and how they move.