Material maps

Every map is a pair: the image, and its options (tiling, offset, rotation, filtering, colour space, UV channel). Setting just the image is usually enough.

Which maps a material accepts depends on its type, so switching type can leave a map you set earlier unused.

The names below are what the material panel calls them; the last column is what a script or a patch node uses.

Map	What it is for	basic	standard	physical	toon	normal	chromakey	occluder	ref	In code
Ambient occlusion	baked contact shadow	✓	✓	✓	✓				✓	aoMap
Anisotropy	brushed-metal direction			✓						anisotropyMap
Baked light	baked lighting	✓	✓	✓	✓				✓	lightMap
Bump	height-based detail — prefer a normal map		✓	✓	✓	✓			✓	bumpMap
Clearcoat	where the lacquer sits			✓						clearcoatMap
Clearcoat normal	texture in the lacquer			✓						clearcoatNormalMap
Clearcoat roughness	how polished the lacquer is			✓						clearcoatRoughnessMap
Colour	the main colour image	✓	✓	✓	✓		✓		✓	map
Displacement	actually moves the surface		✓	✓	✓	✓				displacementMap
Emissive	which parts glow		✓	✓	✓					emissiveMap
Environment	reflections	✓	✓	✓						envMap
Iridescence	where the oil-slick effect appears			✓						iridescenceMap
Iridescence thickness	how strong it is			✓						iridescenceThicknessMap
Metalness	which parts are metal		✓	✓					✓	metalnessMap
Normal	surface detail without extra geometry		✓	✓	✓	✓			✓	normalMap
Opacity	transparency, taken from brightness	✓	✓	✓	✓				✓	alphaMap
Roughness	polished here, matte there		✓	✓					✓	roughnessMap
Sheen colour	the colour of fabric sheen			✓						sheenColorMap
Sheen roughness	how soft that sheen is			✓						sheenRoughnessMap
Specular	where it is shiny	✓								specularMap
Specular colour	the tint of reflections			✓						specularColorMap
Specular intensity	how reflective			✓						specularIntensityMap
Thickness	how thick the glass is			✓						thicknessMap
Toon gradient	the toon ramp				✓					gradientMap
Transmission	where light passes through			✓						transmissionMap

Some of these are stored but not drawn

Ambient occlusion, light, environment, bump, displacement and gradient maps are kept if you set them, but the renderer ignores them. Use a normal map instead of bump, and set the environment on the scene. The material panel warns you when you use one.

Mark data maps as data

A map carrying numbers rather than colour — roughness, metalness, a mask — must be marked as such in its colour-space option, or it is colour-corrected and the values come out wrong.

How to use them: Materials.