The Material Editor

The material editor is visible on the right side of the workspace when an object is selected. Here you can apply & edit materials from the Brio library, or upload texture maps to build custom materials.

Materials are built up of multiple channels. Each channel controls a different surface characteristic, ie. colour or roughness. 

You can load an image (known as a map) into any channel. It will be used to alter a different aspect of the material’s appearance depending where you load it.

Colour & Diffuse Channels

The colour and diffuse channels blend to create the material colour. 

The colour add blends with the base colour. It can be used to create a tint.  

The base colour is set using the diffuse channel. Maps loaded into this channel define the colour and pattern of the material by applying the image to the object’s surface.

The diffuse level determines how sensitive the colour is to light. Reducing the diffuse level will create a darker appearance - when the diffuse level is 0, it will appear fully black. 

Light sensitivity is determined by the number of black or white pixels. Adding black pixels reduces the diffuse level, while white pixels have no effect. 

The colour channel and diffuse channels are linked, so if you add a colour overlay containing black pixels, it will decrease the diffuse level and darken the base colour. Setting the colour channel to white will leave the base colour unaffected.  

Normal

Normal maps fake the lighting on the surface of your material, to create the appearance of bumps and 3D textures. Moving the slider will change the strength of the map’s appearance.

Roughness

Increasing roughness creates a matte appearance, while decreasing makes the material appear more shiny. 

Metalness 

Materials with a 100% metalness setting behave like pure metals. Any setting between 0-100% can be used to create other effects, like rusted. 

Double Sided

Surfaces in 3D design software only have one visible face by default (if you create a billboard, you’ll notice it is invisible when viewed from the back). Turn the double-sided setting on if you need both sides to be visible. 

Triplanar projection

This means the texture maps will be applied 3 times in different directions across the object's surface and then blended to create a texture with no visible seams or stretching. 

Facet Shading

When this setting is turned on, the polygons in the model appear flat, and lighting is only evaluated once for each polygon. 

Offset

Moving the slider offsets the pattern of the texture map from its original position. This is useful if you need to fine-tune the placement of a pattern on a surface. 

Rotation

Rotates the surface placement of the texture up to 360 degrees. 

Tiling

Repeats the texture by creating a seamless grid of tiles. This is useful if you need to cover a large surface without enlarging the texture.