Materials & Lighting

Give a shape depth and shine with bumps, roughness, metal, and a light you can aim.

A flat shape becomes a lit object when you give it a material: a few maps that describe its surface, plus a light. A plain ring becomes a gold frame. A painted panel becomes worn metal.

The maps#

Only Albedo is required.

Map Controls Think of it as
Albedo Base color The paint
Normal Which way the surface tilts Bumps and grooves
Roughness Matte to glossy Chalk vs polished
Metallic Metal or not Gold vs plastic

Advanced: Height, AO (contact shadow), Emissive (self-lit glow), and Opacity.

Build and light one#

Add a Material node. Wire paint or a Gradient Map into Albedo, a bump source into Normal. Roughness and Metallic have sliders until you wire a map. Metallic at 1 for gold or steel, 0 for anything else.

Node What it does
Material Bundle the maps.
Material Preview Live lit preview. Shift + Alt + drag on it, or click the gear on its title, to aim the light.
Material Light Bake the lit look into a plain image.
Material Blend Mix two materials, map by map.

Material Preview is for looking. For an ordinary image to cut out, composite, and export, wire the Material into Material Light instead. Its light has its own sliders, so set it there.

Bumps from a shape#

The quickest rounded, light-catching surface is Bevel. Wire Shape's Distance output into Bevel's Distance input, then Bevel's Normal into Material's Normal. The bevel follows the true curve, no stair-stepping.

Shape  --Distance-->  Bevel  --Normal-->  Material

Normal Intensity deepens the tilt.

Cut it out#

A lit material fills its whole frame. Alpha Merge takes color from the lit result and transparency from the shape. Drop Shadow after that reads the transparency and lays a soft shadow behind. Exports straight to a transparent PNG.

Export the maps#

Wire a Material into Image Exporter and it writes one file per map. Channel Names picks the naming: Plain, Substance, or Unreal.

Where to next#