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Edit a material

Click a tile in the Library and the panel under the grid shows its settings. A change shows on every part that wears the material.

Material panel for Steel with Metalness, Roughness, Transmission, Emission and Clearcoat sliders

The main settings

Setting What it does
Name The name on the tile.
Colour The base colour.
Metalness Runs from plastic to bare metal.
Roughness Runs from mirror to matte.
Transmission How see-through it is, high gives glass.
Emission Makes the material glow.
Clearcoat A shiny layer on top, like lacquer.
Thin film A soap bubble shimmer.
Highlight tint Colours the reflections, Clear sets them back to white.

Advanced opens Sheen and Anisotropy, and Scatter (mm) on glass.

Emission

The warning triangle beside Emission marks a heavy effect. Every glowing body adds lights and shadows, which can slow the view on a large model, so a thin bar under the slider shows the lights filling in.

  1. Lights other parts appears once Emission is above zero. Untick it to glow without lighting the parts around it.
  2. The glow spills light only while Bloom Amount, on the Environment tab, is above zero.

Glass

A see-through material that is not metal gets Glass settings.

  1. Water, Glass, Crystal and Diamond set how strongly it bends light. The IOR slider sets it by number.
  2. Thickness is how much glass the light passes through. It is auto, measured on each body, until you move it, and Auto sets it back.
  3. Dispersion splits the light into rainbow colours, it shows on thick glass.
  4. Tint colours the glass the deeper the light goes, Tint depth sets how deep.
  5. Roughness frosts the glass.

Performance mode, under Viewport in Preferences, draws glass as plain see-through.

Surface

Surface adds a pattern: Noise, Scratches, Brushed, Wear or Bands. None takes it off.

  1. Scale sets the size of the pattern, Amount its strength and Bump how raised it looks.
  2. Angle turns Scratches, Brushed and Bands.
  3. Tint and Tint amount colour the pattern.

Edit graph… builds a pattern of your own in the node editor. While a graph is set, the pattern chips are ignored.

None of this changes the shape. For a texture that prints, use Surface Texture.