Material Creation and Texture Importing

Material Types and Material Editing will undergo major changes with upcoming updates. This documentation will be expanded when more solid systems are in place.

Material Creation

Just like Mesh Import button, the Create Material button is located in the Material Container on the left edge of the UI. Unlike Mesh Import button, by default Create Material button is disabled until a mesh or a specific material slot is selected, either in the viewport or through the Mesh Settings panel on the right. This is because newly created materials are visualized directly on the mesh surface in real-time, to be able to observe adjustment changes of Material Parameters.

Upon clicking Create Material, a Material Creation UI appears with the following settings:

• Custom Material Name input – Sets a name to the newly created material.
• Material Type dropdown – Determines the visual and physically accurate light bouncing behavior of the material (e.g. metallic, translucent, emissive). Each Material Type can be used for specific need with various sets of parameters.
• Two-Sided Rendering checkbox – When enabled, the material is rendered on both sides of the mesh surface. By default, materials are rendered One-Sided, meaning only surfaces facing outward (with outward-facing normals) are visible. Two-Sided rendering ensures that both front and back sides of the surface are visible, which is useful for Plane based geometries like leaves, curtains, or cloth.

Each of the above settings from the Material Creation UI can be edited at any time in the Material Parameters panel.

Material Types

Each material type supports different rendering characteristics and use cases:

• RoughnessMetallic – Standard PBR material used for most surfaces, from rough stone to shiny metals.
• Opacity Mask – Used to create material cutouts based on Opacity Mask Texture maps. Masks cut out parts of the material, where the black areas of the mask become invisible. This material type is useful for foliage like grass and leaves.
• Translucent – Offers partial transparency and light scattering based on Index of Refraction (IOR) for glass, plastic, or thin curtains.
• Emissive – Emits light from the surface itself, useful for LEDs, screens, and glowing objects.
• Fabric – Specialized shading for cloth-like materials using Fresnel Effect differing reflectance on a surface depending on viewing angle.
• Subsurface – Simulates subsurface scattering for materials like foliage, skin or wax. This effect allows light to penetrate the surface slightly and scatter beneath it before exiting, mimicking how light behaves in organic or semi-translucent materials for a softer, more natural look.

Material Creation and Editing

Materials can be Created or Edited using various parameters depending on the Material Type that’s being adjusted. While we try to keep parameters intuitive by having as many similarities across different types, there are some unique parameters within each Material Type to define their physically accurate properties. Material Types and One-Sided or Two-Sided Rendering can be adjusted in real time at any point during material creation or editing, regardless of the initial Material Creation UI choice, which offers greater flexibility.

Along with parameter sliders and values, we also support texture map inputs. Clicking on a texture input tile opens the Windows Explorer to browse and select a file.

Currently supported image formats for texture map imports are .PNG and .JPG.

For best visual results, it is recommended to use .PNG for normal maps. Using .JPG may cause rendering artifacts.

At the bottom of the panel, a few core actions are available:

• Create New – Creates a new material. However, if the user is currently editing a previously saved material, this button creates a new instance using the adjusted parameter values. This is useful for quickly creating material variations from an existing base (e.g. changing only color or roughness).
• Update Material – Available only when editing an already saved material. This applies the new parameter values to update the material in the Material Container (library).
• Quick Material – Creates a one-off material that is used only within the current project and is not saved globally to the Material Container. This is useful for temporary adjustments or unique scene materials. Quick Materials can also be exported for presentations in Omniarch Explorer.

Material Parameters

Material Parameters will undergo many changes in the coming updates. This documentations will be expanded when more solid systems are in place.

Texture Control

Texture Control adjusts offset or tiling of the texture maps with the following parameters:

• Movement Horizontal – Shifts the texture left or right across the surface.
• Movement Vertical – Moves the texture up or down.
• Rotation Angle – Rotates the texture around its center point.
• Scale – Uniformly scales the texture size across both axes.
• Scale Horizontal – Scales the texture width independently.
• Scale Vertical – Scales the texture height independently.

Triplanar Projection

The Triplanar Projection option automatically projects textures from three axis (X, Y, and Z) simultaneously, blending them at the seams. This approach minimizes visible stretching and seams commonly seen with poor or missing UVs. Triplanar Projection in Omniarch is World Aligned, meaning textures are fixed to the world position rather than to the mesh’s UV layout.

While not as flexible, Triplanar Projection offers a great solution for meshes that have broken or undefined UVs. It also serves great for terrain meshes.