Material Templates

Stored in MaterialTemplates.blend, this is where the addon will look up node setups for each shader, copy it over to the material and fill it with textures and parameters.

Basics

Every material in the file is a template. Despite not needing to be attached to an object, it’s recommended to set up a dummy object to hold all the materials.

Every templates file should also have at least a FALLBACK material, which is used whenever a shader does not have its own template set up yet.

Example: The FALLBACK material setup for Shadow Generations

Node Setups

First and foremost, the addon accesses and modifies nodes by their name (not their label!), so make sure to correctly name nodes that interface with parameters and textures!

Every template must also include 4 UV map nodes named UV0 through UV3.

Parameter Nodes

Float and color parameters can be assigned to multiple different types of nodes:

• An RGB node

• A combine color node (in RGB mode)

• A combine XYZ node

• A value node (gets filled with the x/red value)

• A value node with the name followed by .w or .a (gets filled with the w/alpha value)

Boolean parameters can only be assigned to value node, which receives a 1 if the parameter is set to true, and otherwise a 0.

Texture Nodes

To properly make use of textures, you need to set up 3 nodes, of which their names need to end with the texture type name they are set up for.

example for a texture nodes setup

Important

If a shader has a texture type more than once, and you want to make use of the second or even third texture entry, you need to append the occurrance index to the end of the type.

For example, if you have 3 diffuse textures, the first one remains as is, while the second one uses diffuse1 and the third one uses diffuse2.

The Image node

An image texture node with the name Texture (e.g. Texture diffuse) for sampling the actual image.

Warning

Make sure to set the extension mode of the node to Extend!

The image node also has special behavior regarding its label: By default, images are loaded as regular sRGB images, which is often not desired. You can specify an “image type” by adding it to the start of a label and following it up with a ;.

Following texture types exist:

• sRGB: Color texture

• Linear: Non-color texture

• Normal: Normal map (will enable y-channel flipping on import/export)

For example: A normalmap texture would get an image texture node with the name Texture normal and the label Normal; Texture normal.

The “Has Texture” node

A value node with the name Has Texture (e.g. Has Texture diffuse), which receives a 1 if an image is provided, otherwise 0.

The UV Tiling node

A group node with the HEIO UV Tiling node tree and the name Tiling (e.g. Tiling diffuse) that gets connected to the image nodes vector input.

You can append the node tree it from any of the default target definitions by HEIO. It replaces the texture wrapping to make per-axis wrapping possible.