3D Materials

Kinetic gives you the choice between 4 types of materials to create and simulate any type of surface. From purely aesthetic materials to ultra realistic by way the interactive textures thanks to Substance by Adobe.

material panel

You can add a standard material by double clicking in the panel or choose which type to add by clicking on the add button in the toolbar at the bottom of the panel. In this toolbar you will find: a dynamic search field when you need to find a material by name, a button to select unused materials to clean up your project and a trash can button to delete the selected materials.

!Warning! The “select unsed” button only selects unused materials at the moment you click on it, if some materials are applied via a task, they may be selected.

Types

• Standard
• PBR
• MatCap
• Substance
  

Applying a material
Relationship with render surfaces

Types

Standard

This is the default material. It uses the Blinn-Phong model to compute reflections and shadowing of objects. It gives access to many parameters to create any kind of surface. In addition, these many maps allow you to customize the rendering of the objects in the scene as much as possible.

Settings

Ambiant	color of the object when there is little or no light on it
Diffuse	color of the object when illuminated
Specular	color of the direct reflexion of a light
Transparency	(0-100) overall object transparency
Shininess	the amount of gloss in the surface of objects
Proj. absorbance	(0-100) absorption rate of light received from projectors
Emissive	may or may not interact with the lights. If the option is enabled, the object has its full diffuse color

Maps

Instead of the basic parameters, you can use textures to define the different colors but also to modify the interactions with the lights of the scene. These maps can be activated/deactivated and a coefficient can be used to modify their action on the rendering of the material. To apply an image in one of the fields, simply drag and drop an image from your explorer directly into the field.

Diffuse	color of the object when illuminated
Specular	color of the direct reflexion of a light
Height	changes the geometry of the object
Shininess	the amount of gloss in the surface of objects
Opacity	object transparency by pixel
Normals	changes the normals of the object
Reflection	if this parameter is activated, the material will reflect the environment map on the object surface. If the parameter is positive it will generate reflection, but if it is negative it will produce refraction
Reflection mask	mask to limit reflection/refractions to certain areas
Ambiant occl	texture to add recalculated ambient occlusion
Emissive	allows the material to have areas that do not react to light and therefore have the full diffuse color

*The main supported image files are: PNG / JPG / BMP

!Warning! Like all other assets in your project, these images must be on the same hard drive as your project.

default material

applying a texture file to a material

PBR

PBR stands for “Physically Based Rendering”. This more complex material is used to get much more realistic rendering. However, it is more difficult to adjust, so it is strongly recommended to use directly the textures/images provided for this type of material rather than trying to set the parameters.

!Warning! This type of material is very dependent on the skybox applied in the scene. A large part of the light calculation is due to this environmental texture. See the section on the environment map for more details.

Settings

Base color	(or albedo) color of the diffuse reflection
Roughness	(0-100) surface roughness in percentage, this value will make the reflections sharp or blurred
Metalic	(0-100) defined whether the material behaves like a metal or not
Specular	(0-100) defined the reflectance information
Transparency	(0-100) overall object transparency
Proj. absorbance	(0-100) absorption rate of light received from projectors
Heightmap factor	factor to amplify the effect of the heightmap

Maps

Albedo	color of the diffuse reflection
Specular	defined the reflectance information
Height	changes the geometry of the object
Shininess	the amount of gloss in the surface of objects
Opacity	object transparency by pixel
Normals	changes the normals of the object
Metalic	grey level texture which defines the behaviour of the material as a metal or not
Roughness	grey level texture which defines the surface roughness, this texture will make the reflections sharp or blurred
Ambiant occl	texture to add recalculated ambient occlusion
Emissive	allows the material to have areas that do not react to light and therefore have the full diffuse color

default PBR settings
	albedo/metalic/roughness/normals

MatCap

MatCap means “material capture”, it is a complete material including illumination and reflections that you can apply to an object without the need for illumination and/or reflections. It is most often used for 3D sculpture.

A MatCap texture is mapped to the object normals in the camera view. Thus, as the camera moves around the object, reflections and lights move around your object. This very simple texture gives the final impression of a complex material.

This type of material can be handy, for example, when you don’t have time to set up lights or complex materials.

Settings

Transparency	(0-100) overall object transparency
Proj. absorbance	(0-100) absorption rate of light received from projectors
Fixed normals	fixed the normals in the view, can be used in certain cases

Maps

MatCap	square texture that defines the whole rendering (see examples below)
Normals	changes the normals of the object

Examples

Texture	Result
default matcap

Substance

Substance materials are from Substance Designer. They are in “sbsar” format and can be imported directly into Kinetic. The advantage of these materials is that they can be very complex but also dynamic, which makes them particularly effective in interactivity (all exposed parameters can be manipulated in the graph).

!Warning! This type of material is very dependent on the skybox applied in the scene. A large part of the light calculation is due to this environmental texture. See the section on the environment map for more details.

!Warning! Render size can seriously impact performance. Each change of parameter triggers a rendering of the material.

*The button allows you to drag and drop the parameter concerned into the graph.

Examples

metal bumpy squares

wool cellular woven striped

autumn leaves

Applying a material

The materials are applied on the instances of the different meshes. So you may have several instances of the same mesh with different materials.

Directly

When you select one or more instances in the view or in the scene panel, a “material” drop-down field is displayed allowing you to assign any material to your entire selection.

applying material via an instance

Drag/drop

To go faster, you can simply drag and drop your material into the view. If nothing is selected, the material will be applied to the instance where you dropped the mouse button. If multiple instances are selected, all of them will have the material applied to them.

Task

The last option to assign a material is to drag and drop an instance into a task and choose the “set material” action. From a drop down list you will see all available materials that can be assigned.

applying a material via a task

Relationship with render surfaces

Kinetic rendersurfaces can be used as textures in materials. Most often they are used as diffuse map in standard materials. To do this you must drag and drop a rendersurface from its panel into the desired field of the material.

By doing this you have the possibility to play any content (video, image, live,…) directly mapped on a 3D object.

applying a rendersurface to the diffuse channel

*You can drag and drop a rendersurface in the 3D view, the software will try to apply this texture to the diffuse channel of the material below the mouse drop.

Copyright © 2024 MODULO PI