Refine PBR materials
You can refine a PBR material to change the PBR maps. You can also view the PBR material in different lighting conditions and shapes.
To enter the Refinements branch, in the Generations panel, hover over the PBR sphere and select the Refine icon.
Tip
You can also double-click the PBR sphere to enter the Refinements branch.
Preview the PBR material
To preview the PBR material:
- To switch between the PBR material view and the generated texture view, select the Material Preview or Artifact Prerview icon.
- To preview the PBR material in different map modes, select a preview button.
- To view the PBR material in different shapes, choose a shape from the shape selection controls.
- To view the PBR material in different environment, choose a lighting condition from the environment selection controls.
- To view the PBR material in different lighting conditions, use the Intensity slider to specify the intensity of the light source.
Edit the Preview settings
By default, vertex displacement is enabled for your PBR material. Vertex displacement is a method that controls the positions of a mesh's vertices through a shader. You can use vertex displacement to create effects such as water, distorted surfaces, terrain manipulation, explosions, fragmentation, and many more. However, if you don't need this effect, you can disable it to improve the performance of the PBR material.
To change the Preview settings:
- To tile the map, use the Tiling control to specify the Tile X and Tile Y coordinates.
- To offset the map, use the Offset control to specify the Offset X and Offset Y coordinates.
- To rotate the map, use the Rotation control to specify the rotation angle.
- To flip the map vertically, enable Flip Vertical.
- To flip the map horizontally, enable Flip Horizontal.
- To disable the vertex displacement, disable Vertex Displacement.
Edit the Maps settings
By default, the metallic and smoothness maps are enabled, which allows you to change the metallic or smoothness intensities of the material to more than 100%. However, you can disable them for certain materials that don't require them. For example, you might want to disable the metallic map for medals to get a better effect.
To change the Maps settings:
- To change the grayscale values of the material, move the Height slider. For more information about height mapping, refer to Heightmap.
- To change the metallic intensity of the material, move the Metallic slider. For more information about Metallic, refer to Metallic mode: Metallic Property.
- To change the smoothness intensity of the material, move the Smoothness slider. For more information about smoothness, refer to Smoothness.
- To disable the metallic map, disable Metallic. This allows you to change the metallic intensity to less than 100%.
- To disable the smoothness map, disable Smoothness. This allows you to change the smoothness intensity to less than 100%.