The Materials tab

The Materials tab has up to three sections: the shared Textures pool, a Variants section for glTF files, and the Materials list. This page describes what the tab reports; Editing materials covers making changes.

Textures

The pool holds one row per unique image the file uses, deduplicated by file path, or by pixel content for embedded images that have no path. A material that shares a texture with three others contributes one row rather than four.

Each row reports the image's resolution and where it came from. A texture with a readable path names its file; one inside a container, such as an image embedded in a GLB or packaged inside a USDZ, is reported as embedded. Clicking a texture opens it in a preview panel at its own resolution.

Expanding a row shows a Used By list, holding the materials that bind the file and, for USD, the prims that read it. Selecting an entry opens that material's card or selects that prim.

For glTF, expanding a row also exposes the sampler: wrap modes, filtering, and the KHR_texture_transform offset, rotation, and scale.

For USD the row carries a Read As block. One image file is routinely read by several texture prims with different colour spaces, wrap modes, UV sets, channel selections, and scale and bias values. Facts that every reading agrees on are stated once, and where readings disagree, each row names which reading it describes.

Variants

glTF files that declare KHR_materials_variants get a Variants section listing each variant, with a control to add one. Selecting a variant switches which materials the viewport uses, and the Info tab carries the same picker.

Materials

Every material in the file gets a card, in the order the file declares them. A material stays listed even when nothing uses it, since reassignment, a variant switch, or a node deletion can leave a material unused.

Each card opens with the material's name and a row of chips summarizing what it binds. Expanding it reveals the editable properties, grouped into sections:

Section	Contents
Surface	Alpha mode, being Opaque, Mask, or Blend, an alpha cutoff when the mode is Mask, and a double-sided switch. glTF only
Base Color	The base colour factor, with alpha for glTF, and the base colour texture
Metallic and Roughness	Their factors, and the texture that carries them. glTF stores one combined metallic-roughness texture, so the two channels share a map while keeping independent factors. For FBX these appear on a material that uses a metalness convention or that has been given a metallic or roughness map
Normal	The normal map and its scale
Occlusion	The occlusion map and its intensity. glTF only
Opacity	The opacity map and its amount. FBX and OBJ
Emissive	The emissive colour, its strength, and the emissive texture

An OBJ material adds an MTL PBR Extensions section covering transmission, sheen, clearcoat, coat roughness, anisotropy, anisotropy rotation, and index of refraction.

FBX materials

An FBX material is edited through the properties its own shading model defines. Base colour, opacity, normal strength, and emissive colour and intensity are available on any FBX material. The rest of the card depends on the convention the file authored the material in:

Convention	Additional controls
Phong	Specular colour, specular amount, and shininess
Lambert	None. The section records that the material is diffuse only
Stingray PBS, Standard Surface, or a physical material	Metallic and roughness values

Solidly approximates a Lambert or Phong material in the viewport so that it shades alongside PBR materials, while its controls stay in the material's own terms.

Binding a metallic or roughness map to a Lambert or Phong material, which is what applying a material suggestion does, replaces the shading model's own controls with metallic and roughness values. The material is written as a Phong material when the file is saved, so it carries the slots those maps occupy. A material that Solidly has given a metallic value keeps these controls when the file is reopened, because the value is stored in the reflection slot.

Alpha mode and double-sided are glTF material properties and are absent here. An FBX mesh node carries its own culling mode instead; see The Node tab.

glTF material extensions

A glTF material card lists the material extensions it declares, each with its own fields:

Extension	Fields
`KHR_materials_clearcoat`	Clearcoat, Roughness
`KHR_materials_sheen`	Colour, Roughness
`KHR_materials_transmission`	Transmission
`KHR_materials_volume`	Thickness, Attenuation colour, Attenuation distance
`KHR_materials_ior`	IOR
`KHR_materials_specular`	Strength, Colour
`KHR_materials_iridescence`	Iridescence, Film IOR, Thickness minimum and maximum in nanometres
`KHR_materials_anisotropy`	Strength, Rotation
`KHR_materials_diffuse_transmission`	Strength, Colour
`KHR_materials_dispersion`	Dispersion
`KHR_materials_emissive_strength`	Strength
`KHR_materials_unlit`	No fields
`KHR_materials_pbrSpecularGlossiness`	Diffuse, Specular, Glossiness

Descriptors

Below the friendly controls, each card carries a disclosure holding the material's properties as the source format spells them. It is titled Descriptors & Extensions for a glTF material that declares extensions, Original FBX Properties for FBX, and Descriptors otherwise. glTF and FBX materials add Additional Parameters and Legacy Parameters disclosures for properties outside the core set.

These rows are editable, and they are the view to use when checking exactly what a file declares rather than how Solidly interprets it. Rows describing custom properties in an FBX file are shown for reference and cannot be edited, because Solidly writes only the properties the FBX format defines.

Materials in USD

A USD material is described rather than edited. The Materials tab lists the stage's materials with their bound textures, and the Node tab describes each Material and Shader prim as authored. The Shading Network panel opens from a material or shader and draws the resolved network as a graph, with each node's inputs, its connections, and previews of the textures it reads. See Prims.