Brick, boards, tin and glass: materials that read as the real thing
Texture cladding for walls and gables, corrugated, tiled and standing-seam roofs, real refracting glass, and a material editor for any model you import.
Close enough to read
A wall coloured brick-red is not a brick wall. You notice the difference at a glance: the joints catch the light, and the courses have depth. This autumn's material work was about passing that glance.
Cladding as a texture
Walls and roof gables take cladding as a texture as well as geometry:
- Vertical boards and horizontal boards, with even or random board shades.
- Brick, in several brick sizes.
Each has a joint colour and a relief setting, from barely there to deep, drawn with a normal map so the joints shade with the light. A textured wall costs almost nothing compared with modelling every board, so a whole street of brick houses stays fast. The cladding runs right up to the window frames.
When you want real depth, the geometry cladding is still there. Log walls are always real geometry, for the log cabins.
Roof coverings
Roofs take three coverings as textures: corrugated sheet, staggered tiles and standing seam. Each one follows the slope it lies on, on every face of the roof, and the tile colour carries through to the fascia and the ridge caps.
Glass that bends light
The palette's glass is now real glass. It lets light through, refracts what is behind it, and takes on more tint the thicker it is.
A palette of materials, not swatches
The colour palette used to be a chart of flat swatches. It is now a set of paint materials, bigger and six to a row. Drop one on any face. If you edit a material after painting with it, the change is saved with the scene rather than only shown on screen.
Materials on imported models
Select a GLB or FBX model you imported and its materials are listed in the inspector. For each one you can change:
- the base colour and its picture
- roughness and metalness
- an emissive glow
- the normal map
- transparency
Each change is a patch on top of the model's own material, so anything you do not touch stays as the model came. You can also take one of the model's own pictures out. Your edits are saved with the scene and go with it when you publish.
Try them in the editor: select a wall, a roof or a model and look in its inspector.