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BasicMaterial

This node lets you control what material your objects seem to be made of. It combines the Diffuse, Specular, and Emission nodes, allowing you to control all three aspects of the material with a single node.

NOTE: To see the effect of your changes to an object’s material properties, you need to have at least one light node in your Scene. You also need to enable transparency and lighting in the Viewer settings. Press S over the 3D Viewer, and check transparency and headlamp on the 3D tab.

Inputs and Controls

Connection Type	Connection Name	Function
Input	mapSh	An optional mask for varying the shininess value. Where the mask is black, the shininess is set to min shininess. Where the mask is white, the shininess is set to max shininess. Values in between (where the matte is gray) are attenuated accordingly.
	mapS	An optional mask for limiting the effect of the specular component. Any changes you make to specular are limited to the non-black areas of the mask.
	mapE	An optional mask for limiting the effect of the emissive component. Any changes you make to emission are limited to the non-black areas of the mask.
	mapD	An optional mask for limiting the effect of the diffuse component. Any changes you make to diffuse are limited to the non-black areas of the mask.
	unnamed	Either: • The 2D image you’re using for the surface texture, or • Another shader node, such as Diffuse, Specular, or Emission. Adding several shader nodes one after the other allows you to produce more complex effects.

Control (UI)	Knob (Scripting)	Default Value	Function
BasicMaterial Tab
channels	channels	rgb	The effect is only applied to these channels. If you set this to something other than all or none, you can use the checkboxes on the right to select individual channels.
emission	emission	0	Sets the color of the light the material emits. Note that when you have an image connected to the unnamed input of the BasicMaterial node and adjust this value, you need to look at the rendered 2D image to see the effect of your changes. Changing the emission value does not have any effect in the 3D Viewer.
diffuse	diffuse	0.18	Sets the color of the material when illuminated. Note that when you have an image connected to the unnamed input of the BasicMaterial node and adjust this value, you need to look at the rendered 2D image to see the effect of your changes. Changing the diffuse value does not have any effect in the 3D Viewer.
specular	specular	0.8	Sets how bright the highlights on the material seem.
min shininess	min_shininess	10	Sets the shininess value controlling the width of the highlights. The higher the value, the wider the highlights. If you have connected a mask to the mapSh input of the node, pixel values in the mask are used to vary the shininess value. Where the matte is black, the shininess is set to min shininess. Where the matte is white, the shininess is set to max shininess. Values in between (where the matte is gray) are attenuated accordingly. If you’re not using the mapSh input, the average of min shininess and the maxshininess value is used as the shininess value for the material.
max shininess	max_shininess	10	Sets the shininess value controlling the width of the highlights. The higher the value, the wider the highlights. If you have connected a mask to the mapSh input of the node, pixel values in the mask are used to vary the shininess value. Where the matte is black, the shininess is set to min shininess. Where the matte is white, the shininess is set to max shininess. Values in between (where the matte is gray) are attenuated accordingly. If you’re not using the mapSh input, the average of min shininess and the maxshininess value is used as the shininess value for the material.
shininess channel	shininess_channel	luminance	Selects which channel from the mapSh input is used to map the black and white values to the minshininess and maxshininess controls. Choose: • red - use the red channel for the mapping. • green - use the green channel. • blue - use the blue channel. • alpha - use the alpha channel. • luminance - use the luminance. • averagergb - use the average of the red, green, and blue channels.