The material node graph
A visual, node-based editor for physically-based materials: wire color, roughness, normals, and more into a single output.
Open in the interactive manual →The interactive version has full-text search, a table of contents, and light/dark themes.
The Material Graph is where materials get serious. You drop in source nodes and wire their outputs into the channels of a single Material Output node. Open it with Edit in Graph on any material card.
Getting around
The graph edits one material at a time (switch with the Material dropdown). The toolbox row has + Add Node, Fit view, the material switcher, and New material. Zoom with the wheel, pan with a middle-drag or Alt+drag, and move a node by dragging its header.
Any graph you didn't arrange yourself arrives as a left-to-right row, sources first and the Material Output last, so no card can hide the one before it however tall its preview grows. That covers the material a new scene starts with, the pack builder and the built-in presets, a texture dropped onto an object, an imported model's materials, and anything the Assistant generates. Once you drag a node somewhere yourself, that arrangement is kept. Fit view brings the whole row back on screen.
The source nodes
| Node | Produces |
|---|---|
| Solid Color | A flat color. |
| Scalar Value | A single 0–1 number (great for roughness/metalness). |
| Ramp | A gradient between two colors. |
| Fractal Noise | Procedural noise: scale, contrast, up to 8 octaves. |
| Checkerboard | A procedural checker pattern. |
| Raster Map | An image texture, with repeat, offset, and optional scroll or flipbook animation. |
| Channel Splitter | Pulls one channel (R/G/B/A) out of a packed image. See ORMH below. |
| Material Output | The destination. One per graph. |
Ramp, Fractal Noise, and Checkerboard are procedural: they synthesize their texture in the browser, no image file needed.
The output channels
The Material Output node accepts a long list of surface channels: Color, Roughness, Metalness, AO, Bump, Normal, Opacity, Emissive, Displacement, Clearcoat, Sheen, Anisotropy, Iridescence, and more. Most channels take a color or a scalar; Normal needs a real normal-map image (a Raster Map). The output node also carries the Alpha mode. See Transparency & alpha cut-outs.
Beside the channels the output node carries a few scalars for the maps wired into it: Bump Scale, AO Intensity, Displacement and its bias, the clearcoat and sheen amounts, and an emissive strength slider (0 to 16, 1 by default) that reads Emissive Map Intensity when an image is bound to Emissive (1 = the map as painted) and Emissive Intensity when a solid colour is (1 = the colour as given, the same value the Assistant's emissiveIntensity sets). A gradient or pattern keeps its own brightness-driven glow, so the slider is not offered for one. An emissive image reaches shapes only: an imported model paints itself, so on a model only an emissive colour or gradient shows, as a glow over the whole model. If you bound an emissive map before 15 September 2026 it was glowing at about a third of its own pixels, because a grey stand-in meant for the decode window was multiplying it; it now renders at full strength, so turn this slider down rather than repainting the image if a screen suddenly reads hot.
Wiring a node
- Pick a source
Click Out on a source node (or right-click ▸ Set as source). A hint bar appears.
- Pick a channel
On the Material Output node, click the In socket next to the channel you want. The link is made.
- Disconnect anytime
Click the × on a channel row to clear it. If a source can't drive a channel (a scalar into Normal, say), you'll get a friendly warning.
ORMH: four maps in one image
A packed PBR texture stuffs four grayscale maps into one image's color channels. A Channel Splitter extracts one channel each, following the ORMH convention:
| Channel | Drives |
|---|---|
| R | Ambient Occlusion |
| G | Roughness |
| B | Metalness |
| A | Height / Bump |
That's four splitter nodes from one image, or just use the one-click pack builder, which wires it all for you. The Assistant and Claude via MCP take the packed file on its own ormh slot (or orm for a three-channel glTF pack) and build the same four splitters.