Material Types
Every material has one of four types. Standard covers almost everything; the other three are for surfaces that need a material of their own. This page describes the settings of each type. To pick one, see Choosing a Material Type. The settings that all types share, the normal map and emission, are on the Materials page.
| Type | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Standard | Paint, wood, stone, tiles, plastic, fabric, ceramics, mirrors: everything that isn’t one of the types below. |
| Glass | Windows, drinking glasses, bottles and vases. |
| Metal | Gold, brass, copper, steel and other metals. |
| Water | Pools, ponds and lakes. |
Videos
Section titled “Videos”Water, mirrors and glossy finishes turns a pool into Water with the Pool preset, and gives a mirror, glazed vases and a side table the Mirror, Glossy and Lacquered finishes of the Standard material. To follow along, download its scene, rayscaper-material-types.skp (5.1 MB): a small pool terrace. It works with the free version of Rayscaper.
Standard Material
Section titled “Standard Material”The material for almost every surface. Every SketchUp material starts as a Standard material, and so do the materials from the asset manager. It’s a PBR (physically based) material, often called the “principled” material in other software, so scanned and downloaded PBR textures fit it directly.
Scanned fruit and wood: Standard materials with color, roughness and normal maps.
The Standard material settings.
Finish: sets the roughness, metallic, coating and sheen for a common finish in one click, and keeps the color. A new material is Satin. As soon as you change one of those settings yourself, the finish shows Custom.
| Finish | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Matte | Plaster, unglazed terracotta, chalk paint, raw concrete: no visible reflections. |
| Satin | Eggshell paint, plastic, oiled wood: soft, blurry reflections. |
| Glossy | Gloss paint, polished stone, glazed tiles, shiny plastic: sharp reflections. |
| Lacquered | Varnished wood, lacquered furniture, glazed ceramics: a clear glossy coat on a satin base. |
| Fabric | Velvet, wool, upholstery: fully rough with a soft shine at the edges. |
| Mirror | Mirrors and chrome: a perfect reflection, tinted by the color. |
A round mirror with the Mirror finish, in a frame of Brass metal.
Color: the base color, a color or an image. For a material from SketchUp it’s the color or texture of the SketchUp material.
Roughness: how smooth the surface is. 0% gives mirror-sharp reflections, 100% a completely matte surface. Use a roughness map for realistic variation across the surface.
Metallic: blends between a non-metal (0%) and a metal (100%). Real surfaces are one or the other, so use values in between only for transitions in a texture, like paint worn down to the metal. For metals with measured colors, use the Metal material.
A non-metal: the color is in the surface, the reflections are white.
Halfway.
A metal: the color is in the reflections, like gold.
Opacity: see Opacity.
Advanced
Section titled “Advanced”Expand Advanced for the layers on top of the material and the settings that most materials keep at their default. The Lacquered and Fabric finishes set the coating and sheen for you, and every finish turns transmission and anisotropy off. Changing the coating, the sheen strength, the transmission or the anisotropy switches the finish to Custom.
Transmission
Section titled “Transmission”Strength: how much light passes through the material. 0% is opaque, 100% transmits like glass. The Index of Refraction (IOR) under Specular controls how much the material bends the light. For windows, glasses and bottles, use the Glass material instead.
Coating
Section titled “Coating”A clear layer of varnish or lacquer on top of the material. It works best on a rough base, like car paint or varnished wood.
Strength: 0% turns the coating off, 100% applies it fully.
Roughness: how smooth the coating is. 0% gives sharp, glossy reflections, 100% soft, matte ones.
A soft shine at the edges, as on velvet and other fabrics with fine fibers.
Strength: 0% turns the sheen off, 100% gives a strong velvet-like edge.
Tint: the color of the sheen. White gives a neutral sheen.
Roughness: low values keep the sheen in a narrow band at the edges, high values spread it over the surface.
Specular
Section titled “Specular”Tint: the color of the reflections of a non-metal. White is physically accurate for almost every material, a color gives tinted reflections. These examples use a black base, so only the reflections show:
Index of Refraction (IOR): how strong the reflections are, especially when you look at the surface straight on, and how much a transmissive material bends the light. The default of 1.5 suits most materials, like plastic and glass. These examples use a dark, glossy material, where reflections show best:
Anisotropy
Section titled “Anisotropy”Stretches the highlights in one direction. Use it for brushed metal, hair, satin and other materials with a direction in their surface. It needs some roughness to show.
Strength: higher values stretch the highlights further.
Rotation: turns the direction of the stretching, from 0 to 360°, to align it with the grain of the material, for example the brushing direction of a steel panel.
The Standard material, setting by setting goes through every setting above on Rayscaper’s shader ball. To follow along, download its scene, rayscaper-pbr-material.skp (0.9 MB): a small photo studio.
Glass Material
Section titled “Glass Material”For windows, drinking glasses, bottles, vases and water in a container. Glass reflects and refracts light like the real thing, and lets light through for shadows, so daylight reaches the rooms behind windows.
A carafe and a tumbler of glass.
The Glass material settings.
Color: the tint of the glass. Keep it white for clear glass. A color tints both the light passing through and the reflections.
Roughness: frosts the glass. Use 0% for clear glass and higher values for frosted, etched or privacy glass.
Thin: treats the glass as a sheet without thickness. Turn it on for window panes, which are usually modeled as a single face: light passes straight through without bending. Keep it off for objects with real thickness, like bottles, glasses and aquariums. Thin glass ignores Roughness. Off by default.
A solid ball of glass that bends the light.
The ball is a thin glass bubble: only its reflections remain.
Advanced
Section titled “Advanced”Expand Advanced for the index of refraction, the shadows and the opacity of the glass.
Index of Refraction (IOR): how strongly the glass bends light, and so how much it distorts what’s behind it. Higher values bend more and reflect more. The default of 1.5 is window glass.
| Material | IOR |
|---|---|
| Air | 1.0 |
| Ice | 1.31 |
| Water | 1.33 |
| Glass | 1.5–1.7 |
| Ruby | 1.77 |
| Sapphire | 1.77 |
| Crystal | 2.0 |
| Diamond | 2.42 |
Transparent Shadows: lets light pass through the glass, so it casts a light shadow instead of a dark one. Keep it on for windows, otherwise the rooms behind them stay too dark. On by default.
Opacity: see Opacity.
Metal Material
Section titled “Metal Material”Metals with their measured color and reflection. Choose the metal, and tint or roughen it if you like.
Brass candleholders with lit candles. The candle flames use emission.
The Metal material settings.
Metal: the metal: Aluminium, Brass, Chrome, Copper, Gold, Iron, Nickel, Platinum, Silver or Titanium. Gold is the default. A metal from an older scene that isn’t one of these, or one whose values you changed under Advanced, shows Custom and keeps its look.
Six of the metals, all with a roughness of 15%.
Tint: colors the metal, for anodized aluminium or tinted steel. White keeps the color of the metal.
Roughness: 0% is polished like a mirror, higher values give satin, brushed and weathered metal.
Roughness also accepts an image map, including when you use a metal preset:
- Choose a Metal, such as Aluminium or Chrome.
- Click the image icon next to Roughness and select your roughness map.
- Click the sliders icon next to Roughness to open the texture editor and adjust the image settings.
Dark areas of the map give smoother reflections; light areas give rougher reflections. Use this to vary the finish across the surface, for example with worn patches or fingerprints.
Choosing another Metal preset keeps your roughness map and its settings. It changes the metal’s measured reflection properties, so you can compare metals without loading the map again.
Advanced
Section titled “Advanced”Expand Advanced for the measured values of the metal, brushed highlights and the opacity.
Metallic Index of Refraction (IOR) and Absorption Coefficient: how the metal reflects and absorbs light, per color channel (red, green, blue). Together they give the metal its color. Choosing a metal sets both, and changing them switches the metal to Custom. These are the values of the metals:
| Metal | Metallic IOR | Absorption Coefficient |
|---|---|---|
| Aluminium (Al) | (1.35, 0.97, 0.62) | (7.47, 6.40, 5.30) |
| Brass (Cu-Zn) | (0.44, 0.53, 1.09) | (3.70, 2.77, 1.83) |
| Chrome (Cr) | (2.02, 2.79, 2.02) | (3.86, 4.20, 3.86) |
| Copper (Cu) | (0.27, 0.68, 1.32) | (3.61, 2.62, 2.29) |
| Gold (Au) | (0.18, 0.42, 1.37) | (3.42, 2.35, 1.77) |
| Iron (Fe) | (2.91, 2.95, 2.58) | (3.09, 2.93, 2.77) |
| Nickel (Ni) | (1.99, 1.92, 1.73) | (4.21, 3.62, 2.94) |
| Platinum (Pt) | (2.38, 2.08, 1.85) | (4.27, 3.72, 3.14) |
| Silver (Ag) | (0.16, 0.15, 0.14) | (3.93, 3.19, 2.38) |
| Titanium (Ti) | (2.74, 2.54, 2.27) | (3.81, 3.43, 3.04) |
Anisotropy: stretches the highlights along the surface, like the fine grooves of brushed metal do. It needs some roughness to show.
Round, even highlights.
The highlights start to stretch.
Long streaks, like brushed steel.
Anisotropy Rotation: turns the direction of the streaks, from 0 to 360°.
Opacity: see Opacity.
Water Material
Section titled “Water Material”A material made for swimming pools, ponds, lakes, fountains, and other bodies of water in architectural scenes. It combines a reflective, refracting water surface with procedural waves and depth-dependent color, so you get convincing water from a single flat face: no textures, normal maps, or water volumes required.
A courtyard pool rendered with the Water material. The deep end takes on more color than the steps, the mosaic floor warps with the waves, and the far side of the pool reflects the wall and sky.
The Water material settings.
Preset: sets the color, clarity and waves for a kind of water in one click. Start from the preset closest to your scene and fine-tune from there. As soon as you change another setting, the preset switches to Custom. A new Water material also starts at Custom, with generic values, so pick a preset first: Pool is a good start.
| Preset | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Pool | Clear, calm swimming pool water with small ripples. |
| Pond | Murky green garden ponds. |
| Lake | Natural open water with a slow, large swell. |
| Windy | Choppy water with strong waves and lots of small ripples. |
| Tropical | Very clear turquoise water, like a resort pool or a shallow lagoon. |
| Reflecting Pool | Dark, nearly still water that mirrors its surroundings. |
| Spa | Agitated hot tub or whirlpool water with small, busy waves. |
The examples below start from the same pool and change one setting at a time.
Water Tint: the color the water takes on as light travels through it. Shallow water shows only a hint of the tint, while deep water shows its full color. The tint doesn’t color the reflections on the surface, only what you see through the water. Use a light aqua for pools, green or brown for ponds, and a deeper blue for lakes and the sea.
Clarity: how far light travels through the water before it reaches the full Water Tint, from 0.1 m to 50 m. Low values give murky water where the bottom quickly fades into the tint color. High values give crystal-clear water where you can see the floor of even a deep pool. Because Clarity is a distance, it works together with the depth of your pool: 2 m of clarity looks clear in a shallow pool but hazy in a deep one. The examples below use a stronger blue tint to make the difference easy to see.
Wave Strength: how rough the water is, from 0 to 1. At 0 the water is perfectly calm and behaves like a flat pane of glass. Higher values distort the view of the pool floor more and break up the reflections on the surface. The size and direction of the waves come from the preset, or from Wave Size and Wave Direction under Advanced.
Advanced
Section titled “Advanced”Expand Advanced for the settings that the presets set for you: how cloudy the water is, the shape of the waves and the reflections.
Turbidity: how much suspended matter, like algae or silt, is floating in the water, from 0 to 1. Turbid water scatters tinted light back toward the viewer and hides submerged objects, even in shallow areas. Keep this close to 0 for pools and increase it for ponds, rivers, and other natural water.
Wave Size: the distance between the crests of the main swell, from 0.05 m to 10 m. Small values give short ripples, like a pool with a light breeze or a fountain. Large values give the long, rolling swell of a lake. The examples below turn Wave Detail off so you only see the swell.
Wave Detail: adds small ripples on top of the main swell, from 0 to 1. Low values give a smooth, rolling surface. High values give agitated, wind-blown water.
Wave Direction: the direction in which the waves travel, from 0° to 360°. At 0° the waves travel along the red axis of the object that holds the water face, at 90° along its green axis. The downwind side of each wave is the steeper one. This setting has no visible effect when Wave Strength is 0.
Surface Roughness: blurs the reflections on the water surface, from 0 to 0.3. Use 0 for mirror-sharp reflections on still water, and a small value to soften reflections on a breezy day. The view through the water blurs only slightly, so the pool floor stays readable.
Reflection: the maximum strength of the reflections, from 0 to 1. Like real water, the surface reflects little when you look straight down and more at grazing angles; this setting limits how strong those grazing reflections can get. The default of 0.45 keeps the floor of the pool visible across the whole surface. Use 1 to let calm water turn into a mirror toward the horizon, as with a reflecting pool.
Credits
Section titled “Credits”The examples on this page use CC0 models, textures and HDRIs from Poly Haven.