Advanced settings enable you to customize material properties like roughness and metalness, or add texture maps and emission, giving you more control over your 3D model’s visual appearance.
Advanced material settings
Advanced material and texture settings are edited in the object property panel on the Windows and Mac desktop apps.
1 Emission color
Allows your 3D model to emit light of a particular color, enhancing its visual appeal. Select a color from the color picker or enter a HEX color code to precisely control the emitted light's hue.
2 Emission Intensity
Adjust the intensity slider to make the emitted light subtle or intense.
3 Normal texture
Introduces surface details and depth to your object. By adding a Normal map, you can simulate surface bumps, indents, and finer details without increasing the model's geometric complexity enhancing the object's visual realism.
4 Normal Intensity
Adjusts the strength or prominence of the surface details in the Normal map. Increase this setting for more pronounced bumps and indents, or decrease it for subtler surface effects.
5 RMA texture
The RMA Texture includes three maps: roughness, metalness, ambient occlusion. Roughness controls the smoothness or roughness of the surface. Metalness defines the metallic properties of the material, and Ambient Occlusion adds realistic shadows and depth.
6 Roughness
Increase it for a rougher texture, and decrease it for a smoother, glossier appearance.
7 Metalness
Adjust this setting to make your object appear more or less like a metal surface.
8 Flow Speed U and flow speed V
Control the movement of textures on your object's surface. These settings are particularly useful when you want to animate or simulate dynamic materials, such as flowing water or shifting patterns. Adjust these parameters to achieve the desired texture movement along the U (horizontal) and V (vertical) axes.
Color diffuse
Applying a color on an object will achieve a uniform color across all of these components. By applying different colors to sub-objects, you can easily define and differentiate various components in your CAD file.
Applying color to your CAD file
Change the color of your 3D object by clicking the color box in the Material Property Panel. Use the color picker panel to select a color from the field and spectrum slider. Need a specific brand color? Just type or paste your code into the HEX input field.
Applying transparency to your CAD file
You can change the transparency of your object using the transparency slider or adding a value in the input field.
Select your object and in the object properties panel, set the transparency to 1%
Copying material properties
The Eyedropper tool lets you pick a color from an object or a sub-object and apply it to other objects. To use the eyedropper:
1. Select an object or sub-object
2. Click on the Eyedropper tool inside the Color Picker panel
3. Select the object your want to sample by clicking on it. The sampled color and material is applied on the selected object.
Material library
JigSpace materials allow you to apply photo realistic materials to a CAD model without the need for UV maps and custom textures. These materials can be applied to any model inside of the Jig Workshop to achieve a clean tangible looking render when viewing your models in Augmented reality.
All of the materials in the Jig workshop have color, normal, roughness, and metalness values assigned to them in order to achieve a realistic look. You can edit these values to customize the look of certain materials on your objects.
Applying materials to an object
To apply a material to your object select the object, click the {icon-library.svg} material library button in the Material library panel select from a wide range of photorealistic materials.
By default CAD models will load into the JigWorkshop with the ‘Standard’ material applied
Once you have selected a material you can further edit this using the color tool. By customizing the color of materials you can change how people perceive them. By coloring a silver material orange it can look like copper.
Customizing the color of a wood texture can demonstrate what kind of wood is being used on a product
Emission
Emission will affect the way shadows interact with an object's materials. An object with emission applied will have a brighter surface and softer shadows. This can be a great of adding a luminescence to objects in your scene, making screens appear backlit or objects to glow from within.
Applying emission to an object
You can choose an emission color by selecting the color box and using the color slider, or you can type in a Hex color code.
You can use the intensity slider to customize the intensity of that glow on an object.
Custom textures
A texture is a 2D image or data that is applied to the surface of a 3D object to enhance its visual appearance. Textures add details, colors, patterns, and other surface characteristics, making the model look more realistic and visually appealing when rendered or displayed in a 3D environment.
In order to apply a texture to a CAD model this model needs to have a UV map. This 2D map is often generated based on the shape of the 3D model so textures are often tailor made to match a specific model's UV map.
JigSpace supports 3 texture channels:
- Color/Diffuse map - is a texture used in 3D modeling to define the base color of a 3D object's surface, creating its primary visual appearance.
- Normal map - is a texture that adds depth and surface details to 3D models by simulating bumps and creases without increasing geometric complexity.
- RMA map - comprises three maps: Roughness, Metalness, and Ambient Occlusion. These maps refine the material appearance, controlling smoothness, metallic reflections, and shadowing effects for enhanced realism.
To create an RMA map, apply textures in the correct color channels of a single .PNG image. Roughness in red, Metalness in Green and Ambient Occlusion in blue.
Remove a texture from an object:
Select your object. In the object properties panel hover on the current texture swatch, click on the ‘Delete’ button.
To upload a new texture, click on the ‘Upload’ button and choose a texture image from your folders.
Diffuse map
The Color/Diffuse map is a texture channel that stores color information for 3D models. It defines the base color of the surface and is responsible for providing the primary visual appearance of the object. By mapping colors to the surface vertices, this channel determines how light interacts with the model, resulting in a vibrant and realistic representation of the object's surface appearance.
Applying textures to an object
Select your object. In the object properties panel click the {icon-swatch-texture.svg} ‘Upload’ button,select the texture image from your folders.
Normal map
The Normal map is a texture channel that encodes height information, adding depth and surface details to 3D models. Utilizing a specialized technique called "bump mapping," it simulates small bumps, creases, and indentations on the object's surface without increasing its geometric complexity. By manipulating the normals (surface directions) of the model, the Normal map imparts a sense of depth and realism, enhancing the visual fidelity of the object.
Applying a Normal texture to an object
Select your object. In the object properties panel click the {icon-swatch-texture.svg} ‘Upload’ button,select the texture image from your folder.
Remove a Normal texture from an object:
Select your object. In the object properties panel hover on the current texture swatch, click on the {icon-swatch-texture-delete.svg} ‘Delete’ button.
To upload a new texture, click on the ‘Upload’ button and choose a texture image from your folders.
RMA map
The RMA map is a comprehensive texture channel that comprises three distinct maps: Roughness, Metalness, and Ambient Occlusion (AO). Each of these maps contributes vital information to refine the material appearance.
- Roughness Map: The Roughness map controls the smoothness or roughness of the surface. It determines how light scatters across the material, affecting its overall glossiness. High values indicate a rough surface with diffuse reflections, while low values represent a smooth surface with more specular reflections.
- Metalness Map: The Metalness map defines the metallic properties of the material. It indicates which parts of the surface exhibit metallic reflections, such as shiny metal, and which parts behave more like non-metallic surfaces, such as matte materials.
- Ambient Occlusion (AO) Map: The Ambient Occlusion map influences the object's shading and shadowing, enhancing the realism and depth of the model. It darkens areas that are less exposed to light, simulating subtle shadowing effects caused by ambient lighting conditions.
Applying an RMA texture to an object
Select your object. In the object properties panel click the {icon-swatch-texture.svg} ‘Upload’ button,select the texture image from your folders.
Remove an RMA texture from an object:
Select your object. In the object properties panel hover on the current texture swatch, click on the {icon-swatch-texture-delete.svg} ‘Delete’ button.
To upload a new texture, click on the ‘Upload’ button and choose a texture image from your folders.
Roughness and metalness
Once you have applied the Normal and RMA textures, you can further edit these texture values using the ‘normal intensity’ and the ‘metalness’ and ‘roughness’ sliders. Minor edits to the strength of these textures can allow you to increase or lower the shine or roughness of certain materials on your model and achieve a more exact photorealistic render in JigSpace.
To edit the roughness and metalness just drag on the value slider or type in a value in ‘Advanced settings’ in the object properties panel.
The ‘Roughness’ values of materials can be wide ranging.
But ‘Metalness’ values are usually either 100% metal or 100% not metal.
Flow shader speed
Flow speed and direction determines how a flow-shader based texture will flow across an object, providing a model with unique animations.
By applying flow to the texture of a car tyre model you can create the illusion of the car wheel turning. By applying flow to a water texture you can create the illusion of water flowing down the shape of a model. You can start by adding a flow effect shape from the JigSpace library to your Jig, then replacing its diffuse texture or changing its color. You can also choose the direction of flow based on the UV flow sliders.
- U represents the horizontal axis of a texture or material.
- U represents the horizontal axis of a texture or material.
- V represents the vertical axis of a texture or material.
To reverse the direction of the flow use a negative number.
