Instructions for use

The Manage Material function allows you to view, modify, edit, and Export materials for Model data.

Function entrance

• 3D Geographic Design tab-> Model Operation group-> Material dropdown-> Manage Material

Operation steps

View and Edit Model Material

1. Open the Datasource containing the target Model Dataest and add the Model Dataest to the Spherical Scene.
2. On the 3D Geographic Design tab, click the Manage Material button in the Materials Drop-down Button in the Model Operation group, or click 3D The Materials button in the Model Operation group on the Geographic Design tab opens the Manage Material "dialog.
3. Source data: Click the drop-down arrow to the right of Model Layer. Select Model: Layer of Object.
4. Material list: All materials of the object can be viewed through the material list, and new, import, export and Delete Material operations can be performed through the toolbar.
   • The list area shows all the materials for the current Model Object.
   • Add: The toolbar Add button is available for New Material. Click the Add button, create a material name and select a material type in the pop-up New Material "dialog box, and click OK to complete the creation. The material name is used as the Unique identifier of the material and cannot be duplicated. Therefore, when the name of New Material is the same as that of an existing material, the texture and color in the material must be consistent with it.
   • Import: The Import button in the toolbar can be used to import an XML or JSON file with Material Info. When the Manage Material dialog box is closed, only the material assigned to the Model Object is saved.
   • Export: The Export button in the toolbar can be used to export all selected material files with Material Info and texture. Currently, only JSON format is supported.
   • Delete: The Delete button in the toolbar can be used to delete the selected material.
   • Assign material to selected object: The Assign material to selected object button in the toolbar can be used to assign the selected material to the selected Model Object in the scene in batch. Note: When using this function, you need to select the target Model Object in the scene before opening the dialog box.
5. Edit Material: The name and specific parameters of the selected material will be displayed on the right side of the material list. The material can be adjusted by specific parameter values. Currently, normal Edit Material and PBR Material editing are supported.

Normal Edit Material

When a Common Material is selected in the material list, the Edit Common Material Parameters is displayed on the right side of the Manage Material dialog box. Set the following parameters and click Apply to apply the edited material to the Model Object.

1. Coloring:
   • Material color: Set the material color through the drop-down color panel.
   • Transparency: Adjust the transparency by entering a value directly or clicking the right arrow and sliding the pop-up slider. The value range is 0 to 100. 0 indicates that the layer is completely opaque, and the layer becomes more and more transparent as the value increases; when the transparency value is set to 100, the layer is completely transparent.
2. Texture Editing: Edit the Texture Map with the Add, Replace, Delete, and Set buttons.
   • Add: Used to create a new Texture Map. After clicking the Add button, select the specified Picture File in the pop-up Browse Folder "dialog box, and then click Open to complete the addition.
   • Replace: Picture File to replace an existing texture. After clicking the Replace button, select Picture File to replace the selected texture in the pop-up Open dialog box.
   • Delete: used to delete the selected texture.
   • Settings: Used to offset, rotate, scale, and export the Texture Map. Click the Settings button to set the Texture Coordinate Offset, scaling, and rotation parameters for the map in the pop-up Texture Editor panel.
     • Replace: supports replacing the Picture File of an existing texture. After clicking the Replace button, select the specified Picture File in the pop-up Browse Folder "dialog box, and then click Open.
     • Delete: supports the deletion of the current texture Picture File.
     • Export: supports exporting the texture to the specified path in PNG format.
     • Support for setting texture XY offset, scaling, and rotation.

PBR material editing

Physically-based rendering (Physically Based Rendering, PBR) materials use physically-based parameters (roughness, metallicity, and so on) to describe the optical properties of a material, enabling more realistic material and surface detail. Set the following parameters and click Apply to apply the edited material to the Model Object.

Base Color (BaseColor)

The base color is the apparent color of the object itself, without any lighting effects, such as shadows, highlights, and so on. You can set the base color of an object by specifying the appearance color directly or by adding a Texture Map that characterizes the base color. The specific parameters are as follows:

1. Texture settings: Texture Map file used to set the colors that characterize the surface of the object. You can set the offset, rotation, scaling and other parameters of Texture Coordinates in the pop-up Texture settings "dialog box by clicking the Set button.
2. Color Settings: Lets you set the color of the object's surface. You can specify a color in the color table that pops up by clicking the drop-down menu.
3. Translation motion: realize the translation motion of the base color texture. Translation Motion support sets the speed of translation motion in the U and V directions in the range of Texture Unit/sec.
   • Period: Sets the time, in seconds, for a single translation.
   • U: Sets the number of times the base color texture is translated along the X axis. A positive value means the texture is translated along the positive half of the X axis for the specified number of cycles. A negative value means the texture moves along the negative half of the X axis at the specified speed.
   • V: Sets the number of times the base color texture is translated along the Y axis. A positive value indicates movement along the positive half of the Y axis at the specified speed; a negative value indicates movement along the negative half of the Y axis at the specified speed.
4. Scale Motion: implements the scale motion of the base color texture. Scale Motion support sets the speed at which the scale changes in the U and V directions, in the range of Texture Unit/sec.
   • Period: The time taken for a single zoom, in seconds.
   • U: The number of times the texture is scaled along the X axis (set to a positive value to compress against the X axis; set to a negative value to stretch along the X axis).
   • V: Scale speed of the texture along the Y axis (set to a positive value, compressing against the Y axis; set to a negative value, stretching along the Y axis). of Base Color material

     Figure: Example

Metallic Roughness

Metal/roughness (metallic mode) is a common workflow of PBR material, which can control the reflectivity and photoresponse intensity of the object surface through two parameters of metallicity and roughness.

When no metallicity roughness texture is used, the effect of metallicity roughness is determined only by the metallicity coefficient and the roughness coefficient. When using the Metallicity Roughness texture, the effect of the Metallicity Roughness is determined by the result of the texture multiplied by the coefficient.

Figure: Example of the effect of metallicity as a function of metallicity value (the effect of metallicity at 0 roughness, from left to right, is 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1 metallicity)

Figure: Example of the roughness effect as a function of the roughness value (at metallicity 0, the roughness is 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1 from left to right)

Figure: Metal effect of transformer

1. Texture settings: Use the Texture Map to control the variation of metallicity and roughness on the surface of the material. Among them, the R channel in the texture is used to control the metallicity, and the G channel is used to control the roughness. When using Texture Map, the factor of metallicity and roughness is set to 1.
2. Metallicity coefficient: It controls the degree of "like metal" on the surface of the material. The value range is 0 ~ 1. The larger the value is, the higher the metal level of the material is. The more metallic the surface, the more the surface color is driven by environmental reflections, and the more blurred the appearance of the material itself. The lower the surface metal, the less affected by the reflection environment, and the more obvious the appearance color of the material itself.
3. Roughness coefficient: It controls the roughness of the material surface. The value range is 0 ~ 1. The larger the value is, the greater the roughness of the material is. The roughness of the material affects the degree of light reflection: the rougher the surface, the higher the micro-surface detail, and the more blurred the object environment reflection; the smoother the surface, the higher the reflectivity, and the more clearly it reflects the object environment.

Self-emission (Emission)

When the scene is dark, Selt-luminous Texture can make a part of the object appear to be illuminated from the inside (such as the window on the building), which is often used for the production of night scene effects.

When Selt-luminous Texture is not used, the effect of self-illumination is determined only by the self-illumination color value. When using Selt-luminous Texture, the effect of self-illumination is determined by the result of multiplying the Selt-luminous Texture by the color value.

Image: Selt-luminous Texture effect

1. Texture settings: Self-illumination map texture files.
2. Color Settings: Controls the color and intensity of the material's surface glow.
3. Translational motion
   • Period: The time taken for a single translation.
   • U: Speed of texture motion along the X axis (set to a positive value to move against the X axis; set to a negative value to move along the X axis).
   • V: The speed at which the texture moves along the Y axis (set to a positive value to move against the Y axis; set to a negative value to move along the Y axis).
4. Scale motion
   • Period: The time taken for a single zoom.
   • U: Scale speed of the texture along the X axis (set to a positive value, compressing against the X axis; set to a negative value, stretching along the X axis).
   • V: Scale speed of the texture along the Y axis (set to a positive value, compressing against the Y axis; set to a negative value, stretching along the Y axis).

Normal (Normal)

A normal map is a special texture, often with a blue tint to the visible color, that lets you add surface details, such as bumps, grooves, and scratches, to a model, adding depth to the model.

Figure: Comparison of normal mapping effect (the left image has no normal mapping, while the right image has normal mapping)

1. Texture settings: Normal map texture files.
2. Intensity Factor: The degree of influence of the normal map texture.

Occlusion

Ambient Occlusion texture, which appears as a grayscale map with white indicating areas that should receive full indirect light and black indicating no indirect light. Simulates the self-shadowing that occurs in a crevice, used to increase light and dark detail on the model.

Figure: Occlusion map effect

1. Texture settings: Occlusion map texture files.
2. Intensity Factor: The degree of influence of the occlusion map texture.

Mask

At present, it is only used in Unreal Engine to beautify the fine model workflow and make the night scene self-luminous. For specific methods, please refer to the SuperMap Hi-Fi 3D SDK for UnrealHelp and the special topic of fine Model Data beautification process. And the effect of Mask texture can only be seen in Unreal Engine.

Figure: Example of PBR using multiple textures

Figure: Overall material effect

1. Texture settings: Occlusion map texture files.

Advance Settings

1. Alpha Rendering Mode: This parameter allows you to Select whether the Object uses transparency, and if so, which type of Blend Mode to use.

   Figure: Hollow out effect

   • Opaque: This is the default setting for normal solid objects with no transparent areas.
   • Stencil/Mask: In this mode, there are no translucent areas and the texture is either fully transparent or fully opaque. There is no need to make complex models, through the basic color texture with transparency, you can make complex hollow effects.
   • Transparent: blend rendering based on the texture of the material or the Alpha value in the material color with the background. The larger the Alpha value, the less clear the background and the clearer the foreground after blending, and vice versa. Works well for rendering realistic transparent materials, such as clear plastic or glass.
2. Alpha filter threshold setting: in the hollowed-out rendering mode, the area below the transparency is displayed as fully opaque; the area above the transparency is displayed as fully transparent.
3. Double-sided: Whether to enable double-sided rendering. If not, single-sided rendering will be used. Single-sided rendering means that only one side of the model surface is rendered, not the back side. This means that only the surface of the model facing the camera is affected by lighting and materials, while the surface of the model facing away from the camera is not rendered. This way of rendering works well in most cases, especially when the back of the model is not visible or has no important details. Single-sided rendering can improve rendering performance and reduce unnecessary computational overhead. Two-sided rendering renders both sides of the model surface, that is, regardless of which side the model is facing. Two-sided rendering increases rendering overhead.