Applying 3D textures on shapes

Applying a 3D Texture to a shape

What's a material?

Shapes can be textured with the help of a Material. Materials are used to replicate real-life matter and allow to apply a texture to the surface of a shape, simulating its bumps, dents, wrinkles, etc.

Shapes with a light source and simple blue color. Left face has a 3D metallic texture, Right shape is plain.

To dive into tech lingo, we use the "normal mapping" technique to texture map HeavyM shapes, which lets us give the impression that the surface is 3D by faking the lighting of its asperities.

You can choose one Material to apply to a shape from the built-in library in HeavyM.

Note: this does not mean that HeavyM Shapes are now objects that you can manipulate in a 3D space though. It is merely a ploy to add depth to your mapping, similarly to the effect of the Center, that adds a perspective illusion while staying in a 2D canvas. See the visual difference below.

On the left would be a realistic 3D rendering of volumes, on the right is the rendering when applying the normal map technique to plane surfaces (as in HeavyM).
By Pac72 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
 

Adding a material on a shape

⚠️ Materials appear only if the shape contains something (group effect, media).

Each shape can have a different Material. To apply a Material:

1. Select the Shape(s) you want to apply the Material on (Face(s) or Player(s)).
2. In the Properties on the left, open the "3D Texture" section and click on the "..." button to open the Materials library.
3. In the library, select the Material you wish to apply and click on "Open".
4. Don't forget to add content in your Shape(s) to be able to see the Material! 
   If the Shape is a Face, add a Group Effect and if it's a Player add a Media.

Adjusting the settings of the 3D texture

The 3D Texture of a shape and its related settings are considered a geometric property, just like its coordinates for instance. That means that it is inherent to the shape and is dependent of its Map (i.e. in every sequence where this shape and its Map appear, its 3D texture will be the same). 

• Material: see above :)
• Size: allows to change the zoom level of the texture inside the shape.
• Weight: describes the "influence" of the texture in the rendering of the shape. The higher the Weight, the more you'll see the texture appear in the mix with the content inside the shape.
• Roughness: determines how rough (or smooth) the surface of the texture will look.
• Finish: you can choose between a Matte or Metallic-looking polish of the texture.

Note: all these settings support multi-selection, you can edit the 3D Texture of multiple shapes at once!

Relation to Light Sources & other Effects

Lighting

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the technique used to apply the 3D Texture works by faking the reaction of the surface to lighting. Which means that we need...light!

By default, when you only add a Material to a shape, we'll "fake" some lighting so that the Material is visible. But the true potential of 3D Textures is really unlocked once you add a Light Source. The Material reacts to lighting!

You can add a Light Source as an effect on Groups, Sequences or as a Master Shader. You'll find the Light Source in the Shaders library, it can be applied like any other shader.

As for any other shader, the Light Source has parameters that can be customized, you can control its Color, Position above the Canvas (X, Y, Z), Intensity, adjust the Ambient lighting as well as its Iridescence (Amount, Mix level, Palette position) and Displacement. (The behavior of “Displacement” is further discussed below.).

See how the Material reacts to light!

Content

The 3D Texture is as if the chosen material were applied directly on the shape. That means that if the shape is invisible/has no color, well, you can't see it!

Once the shape is filled with a group effect or a media, the Material is visible, blended with the content. On the same principle, if the shape contains holes or transparent areas, the texture doesn't appear there.

Note: at the moment (2.14.2), this last statement is slightly untrue in the case of intra-group overlap. If a transparent shape with a Material overlaps another shape in the same group, the Material appears on the shape below. This problem does not happen inter-groups.

Adjusting lighting & content together

To enhance the realistic aspect of the rendering, you can play with the “Displacement” parameter in the Light Source shader. (2.14.2) 

This parameter reflects on the content inside the shape, which now seem affected by the asperities of the material instead of simply being blended with it, giving materials a more physically realistic aspect. By default its value is set to 50 (no height aspect on content).

Now it really looks as if the shape were coated in the chosen material when we adjust the Displacement slightly!