Materials, textures and decals

A material says how light meets a surface. Materials and the look of a model explains the idea and shows a physically based material on a sphere; this page lists what bitbybit.babylon adds to it.

• Materials (babylon.material): physically based materials with a base colour, how metallic and how rough a surface is, emission, transparency and its blending, both sides or one, and wireframe. A material is given to a drawn shape through the drawing options' face material, or applied to a mesh with babylon.mesh.
• Textures (babylon.texture): an image from a URL, tiled, scaled and offset, for a material's colour, roughness, normals or emission.
• Decals (babylon.decal): an image stuck onto a mesh where you point, the way a label sits on a product.

Every function

Materials

Function	What it does
pbrMetallicRoughness.create	Creates a metallic-roughness material with the given color, metallic and roughness values, opacity, back-face culling and optional emissive color.
pbrMetallicRoughness.getAlpha	Reads the opacity of a material, from 0 to 1.
pbrMetallicRoughness.getBackFaceCulling	Reads whether a material skips the back of each face when drawing.
pbrMetallicRoughness.getBaseColor	Reads the base color of a material as a hex string.
pbrMetallicRoughness.getBaseTexture	Reads the image texture a material uses in place of its base color, if it has one.
pbrMetallicRoughness.getMetallic	Reads how metallic a material is, from 0 to 1.
pbrMetallicRoughness.getRoughness	Reads how rough a material's surface is, from 0 to 1.
pbrMetallicRoughness.setAlpha	Changes the opacity of a material, from 0 for invisible to 1 for solid; values between make the surface see-through.
pbrMetallicRoughness.setBackFaceCulling	Sets whether the back of each face is skipped when drawing; culling is faster, while drawing both sides shows the inside of open or single-sided meshes.
pbrMetallicRoughness.setBaseColor	Changes the base color of a material, the color its surface has under white light, from a hex string.
pbrMetallicRoughness.setBaseTexture	Gives a material an image texture that replaces its base color across the surface, as texture.createSimple makes one.
pbrMetallicRoughness.setMetallic	Changes how metallic a material looks, from 0 for paint or plastic to 1 for bare metal.
pbrMetallicRoughness.setRoughness	Changes how rough a material's surface is, from 0 for a mirror finish to 1 for fully matte.
skyMaterial.create	Creates a sky material from atmosphere settings; only the values you give are applied over the defaults.
skyMaterial.getAzimuth	Reads where around the horizon the sun stands in a sky material, from 0 to 1.
skyMaterial.getCameraOffset	Reads the horizon offset vector of a sky material.
skyMaterial.getDistance	Reads how far the sky dome sits from the camera in a sky material.
skyMaterial.getDithering	Reads whether a sky material dithers its gradients to hide color banding.
skyMaterial.getInclination	Reads how high the sun stands in a sky material, from -0.5 to 0.5.
skyMaterial.getLuminance	Reads the overall brightness of a sky material.
skyMaterial.getMieCoefficient	Reads how much haze a sky material has around the sun.
skyMaterial.getMieDirectionalG	Reads how tightly a sky material's haze glow gathers around the sun.
skyMaterial.getRayleigh	Reads the Rayleigh scattering strength of a sky material, the setting behind its blue.
skyMaterial.getSunPosition	Reads the sun direction of a sky material; when useSunPosition is off it reflects the inclination and azimuth.
skyMaterial.getTurbidity	Reads how hazy a sky material's air is.
skyMaterial.getUp	Reads the direction a sky material treats as up.
skyMaterial.getUseSunPosition	Reads whether a sky material places the sun from sunPosition rather than from inclination and azimuth.
skyMaterial.setAzimuth	Changes where around the horizon the sun stands in a sky material, from 0 to 1 for a full turn; ignored while useSunPosition is on.
skyMaterial.setCameraOffset	Shifts the horizon of a sky material by an offset vector, so the sky can sit higher or lower relative to the camera.
skyMaterial.setDistance	Changes how far the sky dome sits from the camera in a sky material, which changes how the horizon reads.
skyMaterial.setDithering	Turns dithering on or off for a sky material; on, it adds fine noise that hides color banding in smooth gradients.
skyMaterial.setInclination	Changes how high the sun stands in a sky material, from -0.5 below the horizon through 0 at the horizon to 0.5 overhead; ignored while useSunPosition is on.
skyMaterial.setLuminance	Changes the overall brightness of a sky material, between 0 and 1.
skyMaterial.setMieCoefficient	Changes how much haze a sky material has around the sun, between 0 and 0.1; more makes a wider, whiter glow.
skyMaterial.setMieDirectionalG	Changes how tightly a sky material's haze glow gathers around the sun; values near 1 make a small bright halo, lower values spread it.
skyMaterial.setRayleigh	Changes how strongly a sky material scatters light in the way that makes a clear sky blue; higher is a deeper, brighter blue.
skyMaterial.setSunPosition	Places the sun of a sky material at an explicit direction vector; it takes effect only while useSunPosition is on, otherwise inclination and azimuth decide.
skyMaterial.setTurbidity	Changes how hazy a sky material's air is; more haze whitens the sky and spreads the sun's glow.
skyMaterial.setUp	Changes which direction a sky material treats as up, normally [0, 1, 0]; change it for scenes that use another axis as up.
skyMaterial.setUseSunPosition	Chooses whether a sky material places the sun from sunPosition, when true, or from inclination and azimuth, when false.

Textures

Function	What it does
createImage	Creates an image texture intended for decals and projections.
createSimple	Creates texture from URL from a few basic options.

Decals

Function	What it does
clearDecalMap	Clears all projected decals from a decal map, resetting it to empty.
createMeshDecal	Creates a geometry decal that projects an image onto a mesh.
enableDecalMap	Enables a UV-space decal map on a mesh and turns on the decal map plugin of its material.
projectDecal	Projects an image into a decal map.