Shaderlight’s Material Editor has been developed so that it works out of the box.  If you have applied a Material from the standard SketchUp collection, Shaderlight automatically assigns properties so that the material renders correctly. 

In order to create the perfect finish for your SketchUp model you may want to edit the Material Type and Finish.  For those of you not familiar with the options available in Shaderlight’s Material Editor, here is a quick overview.

By default Shaderlight will use the Auto Material option however there are 8 preset Material types that can be selected as an alternative or used for new Materials you create yourself. You can change the colour, opacity and add ‘bump’to your Material.

The Materials will look different depending on which Lighting presets are used in the Shaderlight render settings.

The following slides show the variation of the different preset finishes available in Shaderlight.

Shiny Material.

Objects and light sources show as well defined reflections in the material.

Satin Material.

Strong light sources show as highlights, but other objects do not reflect.

Glossy Material.

Objects and light sources show as blurred reflections in the material.

Metal Material.

Reflections in the material are affected by the colour of the metal.

Transparent Material.

Material you can see through but can be coloured.

Translucent Material.

Material that you can see through, but it may be cloudy.

Self Illuminating Material.

LED 2 cd/m2Self-Illuminating materials are to represent light emitting materials. They do not actually cast light, but to get the effect of light shining from them you can apply lights to the front of the Material. They are used for things like televisions, computer monitors and other similar devices.

There are a range of light intensity’s to choose from in the Self-Illuminating Material drop down depending on the how bright you want your light to be:

Luminous Paint 0.1 cd/m2

LED 2 cd/m2

10 cd/m2

CRT Monitor 150 cd/m2

LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2

Neon Sign 1500 cd/m2

10,000 cd/m2

100,000 cd/m2

1,000,000 cd/m2

10,000,000 cd/m2

Rendered image using different Shaderlight Materials.

To give you an idea of how different material types and finishes can transform an image, we’ve detailed the material options chosen for each element of this scene.