Vertexix

Edit Material

· · Vertexix & Ultra

The Edit Material window changes one material's name and properties, with the viewport updating as you drag. Open it with the pencil icon on a material's row in the Material Tools window (either list), the pencil beside Material in the Paint Palette or the Layers window, or by Ctrl+clicking a polygon without moving the mouse while the Retopology sidebar is showing — that opens the polygon's own material.

Edit Material is available in Vertexix and Ultra. In Free and Light the pencil icons are disabled.

The Edit Material window on the Standard PBR tab: the Material name field at the top, then the Properties table with Base Color, Metallic and Roughness rows, each with an image icon and a plus icon on the left and a slider or color field with a grey swatch on the right, and the model in the viewport behind it showing the edited material
Edit Material on the Standard PBR tab.

Material name

The name field at the top renames the material everywhere it is shown, including the exported file. An unnamed material shows “Material N” in grey as a hint; that is not saved as its name unless you type it. Names must be unique (ignoring case): if another material already has the name, a warning appears and the rename is not applied until you change it.

Under the name are two tabs, Standard PBR and Open PBR.

Standard PBR tab

The Properties table lists every editable value in Principled BSDF order, the same order the read-only Material Properties Inspector uses. Edits apply to the viewport in real time. Sliders whose range is 0 to 1 end in a grey swatch showing how that value would look as a greyscale texture (0% black, 100% white).

GroupRows
Base surfaceBase Color, Metallic, Roughness, Specular, Specular Color
AnisotropyAnisotropic (its sign picks the tangent or bitangent axis), Anisotropic Rotation
Sheen and clearcoatSheen, Sheen Roughness, Clearcoat, Clearcoat Roughness
Glass and volumeIOR, Transmission, Volume Thickness, Attenuation Distance, Attenuation Color
SubsurfaceSubsurface, Subsurface Color, Subsurface Radius, Subsurface Radius Scale, Subsurface Anisotropy — a viewport approximation of light scattering inside the surface. These share their values with the Open PBR tab's Subsurface section.
Iridescence and dispersionIridescence, Iridescence IOR, Dispersion (only visible on a transmissive material)
EmissionEmission — values above 1 push past the bloom threshold for a surface that really glows.
TransparencyAlpha, Alpha Mode (Opaque, Mask or Blend), Alpha Cutoff (only used under Mask), Double Sided
Surface shapeNormal Map and Height (bump) set how strongly each map shows (1 as authored, 0 flat, without detaching the map); Displacement moves vertices along their normals by up to this distance for a fully white texel, visible only while PBR Preview is on.

Below the table, Legacy properties (not used by rendering) lists, for reference, non-glTF values an FBX, OBJ or Collada file can carry. Nothing in Vertexix reads them, so there is nothing there to edit.

Images for each property

Rows that can be driven by a texture have two icons on the left:

ControlWhat it does
Image iconHighlighted when the material already has an image for this property; its tooltip names the image, and clicking it opens that image in the Image Viewer. While the Generated Mesh is shown, it refers to the created topology's own texture for the properties a bake can produce (base color, normal, metallic, roughness, occlusion, emission).
Plus iconCreates a blank image for this property. Disabled once an image exists. A Create Image popup asks for the Image name (the material and property name by default), which UV map to use (Apply painted coordinates from), the Size (Match Albedo or a fixed size your edition allows) and a Default color.

Open PBR tab

The Edit Material window on the Open PBR tab: Load MTLX and Save MTLX buttons at the top, the Use OpenPBR shading checkbox ticked, and the Open PBR parameters accordions with Coat expanded showing Weight, Color, Roughness, Roughness Anisotropy, IOR and Darkening, the model behind showing a glossy coated surface
The Open PBR tab with the Coat section open.

The Open PBR tab edits the material's OpenPBR parameters. It needs OpenPBR shading, which is an Ultra feature: in other editions the tab shows its buttons disabled and an upgrade note instead of the parameters. When a material has no OpenPBR values of its own, the tab starts from values derived from its Standard PBR properties, so switching tabs does not change its look.

ControlWhat it does
Load MTLX...Loads a .mtlx file's open_pbr_surface parameters into every field, replacing them.
Save MTLX...Saves every field to a .mtlx file.
Use OpenPBR shadingShades every material with the OpenPBR BSDF instead of the default shader. Same toggle as the one in PBR Settings — either flips both. Needs PBR Preview on (by default P).

The Open PBR parameters always feed the material's own data (and Save MTLX); whether they are what you see in the viewport depends on Use OpenPBR shading. They are grouped in accordions, one open at a time:

SectionRows
BaseWeight, Color, Diffuse Roughness, Metalness
SpecularWeight, Color, Roughness, Roughness Anisotropy, IOR
TransmissionWeight, Color, Depth, Scatter, Scatter Anisotropy, Dispersion Scale, Dispersion Abbe Number
SubsurfaceWeight, Color, Radius, Radius Scale, Scatter Anisotropy
SheenWeight, Color, Roughness
CoatWeight, Color, Roughness, Roughness Anisotropy, IOR, Darkening (how a clear coat makes a material look wet)
Thin FilmWeight, Thickness (microns), IOR
EmissionLuminance, Color
GeometryOpacity, Thin Walled

Rows that share a texture with a Standard PBR property carry the same image and plus icons. See OpenPBR Shading for how the shader itself behaves.