Matelume / Guide

A little guidance.
A material of your own.

Start with your first flat image, or go straight to the tool you need.

A bedroom render in which every material was made in MatelumeFabric tools in MatelumeWall art tools in Matelume
01

Get started

What Matelume does

Matelume turns one image into a real-size PBR material for your 3D software, made on your own Windows PC.

System requirements

Matelume needs Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and an internet connection, with 16 GB of RAM recommended and ideally an NVIDIA graphics card.

Install Matelume

Download the Windows installer, get past the SmartScreen warning, install and start Matelume, update to a new version, or uninstall it.

Sign in and link your PC

Link Matelume to your account through your web browser with a matching code; you never type a password into the app.

Quick start: your first fabric

Make your first fabric material in the Studio's four phases, Begin, Prepare, Craft and Export, with only the essentials.

02

The Studio

A tour of the Studio

The parts of the Matelume Studio, from the top bar and the step bar to the picture, the 3D view, the controls panel and the step guide.

Begin: image, software and material type

The first three steps of every material, choosing and cleaning up a good image, picking your 3D programs, and saying what the image shows.

Prepare: quality, scale and seamless

Choose the size of your maps, set how big your image is in real life, and make one tile that repeats with no visible join.

The 3D view

Check your material on a real object at its real size, pick the object, turn the light, show real relief, and switch on path tracing for a Cycles-like still.

03

Fabric

Fabric overview

The six Craft steps that turn your seamless tile into a finished fabric, in order, and which ones matter most for embroidery, print, jacquard and velvet-like cloth.

What stands up

Pick the parts of your design that are raised and stitched, by clicking shapes on the image or by choosing colours.

Ground

Set the cloth under your design: the weave, how many threads there are per centimetre and how high they stand.

Height

Set how far the raised parts stand from the cloth, in real millimetres, and check it in a true-scale side view.

Stitching

Choose how your raised parts are made, from 26 stitch types in six groups, each with its own control, and set the density of satin cords.

Construction

Lay a fabric finish (velvet, chenille, silk, suede or cotton) over your finished material, and set how strong it is and how glossy your raised parts stay.

Imperfections

Add subtle signs of use to your fabric one by one, each starting at zero, from a list that follows your material.

04

Wall art

Wall art overview

Turn an image of a painting or a print into a framed 3D asset at its real size, and set that size first.

Raised paint

Pick where the paint, or the clear gel on a canvas print, stands up, then set how thick it stands at its thickest.

Paint, metal and ageing

Give the raised paint a type and a varnish, turn gold, silver or copper colours into real metal, and age the painting a little.

Frame

Build the frame round your finished artwork live in 3D, with its shape, moulding, inner frame, mat and glass, then age the frame and the glass a little.

Exporting wall art

Export the framed artwork as a GLB and an FBX with its materials and textures, plus the artwork's full map set and the frame's textures.

05

Marble

Marble overview

Make a stone slab material from one image: its real size, a seamless tile or the slab once, a soft relief, the veins' own finish, the gloss you choose and optional wear.

Seamless slab

Make one tile of your slab that repeats without a visible join, choose how much of the slab it keeps, or use the slab once.

Soft bump

Give polished stone its gentle relief, pits and fissures a few hundredths of a millimetre deep, and check it at true scale.

Gloss and veins

Give the veins their own finish, then set how glossy the whole stone is, in the gloss units a gloss meter reads.

Imperfections

Add subtle signs of use to the finished stone, fine scratches, polish wear, small chips, dust and water marks, each starting at zero.

Exporting marble

Export your marble's full-quality maps for your programs, with the vein mask, a .json of its real size and finish, and a how-to sheet per program.

06

Export and use

Export your material

Build the full-quality maps into a folder, with the maps each program gets, what each map is for, the real-size JSON, Package it and Send to.

Use Matelume in Blender

Install the Matelume add-on in Blender 4.2 or later, put materials on your objects at their real size, and receive Send to Blender from the Studio.

Use Matelume in 3ds Max

Install the Matelume plugin in 3ds Max 2025 or later and put V-Ray or Corona materials on your objects at their real size.

Other programs and renderers

Use Matelume maps in any PBR renderer, with which map goes where, OpenGL or DirectX normals, and the tile size and displacement taken from the JSON.

07

Account and plans

Trial and plans

A new account gets a 5-day trial of every Pro tool from its first linked PC, with exports up to 2K and a faint watermark; buying unlocks the same install.

Your PCs

Use Matelume on up to two PCs, one at a time, and link, switch, unlink or move to a new PC.

08

Help

Troubleshooting

Fixes for common problems with the installer, the Studio window, sign-in, slow builds, memory, the add-ons, material size, visible seams and the export folder.

Frequently asked questions

Short answers about AI, your images, working offline, Mac, supported renderers, commercial use and image rights.

Contact support

How to reach Matelume support, what to include so we can help quickly, and what never to send.

09

What's new

What's new

What changed in each Matelume version, and what's coming in the next one.