Metal

Exporting metal

Export the full-quality maps of your metal for the programs you use.

Current release: Matelume 2.0

Export the maps

1. Check the summary: Name, Colour (or Photo), Shine, Effect, Imperfections, Tile, Quality and For (your programs).
2. Under Folder, click Choose the folder..., or type a folder into the box. The line under it shows where the maps are saved.
3. Click Export the maps.

The export is one seamless tile at its real size, made with the same recipe as the 3D view and the close-up.

When it is done, Saved lists every file, with the map size and how long it took. Open the folder opens it, and Export again makes a new export.

What you get

What you get lists the files for the programs you picked. For Blender:

• Color: your metal's colour.
• NormalGL: the finish and the wear.
• Roughness: the shine, texel by texel.
• Displacement: the height, 16-bit, with its real depth in mm.
• Metalness: white, because the whole surface is metal.
• .json: the real size, the colour, the shine, the effect with its strength and scale, and the imperfections, with a how-to sheet for each program.

Each file is named after your material, the word Metal and the quality, for example BRUSHED_STEEL_Metal_4K_Color.png.

Your programs

Each program you picked under Your software gets its own list:

• Blender (Cycles / EEVEE)
• 3ds Max + V-Ray
• 3ds Max + Corona
• Cinema 4D (Redshift)
• Unreal Engine (maps for Unreal Engine 5)
• Other software: the standard set of eight maps (Color, NormalGL, NormalDX, Roughness, Glossiness, Displacement, Metalness and AmbientOcclusion) for SketchUp, Enscape, D5 Render, Twinmotion, Lumion, Unity and others.

Brushed metal

A brushed metal also exports two small Brushing direction maps (anisotropy maps) in the extras folder, for the programs that stretch the highlight along the brushing. The Blender add-on 0.2.2 connects them for you.

8K on a 16 GB PC

An 8K metal export runs on a PC with 16 GB of memory. One measured 8K metal export took 41 seconds on an RTX 4090. That is an example, not a promise: the time depends on your PC.

Send to Blender

After the export, Send to Blender brings your metal into Blender: On the selected objects at its real size, A sphere (30 cm, ready to render) or A plane (one tile at its real size). It needs the Matelume add-on in Blender. Use Matelume in Blender

Render in Blender: the Studio no longer renders with Cycles itself. The live 3D view stays.