Materials

Roblox’s materials are unlike materials on other platforms. Their visual and physical properties reflect those of materials in the real world. For example, concrete is heavier than plastic and sinks faster in water. Set the material in the part or terrain, and Roblox simulates the physical material properties to make this behavior just work.

Roblox Engine offers a wide range of built-in materials suitable to build many experiences, including various categories of metal, rock, and organic materials. The Material Manager in Studio helps you visualize materials and apply them to parts and terrain.

You can create your own custom materials or load custom materials that other users created, via a system called the MaterialService. Custom materials have an additional behavior called Adaptive Materials that makes it easy for you to adapt any model to use your art style and custom materials, even if someone else created the model.

Material Manager

The easiest way to interact with materials is through the Material Manager. It's a convenient, streamlined tool for working with materials. You can also interact with materials via the Properties window, but the Material Manager is easier.

Exploring Material Manager

To open the Material Manager, click the Home tab, then click Material Manager. You can also open it from the Parts section of the Model tab.

The Material Manager opens as a large window.

Material Manager has four areas:

A. The Toolbar displays key commands and a material search field.
B. The Browser displays available materials, either all at once or by category.
C. The Palette displays the materials in the currently selected category.
D. The Inspector displays information about the selected material.

You can resize it and dock it like other windows in Studio. To adjust the size of each grid and toggle between list or grid view, use the view options on the top-right corner.

Applying Materials to Parts using Apply to Selected

The Material property for new Part instances is Plastic. To apply a material to a part:

1. In the viewport or the Explorer window, click the Part.

   

2. In the Palette, hover your mouse over the material you want to apply. You don't need to click it. The Apply to Selected button appears.

   

3. Click Apply to Selected.

Applying Materials to Parts using Material as Tool

You can use a material as a tool that applies to parts. To use a material as a tool:

1. In the Material Manager, click the material you want to apply.

2. In the top-left corner of the Material Manager, click Use Material as Tool button to enable the material as a tool.

   

3. In the viewport, click the parts you want to apply the material to.

4. When you're done using the material as a tool, click Use Material as Tool again to disable the tool.

Materials for Terrain

A subset of the materials available for parts is available for terrain. In addition to the visual and physical properties materials provide for parts, terrain materials determine features such as the terrain's shape and its decorator display. For example, brick terrain has a boxy shape and the grass decorator renders on grass terrain but not on ice terrain. For information on which materials are available for terrain and how to apply them, see Terrain.

Colors for Parts and Terrain

Parts and terrain inherit their look from its material, but you can apply colors to further adjust their look. Parts are colored per-part, but Terrain is colored per-place. For example, you can have three different parts made of grass that are tinted red, blue, and green, but all Terrain grass in a Place has the same tint. For information on how to color parts and terrain, see Parts and Terrain, respectively.

Custom Materials

Roblox provides APIs and tools to make it easy to create your own custom materials and use them in a variety of ways. MaterialService is the system that enables you to generate custom materials. MaterialVariant instances represent custom materials as variations of built-in materials. You can apply custom materials per-part or globally to both parts and terrain, and you can fine-tune how custom materials apply to faces of terrain using TerrainDetail instances.

The appearance of custom materials is based on Physically Based Rendering (PBR) textures that you make with other tools, such as Adobe Substance 3D Designer.

MaterialService

The Material Manager provides a user interface to interact with various aspects of the MaterialService, including creating new custom materials and applying them to parts and terrain.

You can also interact with the MaterialService from the Explorer or in server-side scripts. Each MaterialVariant instance must be in the MaterialService for it to work.

Upgrading Built-In Materials

The built-in materials upgraded in 2022 to support Custom Materials. This upgrade is on by default for new places, but it's optional. To upgrade built-in materials from the Pre-2022 versions to the 2022 versions:

1. In the Explorer window, click MaterialService.

   

2. In the Properties window, scroll down to Material Pack. Enable Use2022Materials.

   

After upgrading, you might need to adjust colors for terrain because terrain made with 2022 materials use tint instead of hue shift.

Creating a Custom Material in the Material Manager

The Material Manager provides a graphical user interface for you to insert MaterialVariant instances in the MaterialService. To create a custom material in the Material Manager:

1. If the Material Manager isn't open, then click Material Manager in the Home tab.

   

2. In the top-left corner of the Material Manager, click Create Material Variant. The Create Variant window appears.

   

3. Choose a name for your custom material. You can change the name later, but if you change the name after applying it to parts, then you need to reapply it.

4. Select a built-in material as a Base Material for your custom material to inherit non-customizable properties from.

5. Type the asset ID for the texture maps that you want to use for your MaterialVariant or import new textures. If you don't specify the asset ID for a texture map, then the custom material displays a blank texture.

6. If you want, set values for Studs Per Tile and Material Pattern to adjust how the material looks.

7. When you are ready, click Save. Your new custom material appears in the Material Manager. The icon in the bottom-right corner indicates that it's a custom material.

   

Creating a Custom Material in the Explorer

To create a custom material in the Explorer:

1. Hover over the MaterialService.
2. Click the ⊕ button that appears to the right of the MaterialService to open the Insert Object menu.
3. Select MaterialVariant.
4. Rename the custom material to describe its purpose.
5. Update the properties of the custom material to fit your needs.

Applying Custom Materials

Applying Custom Materials to Parts

You can apply custom materials to a Part by setting the Part.Material to MaterialVariant.BaseMaterial and Part.MaterialVariant to MaterialVariant.Name. If you use the Material Manager, it sets both for you. If you use the Properties window, then setting the MaterialVariant property automatically sets the Material as the base material. If you use a server-side script, remember to set both properties.

You can apply custom materials to parts from the Material Manager by using the Apply to Selected or the Use Material as Tool. To use Apply to Selected:

1. In the viewport or the Explorer window, click the parts that you want to apply the custom materials to.

2. In the Material Manager, find your custom material and hover over it.

3. Click Apply to Selected Parts.

   

Setting Material Overrides

You can set a custom material as a Material Override to make its built-in base material be a reference to the custom material. As a result, when you set the material of a part or terrain to be the built-in material, the Engine uses the custom material instead.

Material Overrides apply to both parts and terrain, and they are the only way to apply custom materials to terrain. The materials for terrain are global per place, so you can't apply multiple variants of the same base material to terrain in a single place.

To set a custom material as a material override in the Material Manager:

1. If the Material Manager isn't open, then click Material Manager in the Home tab.

2. Click the custom material that you want to set as an override.

3. In the inspector, scroll down to Material Overrides. Enable Set Override.

   

A convenient way to automatically make a variant an override is to give it the same name as the base material. You can disable the automatic override in the Material Manager by following the previous steps.

Viewing Material Overrides

To view Material Overrides in your place:

1. In the Explorer window, click MaterialService.

   

2. In the Properties window, scroll to Material Overrides.

   

Detailing Faces of Terrain

When you apply a material to parts or terrain, the material applies as tiles across each face. You can use a TerrainDetail instance to customize the Side, Bottom, and Top faces of terrain. Each TerrainDetail instance overrides the properties of a custom material for one face on the terrain. Use one instance for each face of each custom material.

TerrainDetail instances don't apply to parts. To detail faces of parts, create a mesh with a SurfaceAppearance instance. For more information, see Meshes in Studio.

To detail the face of a terrain with a custom material:

1. Set the custom material as a Material Override for its built-in base material.

2. In the Explorer, hover over the custom material.

3. Click the ⊕ button that appears to the right of the custom material to open the Insert Object menu. Select TerrainDetail.

4. Rename the terrain detail to describe its purpose.

   

5. In the Properties window, define the properties to fit your needs. The Face property determines whether to apply the TerrainDetail to the Bottom, Side, or Top of the terrain. The default is Side. The remaining properties are the same as those for MaterialVariant.

   

Editing a Custom Material

You can edit all properties of a custom material in the Material Manager or the Properties window. However, if you rename the custom material after applying it to parts, then the parts don't automatically use the custom material with the new name. This behavior allows for Adaptive Materials. If you want parts to continue using a custom material after you rename it, you need to re-apply the custom material.

To edit a MaterialVariant in the Material Manager:

1. If the Material Manager isn't open, then click Material Manager in the Home tab.

2. Click the custom material you want to edit.

3. Click the edit icon.

   

Deleting a Custom Material

You can delete a custom material using the Material Manager or the Explorer. To delete a custom material in the Material Manager:

1. If the Material Manager isn't open, then click Material Manager in the Home tab.

2. Click the custom material you want to edit.

3. Click the edit icon.

   

Reusing Custom Materials

You can reuse custom materials across multiple places and experiences by putting them in Models and Packages. However, each MaterialVariant instance must be in the MaterialService for it to work.

• If you publish a model in the Creator Marketplace with a custom material, include the MaterialVariant instance in the model. For more information about publishing models to the Creator Marketplace, see Publishing Assets.
• If you insert a model from the Creator Marketplace, look for any MaterialVariant instances and copy them to the MaterialService. For more information about importing models from the Creator Marketplace, see Creator Marketplace.
• If you want to use custom materials with packages, put the package in the MaterialService. For more information on packages, see Packages.

Adaptive Materials

When you apply a custom material to a part, the part's Part.MaterialVariant property becomes the name of its MaterialVariant rather than its specific instance. This means that when you reuse the part in the same or a different place, as in a model or package, it's easier for you to adapt different custom materials to adjust the part's look. The adaptive behavior of custom materials has the following effects:

• If you create collections of custom materials with the same name but different textures, then you can quickly change the style of a place by changing which collection is a child of MaterialService.
• If you insert a model with parts that use a custom material, then you can modify its look by creating an instance of MaterialVariant in the MaterialService and renaming it to the same name as the previous custom material, rather than applying the new material to the parts in the model.

For more information about reusing custom materials in models and packages, see Reusing Custom Materials.

Asset IDs for Built-In Materials

Shaders generate the look and feel of materials. The built-in Materials shaders work differently than the shader MaterialVariant instances use, so you can't create a custom material that looks exactly like a built-in Material. However, you can still create custom materials that use the textures of built-in materials. The following tables list the asset IDs for built-in materials.

2022 Materials

Pre-2022 Materials

2022 Terrain Materials

Pre-2022 Terrain Materials

Default Colors

The following table lists the default RGB values for each 2022 material. For steps on how to upgrade Pre-2022 materials to 2022 materials, see Upgrading Built-In Materials. For information on how to color parts and terrain, see Parts and Terrain, respectively.