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MaterialX Viewer

The MaterialX Viewer leverages shader generation to build GLSL shaders from MaterialX graphs, rendering the results using the NanoGUI framework. Both the standard set of MaterialX nodes and the PBR node set are supported.

Example Images

Figure 1: Standard Surface Shader with procedural and uniform materials

Figure 2: Standard Surface Shader with textured, color-space-managed materials

Building The MaterialX Viewer

Select the MATERIALX_BUILD_VIEWER option to build the MaterialX Viewer. Installation will copy the MaterialXView executable to a bin/ directory within the selected install folder.

Summary of Viewer Options

  1. Load Mesh: Load in geometry for viewing. There is currently support for OBJ file loading.
  2. Load Material: Load in a MaterialX document containing elements to render.
  3. Property Editor: View or edit the properties for the current element selected.
  4. Advanced Settings : Loading and fidelity options.

Geometry

Upon launching MaterialXView, a teapot model is automatically loaded. To change this preview geometry, click Load Mesh and navigate to /resources/Geometry for a list of available models.

Currently, files using the OBJ file format are supported. If a file contains more than one group, then a Select Geometry option is available which lists the available groups. One group is chosen as the current active group. To change the active group, click the Select Geometry list to choose from a list of available groups.

Under Advanced Settings it is possible to have a wireframe overlay displayed for the active group by choosing Outline Selected Geometry.

Materials

To experiment with different materials, click Load Material. Navigate to resources/Materials/Examples/StandardSurface for a selection of .mtlx files.

To adjust the attributes on the materials, click Property Editor to show or hide the material properties. Note that this changes the generated shader inputs and not the original MaterialX document.

Multiple materials can be loaded using the following options:

  1. Load a single MaterialX document containing multiple materials, or
  2. Merge additional materials into the current session by
    1. Clicking on Advanced Settings and enabling Merge Materials.
    2. Clicking on Load Material to select additional .mtlx files.

If more than one material has been loaded they will be listed in a pop-up menu under an Assigned Material label.

To assign a renderable item to either an existing group or the entire object, click on the pop-up menu to switch among (between) the available materials. Alternatively the LEFT and RIGHT arrows can be used to cycle through the list.

Note: Once you have loaded a material, it remains in the list even after you disable Merge Materials. To clear the entries, disable Merge Materials and load in a new .mtlx file. The list will be refreshed to include only the renderable items from that document.

Looks

Assignment of materials to geometry can be performed by loading a MaterialX document which contains one or more looks (e.g. resources\Materials\Examples\StandardSurface\standard_surface_look_brass_tiled.mtlx). If the geometry string referenced by a look matches the name of a group in the current mesh, then the given material assignment will be applied to that mesh group.

Lighting

MaterialXView currently provides built-in direct and indirect lighting (IBL). You can enable one or both by selecting Advanced Settings > Lighting Options.

To improve the indirect lighting highlights on your material, increase the Advanced Settings > Environment Samples. This may cause your system to slow down, so you may want to balance speed with quality.

Keyboard Shortcuts

  • R: Reload the current document from file.
  • S: Save the current shader source to file.
  • L: Load shader source from file. Editing the source files before loading provides a way to debug and experiment with shader source code.
  • D: Save each node graph in the current material as a DOT file. See www.graphviz.org for more details on this format.
  • F: Capture the current frame and save to file.

Command-Line Options

The following are common command-line options for MaterialXView, and a complete list can be displayed with the --help option.

  • --library [FILEPATH]: Additional library folder location
  • --path [FILEPATH]: Additional file search path location
  • --mesh [FILENAME]: Mesh filename
  • --material [FILENAME]: Material filename
  • --help: Display the complete list of command-line options