Materials

Feather Engine 2 has two ways to set how a surface looks. Built-in objects such as cubes, trees and cottages carry their own surface settings in the Details panel. Material assets are reusable, project-wide materials with textures; you assign them to any object, either to the whole object or to one named material slot of an imported model. Editing a material asset updates every object that uses it, live.

Set the surface of a built-in object

1. Select the object.
2. In the Details panel, open Appearance.
3. Pick a colour and a Preset, then adjust the sliders.

Setting	Range	Default	Description
Base colour	sRGB	—	Labelled Canopy colour on trees and Wall colour on cottages; other parts keep their original materials
Unlit surface	On/off	Off	Shows the base colour without lighting
Roughness	0–1	0.95	Low values are glossy
Metallic	0–1	0
Emission colour	sRGB	—	Separate from the base colour
Emission strength	0–100	0	Brightens the surface. It does not add a light

Preset	Sets
Matte	The defaults. Reset material applies it too
Polished	Roughness 0.18
Metal	Roughness 0.2, metallic 1
Emission	Emission in the base colour at strength 2
Unlit	Keeps the current settings and turns on Unlit surface

Groups have no surface of their own; their children keep their own materials. Imported models keep their embedded materials; change them with material assets instead.

Create a material asset

1. Open Window → Materials & textures and select the Materials tab.
2. Click + New material. Duplicate copies the selected material; Delete removes it and clears every slot that used it.
3. Edit the fields. The preview sphere follows your changes while you drag.
4. Select an object in the viewport and click Assign to object name to apply the material to all of its meshes.

The panel shows how many objects use the material.

Field	Range	Default	Description
Base colour	sRGB 0–1	White	Multiplied with the base texture
Base texture	Project texture	None
Normal map	Project texture	None
Roughness	0–1	0.8
Metallic	0–1	0
Emission	sRGB 0–1	White	Emission colour
Strength	0–50 in the panel, 0–100 by command	0	Emission strength
Emission texture	Project texture	None
Opaque / Cutout / Transparent	—	Opaque	Alpha mode
Cutoff	0–1	0.5	Cutout only: pixels below it are discarded, for leaves and fences
Opacity	0–1	1	Transparent only
Double sided	On/off	Off
Unlit	On/off	Off
Shading	Project / Standard / Toon	Project	See below
UV tiling	0.01–100 per axis in the panel	1 × 1	Texture repeats across the mesh UVs

Shading

Standard is physically based. Toon is cel shading. Project follows the project default, set in the Project shading tab of the same window. A toon material can use the project’s toon look or turn on Own toon look to keep its own. See Post-processing for the toon look settings.

A material can also carry a node graph. Build it in the Material Graph tab; see Material graphs.

Override a model’s materials

Imported models list each embedded glTF material in Details → Materials.

1. Select the model.
2. In Details → Materials, each slot shows Embedded or the material asset that replaces it. Pick a material asset from the list to override that slot.
3. To edit an embedded material, click Edit next to the slot. The editor copies it into a new material asset — colour, roughness, metallic, emission, alpha, double-sided and textures — assigns it to the slot, and opens it in the material editor.
4. + Whole-model override applies one material to every mesh. On built-in objects the button is + Override material.

Remove an override with ×. An object can hold up to 32 material overrides.

Textures

Materials, terrain layers and skies use project textures.

1. Open Window → Materials & textures and select the Textures tab.
2. Click Import PNG texture….

Textures must be PNG images. Identical images share one stored file, and you can rename or remove a texture from its menu. To use the stylized texture library instead, import a library texture with texture.library_import; it copies the colour map and the OpenGL normal map into the project.

Limits

• Up to 1,000 material assets per project.
• Up to 32 material overrides per object.
• Colours, roughness, metallic, cutoff and opacity are 0–1. Emission strength is 0–100. UV scale is 0.001–1,000 by command.
• Textures are PNG only. A .cube colour LUT is converted on import for post-processing.

Automate it

Agents create and assign materials through the same commands the editor uses. This imports a texture, creates a tiled material from it, and assigns it to object 12:

feather-cli --connect .feather-session.json command texture.import \
  --json '{"path":"textures/stone.png"}'

feather-cli --connect .feather-session.json command material.create \
  --json '{"name":"Stone wall","base_texture":3,"roughness":0.9,"uv_scale":[4,4]}'

feather-cli --connect .feather-session.json command scene.update \
  --json '{"id":12,"patch":{"material_slots":[{"slot":null,"material_id":1}]}}'

Command	Purpose
material.get	Reads project shading and material summaries; with id, one material in full
material.create	Creates a material asset and returns its ID
material.update	Patches a material asset; every user updates live
material.remove	Deletes a material and clears the slots that used it
material.from_model	Makes an editable material from a model’s embedded glTF material
material.set	Patches the project shading defaults
scene.update	Sets material_slots, or the built-in material fields, on an object
texture.import	Imports a PNG as a project texture

Use the IDs the commands return in place of the example IDs. See Agents & automation for connecting a live session.