Your First Material

This tutorial builds a minimal but complete material: one noise generator, shaped with a Levels filter, converted to a normal map, and wired into a PBR Output. By the end you will have previewed it in 3D and exported its maps.

1. Create a project

In the Project Hub, press New Project. An inline form replaces the shelves. Type a project name and press Create. The project file is written under Documents/Surface Labs/ and the editor opens.

The Project Hub with the New Project form open on the right, a name typed into the Project name field, and the Create and Cancel buttons below it.

2. Place a Noise generator

Type noise into the toolbar’s search field and drag the Noise result onto the canvas, or tap it to drop it at the center of the viewport. The Node Picker panel and a double-click on empty canvas offer the same catalog if you would rather browse; Noise is in the Generators category. It has no inputs and one output, Output, a grayscale field in the 0 to 1 range.

A Noise node freshly placed on the canvas, its thumbnail showing the default Perlin pattern, with the Preview 2D panel on the left rendering the same field at 512 by 512.

In the Properties panel, pick a family from Type (Perlin is the default; fBm is a good start for natural surfaces). Scale sets the cells per axis, and pressing the randomize button next to Seed reshuffles the pattern without changing anything else. Only the controls the chosen family uses stay visible.

The Properties panel for a Noise node with Type set to fBm, showing the Scale, Seed, Octaves, Lacunarity and Gain controls, and the node's thumbnail updated to the fBm pattern.

3. Shape it with Levels

Add a Levels node (Filters) and connect the Noise Output to its Input (see Connections for wiring). Levels remaps the black point, white point and gamma onto a new output range:

In Black and In White set which input values become fully black and fully white.
Gamma biases the midtones between those two points.
Out Black and Out White set the range the result is written into. Swapping them inverts the result.
Channel picks which channel the five handles act on: Master grades every channel together, and Red, Green or Blue grades one and passes the rest through. Leave it on Master here.

Raise In Black slightly and lower Gamma until the pattern has clear peaks and valleys. This grayscale result will serve as the height map.

The Noise node wired into a Levels node on the canvas, with the Levels Properties open on the left showing the histogram and its black point, gamma and white point handles.

4. Convert height to a normal map

Add a Normal from Height node (Normal category) and wire the Levels Output into its Height input. It converts the grayscale height map into a tangent-space normal map on its Output port. Its single parameter, Strength (0 to 32, default 4), multiplies the slopes: 0 is dead flat, higher values exaggerate relief.

The Normal from Height node wired off the Levels output, its thumbnail and the Preview 2D panel both showing the purple and blue toned tangent-space normal map.

5. Wire the PBR Output

Add a PBR Output node (Output category). It is the material endpoint: no input is required, and every channel has an on/off toggle with a constant fallback, so the material looks sensible with any subset connected. Wire:

Levels Output into Base Color (grayscale and color textures are interchangeable; see Data Types & Ports).
Levels Output into Roughness and into Height.
Normal from Height Output into Normal.

Channels you leave unwired fall back to their constants, such as Roughness Value and Metallic Value, which export as real flat maps.

The finished graph on a clear canvas: Noise feeding Levels, Levels feeding both Normal from Height and the PBR Output's Base Color, Roughness and Height inputs, and Normal from Height feeding the Normal input.

6. Preview in 3D

Open the Preview 3D panel (pin it to any panel slot with a slot’s + button; see Interface Tour). It shows the material on a mesh in a real-time PBR-lit viewport, reading its channels from the PBR Output node. See Preview 3D.

The Preview 3D panel showing the finished material on a sphere, its surface carrying visible relief from the normal map, with the finished graph on the canvas beside it.

7. Export

Select the PBR Output node and press Export Textures… at the top of the Properties panel, or press Ctrl+E / Cmd+E, which picks the first PBR Output in the graph. In the dialog, choose an Engine preset and a Format (PNG, TGA, TIFF, BMP, or EXR), and keep Individual maps (one file per channel) on. The planned-file preview under the prefix field lists the exact files the run will write.

Press Export, pick a destination folder, and a toast reports the result. The app waits for any still-rendering maps and promotes previews to full resolution first, so the export never captures a stale image. Files with the same name in the target folder are overwritten. See Exporting for every dialog option.