Output Nodes

Output nodes are the endpoints of a graph. They decide which textures leave the project, which material channel each texture fills, and what the 3D material preview shows. The category contains three nodes: PBR Output, Custom Output and Trim Sheet. Exporting is per node: you pick an output node and export that one. See Exporting for how output nodes drive the export dialog and file naming.

PBR Output

Type id: pbr_output

The material endpoint. Wire base color, roughness, metallic, normal, height and emissive here to drive the 3D preview and the exporter. Every channel has an on/off toggle and, in most cases, a constant fallback, so a material looks sensible long before all its maps are wired.

Inputs: Material (material, optional), a whole material from a Trim Sheet, a Material node or another PBR Output; see below. Base Color (color map, optional), albedo. Normal (color map, optional), tangent-space normal. Roughness (grayscale map, optional). Metallic (grayscale map, optional). Specular (color map, optional), for the Specular/Glossiness workflow. Glossiness (grayscale map, optional). AO (grayscale map, optional), ambient occlusion. Height (grayscale map, optional). Opacity (grayscale map, optional). Emissive (color map, optional), light the surface gives off. Clearcoat (grayscale map, optional). Thickness (grayscale map, optional), how far light travels through the surface. No input is required; a graph renders and exports with any subset connected.

Outputs: Material (material), the whole map set as a single wire. It carries no texture of its own; whatever consumes it (a Trim Sheet slot, or another PBR Output’s Material input) resolves each individual channel back through this node’s inputs at render and export time. A material wire only connects to another material-aware socket.

Parameter	Type	Default	Range / Options	Notes
Workflow	Choice	Metallic / Roughness	Metallic / Roughness, Specular / Glossiness	Picks which channel pair describes reflectance. The preview reads Metallic + Roughness in the first mode and Specular + Glossiness in the second. The export dialog opens pre-set to whichever workflow this node is on.
Use Base Color	Toggle	On	On / Off	Enables the Base Color channel.
Base (color)	Color	0.8, 0.8, 0.8	each 0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback when Base Color is enabled but nothing is wired. Edited as one color swatch.
Use Normal	Toggle	On	On / Off	Enables the Normal channel. Normal is the one channel with no constant of its own; when it is off or unwired the preview uses a flat normal.
Use Roughness	Toggle	On	On / Off	Enables the Roughness channel.
Roughness Value	Slider	0.5	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Roughness.
Use Metallic	Toggle	On	On / Off	Enables the Metallic channel.
Metallic Value	Slider	0.0	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Metallic.
Use Specular	Toggle	Off	On / Off	Enables the Specular channel.
Specular (color)	Color	0.04, 0.04, 0.04	each 0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Specular. Edited as one color swatch.
Use Glossiness	Toggle	Off	On / Off	Enables the Glossiness channel.
Glossiness Value	Slider	0.5	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Glossiness.
Use AO	Toggle	On	On / Off	Enables the AO channel.
Ao Value	Slider	1.0	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for AO.
Use Height	Toggle	On	On / Off	Enables the Height channel.
Height Value	Slider	0.5	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Height.
Use Opacity	Toggle	Off	On / Off	Enables the Opacity channel.
Opacity Value	Slider	1.0	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Opacity.
Use Emissive	Toggle	Off	On / Off	Enables the Emissive channel, so parts of the material give off light in the preview and in exports.
Emissive (color)	Color	0.0, 0.0, 0.0	each 0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Emissive. Black, so enabling the channel on its own changes nothing until there is something to emit. Edited as one color swatch.
Emissive Strength	Slider	1.0	0.0 to 8.0	Multiplies the emission in the 3D preview. Above 1 the tonemapper blooms the glow past its edges instead of clipping it.
Use Clearcoat	Toggle	Off	On / Off	Enables the Clearcoat channel. Metallic / Roughness only on export: the Specular / Glossiness channel set carries no clearcoat maps.
Clearcoat Value	Slider	0.0	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Clearcoat.
Clearcoat Roughness Value	Slider	0.1	0.0 to 1.0	How rough the clearcoat layer is. There is no Clearcoat Roughness input, so this constant is what the preview shades with and what exports; Use Clearcoat gates both.
Use Thickness	Toggle	Off	On / Off	Enables the Thickness channel, which drives subsurface scattering: light passing through thin material such as wax, leaves or skin.
Thickness Value	Slider	0.0	0.0 to 1.0	Constant fallback for Thickness. 0 scatters nothing, so a material that never touches this channel renders exactly as it did before the channel existed.

A channel with a texture wired in always uses that texture, whatever its toggle says. A channel with nothing wired but its toggle on falls back to its constant, and that constant is a real, exportable flat map, not preview-only. A channel with its toggle off falls back to an engine-neutral value (flat normal, white AO, white opacity, black metallic, black emissive, black thickness, mid gray for the rest) and is not exported.

The Material input. Wiring a whole material into the Material port fills in the channels you did not wire yourself: a per-channel input stays more specific and keeps winning, and only an unwired channel resolves from the upstream material. This is what puts a Trim Sheet in the 3D preview, since the sheet’s own Output port carries just the one channel its Preview Channel picks. For a Trim Sheet the exporter resolves the same way, so the written maps match what is on screen.

Thickness drives subsurface scattering

Subsurface scattering is a material channel: wire a map into Thickness, or turn the channel on and raise Thickness Value. It exports like any other map. The channel starts off, with a constant of 0, which scatters nothing, so it changes nothing until you use it.

Picking which output the 3D preview shows

A graph can hold several PBR Outputs. By default the preview is about the terminal one, the PBR Output whose Material port feeds nothing, falling back to the first when every candidate feeds something. Visualize in 3D Preview in the Properties panel, or Visualize in a node’s context menu, pins the choice to a specific node instead. The choice is saved with the project rather than as an app preference, so a multi-material file reopens on the output you picked.

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A PBR Output node with several maps wired and the Properties panel showing the per-channel toggles and constant fallbacks.

Custom Output

Type id: custom_output

A free-form export endpoint. Name the channel yourself for pipelines that expect something other than the standard PBR set. One input, no parameters, no outputs.

Inputs: Input (texture, optional), any map you want written out under your own name.

Outputs: none.

This node has no parameters.

The exported filename is built from the export prefix plus a slug of the node’s own label: <prefix>_<label-slug>.<extension>. The slug is the label lowercased, with every run of non-alphanumeric characters replaced by a single underscore, leading and trailing underscores stripped; a label containing no letters or digits falls back to output. The stock label “Custom Output” therefore writes <prefix>_custom_output.

Trim Sheet

Type id: trim_sheet

Stacks up to four materials into horizontal strips on one sheet, for the trim-sheet workflow where a single texture set covers many meshes through UV placement. Strip heights come from a layout preset or from per-strip fill weights you set yourself.

Inputs: Strip 1 (top) (map or material, optional), Strip 2 (map or material, optional), Strip 3 (map or material, optional), Strip 4 (map or material, optional). Each slot accepts either a plain map, used as that strip’s Base Color with engine-neutral values in every other channel, or a whole material wired from a PBR Output’s or a Material node’s Material port, in which case every channel of that strip resolves from that material. Slots also see through Reroute nodes.

Outputs: Output (color map), the composited sheet for the channel chosen by Preview Channel. Material (material), the whole sheet as one wire: run it into a PBR Output’s Material input to see the trim sheet in the 3D preview, since Output alone carries just the one channel. Export walks every channel the sheet composes (Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, AO, Height and Emissive) through the same compositor.

Parameter	Type	Default	Range / Options	Notes
Layout	Choice	Equal strips	Custom, Equal strips, Feature top (½ then equal), Cascade (½ ¼ ⅛ ⅛)	Equal strips divides the sheet evenly. Feature top gives the first strip half the sheet and splits the rest evenly. Cascade halves successively, with the last two equal. Custom uses the Strip fill sliders below.
Preview Channel	Choice	Base Color	Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, AO, Height	Which material channel the node’s own output shows. It does not affect what gets exported; export writes all seven, Emissive included, even though Emissive is not offered as a preview choice.
Fit Mode	Choice	Stretch to strip	Stretch to strip, Preserve aspect (tile across)	How each source fills its strip. Preserve aspect tiles the source horizontally instead of squashing it.
Strip fill	Sliders (one per strip)	1.00 each	0.02 to 1.00 each	Only shown when Layout is Custom. Weights are relative; each slider’s percentage readout is its share of the sheet among the strips currently in use. A Reset button returns all four to equal.

Only connected slots become strips, and they close up in order: if you connect slots 2, 3 and 4 you get a three-strip sheet, not a blank top strip. A slot whose upstream has not produced anything yet is skipped rather than rendered as a placeholder. Channel neutrals for a strip with no data are a flat normal, white AO, black metallic, black emissive and mid gray for everything else.

Vertical seams between neighboring strips are inherent to trim sheets; each strip is its own material band. Within one strip the content still wraps cleanly against itself, and each strip tiles horizontally wherever its source does.

Strips compose on the native render core, in the app and in a headless run alike, so the Command Line exporter and the standalone MCP Server write the same sheet the app does. Where there is no native core the app falls back to its own compositor and produces the same result.

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A Trim Sheet with three materials wired, showing the composited strips in the node preview and the Layout controls in the Properties panel.