-----Materials Overview------

Materials

There are five types of materials available in OctaneRender.

1. Diffuse — Used for dull, non-reflecting materials or mesh emitters
2. Glossy — Used for shiny materials such as plastics or metals
3. Specular — Used for transparent materials such as glass and water
4. Mix — Used to mix any two material types
5. Portal — Used to designate openings in scenes to allow the render kernel to better sample light from those areas. The Portal material is covered in more detail in the Lighting section.

However, the most commonly used materials are the Diffuse, Glossy, and Specular. The Mix material is often used to blend any combination of these material together to provide deeper surface characteristics (figure 1).

Figure 1: The three common Octane materials are Diffuse, Glossy, and Specular.

The OctaneRender materials can be accessed by expanding the OctaneRender rollout in the Materials section of the Slate Material Editor.