Abstract base class for materials.
Materials describe the appearance of [page:Object objects]. They are
defined in a (mostly) renderer-independent way, so you don't have to
rewrite materials if you decide to use a different renderer.
The following properties and methods are inherited by all other material
types (although they may have different defaults).
This creates a generic material.
Enables alpha hashed transparency, an alternative to [page:.transparent] or [page:.alphaTest]. The material will not be rendered if opacity is lower than a random threshold. Randomization introduces some grain or noise, but approximates alpha blending without the associated problems of sorting. Using TAARenderPass can reduce the resulting noise.
Sets the alpha value to be used when running an alpha test. The material will not be rendered if the opacity is lower than this value. Default is `0`.
Enables alpha to coverage. Can only be used with MSAA-enabled contexts (meaning when the renderer was created with *antialias* parameter set to `true`). Enabling this will smooth aliasing on clip plane edges and alphaTest-clipped edges. Default is `false`.
Represents the alpha value of the constant blend color. Default is `0`. This property has only an effect when using custom blending with [page:CustomBlendingEquation ConstantAlpha] or [page:CustomBlendingEquation OneMinusConstantAlpha].
Represent the RGB values of the constant blend color. Default is `0x000000`.
This property has only an effect when using custom blending with [page:CustomBlendingEquation ConstantColor] or [page:CustomBlendingEquation OneMinusConstantColor].
Blending destination. Default is [page:CustomBlendingEquation OneMinusSrcAlphaFactor].
See the destination factors [page:CustomBlendingEquation constants] for all possible values.
The material's [page:Constant blending] must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending]
for this to have any effect.
The transparency of the [page:.blendDst]. Uses [page:.blendDst] value if null. Default is `null`.
Blending equation to use when applying blending. Default is
[page:CustomBlendingEquation AddEquation]. See the blending equation
[page:CustomBlendingEquation constants] for all possible values.
The material's [page:Constant blending] must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending]
for this to have any effect.
The transparency of the [page:.blendEquation]. Uses [page:.blendEquation] value if null. Default is `null`.
Which blending to use when displaying objects with this material.
This must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending] to use custom
[page:Constant blendSrc], [page:Constant blendDst] or [page:Constant blendEquation].
See the blending mode [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.
Default is [page:Materials NormalBlending].
Blending source. Default is [page:CustomBlendingEquation SrcAlphaFactor].
See the source factors [page:CustomBlendingEquation constants] for all
possible values.
The material's [page:Constant blending] must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending]
for this to have any effect.
The transparency of the [page:.blendSrc]. Uses [page:.blendSrc] value if null. Default is `null`.
Changes the behavior of clipping planes so that only their intersection is clipped, rather than their union. Default is `false`.
User-defined clipping planes specified as THREE.Plane objects in world space. These planes apply to the objects this material is attached to. Points in space whose signed distance to the plane is negative are clipped (not rendered). This requires [page:WebGLRenderer.localClippingEnabled] to be `true`. See the [example:webgl_clipping_intersection WebGL / clipping /intersection] example. Default is `null`.
Defines whether to clip shadows according to the clipping planes specified on this material. Default is `false`.
Whether to render the material's color. This can be used in conjunction with a mesh's [page:Integer renderOrder] property to create invisible objects that occlude other objects. Default is `true`.
Custom defines to be injected into the shader. These are passed in form of an object literal, with key/value pairs. `{ MY_CUSTOM_DEFINE: '' , PI2: Math.PI * 2 }`. The pairs are defined in both vertex and fragment shaders. Default is `undefined`.
Which depth function to use. Default is [page:Materials LessEqualDepth]. See the depth mode [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.
Whether to have depth test enabled when rendering this material. Default is `true`. When the depth test is disabled, the depth write will also be implicitly disabled.
Whether rendering this material has any effect on the depth buffer.
Default is `true`.
When drawing 2D overlays it can be useful to disable the depth writing in
order to layer several things together without creating z-index artifacts.
Whether double-sided, transparent objects should be rendered with a single
pass or not. Default is `false`.
The engine renders double-sided, transparent objects with two draw calls
(back faces first, then front faces) to mitigate transparency artifacts.
There are scenarios however where this approach produces no quality gains
but still doubles draw calls e.g. when rendering flat vegetation like
grass sprites. In these cases, set the `forceSinglePass` flag to `true` to
disable the two pass rendering to avoid performance issues.
Read-only flag to check if a given object is of type [name].
Whether stencil operations are performed against the stencil buffer. In order to perform writes or comparisons against the stencil buffer this value must be `true`. Default is `false`.
The bit mask to use when writing to the stencil buffer. Default is `0xFF`.
The stencil comparison function to use. Default is [page:Materials AlwaysStencilFunc]. See stencil function [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.
The value to use when performing stencil comparisons or stencil operations. Default is `0`.
The bit mask to use when comparing against the stencil buffer. Default is `0xFF`.
Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns false. Default is [page:Materials KeepStencilOp]. See the stencil operations [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.
Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns true but the depth test fails. Default is [page:Materials KeepStencilOp]. See the stencil operations [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.
Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns true and the depth test passes. Default is [page:Materials KeepStencilOp]. See the stencil operations [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.
Unique number for this material instance.
Optional name of the object (doesn't need to be unique). Default is an empty string.
Specifies that the material needs to be recompiled.
Float in the range of `0.0` - `1.0` indicating how transparent the
material is. A value of `0.0` indicates fully transparent, `1.0` is fully
opaque.
If the material's [page:Boolean transparent] property is not set to
`true`, the material will remain fully opaque and this value will only
affect its color.
Default is `1.0`.
Whether to use polygon offset. Default is `false`. This corresponds to the `GL_POLYGON_OFFSET_FILL` WebGL feature.
Sets the polygon offset factor. Default is `0`.
Sets the polygon offset units. Default is `0`.
Override the renderer's default precision for this material. Can be `"highp"`, `"mediump"` or `"lowp"`. Default is `null`.
Whether to premultiply the alpha (transparency) value. See [Example:webgl_materials_physical_transmission WebGL / Materials / Physical / Transmission] for an example of the difference. Default is `false`.
Whether to apply dithering to the color to remove the appearance of banding. Default is `false`.
Defines which side of faces cast shadows. When set, can be [page:Materials THREE.FrontSide],
[page:Materials THREE.BackSide], or [page:Materials THREE.DoubleSide].
Default is `null`.
If `null`, the side casting shadows is determined as follows:
| [page:Material.side] | Side casting shadows |
|---|---|
| THREE.FrontSide | back side |
| THREE.BackSide | front side |
| THREE.DoubleSide | both sides |
Defines which side of faces will be rendered - front, back or both. Default is [page:Materials THREE.FrontSide]. Other options are [page:Materials THREE.BackSide] or [page:Materials THREE.DoubleSide].
Defines whether this material is tone mapped according to the renderer's [page:WebGLRenderer.toneMapping toneMapping] setting. It is ignored when rendering to a render target or using post processing. Default is `true`.
Defines whether this material is transparent. This has an effect on
rendering as transparent objects need special treatment and are rendered
after non-transparent objects.
When set to true, the extent to which the material is transparent is
controlled by setting its [page:Float opacity] property.
Default is `false`.
Value is the string 'Material'. This shouldn't be changed, and can be used to find all objects of this type in a scene.
[link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier UUID] of this material instance. This gets automatically assigned, so this shouldn't be edited.
This starts at `0` and counts how many times [page:Material.needsUpdate .needsUpdate] is set to `true`.
Defines whether vertex coloring is used. Default is `false`. The engine supports RGB and RGBA vertex colors depending on whether a three (RGB) or four (RGBA) component color buffer attribute is used.
Defines whether this material is visible. Default is `true`.
An object that can be used to store custom data about the Material. It should not hold references to functions as these will not be cloned. Default is an empty object `{}`.
[page:EventDispatcher EventDispatcher] methods are available on this class.
Return a new material with the same parameters as this material.
Copy the parameters from the passed material into this material.
Frees the GPU-related resources allocated by this instance. Call this method whenever this instance is no longer used in your app.
Material textures must be disposed of by the dispose() method of [page:Texture Texture].
An optional callback that is executed immediately before the shader program is compiled. This function is called with the shader source code as a parameter. Useful for the modification of built-in materials.
Unlike properties, the callback is not supported by [page:Material.clone .clone](), [page:Material.copy .copy]() and [page:Material.toJSON .toJSON]().
This callback is only supported in `WebGLRenderer` (not `WebGPURenderer`).
An optional callback that is executed immediately before the material is used to render a 3D object.
Unlike properties, the callback is not supported by [page:Material.clone .clone](), [page:Material.copy .copy]() and [page:Material.toJSON .toJSON]().
This callback is only supported in `WebGLRenderer` (not `WebGPURenderer`).
In case onBeforeCompile is used, this callback can be used to identify values of settings used in onBeforeCompile, so three.js can reuse a cached shader or recompile the shader for this material as needed.
For example, if onBeforeCompile contains a conditional statement like:
if ( black ) {
shader.fragmentShader = shader.fragmentShader.replace('gl_FragColor = vec4(1)',
'gl_FragColor = vec4(0)')
}
then customProgramCacheKey should be set like this:
material.customProgramCacheKey = function() {
return black ? '1' : '0';
}
Unlike properties, the callback is not supported by [page:Material.clone .clone](), [page:Material.copy .copy]() and [page:Material.toJSON .toJSON]().
values -- a container with parameters.
Sets the properties based on the `values`.
meta -- object containing metadata such as textures or images for the
material.
Convert the material to three.js
[link:https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/wiki/JSON-Object-Scene-format-4 JSON Object/Scene format].
[link:https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/master/src/[path].js src/[path].js]