Level Editor/Workflows/Materials and UVs
A material is what a surface looks like: its texture, colour, roughness, shine. UVs are how the texture is laid on a face: where it starts, which way it runs and how big it is. This page shows how to texture a map and fix textures that look wrong.
Putting materials on brushes
There are four ways, from broadest to finest:
- Whole brushes: select brushes with the Move tool and double-click a material in the Materials tab. Every face of each brush gets it.
- Selected faces: select faces with Edit Face (click, Shift+click to add, double-click for a connected region) and double-click a material, or click Apply to Selected Faces.
- Painting: pick the Material Brush and drag over surfaces; tick Individual faces to paint face by face.
- New brushes wear the material selected in the Materials tab when you draw them.
Tools > Select by Material finds every brush (or face) wearing a material, to change them all at once.
Your own materials
Built-in materials are shared by every map and cannot be edited. Make a map's own:
- Duplicate and Edit (right-click a material) to change a built-in one's colour, scale or roughness.
- New Material for a blank one, New from Image for one made from a picture.
- File > Import Custom Asset... to bring in a material file or textures.
They are saved with the map and packed into its export. See Material Editor and Custom assets.
Footstep sound in the Material Editor sets what walking on a material sounds like.
Keeping textures right while you edit
- Lock UVs (Move, Rotate and Scale settings): off by default, so textures stay fixed in the world and a brush slides under them, which keeps neighbouring brushes lined up. Turn it on to carry the texture with the brush (a crate you turn).
- Correct UVs (Edit Vertex, Edge and Face settings) and Correct UVs on Extrude (shape tools): on by default, so faces you change are re-laid from their world position and do not stretch.
- Edit > Re-estimate UVs resets the selected brushes' textures from their shape.
- The Material Brush's Paint UV resets the texture placement of the faces it paints.
Fixing a texture by hand
Use the UV Editor tab: select the faces with Edit Face, open the tab, and move, turn or scale their UVs over the texture.
Colour without new materials
- The Material Brush's Paint color tints whole faces.
- The Vertex Color Brush paints colour that blends across faces, for grime and shading.
- A decal lays a texture (a sign, a stain) over a surface.
Ground
Displacements blend four materials painted by hand or by slope (Displacement tab); terrain blends five (Terrain tab).