The MatCap technique, besides being extremely computationally fast, is a very simple algorithm to implement. It's very cheap,Īnd looks great when the camera doesn't rotate. It also works with rendering, to an extent (good when you need toĭo a quick show-off-your-model render and don’t have time to set up any complex lights or materials). Useful feedback on how an objects shape is changing. MatCap is most commonly used for sculpting, as it gives quick and Normals, the material responds as if it were made of the complex material. But as your object takes non-spherical shapes, thus changing the Sphere (reflections always in the same place, e.g.). In other words, if your object were a sphere, no matter how you looked at it, it would look like the matcap So as the camera movesĪround the object, the reflections and highlights move around your object (as if the object were moving and not theĬamera). (because you don’t need lights to have any influence, as they are a part of the MatCap texture). The key to using a MatCap texture is that is is mapped to the object’s normals (which exist in relation to the camera)ĭefining a color for every vertex normal direction relative to the camera, and your material is set to shadeless This opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities for non-photoreal MatCapsĪllows you to create a surface material and lighting environment simply by painting an object so that it looks like

MatCap ( Material Capture, also known as LitSphere) are complete materials, including lightingĪnd reflections, so you can add it to an object and not have any need for, well, lighting and reflections.

and how the surface reacts to that lighting (for example, how shiny it is).the lighting setup (orientation and types of lights).the point from which the object is viewed.

the surface normals (which determine how the object is shaded).In 3D computer graphics, the appearance of an 3D object depends on A huge library of MatCap textures in PNG and ZMT.ĭynamic Gallery View at Scroll to bottom of page to explore textures, or access the dynamic gallery created by Lionel Radisson at What is MatCap?

Free blender matcaps