Recipe
PBR Materials
Physically-based rendering material setup for consistent, realistic surfaces across all lighting conditions.
Overview
PBR materials use albedo, roughness, metallic, and normal maps to simulate real-world surface behavior. Meridian's renderer follows the Cook-Torrance microfacet model with GGX distribution.
Texture Maps
- Albedo — Base color without lighting information. sRGB, no shadows or highlights baked in.
- Normal — Tangent-space surface detail. DirectX (-Y) convention, BC5 compression.
- Roughness — Microsurface irregularity. 0 = mirror, 1 = diffuse. Packed in G channel of ORM map.
- Metallic — Conductor vs dielectric. Binary in most cases. Packed in B channel of ORM map.
- Ambient Occlusion — Local occlusion for micro-shadowing. Packed in R channel of ORM map.
Material Presets
| Material | Roughness | Metallic |
|---|---|---|
| Plastic | 0.4–0.6 | 0.0 |
| Wood | 0.5–0.8 | 0.0 |
| Steel | 0.2–0.4 | 1.0 |
| Gold | 0.1–0.3 | 1.0 |
| Glass | 0.0–0.1 | 0.0 |
Tip: Always use linear color space for roughness and metallic maps. sRGB sampling on these channels will produce incorrect specular response.