Colour says what something is; material says what it's made of. Alongside colour, every paint stroke in Re:Form can deposit two physically-based material channels:
- Roughness — how matte the surface is. 0 is glossy like glass or polished lacquer; 1 is fully matte like chalk or clay.
- Metalness — whether the surface behaves like a metal. 0 is a dielectric (skin, stone, plastic, wood); 1 is metal, which tints its reflections with its own colour the way real metal does.
Both live in the Paint panel as sliders, and both apply per-stroke, per-vertex — a single mesh can be chrome in one place and chalk in another.
Seeing what you paint
Material response only exists under lighting, so switch Shading to Lit in the Environment section before a material pass — Matcap and Unlit don't evaluate roughness or metalness. In Lit mode the studio light rig (light direction, environment strength, exposure, bloom) is yours to adjust; environment light especially is what makes metals read. See Lighting & display.
Workflow
- Base coat with Fill — a colour plus a sensible starting material (roughness around 0.5, metalness 0).
- Use the channel toggles to work one property at a time: turn Color off, and strokes adjust only roughness or metalness over the existing paint — glossing lips, matting fabric, metalling trim without touching their colours.
- Vary roughness more than you think you should. Uniform roughness is what makes renders look plastic; worn edges glossier, cavities rougher is what makes them look real.
Keep metalness at 0 or 1 in most places — real materials rarely sit in between, and half-metal reads as "dusty mirror". The in-between values are best across a narrow transition where bare metal meets paint.
Material channels save in your .clay project like everything else, and they drive the Lit renders you export.