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.

Two painted strokes in Lit shading: a matte gold stroke above and a glossy metallic stroke below
The same colour, two materials: high roughness, zero metalness above — low roughness, full metalness below.

Seeing what you paint

Material response only exists under lighting, so press Lit on the options bar 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

  1. Base coat with Fill — a colour plus a sensible starting material (roughness around 0.5, metalness 0).
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
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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 project like everything else, and they drive the Lit renders you export.