CesiumJS Materials, Shaders & Post-Processing

Version baseline: CesiumJS 1.144 (August 2026). All imports use ES module style.

Material System (Fabric JSON)

Material defines surface appearance for Primitives through a JSON schema called Fabric. Materials compile to GLSL and are consumed by MaterialAppearance or PolylineMaterialAppearance.

While a material's image loads, CesiumJS renders a placeholder texture that defaults to white. Since 1.144 the static Texture.defaultColor changes that placeholder color to avoid white flashes during material construction. Note that the Texture class is runtime-public but absent from the published TypeScript definitions, so TypeScript callers need a cast.

Built-in Material Types

Surface: Color (color), Image (image, repeat), DiffuseMap, AlphaMap, SpecularMap, EmissionMap (image, channel(s), repeat), BumpMap, NormalMap (image, channel(s), strength, repeat).

Patterns: Grid (color, cellAlpha, lineCount, lineThickness), Stripe (evenColor, oddColor, repeat), Checkerboard (lightColor, darkColor, repeat), Dot (lightColor, darkColor, repeat).