3D Materials

Expert guidance for PBR materials and StandardMaterial3D in Godot.

NEVER Do

NEVER use separate metallic/roughness/AO textures — Use ORM packing (1 RGB texture with Occlusion/Roughness/Metallic channels) to save texture slots and memory.
NEVER forget to enable normal_enabled — Normal maps don't work unless you set normal_enabled = true. Silent failure is common.
NEVER use TRANSPARENCY_ALPHA for cutout materials — Use TRANSPARENCY_ALPHA_SCISSOR or TRANSPARENCY_ALPHA_HASH instead. Full alpha blending is expensive and causes sorting issues.
NEVER set metallic = 0.5 — Materials are either metallic (1.0) or dielectric (0.0). Values between are physically incorrect except for rust/dirt transitions.
NEVER use emission without HDR — Emission values > 1.0 only work with HDR rendering enabled in Project Settings.

MANDATORY: Read the appropriate script before implementing the corresponding pattern.