InstaMAT for Blender enables you to create and tweak procedural assets generated in InstaMAT Studio such as textures and meshes within Blender.
InstaMAT for Blender runs on both MacOS and Windows.
The following version of Blender is supported: 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3.
Our development team strives to implement support for the most recent software release at the earliest possible opportunity.
The following prerequisites must be met in order to use InstaMAT for Blender.
InstaMAT for Blender requires an installed and authorized version of InstaMAT Studio.
InstaMAT has been built on Windows using Visual Studio 2022 and requires the installation of the Visual C++ Redistributables for Visual Studio 2022. If you have already installed Visual Studio 2022 or later on your workstation, the installation of the Visual Studio 2022 redistributables is not necessary.
InstaMAT for Blender is available to download in the InstaMAT License Management Web App under the Your Files
section of the home page.
To install InstaMAT for Blender we can use the Add-ons
section in Blender's Preferences panel.
InstaMAT for Blender.zip
file.Edit
> Preferences
and select the Add-ons
tab.Install from Disk...
and select the InstaMAT for Blender.zip
file.If you are using Blender 4.1, the add-on needs to be enabled once you installed it. This can be done by searching for "InstaMAT for Blender" and clicking the check box next to its name.
InstaMAT for Blender is best used in Blender's Shading
workspace. Navigate to the workspace and press N to bring up the Sidebar. A new InstaMAT
tab will appear. Click it to open the InstaMAT for Blender integration panel.
The installation process for InstaMAT for Blender is now complete.
Materials from the InstaMAT Library can be found in the Library Browser
tab. Click the above a material to view additional information.
InstaMAT for Blender will display a larger preview of the material. To create a new instance of this material, be sure to have an active material created and selected in Blender, and that the Connect To Active Material
checkbox is enabled. Provide a name for the new instance, then click Create Instance
.
InstaMAT for Blender will automatically create the nodes necessary to configure the material in Blender.
Active InstaMAT Graph Instances are available at the top of the Instances Settings
tab. Select an instance to configure its settings.
Materials from InstaMAT's library are tweakable through the settings of the instance. These settings include general parameters such as the material's resolution, execution format, and the seed as well as material-specific parameters to adjust its physical characteristics.
Adjusting a parameter will result in a re-execution of InstaMAT and a regeneration of the material will appear with the updates applied. This behavior can be configured with the Update Type
dropdown. Setting the Update Type
to Manual Full Resolution
makes it so that multiple parameters can be adjusted before manually triggering an update with the Update Instance
button below the parameters.
Increasing the material's resolution and Execution Format
can increase the processing time for a material to update. For this, InstaMAT for Blender provides a preview mode with a predefined Preview Width
and Preview Height
found in the Settings Tab
. To use the preview mode, select either Automatic Preview
or Manual Preview
from the Update Type
dropdown.
User paths make it possible to provide access to custom nodes, materials, and projects in the Library Browser
tab. User paths can be configured in the Settings
tab under the User Paths
section. To add a user path, click the button.
In order to add custom assets, they must be in an InstaMAT Package (.IMP) file created in InstaMAT Studio and nested in a Library
subdirectory. For example: ~/Username/Documents/MyCustomUserPath/Library
.
Once added, custom assets can be found in the User Library
tab by clicking the button in the toolbar along the side.
When adding a user path location, be sure to select the parent directory containing the
Library
subfolder and not theLibrary
subfolder itself. InstaMAT for Blender will automatically detect the subfolder to locate the custom InstaMAT Packages inside.
To learn more about user paths and adding assets to a user library, please visit our dedicated article here.
Textures can be directly exported from within the graph instance. InstaMAT for Blender supports exporting textures to the following file formats: