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 is available to download in your InstaMAT Cloud account under the Your Files
section.
InstaMAT for Blender always supports the latest Blender version on both Windows and macOS on the market. Support for the latest Blender version is typically added shortly after the official release. The plugin is maintained to be fully compatible with the newest version only.
InstaMAT for Blender requires an installed and authorized version of InstaMAT Studio.
To install InstaMAT for Blender, go to Blender's Preferences window by choosing Edit > Preferences...
from the main menu and click on the Add-ons
tab.
Click the Install
button to bring up the file browser and navigate to the location of the InstaMAT for Blender.zip
file. Once the zip file has been selected, click Install Add-on
to install.
Note: The
InstaMAT for Blender.zip
file directly contains the files and folders for the add-on and does not contain a sub zip file. Make sure to keep this file unzipped after downloading.
Once installed, the add-on needs to be enabled. 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.
To finish the installation, the following paths need to be provided:
~/Username/Documents/InstaMAT
~/Username/Documents/InstaMAT/Textures
Once the paths have been entered, 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 prameters 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 behaviour 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.
Textures can be directly exported from within the graph instance. InstaMAT for Blender supports exporting textures to the following file formats: