Materials
Realistic PBR materials with colors, textures and prices, and how they flow into parts and assemblies.
A material is what a part is made of: how it looks, and what it costs. Materials sit at the base of the product chain, and boards, profiles and hardware all use them.
What a material holds
- Name in English and Persian. If one is empty, the translate button next to it fills it in.
- Category and family, to keep large catalogs in order.
- Price and weight per square meter.
- Colors and textures, each of which can have its own price.
- Render settings that control how it looks in the viewport.
- Grain direction: whether the pattern runs one way, or the material can be rotated freely when it's cut.
Render levels
Atrium materials are physically based (PBR, metallic/roughness). Each material has a render level, and higher levels add more controls:
| Level | What it adds | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Color and transparency | Paint, plain plastics, matte finishes |
| Medium | Metallic and roughness | Metals, lacquer, satin and gloss finishes |
| Advanced | Index of refraction (IOR) | Glass, clear acrylic |
Preview with real lighting
The material editor shows a live preview on a sample shape, lit by a real HDRI environment.
- Pick the lighting environment and the preview shape from the galleries.
- A studio HDRI comes with Atrium. You can also load your own
.hdror.exrfile.
The material editor doesn't block the rest of Atrium. You can keep it open next to the assistant and other tabs, and open several materials at once.
Colors and textures
One material can come in several colors or textures, such as one lacquer in five colors.
- Each color can use the material's base price, or turn on Separate price to set its own.
- A texture uses an image as its base color. The Texture effect slider blends it with the color underneath: 0 shows only the color, 1 shows only the texture.
Real tile size
Enter the real width and height that one tile of the texture covers. Atrium sizes the texture's repeat on each part from that real tile size, so a wood grain or a stone pattern appears at a believable scale.
Note
The repeat is an approximation: Atrium applies one repeat scale to the whole shape.
Import from Rhino
If your materials are already set up in Rhino, use the import button in the material editor to bring in a Rhino material file (.rmtl).
Categories and families
- Categories form a tree with as many levels as you need. Items live in the last level of a branch.
- Families group related materials together.
When you're signed in to Bond, categories, units and families come from Bond and are managed there.
Materials in assemblies
In an assembly, a material input lets you change the material of many parts at once.
- Its Applies to list groups the parts in the scene by category and design material, for example "MDF · Oak · 7 parts".
- It's a rule, not a fixed list: new parts of the same kind that you add later follow it too.
- Change the input, and every part it applies to changes with it.
A 2D board also lists the materials it can be made of. See Assemblies and inputs and Parts.
Get materials from the Bond library
You don't have to build every material from scratch. The Bond library has ready-made materials you can add to your workspace with one click. See Atrium and Bond.
Let the assistant build a material
When you're signed in to Bond and the assistant is enabled, describe the material you want. For "frosted glass", the assistant can set the render level, transparency and IOR, add several colors with prices, and use an image from the chat as the texture. The material editor opens filled in, and you review it and save. See AI assistant.