For those who don’t know the site: colormass develops material scanning and 3D asset tools. Its free material library supplies surface scans for texturing and look development. Artists still have to assemble the maps into shaders for their target renderer. The material cannot do all the work.
Surfaces, measured
Colormass has made a library of scanned materials available for free download. The linked report counts 177 materials, including fabrics, wood, ceramics, paint and organic surfaces. These are surface materials, not 3D models. Colormass scans physical samples and derives spatially varying material properties from the captured images. Its process is automated sample capture and cloud-based fitting of reflection properties.
Eight maps, perhaps
Colormass has diffuse, normal, roughness, specular, metalness, anisotropy and displacement data, with optional maps for transparency. The exact files depend on the export workflow. Its PBR export lists different combinations for Cycles, V-Ray and Corona, and separates metalness/roughness from specular/glossiness workflows. The report says each free material includes eight TIFF maps.
Normal direction needs attention before anyone declares the scan broken. Colormass normally describes its tangent-space normals as OpenGL-style Y-up. A renderer expecting the opposite convention needs the green channel inverted or an appropriate export setting. Diffuse colour and numerical maps also need their respective colour-space treatment. A material can be physically scanned and still look impressively wrong when connected incorrectly.
Colormass has ZIP exports containing image maps and an information file. Its broader platform offers TIFF, EXR, PNG and JPEG export choices. Those platform options should not be mistaken for a promise that every format is available with every free-library download.
Free, with fine print
The collection is presented as free. The supplied report says the materials may be used in personal and commercial projects HAve a look at the full license here: https://www.colormass.com/legal/colormass-3d-texture-library!
Test a few materials on representative production assets, under the target renderer’s lighting and colour pipeline, before adding the collection to a shared library.
https://library.colormass.com/
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Collection | Colormass Material Library |
| Developer | colormass |
| Asset type | Scanned surface materials and PBR texture maps |
| Availability | Free library accessible online |
| Export documentation | PBR exports |
