Materials define the surface properties of scene objects. They are stored in the BaseDocument. Shaders are used to define these properties dynamically.
- BaseMaterial is the base class for all materials in Cinema 4D. See BaseMaterial Manual.
- Material is the class representing a Cinema 4D standard material. See Material Manual.
- NodeMaterial is the class representing a BaseMaterial containing a NodeSystem. See NodeMaterial Manual.
- BaseShader is the base class for all shaders in Cinema 4D. See BaseShader Manual.
- To prepare a material or shader for sampling an InitRenderStruct element is needed. See InitRenderStruct Manual.
A material can be assigned to one or multiple objects. This connection is defined with a tag:
When an object is shaded its normals and UV coordinates are important. This information is stored in tags:
- A UVWTag stores UVW coordinates for a polygon object. See UVWTag Manual.
- A NormalTag stores custom normal vectors for a polygon object. See NormalTag Manual.
The node based material utilizes so called core nodes. It is possible to create custom core nodes:
