How to Implement and Use Original Presets to Edit Digital Textiles

There are many reasons for wanting to edit the properties of a digital textile. The Presets feature in SEDDI Textura will help you to do so in a fast, consistent way. Read on to learn why this feature is helpful.

What Are Presets For?

• Implementing material properties that a scanner cannot detect, such as a satin or metallic finish
• Editing material properties consistently
• Creating material variations to experiment with different finishings
• Correcting deviations on specific types of materials like leather or multilayer materials
• Creating material variations for different use cases. For example, to improve visibility in specific engines such as CLO, Browzwear, or Arnold

As you can see, presets can be useful for many reasons. Before you use them, there are a few things you need to know.

Need-to-Know Info About Presets

• There are a few standard presets that can be used by all users
• Custom presets are user based, so every user creates their own presets
• Standard presets are not editable and cannot be removed
• Color changes cannot be saved as material presets
• Preset changes are implemented when saving. After implementing, changes cannot be undone
• Some presets like metallics may add additional maps, so the size of the file could increase
• Changes in presets can be saved as absolute numbers, or relative deviations for some maps
• All relative changes implemented in presets are based on the default status of the material before applying any preset

When creating a new preset, you first need to define the changes that you want to standardize, and then these modifications will be saved as a preset. Here is the step by step to create your own presets:

How To Create a Preset

First, select the material that you want to create the preset with as a "reference". For this, choose a material that you've already used and you know its going to reflect the exact final state that you are looking for. If you are going to implement the changes, you can also use a copy of the material to make sure you always keep a copy of the original.

Once the material is selected, go to the Material Editor.

Use the sliding bars in the left panel to tune and adjust the values that you want to modify. These values will allow you to edit the material properties based on the Alpha, Roughness, Specular and Normal map as well as the scale.

Once you have achieved the desired effect, click on the "Select a Preset" drop down menu in the left side of the panel.

The list shows all of the existing presets. Standard settings will appear with a default settings icon, and custom presets appear with a "Star" icon. To create a new preset, click on "Save these settings as a preset". As soon as you do, a new pop-up will appear for you to input the name of the preset and specify the settings.

Here, you can select how your preset will edit each property, each time you apply it to a material.

Implement Absolute or Relative Values in Your Presets

There are two different needs on a preset. If we want to achieve a specific aspect we will want the value for a specific map to be consistent across materials. For example, when creating a "plastic" effect, the material should always be flat and shiny. For this reason, the same low values are needed on roughness or normal maps. In this case, implement absolute values to make sure that the values are always the same.

Example: If the transparency value is "90" and then saved as an absolute data in the preset, every time you implement this preset the material's transparency value will be set to 90—regardless of the previous value of that property.

In some other cases, it's better to add or remove value to the initial setting, so that the final value will be different in each material. For example, if you know that materials imported from different sources always have the roughness values too low, or that some tools always interpret specular values too high, save a relative change to increase/decrease a property. This will result in the selected values always being increased or decreased by that %.

Example: If the default value of a material's transparency is 100 and then saved as a relative value of 90 in a preset, every time you implement this preset the material's transparency value will be reduced by 10%.