File: Material.md | Updated: 11/15/2025
Abstract base class for materials.
Materials define the appearance of renderable 3D objects.
Constructs a new material.
Whether it's possible to override the material with Scene#overrideMaterial or not.
Default is true.
Enables alpha hashed transparency, an alternative to Material#transparent or Material#alphaTest. The material will not be rendered if opacity is lower than a random threshold. Randomization introduces some grain or noise, but approximates alpha blending without the associated problems of sorting. Using TAA can reduce the resulting noise.
Default is false.
Sets the alpha value to be used when running an alpha test. The material will not be rendered if the opacity is lower than this value.
Default is 0.
Whether alpha to coverage should be enabled or not. Can only be used with MSAA-enabled contexts (meaning when the renderer was created with antialias parameter set to true). Enabling this will smooth aliasing on clip plane edges and alphaTest-clipped edges.
Default is false.
Represents the alpha value of the constant blend color.
This property has only an effect when using custom blending with ConstantAlpha or OneMinusConstantAlpha.
Default is 0.
Represents the RGB values of the constant blend color.
This property has only an effect when using custom blending with ConstantColor or OneMinusConstantColor.
Default is (0,0,0).
Defines the blending destination factor.
Default is OneMinusSrcAlphaFactor.
Defines the blending destination alpha factor.
Default is null.
Defines the blending equation.
Default is AddEquation.
Defines the blending equation of the alpha channel.
Default is null.
Defines the blending source factor.
Default is SrcAlphaFactor.
Defines the blending source alpha factor.
Default is null.
Defines the blending type of the material.
It must be set to CustomBlending if custom blending properties like Material#blendSrc, Material#blendDst or Material#blendEquation should have any effect.
Default is NormalBlending.
Changes the behavior of clipping planes so that only their intersection is clipped, rather than their union.
Default is false.
Defines whether to clip shadows according to the clipping planes specified on this material.
Default is false.
User-defined clipping planes specified as THREE.Plane objects in world space. These planes apply to the objects this material is attached to. Points in space whose signed distance to the plane is negative are clipped (not rendered). This requires WebGLRenderer#localClippingEnabled to be true.
Default is null.
Whether to render the material's color.
This can be used in conjunction with Object3D#renderOder to create invisible objects that occlude other objects.
Default is true.
Defines the depth function.
Default is LessEqualDepth.
Whether to have depth test enabled when rendering this material. When the depth test is disabled, the depth write will also be implicitly disabled.
Default is true.
Whether rendering this material has any effect on the depth buffer.
When drawing 2D overlays it can be useful to disable the depth writing in order to layer several things together without creating z-index artifacts.
Default is true.
Whether to apply dithering to the color to remove the appearance of banding.
Default is false.
Whether double-sided, transparent objects should be rendered with a single pass or not.
The engine renders double-sided, transparent objects with two draw calls (back faces first, then front faces) to mitigate transparency artifacts. There are scenarios however where this approach produces no quality gains but still doubles draw calls e.g. when rendering flat vegetation like grass sprites. In these cases, set the forceSinglePass flag to true to disable the two pass rendering to avoid performance issues.
Default is false.
The ID of the material.
This flag can be used for type testing.
Default is true.
The name of the material.
Setting this property to true indicates the engine the material needs to be recompiled.
Default is false.
Defines how transparent the material is. A value of 0.0 indicates fully transparent, 1.0 is fully opaque.
If the Material#transparent is not set to true, the material will remain fully opaque and this value will only affect its color.
Default is 1.
Whether to use polygon offset or not. When enabled, each fragment's depth value will be offset after it is interpolated from the depth values of the appropriate vertices. The offset is added before the depth test is performed and before the value is written into the depth buffer.
Can be useful for rendering hidden-line images, for applying decals to surfaces, and for rendering solids with highlighted edges.
Default is false.
Specifies a scale factor that is used to create a variable depth offset for each polygon.
Default is 0.
Is multiplied by an implementation-specific value to create a constant depth offset.
Default is 0.
Override the renderer's default precision for this material.
Default is null.
Whether to premultiply the alpha (transparency) value.
Default is false.
Defines which side of faces cast shadows. If null, the side casting shadows is determined as follows:
FrontSide, the back side cast shadows.BackSide, the front side cast shadows.DoubleSide, both sides cast shadows.Default is null.
Defines which side of faces will be rendered - front, back or both.
Default is FrontSide.
Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns false.
Default is KeepStencilOp.
The stencil comparison function to use.
Default is AlwaysStencilFunc.
The bit mask to use when comparing against the stencil buffer.
Default is 0xff.
The value to use when performing stencil comparisons or stencil operations.
Default is 0.
Whether stencil operations are performed against the stencil buffer. In order to perform writes or comparisons against the stencil buffer this value must be true.
Default is false.
The bit mask to use when writing to the stencil buffer.
Default is 0xff.
Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns true but the depth test fails.
Default is KeepStencilOp.
Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns true and the depth test passes.
Default is KeepStencilOp.
Defines whether this material is tone mapped according to the renderer's tone mapping setting.
It is ignored when rendering to a render target or using post processing or when using WebGPURenderer. In all these cases, all materials are honored by tone mapping.
Default is true.
Defines whether this material is transparent. This has an effect on rendering as transparent objects need special treatment and are rendered after non-transparent objects.
When set to true, the extent to which the material is transparent is controlled by Material#opacity.
Default is false.
The type property is used for detecting the object type in context of serialization/deserialization.
An object that can be used to store custom data about the Material. It should not hold references to functions as these will not be cloned.
The UUID of the material.
This starts at 0 and counts how many times Material#needsUpdate is set to true.
Default is 0.
If set to true, vertex colors should be used.
The engine supports RGB and RGBA vertex colors depending on whether a three (RGB) or four (RGBA) component color buffer attribute is used.
Default is false.
Defines whether 3D objects using this material are visible.
Default is true.
Returns a new material with copied values from this instance.
Returns: A clone of this instance.
Copies the values of the given material to this instance.
source | The material to copy.
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Returns: A reference to this instance.
In case Material#onBeforeCompile is used, this callback can be used to identify values of settings used in onBeforeCompile(), so three.js can reuse a cached shader or recompile the shader for this material as needed.
This method can only be used when rendering with WebGLRenderer.
Returns: The custom program cache key.
Frees the GPU-related resources allocated by this instance. Call this method whenever this instance is no longer used in your app.
An optional callback that is executed immediately before the shader program is compiled. This function is called with the shader source code as a parameter. Useful for the modification of built-in materials.
This method can only be used when rendering with WebGLRenderer. The recommended approach when customizing materials is to use WebGPURenderer with the new Node Material system and TSL.
shaderobject | The object holds the uniforms and the vertex and fragment shader source.
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renderer | A reference to the renderer.
An optional callback that is executed immediately before the material is used to render a 3D object.
This method can only be used when rendering with WebGLRenderer.
renderer | The renderer.
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scene | The scene.
camera | The camera that is used to render the scene.
geometry | The 3D object's geometry.
object | The 3D object.
group | The geometry group data.
This method can be used to set default values from parameter objects. It is a generic implementation so it can be used with different types of materials.
values | The material values to set.
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Serializes the material into JSON.
meta | An optional value holding meta information about the serialization.
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See:
Returns: A JSON object representing the serialized material.
Fires when the material has been disposed of.