040 · MATERIALX
— portable shader graph · lumen tactum —
Project Lavos · The Stack
PLATE XL · MATERIAL CATALOG

Lumen tactum.

— LIGHT, TOUCHED —

the surface.

Industrial Light & Magic  ·  Lucasfilm · 2014  ·  Academy Software Foundation · 2021

SHADER EXCHANGE · BSDF GRAPH · OSL-COMPATIBLE · USD-NATIVE · 2014

OpenUSD describes the scene. MaterialX describes the surface — a portable graph of texture, BSDF lobe, and math nodes that any renderer can read and resolve to the same light response. Karma, Arnold, RenderMan, Cycles, Mantra, V-Ray — all consume the same .mtlx. ILM published it from Star Wars: The Force Awakens; the Academy Software Foundation graduated it. The material is portable.

— Plate XL · Brushed Copper · One Shader Graph — after ILM material library, MX-2018
— Fig. I · the same .mtlx, every renderer — ▼ RENDERED OUTPUT — Cu. brushed, 0.6 µm grain — MX-040 / COPPER · BRUSHED ◀ MATERIALX SHADER GRAPH ▣ TEX · albedo tile_size 2.0 color ▣ NORMAL · brush strength 0.85 aniso_dir [1, 0] ═ ROUGHNESS u 0.42 v 0.18 ═ ANISOTROPY amount 0.78 ∿ BSDF · diffuse color roughness 0.30 model oren-nayar ∿ BSDF · GGX color roughness aniso normal ∿ BSDF · coat weight 0.04 ior 1.5 tint ⨁ MIX · BSDFs diffuse specular coat fresnel schlick ▶ surf → OUT FORMAT .mtlx · XML NODES 9 BSDF diffuse + GGX + coat RENDERS ON 7 RENDERERS
— Format — .mtlx · XML graph
— Node Types — ~400 · standard library
— BSDF — layered · OSL-compatible
— Renders On — Karma · Arnold · RenderMan · …
— Material Catalog · Six Surfaces, One Format — each .mtlx, each renderer-portable
MX-001
— chrome —
η 1.18 · k 7.04
roughness 0.04
MX-040
— copper, brushed —
η 0.27 · k 3.41
aniso 0.78 · r 0.42 / 0.18
MX-077
— gold, polished —
η 0.18 · k 3.07
roughness 0.08
MX-201
— ceramic —
diffuse 0.85 · spec 0.10
roughness 0.18 · coat
MX-302
— velvet, crimson —
sheen 0.65 · fuzz 0.40
diffuse charlie
MX-401
— glass —
ior 1.52 · thin-film off
roughness 0.0 · transmission

The .mtlx is the agreement: this graph is what the surface is. Every renderer reads it, evaluates the BSDF lobes its own way, and the light response converges to the same thing. Copper looks like copper — at Karma, at Arnold, at RenderMan, at Cycles.

ILM published it because Star Wars: The Force Awakens needed materials that survived the trip from one renderer to another. The Academy Software Foundation graduated it. The material is portable.

Authorship & Provenance colophon — ILM, ASWF
Authorship
Industrial Light & Magic
Lucasfilm · 2014
open-sourced 2017
github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/MaterialX
Architecture
XML scene-graph · nodegraph
Standard Surface · OSL · GLSL · MDL
~400 standard nodes · USD-native
.mtlx · text · diffable
Governance
Academy Software Foundation
Linux Foundation · 2021
Lucasfilm · Pixar · Adobe · NVIDIA · Apple
aswf.io

— Lineage · the format becomes the standard —

2012ILM begins internal work on a portable material exchange format for Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
2014MaterialX released open-source. Apache 2.0. Adopted by Lucasfilm, Sony, Disney.
2016Standard Surface specification — a unified BSDF taxonomy that every renderer implements.
2018USD integration matures. UsdShade can natively reference MaterialX networks.
2021ASWF graduation — MaterialX joins the Academy Software Foundation. Industrial governance.
2023Karma, RenderMan, Arnold, Cycles all consume .mtlx natively. Houdini ships with a MaterialX builder.
2024NanoVDB volume support, ML denoiser metadata, surface-shader unification.
∞The material is portable. Same .mtlx, every renderer, the same light response.

every renderer. one shader.

USD describes the scene. MaterialX describes the surface. The light remembers.

— § I · Authoring · Standards / Materials —
Plate XL · MMXXVI
projectlavos-bauhaus · 040