SEUT Shader Editor

Owned by enenra, created
Last updated: Oct 23, 2022
3 min read

The Shader Editor SEUT panel holds the most of the functionality of the addon related to materials. It can be found on the right side of Blender’s Shader Editor (marked in green) and opened by pressing N while the cursor is within the shader editor.

Space Engineers Utilities

If the options in this section are greyed out, that is because the currently active material is linked into the BLEND-file. As such, unless the material is made local, it cannot be edited directly.

SEUT Material

This line displays the name of the currently active material as well as a small preview of how it looks.

Technique

This dropdown defines the way Space Engineers renders the material. Valid techniques are:

  • MESH - The standard technique.

  • DECAL - Makes the material look like it’s part of the model behind it.

  • DECAL_NOPREMULT - Higher accuracy of transparency than ‘DECAL’, but same visual style.

  • DECAL_CUTOUT - Makes the material look like it cuts into the model behind it.

  • GLASS - Transparent material - requires additional values to be set in TransparentMaterials.sbc.

  • ALPHA_MASKED - Has an alphamask texture.

  • SHIELD - Animated material used on SafeZone shield - currently limited to default one.

  • HOLO - Transparent LCD screen texture.

  • FOLIAGE - Used for half-transparent textures like leaves - shadows observe transparency in texture.

Using the Technique SHIELD on a material applied to a block of certain types might cause Space Engineers to crash.

Facing

This setting affects the way a material is displayed in Space Engineers. Currently it is unclear what exactly these settings affect but it is likely this is connected to a material being always rotated to face the camera. Valid options are:

  • None - This is the normal Facing setting. This is what is set for all vanilla materials.

  • Vertical - Vertical facing mode.

  • Full - Full facing mode.

  • Imposter - Imposter facing mode.

Create Material

Clicking this button creates a new material on the selected object. Refer to the  Material Creation Tutorial for more details.

Import Materials

Clicking this button allows you to select a Material Library-type XML file and import the materials defined within into the current BLEND file.

Texture Conversion

The texture conversion panel allows for the conversion of image files to and from the DDS file format. It is somewhat independent from the rest of SEUT, as the images don’t need to be loaded into Blender first.

Preset

This option allows the choosing of a preset that makes conversion easier.

  • Icon - The preset used to convert rendered icons into the correct DDS-format.

  • Color Metal - Preset used for CM-textures.

  • Add Maps - Preset used for ADD-textures.

  • Normal Gloss - Preset used for NG-textures.

  • Alphamask - Preset used for alphamask-textures.

  • TIF - The preset used by SEUT to convert the SDK’s DDS-textures into TIF for use within Blender.

  • Custom - Allows the user to set the conversion options by themselves.

File / Folder

Allows the selection between the conversion of single files or all files in a selected directory.

Input

Allows the selection of input options.

Output

Allows the selection of output options.

Options

Is only displayed when the Custom-preset is selected. Offers to customize the conversion parameters.

Convert Texture(s)

Starts the texture conversion as per the options selected above.

Overview

 

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