Development of a Node-Based Material Editor

Abstract

Materials systems are an important element within the development of a renderer for an application such as a video game. Nowadays, the method to build a graphic style for a product involving a real-time engine implies a rendering system supporting a solid and concise materials system, as those well-established in real-time engines such as Unreal or Unity. This study presents an open-source application to serve as an editor of materials consisting of a modern real-time renderer. The application consists of a basic OpenGL real-time rendering engine to visualise 3D geometry and its appearance through the support of a node-based material editor to assemble materials in an intuitive and simple manner, without the use of programming and little technical knowledge. The culmination of the project and the achievement of its objectives was satisfactory. We concluded that this work can be used as a reference to understand real-time material systems and renderers and its state of the art in the video games industry.