PolyOrganic Documentation

PolyOrganic builds procedural materials you shape with a dial. Everything it makes is a normal Blender material, so it renders anywhere a Principled material does.

Install

1. In Blender 4.2 or newer, open Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions, then use the menu at the top right and choose Install from Disk.
2. Pick the PolyOrganic zip. It enables itself.
3. An orange dial button appears in the bottom-left corner of every 3D view, and a PolyOrganic tab appears in the sidebar (N).

Getting started

1. Select a mesh and click the orange button (or press Shift+Alt+D).
2. Pick a family in the Material ring, then a material. The dial jumps straight to its Styles.
3. Pick a style, then turn knobs. Drag the centre knob or scroll over any knob. Every change blends in live.
4. Press Close or Esc when you're done. Everything is also in the sidebar.

Tip: with the Material ring open, just start typing to search (glass, oak, rust, cone). Backspace deletes, Esc clears.

The dial

• Material: nine families (Wood; Stone & Masonry; Metal; Plastic & Rubber; Fabric & Leather; Nature & Water; Glass & Gems; Building; Paint, Paper & Skin).
• Style: the looks for that material, plus Size. Styles are different patterns, not colour swaps.
• Layout: boards, herringbone, chevron, parquet, cladding, brick bonds, tile shapes, stone laying patterns, metal and plastic finishes. Advanced shows the less common ones.
• Colour: a colour wheel for each colour slot (Master drags the others along).
• Detail: the controls for the current material, such as ring spacing, knots and figure for wood, or rock form, chipping and ledges for stone.
• Form: size, structure, variation between copies, and cavity shading (darker gaps and joints).
• Surface: roughness (0 = mirror, 100 = matte), metal, clear coat, sheen, glow and iridescence.
• Depth: Add Real Depth, Displacement, Bump, Clean Edges, fit mode, quality and Optimise.
• Wear and Scratches: styles and strength. Click a lit style again to switch it off.
• Life: Age, dirt, dust, grime, moss, rust, streaks and drips, and wet.
• Layers: add and manage layers. Saved: your library and Bake.

Dial button and corner: turn the orange button off or move it (and where the dial opens) in the sidebar or in Preferences > Add-ons > PolyOrganic.

Layers

Layers sit on top of the base material: render, moss, grass, mud, water, snow, sand, leaves and reflective bands, or any material you like. Open Layers > Add Layer, then use Where to place it:

• Random Patches, Outer Edges, Hollows & Creases, Joints & Gaps, Top Faces, Undersides, Everywhere, Stripes, Around Another Layer, Object Zone (an empty you move and scale), and Painted.
• Mask controls: Coverage, Mask Size, Edge Softness, Edge Breakup, Thickness, Invert and Shuffle.
• Painted: switches to Vertex Paint. Paint white where the layer goes, black to remove it, then Tab back to Object Mode. Painting follows the mesh's vertices, so subdivide low-poly models for smooth edges.

Age, weathering, streaks and drips

• Age (top of the Life ring) takes everything from brand new to ancient in one move: wear, scratches, dirt, grime, dust and streaks, plus rust on metal and roofing, moss on masonry, wood and ground, and sun fading on wood, plastics, paint and fabric. It adds to your own settings; it never overwrites them.
• Streaks & Drips: Water Stains, Rust Bleed, Grime Runs or Salt Bloom. They always run downhill in world space, start below tops and ledges, and dry with a darker tide line. Streak Length sets how far they run.

Real depth and mapping

• Add Real Depth (Depth ring) adds subdivision so the surface really moves. Displacement is in real metres whatever the object's scale.
• The pattern stays pinned to the surface while it displaces. If you edit the mesh, it updates itself when you leave Edit Mode.
• Clean Edges eases displacement off on rounded and bevelled edges so they never tear. Turn it off for full displacement to the very edge.
• Fit: Real Size (true scale), Stick (moves with the object), World (continuous across neighbours) or UV Map (follows your own unwrap, best for curved or complex models).
• Grain Follows Shape (Detail ring, solid wood): the grain runs along each part of chairs, frames and branches. Press Update Grain Direction after editing the mesh.

Real grass

• On a Ground material (or a Ground layer), press Grow Grass in the sidebar Detail panel.
• Controls: Density, Height, Height Variation, Clumping, Clump Size, Blade Width, Bend, Wind Strength, Wind Speed and Viewport Density. Wind moves over time when you play or render an animation.
• Grass stays off the Ground's mud patches and off other layers placed with Random Patches (up to three). Press Refresh Grass after changing layers.
• Scaling a grass object is fine: once you let go, the scale is applied so the blades stand upright at real size.

Glass, water and gems

• Caustic shadows are on by default: glass throws a bright core into its shadow and water throws a caustic network on what's beneath.
• Real Caustics (Surface ring or sidebar) turns on true Cycles caustics. It needs Cycles and at least one lamp (Sun, Point, Spot or Area); HDRI light alone won't make them.
• Gems have Facet Size, Facets, Refraction (IOR), Fire (colour dispersion in Cycles), Clarity, Cloudiness, Inclusions, Growth Lines, Frosting and Colour Play.

Paste onto other objects

• With the dial open, hold Ctrl and click another object. Each gets its own copy, sized for that object.
• Hold Shift as well to share the same material instead, so edits change both.
• Shift+Alt+V (or Paste onto Others in the sidebar) starts paste mode: click as many objects as you like, right-click or Esc to finish.

Baking

1. Select one or more objects and press Bake (sidebar, or the Saved ring).
2. Choose 1K, 2K, 4K or 8K and a quality. Leave Bake in the background on to keep working while it bakes.
3. You get colour, roughness, metallic, normal (16-bit) and height (16-bit, plus or minus 5 cm around mid-grey) maps, and an image material wired up with them.
4. Maps are saved in a textures folder next to your .blend (save the file first to keep them there).
5. Objects without UVs are unwrapped automatically. The procedural material is always kept; the Swap button flips between baked and procedural.

Not baked: glass see-through, glow, iridescence and real grass (grass is geometry).

Saving and your library

• Save stores the material and its layers in your PolyOrganic library and the Asset Browser. Update Saved or Save as New; it never overwrites without asking.
• Materials name themselves after their style and layers until you rename them yourself.

Performance

• Use Draft quality while dialling, Final for renders.
• Optimise removes effects that are switched off or at zero.
• For heavy scenes, bake materials you've finished and swap back whenever you need to edit.