MATRICXPRO

CONTENTS

What's Inside

SECTION 01

What's New in 2.0

Version 2.0 is a rebuild rather than an update. If you are coming from 1.6, these are the changes that affect how you actually work.

Paint masks — the headline feature

Every imperfection layer can now be painted directly onto the mesh. Instead of a procedural mask covering the whole surface, you brush in exactly where rust, dirt, or scratches appear. See Section 13.

A curated material collection

25 authored materials ship inside the add-on — 13 metals, 4 plastics, 3 woods, 3 fabrics and 2 glasses. 17 of them arrive with a complete, hand-built imperfection stack already layered on.

Materials keep their own values

Each material now loads its own authored base colour and roughness. Switching from a red painted metal to Default Metal no longer carries the red across. A Reset Base Material button restores a material's shipped values if you overshoot.

External decal and trim sheet libraries

You can add your own folders of decals or trim sheets, and remove them again, from either the N-panel or Preferences. Trim sheets are not included with MatricX — this is how you supply them.

Everything else

• 15 imperfection types, including new Chip Damaged, Grunge, Leaking, and Bump Texture.
• Anti-tiling with an Auto mode that only pays the cost when an object is large enough to show repeats.
• Mask preview — view any layer's mask in isolation as greyscale.
• Reorderable authored stacks — preset layers can be restacked, and restored afterwards.
• Blender Extension package in addition to the legacy add-on ZIP.
• Minimum Blender version raised to 4.5.

SECTION 02

Introduction

MatricX PRO turns a clean model into a used one. It is built for hard-surface detailing, look development, game-asset presentation, and concept work — anywhere a surface needs a history rather than a flat shader.

The add-on is organised into three workspaces:

• Materials — browse, apply, customise and layer materials and imperfections.
• Decals — place, project, colour and manage decals, plus trim sheets in Trims mode.
• Viewport — quick modelling colours and collection helpers.

Most controls update the active material immediately. Materials shared between objects stay linked until you explicitly make a copy.

SECTION 03

Installation and Asset Pack

The three downloads

Installing the add-on

As a classic add-on:

1. Edit → Preferences → Add-ons.
2. Open the dropdown menu and choose Install from Disk.
3. Select MatricX_PRO_2.0.0_Addon.zip.
4. Enable MatricX PRO if Blender does not enable it for you.

As an extension:

1. Edit → Preferences → Get Extensions.
2. Top-right dropdown → Install from Disk.
3. Select MatricX_PRO_2.0.0_Blender_Extension.zip.

Then press N in the 3D Viewport and open the MatricX PRO tab.

Installing the asset pack

Extract MatricX_Assets_2.0.0.zip anywhere you like — a fast local drive is ideal. Placing it beside the add-on folder lets MatricX find it automatically.

If MatricX does not find it, open the MatricX panel, expand Runtime Assets and click Locate Asset Pack. You may select the pack folder, its parent, or one of its subfolders. The path is stored outside the add-on, so reinstalling — or switching between the add-on and extension packages — does not lose it.

Material preview thumbnails are bundled inside the add-on, so the browser stays visual even before the asset pack is connected.

SECTION 04

Interface Overview

Press N in the 3D Viewport and select the MatricX PRO tab. Three workspace buttons sit at the top of the panel.

The panel follows your selection

Select an object carrying a MatricX material and the panel loads its settings, including the full imperfection stack. Select a decal and the panel switches to that decal's placement, opacity, projection and colour controls. Controls that do not apply to the current selection are hidden or greyed out rather than left to mislead you.

SECTION 05

Materials Workspace

The basic loop

1. Select one or more mesh objects.
2. Open the Materials workspace.
3. Pick a Material category.
4. Choose a preset from the dropdown, or browse thumbnails in the Material Collection.
5. Adjust the surface controls.
6. Click Apply Material.

Categories

The material browser

The thumbnail browser supports text search, favourites, recents, adjustable thumbnail size, and previous/next navigation. Use the browser when you are exploring; use the category dropdown when you already know what you want.

SECTION 06

The 2.0 Material Collection

25 authored materials ship inside the add-on itself. Most arrive with a complete imperfection stack already built — apply one and it is finished, not a starting point.

SECTION 07

Base Surface Controls and Reset

Under Material Setup you get the controls that define the surface underneath the imperfections — typically Base Color and Roughness, plus Bevel on the default materials.

Every material brings its own values

When you apply a material, MatricX reads that material's authored colour and roughness and loads them into the panel. Applying Painted Metal 2 gives you its red; switching to Default Metal gives you Default Metal's grey. Values no longer bleed from one material to the next.

Grouped materials

Some materials — the plastics, for example — expose their surface through a Material Group Controls box instead, with Base Color, Metallic, Roughness and Coat taken straight from the authored shader.

Bevel

Default Metal and Default Plastic expose a Bevel radius that rounds shading on hard edges — this is what makes edge wear catch light convincingly. The authored collection materials do not expose it, because they carry their own hand-built bevel and bump work that a global bevel would overwrite.

SECTION 08

Material Looks

A Material Look is a complete saved setup — base material, every surface value, and the whole imperfection stack with its order, names, opacities and per-layer settings. Build a look once, reuse it on every prop in a set.

1. Build a material on a mesh and tune its imperfections.
2. Expand My Material Looks.
3. Save the current look with a descriptive name.
4. Apply it to any other mesh later.

Looks are stored in your Blender user configuration, so they follow you between projects. You can export a look as a .json file to share it, and import one you have been given.

SECTION 09

Applying, Sharing, and Make Unique

Apply Material assigns the current MatricX material to the active mesh and leaves every setting editable in the panel.

Linked materials

If one material is used by several objects, editing it updates all of them — base colour, roughness, the imperfection stack, layer order, every per-layer value. This is usually what you want for a set of matching parts.

Make Unique

Use it when one object should stop following the others. Make Unique copies the material, separates its nested MatricX node groups, preserves the current panel state, and rebinds mapping compensation to the selected object. After this, edits no longer affect the originals.

Separate Material

The equivalent action for viewport materials — the mesh keeps the same visible look but stops sharing the datablock.

SECTION 10

Live Mapping Compensation

Procedural and projected textures stretch when an object has unapplied scale, and edge effects drift when rotation is unapplied. MatricX can correct both live, without you applying transforms.

Both appear only when the selected mesh carries a compatible material.

Turn them off when you deliberately want mapping to stretch with the object, when a custom material uses its own coordinates, or when you are about to apply transforms and want standard Blender behaviour.

SECTION 11

Imperfection Studio

The Imperfection Studio is where a material stops looking new. Layers stack, reorder, and composite over one another — you are building a history, not applying a texture.

Adding a layer

1. Apply a material that supports imperfections.
2. Click Add Layer and choose a type.
3. Select it in the list to edit its settings.

The arrows to the right of the list reorder layers. Duplicate copies the selected layer with its own independent settings, and the bin removes it.

Layer controls

Every layer has a name, an enable checkbox, and an Opacity slider — shown as the percentage in the list. Beyond that, each type exposes its own colour, scale, amount and surface-response controls, with the less-used ones tucked under Advanced.

Mask preview

Switch the view mode to Mask to see the active layer's mask alone, in greyscale — white is where the imperfection appears. This is the fastest way to understand what a scale or amount slider is actually doing before you commit to it.

Anti-tiling

Large surfaces reveal the repeat in any texture. The tiling control blends phase-shifted samples to break up the lattice.

Reset a layer

Each layer has a ↺ reset that restores its type's defaults. MatricX asks for confirmation first, because it discards your manual tuning for that layer. It does not touch other layers or the base material.

SECTION 12

The 15 Imperfection Types

Tone & Finish

Edges & Damage

Scratches & Marks

Dirt & Weathering

Which materials support which types

Not every imperfection makes sense on every surface, so MatricX only offers the ones that do. The Add Layer menu is filtered accordingly.

SECTION 13

Paint Masks

Procedural masks decide where an imperfection goes by rule. A paint mask lets you decide by hand — brush rust onto the one corner that should have it, wipe grime off the area a hand would have polished.

Painting a layer

1. Select the imperfection layer you want to control.
2. Expand Paint Mask and click Start Painting.
3. MatricX switches to Vertex Paint and sets up a greyscale brush for you.
4. Paint on the mesh. White reveals, black hides.
5. Click Finish Painting when done.

Paint Behavior

Paint In is the default: the mask starts empty and white brushes the imperfection in. Turn it off to invert the meaning — the imperfection covers everything and black erases it. Choose whichever means less painting for the result you want.

Strength

Scales how much the painted mask affects the layer overall, without repainting anything. Pull it down to soften a mask that came out too strong.

Mask Utilities

Fill the mask solid, clear it, or remove it entirely and return the layer to its procedural mask. Removing a paint mask does not remove the layer.

SECTION 14

Custom PBR Materials

Custom Material imports an external texture set and turns it into a reusable MatricX entry.

1. Set the category to Custom Material.
2. Click + and select one or more texture files from the set's folder.
3. MatricX scans the folder and identifies the maps by name.
4. Check the detected entry, then click Apply Custom Material.

Entries are stored in add-on preferences and stay available across projects.

SECTION 15

Decals Workspace

Placing a decal

1. Pick a decal thumbnail.
2. Click Place Decal.
3. Move the cursor over a mesh surface — the decal aligns to the surface normal.
4. Confirm.

The adjustment pie

Key actions

• Reposition — move a placed decal to another point or another mesh, keeping its settings.
• Scale & Rotate — resize or angle without moving the placement point.
• Surface & Opacity — blend into the surface, and set the offset that prevents z-fighting. 0.001 m is a good starting value.
• Change Color — override a label or brand decal's colour instead of using its texture. Restore the original material to go back.
• Project to Surface — build final conforming geometry. Only the first surface along each ray is kept, so the decal never prints through to the far side of a closed mesh.
• Delete Decal, plus Select All / Hide / Show and Delete All Decals in the panel.

SECTION 16

Adding Your Own Decal Libraries

MatricX ships one official decal library. You can add as many of your own as you like, from the N-panel or from Preferences.

Adding a library

1. Click + on the Decal Library header, or Add Library in Preferences.
2. Select the folder that contains the decal subfolders.
3. Optionally give it a name — otherwise the folder name is used.

MatricX validates the folder before accepting it and tells you if there is nothing usable inside.

Expected decal folder layout

Removing a library

Click ✕ on the library header to remove the one you are browsing, or use the ✕ beside any entry in Preferences. Only the reference is removed — nothing is deleted from disk. The bundled MatricX library cannot be removed.

Library references live in your Blender user configuration, not inside the add-on, so they survive reinstalling MatricX and are available in every file.

SECTION 17

Trim Sheets

Applying a trim

1. Enter Edit Mode and select the faces that should receive the trim.
2. Open Decals → Trims and pick a sheet, then a trim region.
3. Choose the UV Fit and material options.
4. Click Apply Trim to Selected Faces.
5. Refine with Live Trim Adjustment if needed.

UV Fit

Trim material

Trimsheet assigns the sheet's own material. Mesh Materials preserves each face's existing material and applies only the UV placement — use it when the trim geometry is right but the surface should keep matching the rest of the model. Surface Detail scales the bump contribution.

Live Trim Adjustment

Move, Rotate and Scale refine the placement after applying. Move adjusts location only — scaling is a separate action, so vertical cursor movement will not resize by accident. The adjustment pie is Ctrl+Shift+T in Edit Mode.

Trim sheet folder format

A trim sheet folder is identified by a data.json describing the atlas and its regions.

The data.json needs a resolution pair and a trims list. Each trim needs coords and dimensions in 0–1 UV space:

SECTION 18

Viewport Workspace

Live Viewport Color

Set Color, Metallic and Roughness, then Apply to Selection. Once assigned, the controls edit that material live, and selecting another object with a MatricX viewport material syncs the panel to its values.

Quick Swatches

Clay, Dark, Light, Rubber Black, Metal Gray, Accent Red, Accent Blue and Glass Cyan. Use Material View switches your viewports to Material Preview so the colours actually show.

Helpers

• Random Viewport Color — a different colour per selected mesh, for separating a busy blockout.
• Move Collection / New Collection — organise the selection without leaving the panel.
• Separate Material — stop one mesh sharing a viewport material with the rest.

SECTION 19

Preferences and Runtime Assets

Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → MatricX PRO.

• External Asset Pack — the path, a Locate button, and a live status line.
• MatricX Decals & Trims — decal and trim counts, pie shortcuts, and Refresh Libraries.
• Additional Libraries — every library you have added, with its path, what it contains, and a ✕ to remove it. A folder that has gone missing is flagged but stays listed so you can still clear it.
• Update and support links.

Runtime asset status

With a valid pack, MatricX can load material files, runtime and imperfection textures, and the official decal library. Without it, the browser still shows thumbnails — those ship in the add-on — but applying a material will fail until the pack is located.

Cross-platform paths

MatricX 2.0 resolves paths without platform-specific separators and tolerates case differences, so projects move between Windows, macOS and Linux. For shared setups, use the locator or MATRICX_ASSET_ROOT rather than hard-coding paths into project files.

SECTION 20

Recommended Workflows

Fast hard-surface material

1. Apply Default Metal or Default Plastic.
2. Enable live scale and rotation compensation if the object still has unapplied transforms.
3. Set base colour, roughness and bevel.
4. Add subtle Edge Wear.
5. Add low-opacity Dirt or Directional Dirt.
6. Add Scratch, Fingerprints or Water Stains only where they earn their place.
7. Save it as a Material Look if you will reuse it.

Start from the collection instead

1. Apply one of the 17 authored materials — the stack is already built.
2. Tune Base Color and Roughness to your asset.
3. Adjust individual layer opacities to taste.
4. Press Restore Authored Stack if you want the original recipe back.

Rusted metal

1. Apply a metal material and add Rust.
2. Tune its sharpness and surface detail; keep opacity restrained.
3. Add Edge Damage for chipped areas.
4. Add Dirt at low opacity to unify everything.
5. Paint the rust mask so corrosion collects where water would actually sit.

Hand-placed wear with paint masks

1. Build the layer and get its procedural look right first.
2. Start painting, and set Paint Behavior to whichever direction means less brushing.
3. Use Mask view to check coverage as you go.
4. Finish Painting, then lower Strength if the result is too strong.

Modelling blockout

1. Open Viewport and click Use Material View.
2. Assign quick swatches by part group, or use Random Viewport Color.
3. Organise with the collection helpers.

SECTION 21

Troubleshooting

The browser shows thumbnails, but applying a material fails

Thumbnails ship in the add-on; the material files are in the asset pack. Open Runtime Assets and click Locate Asset Pack.

"No trim sheets added yet"

Expected. MatricX does not include trim sheets — click Add Trim Sheet Library and point it at a folder of your own. Locating the asset pack will not help; there are none in it.

An imperfection covers far too much

Lower the layer Opacity first, then the type's Amount control. Switch to Mask view to see exactly what the mask is doing.

The Add Layer menu is missing a type

The list is filtered to what the current material supports — see the table in Section 12. Glass and Custom Material offer none by design.

I cannot add or delete layers on a collection material

Authored stacks have fixed contents. You can still reorder them, edit every value, and press Restore Authored Stack to undo your changes.

Painting says another layer is being painted

A different layer owns the paint session. Click Finish That Session and start again on the layer you want.

My paint mask is blocky

Masks are vertex-based, so resolution follows mesh density. Subdivide the mesh where you need finer control.

A decal appears twice

Refresh libraries and check the same folder is not added twice in Preferences. MatricX de-duplicates by uuid, so decals copied without unique uuids may look repeated.

A trim applies to more than the faces I selected

Confirm you are in Edit Mode with only the intended faces selected, and check Fit Each UV Island matches your intent.

A pie shortcut conflicts with another add-on

Preferences → Keymap, search for matricx.show_decal_pie or matricx.show_trim_pie, and rebind or disable.

A fabric material looks flat and wrong

Fabrics sample through the UV map. Without one the weave collapses to a single sampled point — MatricX warns you and offers to add a UV map.

SECTION 22

Support

Use the official Eidos Edge links in MatricX Preferences for support, updates and demos.

When reporting a problem, include:

• Blender version and operating system.
• MatricX PRO version, and whether you installed the add-on or the extension package.
• Whether the asset pack is connected — Preferences shows the status.
• A screenshot or short recording.
• A minimal .blend where possible.
• The exact steps to reproduce it.