How to use a PBR material in Cyberpunk
Published: Jun 29 2022 by manavortex Last documented edit: Jun 29 by manavortex
This guide will teach you how to use a textured (also called PBR
, which is a subtype of textured and will work) material in Cyberpunk. It is a part of Changing materials, colors and textures — if you are missing information, check the parent page.
You have a CMaterialInstance
that can use your textured material.
If you don't have one yet, follow the steps under Changing materials, colors and textures, or skip to #finding-example-material-configurations and copy the entire material.
The default textured material in Cyberpunk can be found under
By setting it as the baseMaterial
, you're telling your item to load anything you configure under the values
array.
metal_base
's full properties are documented under Textured (PBR) material properties.
For a full list with explanations, see Material properties
Some of the most common properties for metal_base are:
Name | Type | Description |
---|---|---|
Tough luck, this is the only textured shader we have. Time to get converting :)
Search for metal_base in your asset browser:
Right-click on the entry, and select "find files using this". That will get you every base item with a textured material.
With what you now know, you can dig through their material instances and find example parameters.
Changing how an item looks in-game
Published: November 05 2022 by Last documented edit: Jun 29 by
This guide will teach you how to edit an item's material, changing its appearance.
For a step-by-step walkthrough for a recolour of the Netrunner suit, check
If you want to edit emissive (glowing) material, check ->
For an overview of base materials and example files, you can check .
If you want to learn how mesh material assignment works in general, you can check the .
For details on changing materials, check .
If you just want to use a textured material, check
You can find a video guide on (It's also embedded below)
Wolvenkit's most recent version ( | — guide has been written with 8.11)
A
Most likely >= 1.6.7 (get the )
If you are editing a basegame material, you need to install from Nexus.
For a complete noob, including setup of the tool(s): ~1h Once you know what you're doing: <5 minutes and as much time for fine tuning as you want
This guide will take you through the following steps:
Please keep in mind that video guides might be outdated, as they are much more difficult to update than a wiki page. Refer to the written guide below if you run into any troubles!
Estimated time: ~5 minutes for total noobs, unless you get side-tracked badly
Make sure to follow it so you're editing the correct material!
One per body gender (m/w), this is shared by all appearances (basic_01
, basic_02
, rich_01
, rich_02
). For the female vest, it's
base\characters\garment\player_equipment\torso\t2_002_vest__puffy\t2_002_pwa_vest__puffy.mesh
This picks the appearance from the mesh file, which you'll need for the next step. Here's how they connect:
Again, you can look these up in the .app file!
Add it to your Wolvenkit Project (double-click or right-click -> Add to Project)
Open your mesh file in Wolvenkit by double-clicking it.
Find the array appearances
at the very top, and expand it.
Find the appearance by the name that you found in Step 0 (example: bwstripes
), and expand it
Find the chunk material names. These define the material:
Starting with Wolvenkit 8.15, you can right-click on a chunk and click on "Select Material" from the context menu. For earlier versions, you have to find the material yourself - proceed to the next step.
Depending on your mesh, the material instance will be in one of two places: either under localMaterialBuffer.materials
, or under preloadLocalMaterialInstances
.
(If you don't see preloadLocalMaterialInstances, that means it's empty and has been hidden.)
Inside the array, find your material by name:
Most materials in Cyberpunk use multilayered.mt
as base material — this is how everything looks so good without 100 GB of extra textures. It's slightly more complex than editing textures because you need an extra tool, but you will love it once you're over the worst shock.
You will (hopefully) see a material with three entries in values
(order doesn't matter):
First, add the .mlsetup to your project. You can either expand the CKeyValuePair
and click the yellow button, or copy the depot path and use the Asset Browser.
Export the file, overwriting the original .mlsetup.json
Switch back to Wolvenkit
This is already working. You can pack the project and see it in action!
Congratulations! You modded an item! If that's all you wanted, you can now go and do whatever you want. You can even delete the mesh from your mod and pack only the .mlsetup
!
Of course you have only changed an in-game texture, which may cause side effects — especially if other mods do the same. To change that, keep reading!
Instead of changing an in-game file, you can also replace it with your own.
Rename your file to something nobody else will touch, e.g. manavortex\mlsetups\my_custom_vest_appearance.mlsetup
Copy the new relative path (right-click), and update your mesh:
Keep your folder and file names unique! If you have two mods adding a file at the same location, the second one will be unable to overwrite it and will use the first mod's file. That is, unless your mods are in REDmod format, which will be loaded even later and in order of their folder names.
Understood? No? That's fine. Just keep it unique. :D
You can rename a material by changing the "name" property inside the CMeshMaterialEntry
in the materials
array:
As of Wolvenkit 8.15, chunkmaterials will not auto-update, but you can use Search and Replace from the Context Menu to rename everything at once.
To add a new material to a mesh, you can simply right-click on the materials
array:
This process is detailed under -> .
Find the file from mesh.DepotPath in your .
To learn how appearances and materials connect, you can read . This is not necessary for this guide.
Go back to and look it up in the .app file
If you see multilayered.mt
as the baseMaterial
, you have to edit this with . Fortunately, it's not very difficult.
If you'd rather use a textured material, see the sub-page.
Key | Value (DepotPath) |
---|
For a detailed explanation of those properties, see
If you want an explanation of the Multilayered shader, check .
To learn more about MultilayerMasks (or how to make your own), check
For more intel on normal maps, check
In the project explorer under Wolvenkit's archive
folder, right-click on the mlsetup
file
This folder will only be visible in the "source" or "archive" tab of your
Select ""
If you don't have MLSetupBuilder installed, you need to . If you don't know how to use it, please check
Optional: If you don't see an mlsetup.json
in your project, switch the to source
or raw
.
Right-click on the file and .
For a documentation of multilayer properties, see . For a list of reference images, check
and .
Right-click on the .mlsetup.json
and
If it doesn't work, you need to install from Nexus.
Consider converting your mod to use for much better compatibility and smaller mod size!
BaseColor
Texture
The base texture of your item
BaseColorScale
Vector4 / Color
If you re-select it after setting the name, Wolvenkit will show you a colour editor. This tint will be applied over your BaseColor for easy creation of variants!
Metalness
Texture
How metallic/shiny your material is
Roughness
Texture
How shiny/rough your material is
Normal
Texture
Path to your normal (bump) map texture
AlphaThreshold
Scalar (number)
Transparency threshold. Only works if the material IsMasked
Emissive
Texture
Texture for glow (with transparency andIsMasked
or black/white, you can control which parts of the item glow)
EmissiveEV
Scalar (number)
Brightness of the glow. 3 is a good neon lamp, 6 might cause loss of vision, 12 will kill vampires immediately
EmissiveColor
Color
What it says. This defaults to white.
LayerTile
Scalar (number)
Seamless tiling factor
basic_01 | default |
basic_02 | bbstripes |
rich_01 | gbstripes |
rich_02 | pwstripes |
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|
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