---
title: Materials
order: 6
---

Every Chisel object carries its own Chisel material for per-object color and shading. The "Chisel Material" properties panel adds a small color picker for quick tweaks, with an optional node graph for richer setups: color blending across booleans, masks driven by other objects, mixing two shaders by a soft seam. The material belongs to the object itself, so undo, redo and proxy-mesh swaps never lose it.

![Default matcap shading, no per-object colors set](../assets/matcap-preview.webp)

The default look: every object renders with the scene matcap, no per-object color applied. Below is the same scene with materials assigned. Chisel multiplies each object's *Color* into the matcap so shapes carry their own tint without changing the underlying shading.

![Same scene with per-object colors applied](../assets/material-render.webp)

## Topics

- **[Material Panel](panel.md)**: the simple color workflow in *Material Properties*
- **[Node Editor](node-editor.md)**: Chisel's mini node graph (Matcap Shader, Mix Shader, Color, Field, Material Output)

## Where to find it

With a Chisel object selected and the Chisel render engine active, open *Material Properties* (red sphere icon on the right). Chisel adds its **Chisel Material** section there.

If the object has no material yet, click **New Chisel Material**. Chisel creates one with a default Matcap Shader → Material Output node tree and assigns it to the object.

## Quick path: just set a color

For most objects you only need one thing: a color.

1. Select the object.
2. Open *Material Properties → Chisel Material*.
3. Drag the **Color** slider.

That's it. The matcap stays the same scene-wide; the *Color* multiplies into it per object so each shape can carry its own tint without changing your viewport shading. See [Material Panel](panel.md) for the panel breakdown.

## What the node graph adds

The panel's *Color* picker sets a single tint. The [node editor](node-editor.md) additionally allows:

- A color seam that blends wider or sharper than the geometry seam.
- Different shading on different parts of one object, blended by an SDF mask.
- Two matcaps mixed through a soft falloff.

## See also

- [Render Engine: Matcap](../render-engine/matcap.md): scene-wide matcap and tint
- [Modifiers: Boolean](../modifiers/boolean.md): *Material Blend* width control across boolean seams
- [Render Engine: Baking](../render-engine/baking.md): bake the shaded result to a diffuse map