MaterialX is an open standard for transfer of rich material and look-development content between applications and renderers. Originated at Lucasfilm in 2012, MaterialX has been used by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in feature films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and real-time experiences such as Trials on Tatooine, and it remains the central material format for new ILM productions.

• Download the latest version of the CMake build system.
• Point CMake to the root of the MaterialX library and generate C++ projects for your platform and compiler.
• Select the MATERIALX_BUILD_PYTHON option to build Python bindings.
• Select the MATERIALX_BUILD_VIEWER option to build the MaterialX viewer.

The MaterialX codebase requires a compiler with support for C++11, and can be built with any of the following:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 or newer
• GCC 4.8 or newer
• Clang 3.3 or newer

The Python bindings for MaterialX are based on PyBind11, and support Python versions 2.7 and 3.x.

The MaterialX repository consists of the following folders:

• documents - MaterialX documentation, including the specification and developer guide.
• libraries - The standard data libraries for MaterialX, including definitions for the standard and physically-based-shading nodes.
• python - Support modules and example scripts for MaterialX Python.
• resources - Resources for rendering MaterialX content, including example materials, images, and geometry.
• source - Cross-platform C++ libraries for MaterialX with Python bindings.

The MaterialX Viewer leverages shader generation to build GLSL shaders from MaterialX graphs, rendering the results using the NanoGUI framework.

Figure 1: Standard Surface Shader with procedural and uniform materials

Figure 2: Standard Surface Shader with textured, color-space-managed materials

• The Developer Guide contains a developer-oriented overview of MaterialX with API documentation.
• The Python Scripts folder contains standalone examples of MaterialX Python code.
• Presentations at the Autodesk Vision Series provide details on the roadmap for MaterialX development.