6 Material

This chapter describes the Material class of the JavaFX 3D Graphics library.

The Material class contains a set of rendering properties. Example 6-1 shows the Material class hierarchy and that the PhongMaterial class is sub-classed from the Material class.

java.lang.Object
  javafx.scene.paint.Material (abstract)
     javafx.scene.paint.PhongMaterial

The PhongMaterial class provides definitions of properties that represent a form of Phong shaded material:

• Diffuse color

• Diffuse map

• Specular map

• Specular color

• Specular power

• Bump map or normal map

• Self-illumination map

Materials are shareable among multiple Shape3D nodes.

Example 6-2 shows how to create a PhongMaterial object, set its diffuseMap properties, and use the material for a shape.

//Create Material
Material mat = new PhongMaterial();
Image diffuseMap = new Image("diffuseMap.png");
Image normalMap = new Image("normalMap.png");

// Set material properties
mat.setDiffuseMap(diffuseMap);
mat.setBumpMap(normalMap);
mat.setSpecularColor(Color.WHITE);

// Use the material for a shape
shape3d.setMaterial(mat);

The MSAAApp.java application and buildMolecule() method show how the PhongMaterial API is used. Both are available in the appendices sections.