When updating to Solidworks Visualize 2024, you may have noticed that the Metal appearance has changed from just the colour and roughness parameters to now having 5 added parameters. This is because, Solidworks Visualize 2024 now uses the Dassault Systèmes’ Enterprise PBR Shading file format for its appearances. With this, comes more parameters to better control and perfect our appearances. However more parameters can be quite intimidating. In this video, we are looking at the most common parameters, where they can be used and how we can add textures to them to enhance the realism of our appearances. The most common parameters that you will see in the appearances are, albedo, metallic, roughness, anisotropy, anisotropy rotation, normal, displacement, transluceny, transparency and cut-out opacity. Albedo specifies the overall colour of the material. If we add an image to this parameter, it will project the exact same image on the surface. This is great if you have a scanned or computer generated image you can use. Here, I have an image of the slate appearance I can use for our kitchen worktop. Metallic determines whether the appearance is nonmetallic or metallic. Adding an image will project the darker parts of the image as metallic and lighter as non metallic. This is not a commonly used parameter as the Metal appearance type doesn’t have it. It's only considered when modifying an Enterprise PBR Shading Model or Basic appearance. Roughness controls the level of shininess or roughness of a surface, on a scale from 0 to 1. Adding an image will project the darker parts of the image as shiny and the lighter as rough. Anisotropy simulates a surface with an asymmetrical specular highlight that changes when the surface rotates relative to the light sources. This parameter is found in metal, textile, Wood appearances. You can use this parameter to create an anisotropic appearance with grain or directionality, such as brushed finishes on metallic surfaces. Adding an image will give a similar effect as adding a texture to metallic. Anisotropy Rotation rotates the highlight. Adding an image will project higher values of anisotropy in the lighter areas. Normal textures add the appearance of details such as bumps and dents to the surface of a model without changing the size of the geometry. They are stored as RGB images. Displacement textures change the geometry of the surface. Displacement textures added to a surface with very few vertices, such as a cube, can lead to unexpected results. To improve the resolution, you can increase the Displacement Density in the Texture Mapping tab. This feature subdivides the existing 3D mesh to create more vertices. Be careful when increasing Displacement Density, as this parameter increases rendering time and memory usage. Translucency controls the amount of light passing through a surface while also diffusing it, making it difficult to see the other side of the model. This is good for appearances such as wax, leaves, or skin. This renders faster than subsurface scattering at the expense of some realism. Adding an image could be good for details like fingerprints. Transparency controls how see-through or glass-like a surface appears. Adding an image could also be good for details like fingerprints or scratches. Transparency and translucency are parameters only found on plastic appearances since glass is automatically considered fully transparent. Frosted glass will just have a little roughness. Cut-Out Opacity makes areas of your material transparent. This allows you to create the look of very complex parts easily without needing to model the holes. This is great for different kinds of mesh. Lastly, we will look at the new parameters in the emissive appearances. Emission Colour defines the colour of light that emits from the surface. Real-world light bulbs specify this feature in terms of colour temperature. eg a colour temperature of 2700 K corresponds to an RGB value of 255, 169, 87. For emissive mode we have the choice of Luminous Emittance or Luminous Power. For Luminous Emittance, the Emission Value corresponds to the brightness emitted per surface area of the light source where the unit is lux. For Luminous Power, the Emission Value corresponds to the power emitted by the light source where the unit is lumens. If you have not been given a value to use for the light, use Luminous Power. Luminous Power tends to be stronger than Luminous Emittance. When Energy Normalization is unticked, the brightness of the Emission Colour determine the intensity of light. When Energy Normalization is ticked, Emission Mode and Emission Value determine the intensity of light. Use Energy Normalization to replicate real light bulbs whose emission characteristic is specified by Luminous Power and colour temperature. It is also worth mentioning the new appearance type: Enterprise PBR Shading Model. This is basically a super appearance which has every parameter within it. This is used for special appearances like Gemstones or miscellaneous appearances like Skin. However, for the inexperienced, you could have parameters overriding each other making it hard to control unless you have deep knowledge of DSPBRs. To get started with the new materials, make use of the default library that comes with SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2024. You can access an updated cloud library of over 430 of these optimised appearances, all separated into functional categories. Thanks for watching and have fun with the new appearances.