Texture settings

A texture parameter in a material has a sampler type (Color, Normal, Masks …), and the texture you put into it must have settings that fit, or the material fails to compile with errors such as Sampler type is Masks, should be Color. With Fix texture settings on, Material Smith changes the settings of every texture it assigns so that it fits its parameter.

When textures are changed

Only during Create, and only with Fix texture settings on (the default). The preview never changes anything.
Only textures that are assigned to a parameter: the first texture of each map in the set. Not Used textures, unrecognized textures and extra textures of the same map are left alone.
Before you click Create, What will happen lists the changes per texture, for example T_Rock_ORM: compression …, sRGB off., and the Texture fixes tile counts the textures that will change.
With Save assets on, the changed textures are saved. Otherwise they are left modified and unsaved.

With Fix texture settings off, nothing is changed and each texture that doesn’t fit gets a warning instead: T_Rock_ORM does not fit the Masks sampler (needs …). Turn on Fix texture settings.

Settings per map type

With the Material Smith master:

Map	Sampler type	Compression	sRGB
Base Color, Emissive	Color	Kept if it is a color compression, otherwise Default	On
Normal	Normal	Normalmap	Off
Packed (ORM …)	Masks	Masks	Off
Roughness, Metallic, Ambient Occlusion, Opacity, Height	Alpha	Alpha (BC4, one channel)	Off

The roughness, metallic, ambient occlusion, opacity and height maps are single channel maps: the master reads their red channel, and Alpha compression stores one channel in BC4.

For every map, Material Smith also sets:

Virtual Texture Streaming: on for the virtual texture master M_Smith_Standard_VT, off for M_Smith_Standard. See Virtual textures.
Flip Green Channel: on for normal maps marked OpenGL (green up).
Texture group: textures in the 8-bit or 16-bit data texture group are moved to World (normal maps to WorldNormalMap), because those groups force a data sampler type.

Settings per sampler type

With a custom master, the sampler type of each parameter is read from your material, and the texture is fitted to it:

Sampler type	Compression	sRGB
Color	Kept if it is a color compression, otherwise Default	On
Linear Color	Kept if it is a color or HDR compression, otherwise Default	Off
Normal	Normalmap	Off
Masks	Masks	Off
Grayscale	Grayscale	On
Linear Grayscale	Grayscale	Off
Alpha	Alpha	Off

The virtual texture versions of these sampler types get the same settings plus Virtual Texture Streaming on. Other sampler types are not set up; the texture gets a warning.

“Color compression” means any compression except Normalmap, Masks, Grayscale, Alpha, Distance Field Font and the HDR and floating point formats. A BC7 base color map, for example, keeps BC7.

An HDR texture on a Color sampler is not changed. It gets the warning … is an HDR texture, but the parameter expects an sRGB color texture.

OpenGL normal maps

Normal maps whose names end with an OpenGL ending (NormalGL, Normal_GL, Nor_GL, NormalOpenGL, Normal_OpenGL), or that you mark with OpenGL (green up) in the details, get Flip Green Channel turned on. Material Smith never turns Flip Green Channel off, so a normal map you flipped yourself stays flipped.

Virtual textures

With the Material Smith master, the variant is chosen per set:

If every map of the set already streams as a virtual texture, the set uses M_Smith_Standard_VT and the textures keep Virtual Texture Streaming on.
Otherwise the set uses M_Smith_Standard. If some of its maps are virtual textures, What will happen says so, and Fix texture settings turns virtual texture streaming off for them.

With a custom master, virtual texture streaming follows the sampler type of each parameter.

After the change

After changing a texture, Material Smith checks again which sampler type the texture needs. If it still doesn’t fit, the run reports … still does not fit the … sampler after the change.

Textures Material Smith creates

Texture	sRGB	Compression	Other
Packed textures (`T_Name_ORM` …)	Off	Masks	Compressed without alpha unless an alpha channel is used. Virtual texture streaming is on if any source texture uses it.
`T_Smith_Default_Packed`	Off	Masks	No alpha.
`T_Smith_Default_Mask`	Off	Alpha

See Channel packer and Master material.