material-authoring

name

material-authoring

description

Create and refine texture-backed BRDF materials in Adriatic by coordinating the in-game Material Lab, agent-owned image generation or editing, reference textures, and the Adriatic MCP material tools. Use when a user asks to make, texture, edit, inspect, save, or manage an Adriatic material; generate or derive albedo, specular, roughness, or normal maps; transform an input texture into material maps; or attach agent-produced PNG maps to a Material Lab material.

Material Authoring

Use the user's image-generation-capable agent to create or transform texture maps, then use Adriatic MCP only to import and attach finished PNGs. Never synthesize texture pixels inside Adriatic or its MCP server.

Workflow

1. Ensure Adriatic is running with the Material Lab open:

   build/dev/adriatic --lab material
   

2. Call material_list through the Adriatic MCP to resolve the exact target material. Do not guess names. If it does not exist, call material_create with its name, base color, metallic value, and roughness before generating maps.

3. Determine the requested map kinds:

   • albedo: color only; avoid baked lighting, highlights, shadows, and ambient occlusion.
   • specular: grayscale reflectance; lighter means stronger reflection.
   • roughness: grayscale microsurface variation; white is rough, black is smooth.
   • normal: tangent-space RGB normal map; use +Y/OpenGL orientation unless the user requests otherwise.

4. Generate or edit the map with the agent's available image-generation skill/tool.

   • For a new texture, ask for a square, seamless, tileable, orthographic surface with no perspective or directional lighting.
   • For an input/reference texture, include the source image and preserve its material identity and feature placement unless the user asks for reinterpretation.
   • When deriving multiple maps from one input, keep every map registered to the same crop, scale, rotation, and dimensions.
   • Generate only requested maps. Do not invent a complete set unless useful and authorized.
   • Prefer power-of-two dimensions. Default to 1024×1024 for authored production maps and 512×512 for quick iteration.

5. Save the agent-produced PNG to a temporary or working path. Do not manually place it in the final material directory.

6. Call Adriatic MCP material_attach_map with:

   {
     "material": "Exact Material Name",
     "kind": "normal",
     "path": "/absolute/path/to/agent-output.png",
     "save": true
   }
   

   The tool imports it atomically to:

   assets/materials/<material-slug>/<kind>.png
   

   It then attaches the imported asset, refreshes the live preview, and saves the material library.

7. Verify the MCP result reports ok: true, saved: true, and the expected asset_path. Inspect the running preview. Iterate through the image tool and reattach if seams, scale, polarity, or response are wrong.

Reference-texture requests

When the user says “based on this texture,” “derive a normal map,” or similar:

1. Inspect the supplied image before editing.
2. Use it as an image-generation/editing reference, not merely as a text description.
3. Preserve its UV registration and aspect ratio.
4. Remove lighting information appropriate to the target map.
5. Attach the resulting PNG with material_attach_map.

If the source image is missing or inaccessible, ask the user to attach it again. Never silently replace a reference-based request with unrelated procedural generation.

Safety and ownership

• Treat image generation as the user's agent responsibility.
• Treat Adriatic MCP as an import, attachment, persistence, and live-preview boundary.
• Keep all committed material maps under assets/materials/.
• Do not overwrite a different material's directory or attach a map to an approximate name.
• Preserve source files outside assets/materials/; MCP copies the finished result into the project.