Replace Material 3D Node

Replace Material 3D is a pass-through node that swaps the material of every object going through it, without touching cameras or lights. It is an alternative to connecting a material to each object individually.

Especially useful for nodes that have no native material input (Text 3D), or to create a technical pass (falloff, matte, emissive) by replacing every shader with a dedicated one.

• Effects Library: Tools > 3D > Replace Material 3D
• Quick add: right-click in the Node Editor → Add Tool > 3D > Replace Material 3D

• SceneInput (orange) - required. The 3D scene whose materials you want to replace.
• MaterialInput (green) - required. Accepts either a 2D image (used as diffuse in the built-in basic material) or a full 3D material (Blinn, Phong, Cook Torrance…). When a 3D material is connected, the built-in basic material is disabled.

Typical workflow:

Text 3D → Replace Material 3D → Merge 3D → Renderer 3D
                  ↑
            Blinn / MediaIn (through MaterialInput)

Or on a whole scene:

Merge 3D → Replace Material 3D → Renderer 3D
                ↑
          Falloff shader

Enable (default: on)

Turns the replacement on or off. Separate from the node's red switch, which bypasses the whole effect (Enable only turns off the effect part, not the scene passthrough).

Instead of simply replacing the material as a whole, Replace Material offers per-channel behavior (Red, Green, Blue, Alpha). For each channel, there are four modes:

Keep

Keeps the original channel - no replacement. Useful to replace only some channels (e.g. touching only the alpha).

Replace (default)

Fully replaces the channel with the one from the input material. The classic mode.

Blend

Mixes the materials (additive or averaged blend, depending on the shader). Allows a partial replacement.

Multiply

Multiplies the values of the original channel by those of the new material. Useful to tint an existing texture without fully replacing it.

Limit by Object ID and Limit by Material ID let you restrict the replacement to specific objects.

• When enabled, only the objects whose ID matches the value you enter get the new material. The others keep their original material.
• If both limiters are enabled, both conditions must be true (intersection).

For example, this lets you change only the shader of the objects with Object ID = 3 in a scene, while leaving the others untouched.

• Texturing a Text 3D - Text 3D has no native material input. Replace Material is the standard way to apply a material to it: text → Replace Material ← Blinn with a texture.
• Falloff pass - combined with an Override 3D that turns off Affected by Lights, apply a Falloff shader to generate a Fresnel pass you can use in compositing.
• Matte pass - replace every material with a pure white Blinn (Diffuse = 1, Specular = 0) to generate a mask of the scene.
• Uniform emissive pass - replace it with a self-illuminated shader to see the geometry without lighting (useful to check topology).
• Quick look change - on a complex scene, test a new look by temporarily inserting a Replace Material without touching the original shaders. Easy to turn off.
• Unifying a set of objects - if you imported FBX meshes with mismatched materials, a Replace Material unifies them instantly under the same shader.

• Pairing with Override 3D - the two are often used together for technical passes: Override to turn off lighting (Do Lighting + Affected by Lights off), Replace Material to apply a specific shader.
• Lights pass through unchanged - only objects (geometry) get the new material. Lights and cameras pass through without any change.
• The per-channel Blend and Multiply modes are rarely used in practice - most of the time, you use Replace on every channel.
• To replace the material on a specific object, first give that object a unique Object ID (on the source node or through Override 3D), then filter with Limit by Object ID.
• Chaining Replace Material nodes - you can chain several with different ID filters to apply different materials to different objects in the same scene.