Add a solid, text, or shape layer to the composition.
Last updated on
Nov 13, 2025
Learn about working with material options in Adobe After Effects and how to modify them to create a wide variety of materials for 3D layers in your compositions.
With Advanced 3D, any objects created internally within After Effects can be rendered with Adobe Standard Material. You can use the Material Options to adjust materials properties of synthetic 3D layers such as text, shapes, and solids to create a variety of materials that react realistically to light and reflections.
Activate the 3D Layer switch for the layer.
Twirl down your 3D layer to Material Options or use A + A on the keyboard with the 3D layer selected.
Set the lights and shadows settings and modify the values for the following properties:
Ambient
The amount of After Effects ambient lighting applied to the layer, if any is present (there may not be any). This behaves similarly to the Adobe Standard Material emissive property but does not cast light onto other objects.
Diffuse
Mapped to the Adobe Standard Material (ASM) Base Color channel and will pass through your layer’s inherent color— the one you see when viewed in 2D. Setting this to 100 will help you get the closest match to the 2D version of a layer.
Specular Intensity
Mapped to the Adobe Standard Material (ASM) specular level.
Specular Shininess
Commonly thought of as inverted Adobe Standard Material (ASM) roughness (0 is very rough, 100 is very shiny). Note that the response is non-linear, and changes may be most visible in the middle of the range.
Metal
Controls how much a surface alters the color of specular reflected light.
Tip
- To have more physically accurate lights to go with your new physically accurate materials, set the light’s falloff to Inverse Square Clamped (Double-click the light layer in the Timeline panel > Falloff > Inverse Square Clamped > OK). This will give you a natural and realistic gradient the further your objects get from the light.
- If you want your 3D layer to match the look of the 2D version as closely as possible, turn Ambient and Diffuse to 100 and turn down Specular Intensity, Specular Shininess, and Metal to 0.
- Environment Lights may make matching 3D versions of 2D art more difficult, as there will be much more interaction between the lights and the artwork.
- Currently, After Effects only calculates reflections from Environment Lights. When there are 3D layers in a composition but no lights, After Effects uses a default and hidden Environment Light, and that environment is reflected in your 3D object. When you add a light layer After Effects disables the default Environment Light. You can manually add an Environment Light referencing an .HDR file to add reflections back in.
- You can create parametric meshes and apply Substance 3D Materials to them.
More like this
Create stunning 3D animations in After Effects
Animate characters and illustrations, add motion to text, and more.
