# [name]

Abstract base class for materials.
Materials describe the appearance of [page:Object objects]. They are defined in a (mostly) renderer-independent way, so you don't have to rewrite materials if you decide to use a different renderer.
The following properties and methods are inherited by all other material types (although they may have different defaults).

## Constructor

### [name]()

This creates a generic material.

## Properties

### [property:Boolean alphaHash]

Enables alpha hashed transparency, an alternative to [page:.transparent] or [page:.alphaTest]. The material will not be rendered if opacity is lower than a random threshold. Randomization introduces some grain or noise, but approximates alpha blending without the associated problems of sorting. Using TAARenderPass can reduce the resulting noise.

### [property:Float alphaTest]

Sets the alpha value to be used when running an alpha test. The material will not be rendered if the opacity is lower than this value. Default is `0`.

### [property:Boolean alphaToCoverage]

Enables alpha to coverage. Can only be used with MSAA-enabled contexts (meaning when the renderer was created with *antialias* parameter set to `true`). Enabling this will smooth aliasing on clip plane edges and alphaTest-clipped edges. Default is `false`.

### [property:Float blendAlpha]

Represents the alpha value of the constant blend color. Default is `0`. This property has only an effect when using custom blending with [page:CustomBlendingEquation ConstantAlpha] or [page:CustomBlendingEquation OneMinusConstantAlpha].

### [property:Color blendColor]

Represent the RGB values of the constant blend color. Default is `0x000000`.
This property has only an effect when using custom blending with [page:CustomBlendingEquation ConstantColor] or [page:CustomBlendingEquation OneMinusConstantColor].

### [property:Integer blendDst]

Blending destination. Default is [page:CustomBlendingEquation OneMinusSrcAlphaFactor]. See the destination factors [page:CustomBlendingEquation constants] for all possible values.
The material's [page:Constant blending] must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending] for this to have any effect.

### [property:Integer blendDstAlpha]

The transparency of the [page:.blendDst]. Uses [page:.blendDst] value if null. Default is `null`.

### [property:Integer blendEquation]

Blending equation to use when applying blending. Default is [page:CustomBlendingEquation AddEquation]. See the blending equation [page:CustomBlendingEquation constants] for all possible values.
The material's [page:Constant blending] must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending] for this to have any effect.

### [property:Integer blendEquationAlpha]

The transparency of the [page:.blendEquation]. Uses [page:.blendEquation] value if null. Default is `null`.

### [property:Blending blending]

Which blending to use when displaying objects with this material.
This must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending] to use custom [page:Constant blendSrc], [page:Constant blendDst] or [page:Constant blendEquation].
See the blending mode [page:Materials constants] for all possible values. Default is [page:Materials NormalBlending].

### [property:Integer blendSrc]

Blending source. Default is [page:CustomBlendingEquation SrcAlphaFactor]. See the source factors [page:CustomBlendingEquation constants] for all possible values.
The material's [page:Constant blending] must be set to [page:Materials CustomBlending] for this to have any effect.

### [property:Integer blendSrcAlpha]

The transparency of the [page:.blendSrc]. Uses [page:.blendSrc] value if null. Default is `null`.

### [property:Boolean clipIntersection]

Changes the behavior of clipping planes so that only their intersection is clipped, rather than their union. Default is `false`.

### [property:Array clippingPlanes]

User-defined clipping planes specified as THREE.Plane objects in world space. These planes apply to the objects this material is attached to. Points in space whose signed distance to the plane is negative are clipped (not rendered). This requires [page:WebGLRenderer.localClippingEnabled] to be `true`. See the [example:webgl_clipping_intersection WebGL / clipping /intersection] example. Default is `null`.

### [property:Boolean clipShadows]

Defines whether to clip shadows according to the clipping planes specified on this material. Default is `false`.

### [property:Boolean colorWrite]

Whether to render the material's color. This can be used in conjunction with a mesh's [page:Integer renderOrder] property to create invisible objects that occlude other objects. Default is `true`.

### [property:Object defines]

Custom defines to be injected into the shader. These are passed in form of an object literal, with key/value pairs. `{ MY_CUSTOM_DEFINE: '' , PI2: Math.PI * 2 }`. The pairs are defined in both vertex and fragment shaders. Default is `undefined`.

### [property:Integer depthFunc]

Which depth function to use. Default is [page:Materials LessEqualDepth]. See the depth mode [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.

### [property:Boolean depthTest]

Whether to have depth test enabled when rendering this material. Default is `true`. When the depth test is disabled, the depth write will also be implicitly disabled.

### [property:Boolean depthWrite]

Whether rendering this material has any effect on the depth buffer. Default is `true`.
When drawing 2D overlays it can be useful to disable the depth writing in order to layer several things together without creating z-index artifacts.

### [property:Boolean forceSinglePass]

Whether double-sided, transparent objects should be rendered with a single pass or not. Default is `false`.
The engine renders double-sided, transparent objects with two draw calls (back faces first, then front faces) to mitigate transparency artifacts. There are scenarios however where this approach produces no quality gains but still doubles draw calls e.g. when rendering flat vegetation like grass sprites. In these cases, set the `forceSinglePass` flag to `true` to disable the two pass rendering to avoid performance issues.

### [property:Boolean isMaterial]

Read-only flag to check if a given object is of type [name].

### [property:Boolean stencilWrite]

Whether stencil operations are performed against the stencil buffer. In order to perform writes or comparisons against the stencil buffer this value must be `true`. Default is `false`.

### [property:Integer stencilWriteMask]

The bit mask to use when writing to the stencil buffer. Default is `0xFF`.

### [property:Integer stencilFunc]

The stencil comparison function to use. Default is [page:Materials AlwaysStencilFunc]. See stencil function [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.

### [property:Integer stencilRef]

The value to use when performing stencil comparisons or stencil operations. Default is `0`.

### [property:Integer stencilFuncMask]

The bit mask to use when comparing against the stencil buffer. Default is `0xFF`.

### [property:Integer stencilFail]

Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns false. Default is [page:Materials KeepStencilOp]. See the stencil operations [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.

### [property:Integer stencilZFail]

Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns true but the depth test fails. Default is [page:Materials KeepStencilOp]. See the stencil operations [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.

### [property:Integer stencilZPass]

Which stencil operation to perform when the comparison function returns true and the depth test passes. Default is [page:Materials KeepStencilOp]. See the stencil operations [page:Materials constants] for all possible values.

### [property:Integer id]

Unique number for this material instance.

### [property:String name]

Optional name of the object (doesn't need to be unique). Default is an empty string.

### [property:Boolean needsUpdate]

Specifies that the material needs to be recompiled.

### [property:Float opacity]

Float in the range of `0.0` - `1.0` indicating how transparent the material is. A value of `0.0` indicates fully transparent, `1.0` is fully opaque.
If the material's [page:Boolean transparent] property is not set to `true`, the material will remain fully opaque and this value will only affect its color.
Default is `1.0`.

### [property:Boolean polygonOffset]

Whether to use polygon offset. Default is `false`. This corresponds to the `GL_POLYGON_OFFSET_FILL` WebGL feature.

### [property:Integer polygonOffsetFactor]

Sets the polygon offset factor. Default is `0`.

### [property:Integer polygonOffsetUnits]

Sets the polygon offset units. Default is `0`.

### [property:String precision]

Override the renderer's default precision for this material. Can be `"highp"`, `"mediump"` or `"lowp"`. Default is `null`.

### [property:Boolean premultipliedAlpha]

Whether to premultiply the alpha (transparency) value. See [Example:webgl_materials_physical_transmission WebGL / Materials / Physical / Transmission] for an example of the difference. Default is `false`.

### [property:Boolean dithering]

Whether to apply dithering to the color to remove the appearance of banding. Default is `false`.

### [property:Integer shadowSide]

Defines which side of faces cast shadows. When set, can be [page:Materials THREE.FrontSide], [page:Materials THREE.BackSide], or [page:Materials THREE.DoubleSide]. Default is `null`.
If `null`, the side casting shadows is determined as follows:

[page:Material.side] | Side casting shadows
--- | ---
THREE.FrontSide | back side
THREE.BackSide | front side
THREE.DoubleSide | both sides

### [property:Integer side]

Defines which side of faces will be rendered - front, back or both. Default is [page:Materials THREE.FrontSide]. Other options are [page:Materials THREE.BackSide] or [page:Materials THREE.DoubleSide].

### [property:Boolean toneMapped]

Defines whether this material is tone mapped according to the renderer's [page:WebGLRenderer.toneMapping toneMapping] setting. It is ignored when rendering to a render target or using post processing. Default is `true`.

### [property:Boolean transparent]

Defines whether this material is transparent. This has an effect on rendering as transparent objects need special treatment and are rendered after non-transparent objects.
When set to true, the extent to which the material is transparent is controlled by setting its [page:Float opacity] property. Default is `false`.

### [property:String type]

Value is the string 'Material'. This shouldn't be changed, and can be used to find all objects of this type in a scene.

### [property:String uuid]

[link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier UUID] of this material instance. This gets automatically assigned, so this shouldn't be edited.

### [property:Integer version]

This starts at `0` and counts how many times [page:Material.needsUpdate .needsUpdate] is set to `true`.

### [property:Boolean vertexColors]

Defines whether vertex coloring is used. Default is `false`. The engine supports RGB and RGBA vertex colors depending on whether a three (RGB) or four (RGBA) component color buffer attribute is used.

### [property:Boolean visible]

Defines whether this material is visible. Default is `true`.

### [property:Object userData]

An object that can be used to store custom data about the Material. It should not hold references to functions as these will not be cloned. Default is an empty object `{}`.

## Methods

[page:EventDispatcher EventDispatcher] methods are available on this class.

### [method:Material clone]( )

Return a new material with the same parameters as this material.

### [method:this copy]( [param:material material] )

Copy the parameters from the passed material into this material.

### [method:undefined dispose]()

Frees the GPU-related resources allocated by this instance. Call this method whenever this instance is no longer used in your app.

Material textures must be be disposed of by the dispose() method of [page:Texture Texture].

### [method:undefined onBeforeCompile]( [param:Shader shader], [param:WebGLRenderer renderer] )

An optional callback that is executed immediately before the shader program is compiled. This function is called with the shader source code as a parameter. Useful for the modification of built-in materials.

Unlike properties, the callback is not supported by [page:Material.clone .clone](), [page:Material.copy .copy]() and [page:Material.toJSON .toJSON]().

### [method:String customProgramCacheKey]()

In case onBeforeCompile is used, this callback can be used to identify values of settings used in onBeforeCompile, so three.js can reuse a cached shader or recompile the shader for this material as needed.

For example, if onBeforeCompile contains a conditional statement like:
`if ( black ) { shader.fragmentShader = shader.fragmentShader.replace('gl_FragColor = vec4(1)', 'gl_FragColor = vec4(0)') }` then customProgramCacheKey should be set like this:
`material.customProgramCacheKey = function() { return black ? '1' : '0'; }`

Unlike properties, the callback is not supported by [page:Material.clone .clone](), [page:Material.copy .copy]() and [page:Material.toJSON .toJSON]().

### [method:undefined setValues]( [param:Object values] )

values -- a container with parameters.
Sets the properties based on the `values`.

### [method:Object toJSON]( [param:Object meta] )

meta -- object containing metadata such as textures or images for the material.
Convert the material to three.js [link:https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/wiki/JSON-Object-Scene-format-4 JSON Object/Scene format].

## Source

[link:https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/master/src/[path].js src/[path].js]