Materials (RVMAT)

An RVMAT (Real Virtuality Material) is a small text file that decides how a surface looks: which shader lights it, which textures feed that shader, and how shiny, self-lit, or reflective it is. It’s the layer between the model and its textures — the model’s faces point at an RVMAT, the RVMAT points at the texture maps.

This page assumes you’ve seen where materials sit in the pipeline and have a model whose faces need shading. RVMATs are plain text, so you can write them in any editor (Object Builder also has a material editor).

How an RVMAT links model → textures → shader

Three things meet in an RVMAT:

 model.p3d face ──material──► model.rvmat ──┬─ PixelShaderID / VertexShaderID  (which shader)
                                            ├─ Stage1 texture ─► *_nohq.paa    (normal)
                                            ├─ Stage5 texture ─► *_smdi.paa    (specular)
                                            └─ ambient/diffuse/specular …      (lighting params)

Each face in a Visual LOD stores a material path (the .rvmat) next to its texture path (the colour map). The RVMAT then names the rest of the texture maps it needs in its stages, and picks the shader. So the colour map is referenced from the face; the normal, specular, and friends are referenced from the RVMAT.

A direct consequence: to change how a surface looks — a damaged state, a different finish — you point the face at a different RVMAT. That’s exactly how damage states work (more below).

The shape of an RVMAT

An RVMAT is a set of top-level lighting parameters followed by numbered texture stages:

ambient[]       = {1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0};   // ambient colour multiplier (RGBA)
diffuse[]       = {1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0};   // diffuse colour multiplier
forcedDiffuse[] = {0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0};   // extra diffuse, ignores lighting
emmisive[]      = {0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0};   // self-illumination  (note the spelling!)
specular[]      = {0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 1.0};   // specular highlight colour
specularPower   = 80;                     // highlight tightness (higher = sharper)

PixelShaderID   = "Super";
VertexShaderID  = "Super";

class Stage1 { texture = "MyMod\data\crate_nohq.paa"; uvSource = "tex"; };   // normal
class Stage2 { texture = "#(argb,8,8,3)color(0.5,0.5,0.5,1,DT)"; uvSource = "tex"; };   // detail
class Stage3 { texture = "#(argb,8,8,3)color(0,0,0,0,MC)"; uvSource = "tex"; };         // macro/colour mask
class Stage4 { texture = "#(argb,8,8,3)color(1,1,1,1,AS)"; uvSource = "tex"; };         // ambient shadow
class Stage5 { texture = "MyMod\data\crate_smdi.paa"; uvSource = "tex"; };   // specular
class Stage6 { texture = "#(ai,64,64,1)fresnel(2.62,0.8)"; uvSource = "none"; };        // fresnel
class Stage7 { texture = "dz\data\data\env_land_co.paa"; uvSource = "tex"; };           // environment

emmisive, not emissive

The self-illumination field is spelled emmisive — a long-standing engine typo. The correctly-spelled emissive is silently ignored. This trips up nearly everyone once.

A few notes that save confusion:

• Stages start at 1. There is no Stage0.
• Paths use backslashes, consistent with the rest of BI config.
• Procedural textures — the #(argb,8,8,3)color(…) and #(ai,…)fresnel(…) strings are generated textures, not files. They’re how you supply a flat/solid input for a stage without authoring an image (handy for a uniform detail or a placeholder).

The stages, mapped to texture types

For the Super shader (the workhorse for DayZ items), the stages have conventional jobs that line up with the texture map types:

Stage	Texture type	What it does
(face)	_co.paa	Colour/albedo — referenced from the face, not a stage.
Stage1	_nohq.paa	Normal map — surface bump/detail and (in alpha) a spec exponent.
Stage2	_dt.paa	Detail — fine tiled micro-detail.
Stage3	_mc.paa	Macro / colour mask — broad tinting or damage masks.
Stage4	_as.paa	Ambient shadow — baked occlusion.
Stage5	_smdi.paa	Specular map — where and how strongly the surface is glossy/metallic.
Stage6	procedural	Fresnel — edge reflectivity falloff.
Stage7	env_*.paa	Environment — the reflection the surface samples.

You rarely touch all seven by hand. In practice you set the colour (on the face), the normal (Stage1), and the specular (Stage5), and leave the detail/mask/fresnel/env stages at sensible defaults copied from a vanilla material of the same kind. The Textures page covers what each map encodes.

Super-shader vs other shaders

PixelShaderID/VertexShaderID pick the shader, and that choice changes which stages matter:

• Super — the standard PBR-ish lit shader for most solid surfaces (gear, props, weapons, vehicles). The seven-stage layout above is its pipeline.
• Normal / Basic and friends — simpler shaders for special cases. An emissive/glowing or additive surface (a screen, an aurora, a light source) often uses a simpler shader with renderFlags[] like AddBlend/NoZWrite and a non-zero emmisive[], and ignores most stages.
• Glass/transparent surfaces use a shader and render flags suited to alpha blending.

When in doubt, start from the vanilla material of the closest surface type and adjust — the shader IDs and render flags are easy to get subtly wrong from scratch.

Damage states

DayZ items change material as they take damage, by swapping the whole RVMAT at thresholds. You author a pristine, a damaged, and a destroyed variant (often the same stages with a different macro/damage mask in Stage3 and a lower specularPower), and the config’s damage system lists which RVMAT applies at which health level:

healthLevels[] =
{
    {1.0, {"MyMod\data\crate.rvmat"}},          // pristine
    {0.7, {"MyMod\data\crate.rvmat"}},
    {0.5, {"MyMod\data\crate_damage.rvmat"}},   // worn
    {0.3, {"MyMod\data\crate_damage.rvmat"}},
    {0.0, {"MyMod\data\crate_destruct.rvmat"}}  // ruined
};

That block lives in the config — see Configs. The material side is just “make three RVMATs that share a layout.”

Starter setups

Concrete points to start from, then tune specular/specularPower/emmisive:

Look	Shape it from
Matte (cloth, wood, rubber)	Super shader, low specular (e.g. {0.1,0.1,0.1,1}), low specularPower (~20–40), flat or real _smdi.
Metal (gun parts, vehicle panels)	Super shader, higher specular, high specularPower (~120+), a real _smdi marking the metal, a real _nohq.
Glass	A transparent-capable shader, low diffuse, strong specular, environment reflection, appropriate render flags.
Emissive (screens, lights, glow)	Simpler shader (Normal/Basic), non-zero emmisive[], often AddBlend/NoZWrite render flags, most stages unused.

Crib from a vanilla material of the same kind

The fastest way to a correct RVMAT is to open the vanilla material for the same kind of surface (a vanilla metal part for a gun, a vanilla cloth for a vest), learn how its stages and parameters are set, and rebuild your own with your textures. Learn the recipe; don’t ship their file or textures.

Related

• Textures — the map types the stages reference, and how they’re authored and packed.
• Pipeline & formats — where RVMAT sits in the asset chain.
• P3D setup — assigning a material to Visual-LOD faces.
• Configs — the healthLevels damage-state wiring.