[X3D-Ecosystem] X3D PBR Material/Texture Export from Blender

[Vincent Marchetti]

I am interested in contributing to this work.

I think a appropriate scope-of-work for this would be to implement X3D export using the v 4.0 nodes related to material and appearance from the Shape Component : https://www.web3d.org/documents/specifications/19775-1/V4.0/Part01/components/shape.html 

The significant work here would be to translate the shader-node tree in Blender to the appropriate realization of the Material or PhysicalMaterial node.
As Michalis points out, the existing glTF export code would be a valuable guide. Besides the informative link to the manual page:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/addons/import_export/scene_gltf2.html

the Python code is available at 
https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/src/branch/main/scripts/addons_core/io_scene_gltf2
and a somehow-related repository at 
https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-Blender-IO/tree/main/addons/io_scene_gltf2

I think a reasonable first step would be to prepare a 'swatch book' of simple Blender files which have a Blender material of interest applied to a simple mesh -- just a 16:9 rectangle. I propose a rectangle rather than a square to make uv axes transpositions readily visible. Simple enough that a corresponding X3D V4 material nodes can be prepared by hand.

Vince Marchetti




> On Nov 27, 2025, at 8:19 AM, Michalis Kamburelis via X3D-Ecosystem <x3d-ecosystem at web3d.org> wrote:
> 
> I want it very much! :) 
> 
> Artists need it to export Blender materials to X3D with nice look (PBR parameters, just like Blender and glTF and X3D PhysicalMaterial already allow), to have nicely-looking models, with physical look, with textures affecting everything (base, normal maps, roughness / metallic, occlusion etc.).
> 
> We have designed PhysicalMaterial in X3D 4 deliberately similar to glTF PBR material. We also have UnlitMaterial. So the Khronos people developing Blender->glTF exporter already did what I consider "difficult decisions" which is figuring out how do Blender materials best map to glTF / X3D material parameters ( https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/addons/import_export/scene_gltf2.html#materials ) and we have even their code ( Khronos glTF exporter ) to show how to do it.
> 
> Regards,
> Michalis
> 
> On Thursday, November 27th, 2025 at 06:56, Bergstrom, Aaron via X3D-Ecosystem <x3d-ecosystem at web3d.org> wrote:
>> At the last Ecosystems meeting we discussed PhysicalMaterial node support for Blender export.
>>  
>> Please respond to this message if you have an interest in seeing PBR Material/Texture export from Blender.
>>  
>> No need to volunteer to do it yourself, we just want to know the interest level of those want to see it prioritized as the next feature to be implemented in the Blender X3D exporter.
>>  
>> Thanks,
>>  
>> Aaron
> 
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