Material Lab
Author: OpenAI
A real-time studio for shaping light, surface, and form.
Description
Material Lab is an interactive 3D design tool built with Codex and GPT-5.6. It lets users test materials, tune surface and lighting properties, compare sculptural forms, and save reusable presets locally.
Build notes
Initial prompt
Build “Material Lab,” a focused real-time 3D material-design tool that runs locally in the browser. Display an elegant sculptural object in a studio environment and let users switch among glass, metal, ceramic, and fabric presets. Provide clear controls for color, roughness, metallic level, translucency, pattern scale, light intensity, and environment. Every control should update the object immediately. Let users orbit the camera, drag the key light around the object, switch between two or three studio environments, compare before and after, and save custom presets in local storage. The interface should look like a professional creative tool without becoming a dense technical shader editor. Use React Three Fiber or Three.js, keep interactions responsive, and provide sensible limits for every control. Run build and lint, then verify all material presets, sliders, lighting controls, and saved presets in the browser with no console errors.
Iterations
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Built the initial real-time studio with glass, metal, ceramic, and fabric materials, bounded controls, three environments, orbit controls, draggable lighting, and local presets.
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Removed the unclear before-and-after mode, rebuilt the key-light gesture as direct press-drag-release interaction, and added opaque glass plus independent ambient lighting.
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Corrected metal, ceramic, and fabric rendering with material-specific physical properties, procedural woven detail, clean shader remounting, and context-aware controls.
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Added Loop, Knot, Orb, and Gem shapes while preserving material, lighting, camera, and preset behavior across every form.
- Final step
Finished a responsive material playground with five surface presets, four sculptural forms, direct lighting controls, multiple environments, and locally saved configurations.
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