Appearance & Materials

DanceXR’s material system is highly customizable, with multiple layers of settings that stack to create the final look of an actor or objects on stage. You can change the materials’ properties, swap textures, apply body paint, toggle outfit pieces, and more.

For per-feature detail, follow the links to each dedicated page. For terms used here (material slot, dressing system, alternative textures, body paint), see Concepts & glossary.

The control layers

A loaded model’s materials are controlled in multiple layers, from bottom to top:

Individual Materials — you can access each material individually and change settings one by one.
Material slots — materials are grouped into slots by surface type (skin, hair, eyes, lips, opaque, transparent, custom). Each slot has its own settings that apply to all materials in that category on the actor when turned on.
Global material settings — Global overrides that apply to all materials for the actor, for quick change of properties that needs to be consistent across the whole model (e.g. toon shading and alpha cutoff threshold for all transparent materials).
Overlays — layers drawn on top of the base materials, like outfit and body paint, sweat effect, detail maps, and specular/mask maps.
System-wide render properties — settings that apply to the entire scene, like unlit mode, shadow quality, raytracing effects, and transparent prepass.

Keep in mind that when you have higher level control enabled, the individual material settings may not have any effect.

Mesh & visibility — the dressing system

The Dressing system combines the morphs from PMX and optional meshes from XPS to provide a unified interface for toggling the visibility of parts of the model. Use it to turn outfit pieces on and off, switch to alternative shapes, or hide specific body parts.

For PMX models, it works through material morphs defined by the model author. Toggling shows or hides specific submeshes.
For XPS models, it works through optional items defined per-slot.

Same UI in both cases. Use this for outfit changes, removing accessories the model came with, swapping hair sub-pieces, hiding limbs for special effects.

PMX models also expose individual morphs through the Morph list — useful when a morph is not surfaced as a dressing toggle.

Texture Enhancement (Pro)

Custom detail map — a custom detail normal map.
Hexagon detail map — built-in hexagon pattern detail.
Generate normal map — auto-derive a normal map from the diffuse texture.
Specular / mask map — specular and mask map configuration.

Textures — alternative texture sets

Alternative textures lets you swap entire texture sets at runtime without editing the model.

How it works: place additional textures with the same filenames as the model’s originals, in a different folder (or elsewhere in the same zip). DanceXR detects them and exposes a picker. Common use: multiple skin tones, day/night versions, recolored outfits.

You can also use Texture enhancement (Pro) to AI-upscale and sharpen textures at load time.

Materials — the slot system

DanceXR groups materials into slots by surface type. Each slot has its own settings; settings on a slot apply to every material in that category on the actor when turned on.

Slot	Use it for	Page
Skin	Body, face	Skin materials
Hair	Head hair, body hair	Hair materials
Eyes	Iris, sclera, eye highlights	Eye materials
Lips	Lips and inner mouth	Lips materials
Opaque	Anything solid that does not fit a body slot — outfits, props on the model	Opaque materials
Transparent	Anything see-through — glass, sheer fabric, particles, hair tips	Transparent materials
Custom	Up to two free-form slots for shaders that need their own settings	Custom materials

How a material gets into a slot:

PMX: based on the material’s properties in the model file (transparency, name hints).
XPS: based on the slot you assign in the dressing system / bone mapper.

If something looks wrong (skin appearing as opaque, hair appearing as skin), it is usually a slot assignment problem.

Overlays

Layers drawn on top of the base materials:

Outfit & body paint — outfit slots and image-based body paint, drawn from images in texture/drawing.
Sweat effect — procedural sweat overlay on skin.

Shading style

Toon shading toggles cel / anime-style shading per actor. The toon path uses different math for light wrap, shadow ramps, and rim lighting than the default PBR-style path. Choose based on the look you want; mixing is OK.

Raytracing effects is a separate, scene-level feature (PC, RT build only) that affects shadow and reflection quality regardless of shading style.

Common problems

Symptom	Likely fix
You can see through hair	Transparency depth prepass — see FAQ
Texture missing, model is white	Filename or path mismatch — see FAQ
Skin looks plastic / shiny	Adjust skin materials — typically reduce specular
Outfit cannot be removed	The model author has to expose it as a morph (PMX) or optional (XPS); use Dressing system to find what is available
Texture looks low-res	Try Texture enhancement, or place a higher-res alternative texture
Sky sphere looks pixelated / has holes	Multiple transparent sky spheres + transparency depth prepass; see FAQ