11
$\begingroup$

Under what circumstances is the color in the Object Properties Viewport Display panel used? I know I can use materials to get color to show up, but I can't figure out what conditions this color value is used in (as witnessed in this screen snap). Googling shows that it is somehow connected to an 'ObColor' setting, but I can't find that in 2.82.

Thanks. David

Object Properties Viewport Display Tab

Improve this question
$\endgroup$

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
18
$\begingroup$

The Object's Viewport Display Colour is used when Viewport Shading > Colour is set to Object rather than Material. You can find this setting in the top-right corner of the 3D Editor.

enter image description here

enter image description here

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for answering this, was wondering that many times myself :). $\endgroup$
    – jachym michal
    Commented Jan 11, 2020 at 23:27
17
$\begingroup$

I will iterate on the other answer and add that you can also use this color to add variation to different objects which use the same material, not only in workbench but also in Cycles and Eevee.

In this example I used the same Material on all three spheres. I just tweaked the Viewport Display Color of each object. This a very simple example but it can have multiple applications.

enter image description here

In this example I used the values of the color to add a roughness variation between the objects. enter image description here

Actually, you can use the three channels of the color (Red, Green, Blue) to add even more variation ! This is all the same material but the Red channel drives the hue, the green channel drives the roughness and the blue channel drives the transmission.

enter image description here

This behavior can be key-framed. This can be used to animate materials per-object easily. Both cubes have the same material.

enter image description here

How-to animate it :

enter image description here

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ That is pretty damn cool! Thanks! (My upvote doesn't count because of my noob status - sorry!) $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 20:16
  • $\begingroup$ No problem ! I actually learned some tricks while editing my answer :) $\endgroup$
    – Gorgious
    Commented Jan 13, 2020 at 21:20
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ That's awesome ;-) possibilities;-) BTW I was always bored set manually material color to Viewport that seemed to me something that should be default and expected behaviour ... So now I don't have to 8-) how could I missed that. $\endgroup$
    – vklidu
    Commented Feb 4, 2021 at 8:44

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .