How to Change the Color of an Object in the 3D Viewport | Blender Tutorial
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Hello everyone!
In this very short video, I’ll show you how to change the color used to display a Material in the 3D Viewport, meaning during modeling, not rendering. This can be useful to easily identify objects using that Material in a complex scene or, as in the example I’ll show you here, when using the Shrinkwrap modifier to do some Retopology.
The parameter we’re interested in is located in the Viewport Display section of the Material tab, and it’s available in both Cycles and Eevee. Specifically, it’s the Viewport Display Color parameter, which can only be a solid color, meaning Textures cannot be used. However, you can set a transparency level by adjusting the Alpha channel value.
This color affects only the appearance in the 3D Viewport and has no impact on the Material’s appearance in Rendering. Also, it actually applies to the Material, not the object, so if an object uses multiple sub-materials, you’ll need to adjust this setting separately for each one.
In the example I’m showing on screen, I’m changing the display color of the Low Poly object, which is overlaid on the High Poly object using a Shrinkwrap modifier. If I change the Wrap Method or the Offset value, it’s easier to evaluate the different results because the two objects now use Materials with very different colors.
A low value for the Roughness field will let us observe how light reflects on the faces and thus evaluate the topology. On the other hand, with higher values for the Roughness parameter, the Material will appear more matte. Just like with Color, the Roughness and Metallic settings in the Viewport Display tab affect only how the Material is displayed in the 3D Viewport and do not impact the actual rendering channels of the Material.
If you set pure black as the color and use a value of 1 for both the Metallic and Roughness fields in Viewport Display, you’ll get a completely black and matte object, but in this case, you’ll also lose surface details, so this combination can be counterproductive in some cases. It’s usually better to choose a different color if you’re using 1 as the value for both Metallic and Roughness in Viewport Display.
With the right color and Roughness set to 1, it also becomes easier to manually fix areas where the overlay isn’t working properly. In my case, I’m applying the Shrinkwrap modifier so I can switch to Sculpt mode and manually adjust some areas using the Inflate brush.
Alright, that’s it for this super quick beginner tutorial on Blender’s interface! I hope you found it useful! See you soon!