Exporting a material

You don’t need an AI agent to use the add-on. Everything it does is also in Blender’s UI, for one material at a time.

Where it is

Select an object, then open Properties ▸ Material ▸ three.js TSL Export. The panel starts closed: click its header to open it. It exports the active material of the active object, so pick the material slot first if the object has several.

It’s also in File ▸ Export ▸ three.js TSL Material (.js), which exports the active material with the panel’s options.

Export, Copy or open in the Text Editor

Button	What it does
Export .js	Writes the module to a file. The file name defaults to <Material>.tsl.js. With Copy Images on, the material’s images are copied next to it.
Copy	Copies the module to the clipboard, ready to paste into your project.
Text Editor icon	Writes the module into a Blender text block named <Material>.tsl.js and shows it in an open Text Editor, so you can read it before exporting.

Each module exports a factory function named after the material, create<Material>Material(), as its default export. Using the module shows how to call it.

Options

The options are saved in the .blend file, so everyone who opens it exports the same way.

Option	Default	What it does
Attribute Prefix	_	Added to custom attribute names the material reads. Blender’s glTF exporter only writes attributes whose names start with _, so the default matches a mesh exported as glTF.
Value/RGB as Uniforms	On	Value and RGB nodes become uniforms you can change at runtime. They’re named after the node labels. Off: their values are baked into the shader.
Match Blender Voronoi Exactly	Off	Includes a port of Blender’s Voronoi texture in the module, so cells land exactly where Blender puts them. Off: three.js’ built-in Voronoi, with the same scale and range but different cells, and less code. Noise and Wave textures always match.
Anti-alias Hard Edges	On	Blends Constant Color Ramp and Checker edges over one screen pixel, like Blender’s anti-aliased render. Off: hard edges, which look jagged in three.js.
Match Blender Highlights	On	Uses the material’s roughness exactly as Blender does. Off: three.js adds roughness on curved or small geometry (specular anti-aliasing), so highlights come out wider and dimmer than in Blender, but shimmer less in motion.
Copy Images	On	With Export .js, copies the material’s image textures next to the exported file.

Notes about the conversion

After an export the panel shows a box with the three.js material class it picked, and a note for each node it couldn’t convert exactly. The same notes are written as comments at the top of the module. A material that converted exactly shows Converted with no notes.

Notes name the node and say what happened. Typical ones:

• Approximated nodes, such as Subsurface Scattering or Toon BSDF, which become the nearest thing three.js has. Supported nodes lists what’s exact and what isn’t.
• Attributes that won’t survive a glTF export. For example, an Attribute node reading rand: Blender’s glTF exporter only writes attributes whose names start with _, so rename it to _rand before exporting the mesh. The module already reads _rand.
• Values that depend on the object, such as Object Info ▸ Random, which become uniforms with Blender’s value for this object as the default.

Which material class you get

The add-on picks the lightest three.js node material that can show the shader:

• MeshBasicNodeMaterial for emission only
• MeshLambertNodeMaterial for diffuse only
• MeshStandardNodeMaterial for the usual metal/rough materials
• MeshPhysicalNodeMaterial when the shader uses coat, sheen, transmission, IOR, specular, thin film or anisotropy

Exporting the mesh

The module holds the material only. Export the mesh with Blender’s own glTF exporter (File ▸ Export ▸ glTF 2.0) and assign the material to it in three.js. If the material reads mesh data, check these in the glTF export:

• Custom attributes must be named with the Attribute Prefix (_ by default), e.g. _rand. GLTFLoader lower-cases the names; the module expects that.
• Vertex colours come from COLOR_0, which is the active colour attribute at export.
• Tangents. Tangent-space normal maps and the Tangent node match Blender best with a tangent attribute: tick Tangents in the glTF exporter’s Mesh options.
• UVs need no setup. The module samples textures the way glTF stores them.

An AI agent exports the mesh for you with the right names, from a temporary copy so your .blend isn’t changed.