Mat Inspector Pro User Guide

Tweak materials in viewport

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Mat Inspector is a Blender add-on that helps you inspect and manipulate material channels quickly from a compact popup in the 3D Viewport. It streamlines actions like previewing individual channels (Base Color, Roughness, Normal, Displacement, etc.), loading and browsing textures, organizing mapping nodes (global or channel-specific), and managing node graphs.

Requirements

Blender 4.0 or newer (tested with 4.4.3 - 4.5.4).

Installation

Easy way:
1. Drag and drop zip file with Mat Inspector plugin onto Blender interface
2. Unzip mat inspector textures.zip to folder of your choosing
3. In add-on preferences choose the location of your unzipped textures folder
4. Optional: configure the hotkey to open the popup. Default is Ctrl + Alt + Right Mouse in the 3D View. Click “Apply Shortcut” after changing.Old-fashioned way:
1. In Blender: Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install… zip file with Mat Inspector
2. Unzip mat inspector textures.zip to folder of your choosing
3. In add-on preferences choose the location of your unzipped textures folder
4. Optional: configure the hotkey to open the popup. Default is Ctrl + Alt + Right Mouse in the 3D View. Click “Apply Shortcut” after changing.

Quick Start

1. Select an object that has a material using nodes (with one Principled BSDF shader ).
2. In the 3D Viewport, press the popup shortcut (default Ctrl + Alt + RMB).
3. Use the popup to preview, tweak, and manage channels, textures, and mapping.The popup appears in the 3D Viewport and adapts to the active object/material.

Materials Selector: If there are many materials assigned to object, you can switch between them with "Prev" and "Next" buttons.

Basic Channel Controls

Mat Inspector Pro supports ALL Principled BSDF channels:Base Color, Roughness, Normal, Metallic, Transmission Weight, Emission Strength, Emission Color, Subsurface Weight, Alpha, Specular IOR, Coat Weight, Coat Roughness, Coat Tint, Sheen Weight, Sheen Roughness, Thin Film Thickness, DisplacementPreview Channel: Click each channel name to show a temporary view of a specific channel’s effect. Toggle again to restore the original setup.Toggle Channel Mute: Mute/unmute all nodes that contribute to the chosen channel.Toggle Channel Mapping: Create/remove a channel-specific Mapping node for independent UV scaling from the global mapping.Remove Channel Connection: Disconnect the channel’s current link from the Principled input (non-destructive to other links).

Advanced Channel and List Controls

Add Node button opens menu with items:Add RGB Node: Insert an RGB color source into the channel chain. Available only for Base Color and Emission Color channels.Add Color Ramp: Insert a Color Ramp for quick remapping/contrast. Node is inserted at the end of a chain of nodes for the selected channel.Load texture: opens texture selector window for adding detail textures for selected channel.

*If there is a texture image that is not connected to any channel it will appear as orphaned texture in this menu. You can add it to any channel by clicking the name of the texture in the list.

Texture Selector: You can browse available detail textures and add them to the material.If you add texture from channel row, loaded texture will be inserted
as the last note before Principled BSDF Shader.If you add texture from extended list row, loaded texture will be inserted
after the node you invoked it from

Expaned Lists: By clicking drop down button you can see expanded list of material nodes.
You will find each node represented here, along with its controls. You can preview each node, mute it, remove it or add another node from the list after it.

Preview Texture in Image Editor: By clicking this button you can open preview of each texture
in a separate window.

Channel Mapping: You can scale each channel individually by clicking Channel Mapping Button. This will add scaling controls In extended list of the channel.

Global Controls

Global Controls: Mapping You can change scale of all channels using Global Mapping.
Just use "Map Material" button to be able to scale all textures at once. This button creates Texture Coordinate and Mapping nodes and connects them with textures that are not currently mapped.

Final Notes

If you want to use your own textures, prepare small preview files – ideally 256 by 256 pixels, saved as JPG. Place them in the previews folder, and make sure their names match the original textures.
This makes browsing fast and smooth.By default, when you add a texture to a channel, Mat Inspector will open the matching folder – for example, choosing the Roughness channel shows roughness textures right away.

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