# Material ID channel process tutorial

**URL:** <https://forums.chaos.com/t/material-id-channel-process-tutorial/37255>\
**Category:** Tutorials, Tips & Tricks\
**Created:** [April 27, 2011, 6:42pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/material-id-channel-process-tutorial/37255 "2011-04-27T18:42:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![thomthom](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/chaosprd/user_avatar/forums.chaos.com/thomthom/32/62299_2.png) [@thomthom](https://forums.chaos.com/u/thomthom)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2011, 3:03pm UTC](https://forums.chaos.com/t/material-id-channel-process-tutorial/37255/11 "2011-05-03T15:03:53Z")

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Re: Material ID channel process tutorial

> [@dkendig](#):
>
> Honestly the method Micha used for grass never made any sense to me in the first place. Material ID or a matte material (which we don’t support yet) would be the way I would go about this. I mean really the important thing is capturing the shadows on the surface where the image of the grass is going to be, and having an area that you can use as a mask to put some grass in post process, right? I don’t know, maybe I like post processing more than others. I don’t like texture colorization in SketchUp either, so maybe it’s just me.

Micha’s process had the benefit that you got shadows imposed on top of the material. When you use material ID to mask out you have to do extra work to preserve shadow areas.

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