The bark of the cork oak (Quercus suber), harvested without killing the tree on a roughly nine-year rotation. A natural closed-cell foam: light, springy, water-resistant, and one of the few materials that recovers fully from compression without losing memory. Wine corks, flooring, gaskets, surf-board cores, sneaker soles.
Natural closed-cell biological foam — ~14-sided polyhedra, ~40 µm cell size, walls 1–1.5 µm thick. Suberin and lignin make the cell walls hydrophobic and chemically inert. Density ~120–240 kg/m³. Compressive Poisson ratio ≈ 0 — cork compresses without expanding sideways, which is why a wine cork can be pushed through a smaller-diameter neck.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere granular finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: granular albedo #c8a070 metallic 0.00 roughness 0.85 ior 1.45 transmission 0.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.00
{
"albedo": "#c8a070",
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.85,
"ior": 1.45,
"transmission": 0.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.0
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Natural Cork · finish: granular
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_cork_natural")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.5776, 0.3515, 0.162, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.850
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.450
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.000
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Natural Cork · finish: granular
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_cork_natural", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (200, 160, 112)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.850)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.450)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Natural Cork \u00b7 finish: granular",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.5776,
"g": 0.3515,
"b": 0.162
},
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.85,
"ior": 1.45,
"opacity": 1.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.0,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_cork_natural",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.5776,
0.3515,
0.162,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 0.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.85
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_ior": {
"ior": 1.45
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Natural Cork · finish: granular
def Material "mat_cork_natural" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_cork_natural/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.5776, 0.3515, 0.162)
float inputs:metallic = 0.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.850
float inputs:ior = 1.450
float inputs:opacity = 1.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
APCOR Portuguese Cork Association technical literature; ReCork by SOLE recycling-program documentation.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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