Clear, glasslike plastic. Cuts on a laser, bends in an oven, glues with a syringe and a clear solvent. The plastic that taught most product designers how plastic feels in the shop. Scratches easily, shatters when sharply hit — but the cut edge can be polished to look exactly like glass.
Amorphous thermoplastic with high optical clarity (>92% light transmission), excellent UV stability, notch-sensitive. Tg ~105 °C. Attacked by aromatic and chlorinated solvents; bonded with methylene chloride or acrylic cement. Cell-cast PMMA outperforms extruded grades for optical clarity and machinability.
Acrylic is the plastic of the showroom — the plastic that wants you to see through it. Glass without the weight of glass, vitrine without the cathedral. It promises transparency the way a window promises a view, and forgets, like the window, that it has been made.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere transparent finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: transparent albedo #ff3b5c metallic 0.00 roughness 0.05 ior 1.50 transmission 1.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.00 thickness 1.00 attenuation_distance 0.60
{
"albedo": "#ff3b5c",
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.05,
"ior": 1.5,
"transmission": 1.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.0,
"thickness": 1.0,
"attenuation_distance": 0.6
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# PMMA (Acrylic) · finish: transparent
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_pmma")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (1.0, 0.0437, 0.107, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.050
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.500
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 1.000
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
# PMMA (Acrylic) · finish: transparent
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_pmma", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (255, 59, 92)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.050)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.500)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 1.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "PMMA (Acrylic) \u00b7 finish: transparent",
"baseColor": {
"r": 1.0,
"g": 0.0437,
"b": 0.107
},
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.05,
"ior": 1.5,
"opacity": 0.0,
"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_pmma",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
1.0,
0.0437,
0.107,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 0.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.05
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_transmission": {
"transmissionFactor": 1.0
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# PMMA (Acrylic) · finish: transparent
def Material "mat_pmma" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_pmma/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (1.0, 0.0437, 0.107)
float inputs:metallic = 0.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.050
float inputs:ior = 1.500
float inputs:opacity = 0.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
The acrylic CNC default. O-flute (single-flute) endmills evacuate chips cleanly without re-cutting; 2-flute compression bits acceptable for through-cuts. Cast PMMA finishes flame-polished after CNC; extruded PMMA crazes at heat — diamond-paste polish instead. Use the swarf 'outline' op with the 1/4 endmill for clean profiles, 'pocket' for back-lit signage trays.
Onsrud Cutter plastic feeds & speeds (O-flute table); Acrylite / Plexiglas machining guides; calibrated for cast and extruded sheet stock.
→ try this material in swarfEditorial pass 2026-04-28; Mitsubishi Chemical sustainability documentation; ICE/Granta class data.
Acrylic with polyester, PVC, and found objects; built up by lamination and carving. Accession 2006.45.
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.
Local to this browser. No cloud, no account, no telemetry.