I’ve been waiting years for this feature, not kidding. Very unexpected though, but I love it.
10 Likes
This is amazing, Now we can make our own custom materials for anything! This is going to be used more than intended. 
Thank you so much Roblox for adding this we’ve all been waiting very long for this. 
10 Likes
Also, out of curiosity - are overridden materials respected by EnvMap reflections in the Future lighting engine? I’ve noticed previously that SurfaceAppearance textures usually work with it, but occasionally invert the shown environmental lighting map from what would be expected.
6 Likes
Wow. I didn’t think this would actually happen. Amazing job!
6 Likes
I was wondering if there was any news on creating this same feature for terrain? I believe adding this customization to terrain will boost the use of terrain for more unique maps. This on its own is an amazing feature, good job!
5 Likes
Man I can’t wait for this to be usable in live experiences.
7 Likes
AYYY LESS GOOOO ITS OUT WOOO!!! Thank you guys SO MUCH!!! EEEK <3
9 Likes
brb choking and crying (this is a positive reaction)
9 Likes
That, and the hope of painting specific areas of terrain.
5 Likes
This is great in terms of customisation, however as I think some people previously noted with the SurfaceAppearance release some time ago, it would be great to have sliders for metalness and roughness intensity, allowing us to set them to unlocked values to more easily create our preferred aesthetic without having to perfectly level everything.
The main reason I bring this up is because such a configuration mode does exist for the built-in materials, inside Roblox’s shaders - though a different implementation was used at this point, from around late 2013 to 2016, the source shader files were visible in the Roblox client, and were, for a time (2013-14), customisable in terms of what were then the Specular and Gloss properties.
Would be nice to hear news on potentially adding such functionality in the near future (cc @JoshSedai @RBLXImagineer)
EDIT: Would also be nice to be able to specify NormalDetail maps as per the built-in materials
19 Likes
been waiting for this forever at this point. its not that materials are not already possible to do with other methods. but a prebuilt one is the most optimized since it will read one single texture pack. very epic !
8 Likes
I can finally make my favorite material, DA ROCK!! Once again, thank you SOO much for this feature. Best update of 2021
58 Likes
Oh Wow this is really great For the Future TY
4 Likes
When can i use it or can i use it now?
Is there a date?
2 Likes
If I recall correctly, however, they implemented a BSDF in addition to the previous BRDF alongside the release of Specular and Diffuse scaling as Future is Bright Phase 2.5, which may have broken that function if it was previously present. However, that being said - assuming that the option for texture based controls of metalness and roughness are still present as an option, allowing users to choose a static level of each for a given material on a per part basis seems like a reasonable addition - as of now, the learning curve to make SurfaceAppearance textures that are of a reasonable quality may be unreasonably high for many users.
3 Likes
I would really like for their to be a way to add our own custom materials as with this if we had the ability to add full new materials instead of overriding default ones that would expand this feature to entire new levels of greatness.
Can’t wait to share some pictures using this!
edit
for the lazy people who want to transfer surface appearance objects to MaterialVarients easy
Just select the SurfaceAppearence first then select the MaterialVarient
local Selection = game:GetService("Selection"):Get()
Selection[2].ColorMap = Selection[1].ColorMap or ""
Selection[2].MetalnessMap = Selection[1].MetalnessMap or ""
Selection[2].NormalMap = Selection[1].NormalMap or ""
Selection[2].RoughnessMap = Selection[1].RoughnessMap or ""
14 Likes
It seems that I’ve encountered a bug already. When trying to create 2 materials, the second dropdown list has nothing, not even the original.
Edit: Stupid thing on my part, no bugs. I just forgot to change it in the variant.
3 Likes
Finally it’s here been waiting for so long 
2 Likes
There were some fairly handicapped sliders in the Avatar Evolution build in which they tested SurfaceApperance back in very late 2019, which were atleast partially helpful in helping to control material look. Something similar albeit with a slider from recommended values and allowing you to input endlessly high integers (ala Lighting) at the same time would go a long way in allowing for greater customisation.
7 Likes