Gem Color & Color Depth
Most materials let you pick the stone's body color freely; Color depth controls how quickly light traveling through the stone reaches that color in Realistic render. Together they're what separates a pale, washed-out tint from a deep, saturated one — using the exact same hex value.
Setting the body color
The Color row in the Material card has two linked controls: a color
swatch (#colorInput) and a hex text field (#colorHex) that always agree —
typing a hex value updates the swatch, and vice versa.
Note
Solid render mode always shows a neutral gray stone, regardless of this color — body color only appears in Realistic render, where the shader actually traces light through the gem. Switch render modes from the viewport's display bar.
Color depth
The slider below the stat tiles (range 0.1–5, default 1.5) sets how far a ray has to travel through the body before the chosen color fully saturates it.
A smaller depth means a shorter travel distance is enough to reach full color — so even a thin slice of the stone looks deeply saturated. A larger depth means light has to travel further before the tint shows, giving the same hex color a lighter, more washed look in a stone of the same size.
Tip
The default of 1.5 is tuned for typical ring-size stones (roughly 6–10mm). If a large stone renders unexpectedly dark, or a small one looks too pale for the color you picked, adjust color depth rather than changing the hex value — it's the control for "how saturated for this size," independent of "what color."
Note
Color depth still applies to the one pleochroic material — see Pleochroism (Alexandrite) — but it's the body color picker, not the depth slider, that gets disabled for that material.
Why size matters here
Color depth isn't measured in millimeters; it's a tuning knob in the same scale the renderer already works in, independent of the Girdle Ø (mm) field in the same card. Two designs with identical color depth but different girdle sizes won't necessarily look equally saturated — if you resize a stone significantly, it's worth re-checking the color in Realistic render and nudging color depth back into a comfortable range.