Although you may use the Sturdy node groups to create your own custom materials, keep in mind that Sturdy was designed to produce highly stylized, abstract, impactful color compositions out of the box, even (or particularly) when used as a single material.

No matter what you do, as long as you provide some lighting to your scene, your meshes will be rendered with a painterly, gestural look defined by colorful and textured brush strokes.

With Sturdy color expression is determined by:

• light position
• light intensity
• light rotation (in the case of the Sun, Area and Spot Lights)

In one word, you’ll be painting with light.

If your colors don’t look great, try adding lights, moving lights around and playing with the lights and the environment’s intensity. You’ll note that moving a light source further away or closer to the main mesh — even if a tiny bit — may result in color effects that range from the nuanced to the dramatic. It’s really all about experimentation.

Colors also change (and brush strokes gently rotate) when you change the viewpoint on the Viewport or on the Camera, so feel free to use that as well as a source of creative expression.
NOTE: Since the actual brush stroke colors will be determined internally by the shader’s node group, Sturdy will react to a light’s value, but won’t react to a light’s color. A red light on your scene won’t produce red brush strokes on your mesh. If you want to control color in Sturdy, keep reading .)