Intermediate Artist Programmer
Material attributes define the core characteristics of a material, such as its diffuse color, diffuse shading model, and so on. Attributes are organized into geometry, shading, and misc.
There are two types of attribute:
Attributes contribute to a layer of a material. If a material is directly used as a model material, all its root attributes are considered part of the first layer.
You can also write custom shaders to use in material attributes.