Texturing can be challenging, and if you're a beginner, your textures will likely appear flat because you're not familiar with PBR textures. This article will help you understand what PBR textures are, where to find them for free, and how to use PBR textures in Blender.
What Is PBR Textures?
PBR (Physically-Based Rendering) textures are a set of texture maps which are used together like layers and simulate realistic material properties under different lighting conditions. PBR is based on the principles of physics and how light interacts with materials in the real world, ensuring that objects in 3D environments look more realistic under different lighting conditions. It contains several maps and the most common types of PBR textures are:
Albedo / Diffuse
This texture carries the basic color information of the surface of the material. It doesn't include any lighting or shading effects, so it's just the flat color without any highlights or shadows.
Normal Map
This texture simulates surface detail without modifying the actual geometry of the model. It helps add depth and realism by affecting how light interacts with the surface.
Roughness Map
This texture controls how smooth or rough the surface is, a rough surface scatters light more, creating a matte effect, while a smooth surface reflects light in a more mirror-like manner.
Metallic Map
This texture indicates whether a material is metallic or not. Non-metallic materials (like wood or plastic) have low metallic values, while metallic materials (like gold or steel) have high values. The map helps define how light interacts with the material's surface.
Height Map (Displacement Map)
This texture provides depth information, which can be used to displace the surface. It’s useful for adding real details to a surface unlike normal maps which fake the details, however, this requires additional geometry.
Ambient Occlusion (AO) Map
This texture darkens areas of the material that are less exposed to ambient light, like corners. It adds depth to the model and enhances the realism by simulating soft shadows. This texture is not used that much.
Specular Map (less common in modern PBR workflows)
It defines how much light is reflected from a surface and is typically used in non-metallic materials, controlling the intensity and color of specular reflections.
These texture maps are used together to get an accurate representation of how light interacts with different surfaces, making it look more realistic.
Where To Get PBR Textures:
Now that you know what these maps do, below are the best places to get high-quality textures for completely free.
Ambient CG
Ambient CG is the best place for PBR textures, they have free textures, HDRIs, and models that you can use however you want.
PolyHaven
Polyhaven is a great spot for free PBR textures. They’re super high-quality and completely free to use, even for commercial projects.
Steps To Use PBR Textures In Blender:
Step 1:
Download the texture that you want from any one of the websites.
Step 2:
You will get a zip file, extract it and in that folder, you will find all the textures.
Step 3:
Open Blender, go to the top left corner and click edit, go into preferences, select the addon tab and search for "Node Wrangler" and enable it.
This will allow you to quickly set up textures with a shortcut without manually plugging every texture map in each slot.
Save the preferences after enabling node wrangler.
Step 4:
Open the shader editor by dragging a new window and switch it to the shader editor.
Once done, select the mesh you want to apply the texture on, click new material and name it whatever you want.
Step 5:
Now, just select the Principled BSDF node and press "Ctrl+Shift+T" on your keyboard, a new window will open and make sure you have enabled the node wrangler addon or it won’t work.
Go to the location where you extracted the textures, select all of those and press enter on your keyboard.
All of your texture maps will plug in automatically, this comes in a lot of handy and saves quite the time.
Step 6:
You will notice that the displacement map won’t show its effect and it's just faking the details.
To fix this, you will need some geometry on your mesh and you have to enable the displacement manually in the material properties.
First, make sure your mesh has some extra geometry like this.
After that go to the material properties, scroll down to the settings tab and find the displacement under the surface tab.
Now change the "Bump Only" option to "Bump and Displacement". You will notice that the mesh will heavily displace.
To reduce the strength, go into the shader editor, find the displacement node and change the strength to something low like 0.05 or 0.1.
After following these steps, your materials will be way better than before.
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