Creating realistic 3D images in Blender requires not only accurate modeling but also high-quality materials. Among the many techniques used to create materials, Physically Based Rendering (PBR) has become the standard for achieving consistent and lifelike results. PBR textures are based on how surfaces interact with light in the real world. By combining multiple texture maps such as base color, roughness, normals, and metallics, the system allows for more realistic shadows and reflections in a variety of lighting environments. This article provides an overview of PBR textures in Blender, their components, and how to effectively apply them in your workflow.
What is PBR Textures in Blender?
First, PBR (Physically Based Rendering) is a shading and rendering method that aims to simulate materials in a way that closely resembles the way light interacts with surfaces in the real world. The main idea is consistency: PBR materials should look realistic under all lighting conditions.
PBR textures are a collection of texture maps that are used together as layers and simulate real-world material properties under different lighting conditions. Of course, the textures will follow the physical principles of light in nature to ensure that objects in a 3D environment look realistic under all different lighting conditions.
In its most basic form, a PBR material in Blender is a primitive shader that is connected to a material output node in the shader editor. We can use color, metal, and roughness sliders to create the most basic materials. But to start adding variety, we need to add textures to some of these inputs.
Here are the most common inputs in the principal shader where we use textures as input.
Diffuse/Albedo: In Blender, you will often hear the terms Diffuse, Color, or Base Color. Albedo is a term that is often used in other software packages, but for our purposes and purposes, they are essentially the same. This map determines the base color of the material.
Ambient Occlusion is less commonly used and was previously a way to create contact shadows.
**Metallic **determines how metallic the material is, note that in most cases, this value should be 0 or 1. If we want a realistic look, there should not be any metallic colored parts of the material. Any value other than 0 or 1 is basically a break in physical accuracy.
Roughness will affect the roughness of the surface, we can think of this as how much light is scattered by the surface. With low roughness values, the reflected light spots of the object will be more limited and concentrated, while high roughness values will result in very scattered reflected light spots.
Normal is used to determine the orientation of a material surface without actually changing the geometry.
Displacement is used to actually change the geometry by moving it along its normal.
Note that there are more Inputs on the BDSF Rules node, but in general, the ones listed above are a good starting point for creating most materials. And these are the most common inputs in PBR material packs.
Also, it is not necessary to have all the maps to create a PBR material. In many cases, you can get pretty good results with just Diffuse and Normal Map. Even a Diffuse Map alone can be enough if you don’t need extreme realism. However, if you have full texture maps for each material attribute (e.g., Roughness, Metallic, AO…), you will have more precise and detailed control over the material. This will result in a more realistic and professional final render.
How to use PBR Textures in Blender?
Let’s walk through the basic process of using PBR textures in Blender. We’ll assume you already have a PBR texture set downloaded (like from CC0 Textures, AmbientCG, or CGBookcase).
1. Create a new material
Start by creating a new material and attaching the Principled BSDF shader to the Material Output. This is the foundation for all PBR materials in Blender.
2. Import the necessary texture maps
At a minimum, you should have 3 maps: Diffuse/Albedo (the base color of the material), Roughness, and Normal Map (the simulated surface detail).
3. Connect the textures to the Principled BSDF
The Diffuse/Albedo Map connects to the Base Color port. The Roughness Map connects to the Roughness port, and the Color Space of this map must be set to ‘Linear’ because this is data, not color.
4. Process Normal Map
Set Normal Map Color Space to Non-color
Add Normal Map node by clicking Add > Vector > Normal Map
Connect Normal texture to Normal Map node
Then from Normal Map node, connect to Normal port of the Principled BSDF.
Now that we have a clear idea of what PBR materials are and what textures are commonly used, let’s move on to setting up the PBR material.
First, we need to create a material (if we don’t already have one). Select the object, go to the Materials tab represented by the red sphere in the Properties panel, and click ‘New’ or select any of the materials listed. Once done, we can go to the Shading Workspace and import all the imported images for the PBR material. You can drag and drop them into the Shader Editor.
In this example, we will use the Diffuse/Albedo Map, Roughness Map, and Normal Map.
Connect the Diffuse/Albedo Map Color Output to the Principled BSDF Base Color Input.
Set the roughness Color Space to Linear and connect the Color output to the Principled BSDF Roughness input.
For Normal, we first need to add a Normal Map Node. You can press Shift + A, hit search and type ‘Normal Map’. The search will filter as you type, then select the Normal Map and drop it into the node graph to the right of the Normal texture.
Once done, set the Normal Color Space to Non-Color and connect the Color output to the Normal Map Color input. Then connect the Normal Map Normal Output to the Principled BSDF normal input. This is what it should look like.
Also, our normal map needs to be set up like this; otherwise, it won’t display correctly. Note that if the PBR material has both DirectX and OpenGL normal maps, we should use the OpenGL format, as this is what Blender uses.
The difference between DirectX and OpenGL normal maps is that the green channel is inverted. So, if you have a DirectX normal map, you can add a separate RGB node to plug the Normal texture into. Then connect each channel to a combineRGB node that you connect to the normal map node.
Keeping the nodes separate and combined, drop an invert node into the G connection. This is what the final setup should look like.
With all that setup, we should be able to preview the PBR material render. If you haven’t already done so and assigned it to an object, just switch to render preview mode, and you should be able to see your PBR material. Here’s the final result using the cobblestone texture.
Conclusion
Mastering PBR textures in Blender can take a bit of practice, but once you understand how each texture map contributes to the final result, you’ll have a powerful toolset for creating incredibly realistic and visually appealing materials. The PBR workflow combined with Blender’s versatile Principle BSDF shader gives artists the flexibility to recreate almost any surface, from worn metal to glossy plastic to rough stone.
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