Full Guide on how to use PBR Materials in Blender

Hi there :wave:! This is my first community tutorial. I would love some feedback as I am still learning blender. I will be using blender 2.82 for this tutorial. Hope you like it!


PBR materials

PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering, it is a method of rendering a more accurate and visually predictable representation of how light acts on the material surface.

How this tutorial will help you

With this tutorial, GFX creator can enhance their gfx. 3D modellers can showcase their models. And very soon PBR materials are getting enabled inside Roblox Studio for everyone so this will give you a basic idea of how PBR materials work!


Stuff Required

For this tutorial, you will need;
1.) Blender Installed (2.8+ version)
2.) Download this Zip file


Let’s get started

Step 1

Delete the default cube
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F in chat

Step 2

Shift + A > Mesh > Insert Grid
image

Step 3

Open the shader tab


You should see node editor

Step 4

From here starts the main part
Go to https://cc0textures.com/ and choose any material you want to use


I will be using this one

Download your material and hop back in blender in the shader tab

Step 5


Click on the new button

A node basic material node will be added

Step 6

Extract the zip file containing your materials and drop them inside the node editor

For now, drop in your Normal, Roughness and Color Materials maps only
image

Color - This is your basic color map with RGB data
Roughness - This map holds the roughness data
Normal - This map creates a 3-dimensional relief on the material

If you are doing this correctly you should have these nodes

Step 7

Connect the Color Map to the base color of the Principle node
image

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Now if you go in render mode you can see that your grid has color, but hey its pretty 2-D and non-appealing, thats because Color map only holds the color data. Lets add the Normal map now

Step 8

Press Ctrl + A in the node editor and search for “Normal Map” and insert it
image

Now connect the nodes like this

Make sure to set the Color space to “None”.
Set the Strenght in Normal to 10 for a good result.

image
our grid looks nice now, but let’s add a roughness map to make it even better.

Step 9

Do Ctrl + A in node editor and search for “ColorRamp” and Insert it
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Connect the nodes like this


Make sure to set the Color Space to “Non-Color” in roughness Map

In the end, nodes should be connected like this

Step 10

Its done! :partying_face:
Final render

Congrats you learned how to use PBR materials in blender, now play with lightning, settings to get a more immersive effect.


Blender File - PBRTuT.blend (601.1 KB)
link to download maps - https://cc0textures.com/view?id=PavingStones054


50 Likes

wow nice!
what’s your discord if i can ask i want to ask you something there

2 Likes

Thanks :slightly_smiling_face:. My discord is Nomz#4168 feel free to ask any question.

2 Likes

Definetly gonna bookmark this topic

question can we add more PBR Materails than just a single pathway stone

Using PBR materials is nice, but what about making PBR materials?

Haven’t seen a tutorial on that yet.

1 Like

Are you able to get a guide for users who stick with Blender 2.79?

Personally I fine the interface with 2.8 a bit bothersome and would much rather use this on Blender 2.79, but I wouldn’t also be upset if I could simply copy and paste this.

If you go to Preferences then enable Node Wrangler, and then click Ctrl+alt+t in the shader tab, and then select all of the texture files it will automatically set it up.

3 Likes

If you’re talking about using multiple materials on a single face and overwriting them, then no, dont do that because it can mess up the material. What you can do is to add a different part for another texture.

@anon66957764 thats a great idea, I will try to make a tutorial on that, thanks for the suggestion :slightly_smiling_face:

@KlausMontanari Sure, I will try update this post with blender version 2.79 version : )

@SpiralGaia Oh wow, I totally didn’t know this. Thanks for the tip I have it noted. :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes

It is so simple and easy to follow thank you so much for making this!

Thank you for this toturial but may I ask how do I import the PBR texture that already been UV map into Roblox without getting any stretch or low-resolution texture?

2 Likes