Where to find your materials! (For Free)

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#1

Materials can single-handedly make or break a game. (At Least Artistically )

This is why it is important to properly utilize materials in your place, to achieve the look you desire.

However, many people do not have the means to design or photoscan their own material maps.

I am just here to share two websites I use most frequently for free, high resolution, seamless PBR materials:

AmbientCG

PolyHaven

Texture Can (Suggested by @CCTVStudios)

These two sites offer hundreds of high quality materials, a majority supporting up to 8K resolution, all for free (Donā€™t even have to sign up.)

You just find a material you like the look of and download its image files! (I personally download the 2k Jpeg pack of the material I want)

Then in Roblox just create a new material variant, and fill each map parameter with the corresponding image out of the Zip file you downloaded.

Personally I feel that the default Roblox materials are severely lacking in both detail and variation. These sites have helped me tremendously to make projects look just the way I want.

Seriously these sites are just so useful for low budget projects, I had to share them.

IMPORTANT: 99.9% ASSETS ON SITES LISTED ARE OF CC0 LICENSURE, MEANING THEY CAN BE USED IN ANY FORMAT, INCLUDING COMMERCIAL USE. However, make sure said assetā€™s license is assured before using commercially.

Read about CC0 Licensure Here!

(Commercial use guidelines pointed out by @https_KingPie)

23 Likes
#2

Quick add to this - both these sites allow for commercial uses of their materials, per their licenses!

6 Likes
#3

I know! I love these sites, if anyone wants to support them, please donate to the people who run the sites. Theyā€™re key in like 60% of all builds I make.

Also I can use them to make renders that better resemble the roblox game as the materials can be used in both roblox and blender

(PS. Added this tidbit to the actual post, including a link detailing the nature of the CC0 license)

1 Like
#4

trust me add texture can bro, texture can has some fire textures for free!

2 Likes
#5

I went ahead and added it, saying all this because apparently ā€œdoneā€ is too short. I checked it out for a bit and it seems legit!

1 Like
#6

LETS GO!, also thanks for making this post, I didnā€™t even knew those 2 other sites existed bro, more textures for me!

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#7

(shameless self-promotion warning :blush:) :: we recently released a tool that can be used to generate materials that fits the geometry of your mesh. You can try out the tool for free here.

For more information, checkout our recent post:

#8

How does this effect the performance of your game? Honestly I donā€™t mind using higher res and I want to test them out but I am no confident in people loading into my game if I turn a rocky mountain side into a REAL rocky mountain side or a cobblestone road into a realstic oneā€¦

1 Like
#9

THIS IS A VERY UNOFFICIAL TEST AND THIS MAY NOT BE ACCURATE AS I DO NOT KNOW ALL THE INS AND OUTS OF ROBLOX STUDIO

I set up a simple little stress test to see how the materials would effect performance and the overall usage of my PC.

Essentially I put a ton of physics objects, assigned them all materials from default roblox, and then made another set that was assigned a simple texture from AmbientCG. I did download and import the 2K resolution version, but Iā€™m 99.9% sure roblox scales the image down anyways for performance. (In Future Lighting BTW)

The Two Materials: (AmbientCG on the left, Roblox on the right.)

image_2024-03-06_204641569
image_2024-03-06_2046415691580Ɨ1031 49.7 KB

Here are videos of said simulations: (First is roblox, Second is AmbientCG)

I know that it isnā€™t exactly scientific and the videos are so low quality that it isnā€™t easy to read the exact performance metrics but, based on this test, I have come to the conclusions that:

The performance difference between default Roblox materials and custom ones is negligible.

#10

if we wanted AI materials we would just use robloxā€™s built in AI material generator, your tool serves a diferent purpose than this post.

Still a cool tool though.

2 Likes
#11

Thatā€™s why I didnā€™t directly add it to the post. Plus, Iā€™m just not a fan of self-promoting in a semi-related thread.

While the tool DOES generate textures for MESHES with specific details (like backpacks and such), I was mostly just discussing places where people can find textures for PARTS to make their own custom materials.

The AI material generator in Roblox is not particularly good though. (Unrelated I just am not a huge fan of its outputs.)