Realistic Materials In Blender EEVEE are EASY!

for the longest time I thought that creating professional materials was something you could only do inside of Cycles but it actually turns out that you can get equally amazing results in Eevee so with some new knowledge I recently picked up in a blended course I now know everything to teach you how to take your EV shading skills to the next level let's start off by creating a smart material for this Shader ball here and as a little side note this is a fully procedural material which means that it works on any object however just to make it easier for you guys you can download this exact Shader ball down in the description below so here's an overview of what we'll create in this video and let's start off by creating our Edge mask now I recorded this once before and it was a really really long video I don't want to waste your time going over at this at that so these are all the nodes you're going to need to create this Edge mask and instead I want to focus on connecting them up and showing you what each individual node does I'm assuming you're not node system is going to look something like this because I just showed you it should look like that but before we can continue here's my one biggest tip for doing materials in blender enable node Wrangler in the add-ons and preview any node you are currently working on you can do this by Ctrl shift clicking on the Note which will preview it for you which is usually more visually telling than previewing the entire Shader and as an added bonus it also helps you grasp the concept of how values affect a roughness or metallic Shader so let's preview the ambient occlusion note and nothing that's because the ambient occlusion functionality is not something that works by default in EV it does in Cycles but since Evie doesn't have Ray tracing you'll have to enable the option in render properties ambient occlusion is actually the key to creating these assets and so I feel it's important to explain what it does normally ambient occlusion captures the amount of ambient light a certain part of a mesh is exposed to this creates shadowing and logical places such as crevices and between touching objects and it does this by looking at Which shapes of an object are concave with the AO node in blender also has the option to set it to inside instead meaning that it's now no longer looking at concave shapes but instead looking at convex shapes by having it set to inside this will provide the basis to our Edge mask let's also enable local only which will make sure that the other objects in our scene don't affect the AO of this object the sample value is also important here since 16 is a bit of an Overkill it works equally well and also makes rendering it a bit faster so that's a win-win in my book I've set the distance to a really low number like 0.05 since this value is now effectively the size of the edge mask by connecting this to the invert node the colors get flipped why well because as far as masks go white means show and black means height so if you want to expose worn edges we'll need to show them and this means that the edges should be white in our mask now this looks okay but we need a bit more variation and control so let's set these up by setting the mix color to multiply and connecting them like this the mix color node is now multiplying all the values from our emucclusion with the values from the map range which means that all black Parts equal to zero from the noise texture affect the AO and mask those parts out if we now change the noise texture values and use the membranes to Crunch in those values a bit we can change the way our Edge mask breaks up here are the values I used in the final render the final step is connecting the multiply to the math node and setting that to greater than this now mathematically removes any value greater than the threshold specified so by setting this to a low value like 0.1 for example we can really crunch in the values or a sharper mask result let's move on to our next very important mask for professional materials the ambient occlusion mask so here's the no those for this mask and before previewing the final result let's connect them up like this from left to right here's what each node does the noise texture is again used to create variation and detail for the AO mask by changing the detail skill and roughness this note provides a lot of different values which are plugged into the distance socket on the AO node this breaks up the distance values and therefore the ambient occlusion making it nice and grungy the AO node just needs one change again enabling local only just to make sure that the other objects don't affect this AO mask the last two nodes share a similar function the color ramp first can be used to increase the amount of black values in The Mask or white and I'm using it to Crunch in the whites and get a more defined mask shape similarly the map range increases the contrast even more and makes the white values stronger while at the same time being able to flip the colors so that's why I use a map range opposed to for example an invert note here are the final values I used now this leaves uses with one final procedural mask for added detail a scratch mask because what doesn't look realer with a few scratches on it right now it might not seem like it but this mask actually requires the most nodes to set up but don't worry it's simple enough once more here are the notes you'll need to create this mask and this is how to connect each individual node together I'll start with the core of this mask the voronoi textures by default they output these spherical gradients on your mesh and to keep these consistent we need them to use the right texture coordinate by default blender uses generated coordinates and instead I want to use object coordinates so with the mapping node and the texture coordinate no let's combine those together and make sure we are using object texture coordinates now this top one here should generate lines instead of spheres so instead of using the F1 type use distance to Edge to make sure these become very thin wind lines we use the math node set it to less than and similarly to the greater than we used before it will remove everything below the set threshold from the texture by setting it to a really low value like 0.01 you get thin white lines this threshold value is now essentially the thickness of your scratches this is where the second voronite texture comes into play by using the map range to flip the colors essentially flipping the two Min and two Max values we can now use the from Max value to determine how much of the lines should be masked out to actually mask it out set the math node to multiply and multiply the second voronoi over the first again multiplying black values over white values masking out certain parts and since the second voronoi is still set to the F1 type we are now getting these black spherical shapes which are perfect for masking out the lines to create our scratch shapes now it's quite important to keep the skills between the two voronoi textures similar and that's why I like to use a value node and just plug that into both both the skill values on the Horner textures just to ensure they are always the same now this map is good enough by its own but I want to make it a little better still so I'm going to randomize and smooth out the scratch shapes for a realer look we can do this by taking another texture like for example the Musgrave texture and plugging that into the location input for the mapping node this will generate vectors which will change the shape of the vorono texture adding randomization and curvature to the lines the final thing this mask needs is a bit stronger contrast so here's a little test to see if you've picked up something so far which note do you need to add at the end of our node system here to make sure that the white values pop yet the black values stay exactly the same [Music] ha ha did you answer multiply nice going indeed the multiply will do just that I've now changed this range of values to go from 0 to 10 making sure that all the values that are not zero are now 10 times stronger here are the final values I used for the scratch mask so we now have three amazing procedural masks using them though might not be immediately obvious so let's dive into that and create a professional material using our newly created smart masks but before we do that I mentioned not that long ago that until recently I thought doing this stuff was practically impossible inside of Eevee which goes to show you're never done learning new things there's always someone who knows something you don't and in this case this was Louis Dumont who has taught me how to do this in CG Boost's latest scores robotic Planet I had so much fun doing it and I learned a ton of new things from Louis like concept sketching and blender and rigging for robots using decals EV shading techniques animation and all of it resulted in this cute little robot I made it truly is a great course for beginners and more advanced blender uses alike to celebrate CG boost is now giving away an amazing scene to Showcase your work for free when you buy the course this offer lasts until August 16th so make sure to get it while you can you can find the link in the description when creating materials it's usually advised to start with either the displacement or roughness since these are crucial in getting it to look right however I'm stubborn and I like doing things my own way so I begin with the base color wow well because it's visually the easiest to see what adding a certain mask or color does and then work my way down the principled bsdf most of these Maps rely heavily on mixing colors or values there's a note for that called The Mix color note FYI these used to be called mix RGB if you were using a version before 3.4 or mix if you're using 3.5 or 3.6 which you have to set it to color mix instead or mix in 3.6 or color mixing 3.6 but there's also no call combined color which is similar you're still paying attention yeah me neither just download blender 3.6 and you're good to go so let's take a mix color node and choose two colors the top one will be the object's main color and the bottom one a darker dirt version of the color I'm going with a nice blue and a darker more maybe brownish blue as well if we Now preview this mix color note by Ctrl shift clicking it it's going to give you exactly that a mix between the two colors the factor here decides which color is being shown on the model so we need a mask to dry this and make sure the entire thing isn't one or the other but a combination of the two let's use the a01 to do just that easy right so I want to have exposed edges of bare metal and bare metal for the scratches too this bare metal should be a light grayish color I think and combined with the previous color output from our AO color mix so let's duplicate this node with shift d plug in the AO color in socket a change the color for B to a light gray tone and again preview the output okay so that's working it's now mixing the colors again and we just need to give it a mask input and the factor to specify which color goes where in this case I want both the edgeware and scratches to be a similar color so let's take those two masks and combine them now you could do this using another mix color node but without getting all technical mix color nodes are harder to compute in the final Shader than for example math nodes so if you can try using math note and since in this case we're only working with black and white values we can perfectly fine use math nodes to do just that so add a math node set it to add it's actually set to add by default and combine the two masks as you can see this gives us a perfect mix of the two masks now it's just a matter of plugging this newly combined mask into the second mix colors factor and voila all colors are now properly combined here's how that looks so far I think the basics are there but we'll need more maps like metallic roughness and the normal map to really make it look great luckily we have everything set up now to realize those even faster now a metal object needs to look metallic right so let's set the metal value for our Shader to one which sort of works but also makes the paint metallic now that looks pretty cool maybe for a car or something but I want a more regular painted metal object like this one in my reference here now let's use the masks again to tell blender what's metallic and what's not and like I said we can do this even faster since we already have the map we need right here the scratch and edgeware mask combination by simply inputting this mask directly into the metallic value of the principled bstf it works and makes all exposed Parts metal whilst retaining a non-metallic look for the rest of it now on to the last two maps roughness and normal now for the roughness it makes sense that our object has an overall roughness value and a separate one for the dirt which should be rougher and another separate one for the metallic part and to do that we'll need a mixed color node and one color ramp now here's my biggest tip for roughness Maps nothing is ever 100 reflective or 100 and rough so don't use black and white for this color ramp but instead use values that are more in the middle space so for the black value something like a mid gray and for the white value go light gray this will result in more natural looking materials Pro tip so let's take the color wrap and plug that into the mix color note a the B socket in this case will be the roughness for our bare metal now logically The Mask we'll need again is the combined edgeware and scratch mask plug that into the factor and finally let's take the mix color into the principled roughness value now that looks pretty dang good right anyways roughness done the normal map will be the final layer of detail to make this material pop and for it to do that I want it to have a nice General bump super simple you've probably done it yourself before adding noise texture set the skill to something like 200 or 300 whatever works for your object basically detail and roughness down to zero and plug that into the height socket of a bump node and finally into the normal socket on the principled bsdf usually the default strength of the bum node is way too strong so tune that down to make sure it's more subtle and voila there you have it General bump for your object normal done nope not done yet because this also added the bump to all the exposed metal and the scratches for example and that's no bueno so we'll need to mask this off again and since the bump note takes in height data that means we can use black and white values to do that once more so let's add a mixed color between the noise texture and bump and first make sure the edgeware has no bump no bump means no height meaning black so by plugging the edge mask into the factor and setting the B color to Black we've done just that black edgeware resulting in no bump now let's add in the scratches which should be visible even on the bare metal meaning they need to be white so repeat as before take a mix color plug in the scratch mask as the factor take the edgeware color into a and set the B color to be white a cool tip here is that if you want the scratches to be more visible you can actually increase white values above their one threshold so by changing the value to be 10 for example we've now made the scratches 10 times more visible in the the bump node having done that we now get exactly what we want the noise bump visible in different gray values black for the bare metal edges and white for the deeper scratches plug that into the height again just enable inford on the bum node to make sure the scratch is actually cut into the material and not lay on top of the material and the normal map is now all done so that wraps up all of our maps and the material is now completely done if you want to see the full note overview I've uploaded an image online which you can check out with the link in the description now you might remember me calling this a smart material this is what I like to call it because it adapts itself to any geometry use it on whilst maintaining full control over all parameters it even works when making real-time changes to your mesh and so that's how you create a fully procedural smart material inside of Eevee which as I mentioned in the beginning is just about as easy as doing it in Cycles but if you're going for the most realistic result possible Cycles is the only way to go so check out this video where I'll show you how to create similar procedural masks and a professional material in Cycles [Music] thank you

Channel: Kaizen

Views: 91,717

Keywords: eevee material tutorial, eevee materials, realistic material blender, realistic eevee blender, realism in eevee, blender material tutorial, blender materials, blender realistic materials, blender realistic materials tutorial, blender eevee realistic render, blender eevee vs cycles

Id: P5hyrq1f7N4

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023