Hey guys, in this tutorial, I'm going to
show you an overview of how to texture this realistic building. An all -in -one texturing workflow in Blender is something that I wanted for years. I just needed a pipeline that allowed me to texture anything, whether it's
buildings, houses, props, pipes, streets, whatever. A system where I could create materials
from scratch and then add on layers of realism like edgeware, dirt occlusion,
grunge, graffiti, or any other features I wanted. And after this video, you're going to
master that workflow. The object that we are going to be
working on, essentially the canvas to present this texturing pipeline, is this
awesome building created in my Urban Environments course. If you'd like to create the building yourself and the entire scene, you can
check out the Master Urban Environments course here, or you can download my
building for free from the link in the description and follow along. Okay, so we have our building loaded up in Blender, but before we jump in, let's
break down the texturing workflow so that you have a clear, step -by -step idea of
the process. First up, finding a reference. This stage is easy to overlook, but it's crucial to developing realistic -looking materials. I found these images of an old building that gives me pretty great information. Looking at this reference, I can see what kind of materials I need and how they
interact with each other. Second step, we need to gather the
materials and textures. Everything used in this video will be
free for you to download and use yourself. If you plan on gathering materials on
your own, I recommend creating a checklist of things you'll need by
analyzing your reference. Third step, we'll set up the materials,
edit them to fit our needs, and blend them together to essentially create our
own new material. Fourth step, we'll paint on damage by
hand using texture painting. This stage is the most exciting to me
personally because it allows for so much creativity. Fifth and final step, we'll layer on
decals like graffiti, stickers, drips, mold, and additional damage that will
finish everything up and contribute to a much more believable building. And bonus step, we'll utilize edgewear and ambient occlusion to create a more
detailed secondary element. Okay, back in the blender, let's get our
hands dirty. Just a quick disclaimer before we get
started, this video is leaning slightly on the overview side of things, which
means I won't always go in depth on every slider and button. And I recommend having fundamental blender knowledge, especially in the
shader editor, so that things are easier to follow along with. Alright, let's jump in. Select on the building, head down to
material properties, hit new, and name it building. Now in the upper left hand corner, I'll
click and drag out to create a new window, and then here, let's select
shader editor. Okay, now I'll start by building the
first material, and my objective is a rugged orange plaster. This material called Red Plaster Weathered from Polyhaven will work perfectly. I'll drop in the diffuse, roughness, and displacement, and plug them into the
principled BSDF. As you can see, the textures aren't
working correctly yet, and that's because we haven't set up box mapping. Box mapping is a way to procedurally project your textures onto the object. The reason I'm choosing to use box mapping is because it skips the UV
process, which can speed up your workflow a lot. To set it up, let's add in a mapping node, texture coordinate, and a value. Plug the texture coordinates object output into the mapping nodes vector
input, and plug the value into the scale of the mapping node. Now highlight each of your image textures, and while holding alt, change
the projection method from flat to box. I'd recommend turning the blend level up
to 0 .3 as well, so that if there are any sharp corners or seams in the textures,
it will smoothen that out. Now I'll adjust the scale via the value
node until it's the size I like. Now currently the texture is too dark and
red to my taste, so I'll drop a hue saturation node into the diffuse line and
edit it to look more like this. Also currently the displacement isn't
functioning, so let's plug it into a displacement node and then into the
displacement socket of the material output. The displacement texture will drive bump
information and displacement information. Bump is essentially a way to fake real
displacement, similar to a normal map, while real displacement is when Blender
literally physically deforms the mesh. Real displacement is dependent on your
object having enough polys, typically a lot of them, in order to look good, which
can get really heavy in the scene. So instead, we'll just use a bump map,
which will look good enough. To make sure bump is working, go to
material, then settings, and find surface, then make sure the displacement
mode is set to bump. Now back in the shader editor, let's
lower the scale of the displacement node until it looks right. With everything except the material output node selected, let's hit Ctrl G to
create a group. This will greatly assist in organizing
our node tree, especially as things get more complicated down the line. Alright, congratulations, you just created the first material that will
serve as the base for our building. This workflow is generally how I'll go
about setting up all the other materials as well, so once you have this down, it
can get pretty quick. Okay, now I'd like to develop the second material. This material is going to be a more basic orange paint to help push everything in
the right direction. Super simple, I'll just download the
beige wall material from Polyhaven, drop in my textures, add in the box mapping
setup, and plug everything in. Now currently, the material is pretty
boring, so let's boost its colors and character with a hue and saturation node. That's much better. Ctrl G to group it all up, and we're
ready for the next step, which is blending materials together. This blend is going to be very basic, and it'll follow the same setup in which
we'll blend all future materials together. All we need is a mix shader and a mix node. Make sure the mix node is set to color. The mix shader is how we'll blend the
BSDF together, and the mix node is how we blend the displacements together. First things first, we're going to plug the BSDF socket of the orange plaster
weathered, the first material we created, into the first socket of the mix shader
node, and the BSDF socket of the beige wall material into the second socket. Now we need to blend the displacements together, so plug the displacement output
of the orange plaster material into the A socket of the mix node, and the
displacement output of the beige wall material into the B socket. Now we have successfully mixed all the materials attributes, and as a result,
we've developed our own new unique material. While this material is looking great,
it's missing character. Just take a look at the difference
between this, the original, and now with color variation. Huge difference, right? Color variation is a great way to add
more interest to your otherwise flat materials. It also helps break up any tiling in the
textures, which is always a realism killer. Adding color variation is a relatively
simple process, and here is how to do it. Firstly, you can do it by duplicating a
previously made material. For example, I'll just copy the orange
plaster material that I created earlier, mix it in by adding another mix shader
and mix node, then hitting the little to button on the group to make sure it's not
going to change the material we duplicated it from, and then inside the
material, I'll change the colors up a bit with a hue and saturation node. Let's just turn the saturation down to make it more washed out than the original. Now, for this to actually show up and to give it a realistic character, I'll plug
a grunge texture into the mix factor of both the mix shader node and the mix node. All the grunge textures I'm using are available for you to download in the
description below. Let's drag in concrete1 -grunge, set it
up with box mapping, and then plug it into the mix factor. I'll also plug a color ramp in between to allow for finer control. After adjusting the scale of the grunge texture and the color ramp, I found this
nice variation in color here. My advice is to make color variation
additions subtle and stack a lot on top of each other to build something more complex. Let's do exactly that, adding a new variation using the second technique,
which is just a regular BSDF node instead of a duplicated material. This BSDF will be a dark brown, and I'll plug it into the mix shader like normal. Then, I'll add another grunge texture using concrete1 again and dial it in
using the color ramp. Now, we have these nice patches of dirt
that really enhance the realism. I'll repeat this process a few more
times, using different colors and different combinations of grunge
textures, until eventually I have this final base material. Okay, here is an overview and breakdown of the node tree so far, representing the
base material with color variations. Here we have the red plaster and beige
wall materials. They are mixing together very simply via
the mix shader and mix node. Then we introduced the first color
variation, the material being a duplicated version of red plaster and
edited to be less saturated, and it is being mixed together with this grunge
texture setup. Then we move on to the next color
variation using the same grunge mixing technique. And finally, the last color variation,
this time just using a BSDF instead of a material. Okay, so this looks pretty awesome, and
it completes my workflow for building base materials for buildings. For this building, we are obviously going to do a lot more work, but it is really
important that we nailed the basic materials first. So, jumping into the next addition to this building, I would like to make
certain walls a different color than others. Here is the before and after. The painted walls really help make this building unique, and that is ultimately
what we are going for. So, how do you set this up? It is really quite simple, and it will be our first look into texture painting. Now, first and foremost, texture painting requires UVs. When we texture paint, we are essentially creating new data on an image texture. Blender has to know where our paint strokes are going to be located on the
mesh, and UVs is the only way to do this. So, let us quickly unwrap our building. I will just go into Edit mode by hitting Tab, then hit A to select everything,
then U and Cube projection. Now, I will change the left -hand window
from Shader Editor to UV Editor. Here, I will select all the UVs by
hitting A, then go up to UV and hit Pack Islands. Now, our UVs are ready for use. If you downloaded the building from the description, the UVs are actually already
set up, so you do not need to worry about this process. Let us change it back to the Shader Editor and get painting. In order to texture paint, you need to first add in a new empty image texture. So, I will just hit Shift A, Search, and then Image Texture. I would like my walls to be blue, so I can name the image texture BluePaint. Next up, I will actually create the blue paint. I will do this by duplicating the
original orange plaster material, adding a Hue and Saturation node to the base
color, and pushing it until it turns blue. That is it. Now, let us add in a mix shader and plug the main materials into the top socket
and the new blue paint material into the bottom sockets. Now, I will take the blue paint image texture that I created and plug it into
the factor of the mix shader. Essentially, we are mixing two materials
together and the blank image texture will act as a mask. To put it simply, a mask is black and white data that can inform the separation
between two materials. With the blue paint image texture
selected, I will head over to the Object Mode button and change it to Texture Paint. You can see up top here that the blue paint image texture is selected. That is very important. Now, if I just start painting, you can
see it adds in the blue paint. I will change this to Solid View, which
is the texture -less preview mode, so you can visualize the fact that this is just
black and white data. So, I would like these bottom walls to be
blue, so I can just paint all of them quickly and boom, this building just
became much more interesting. Now, currently, the paint is very clean
and consistent. There are zero imperfections here. The general rule of 3D is you want to add imperfections to nearly everything. It is a key to realism. So, let us add in a bit of grunge to the mask. Head back over to the Shader Editor, drop in a Mix node, and set the mode to Subtract. Now, you can duplicate one of the grunge texture setups we created earlier and
plug it into the bottom socket of the Mix node and plug the blue paint mask into
the top socket. Turn the factor up to 1 and adjust the
color ramp on the grunge texture until it starts to chip away at the paint. This is an area you can get really creative with, and here you can see I
found a subtle wear and tear of the paint, much more realistic. Alright, here is an overview of the node tree so far, featuring the new Painted
Wall Edition. Here we have the base material with the
color variations, and now with the new painted wall setup here. This is the painted wall mask, and then here is the grunge texture which gives it imperfections. It is all plugged into the factor of the Mix Shader, which is mixing together the
base material and the blue paint material we just created. Alright, now we have made it to the second to last step in general material
creation, and that is and painted damage. Here is the building before the damage,
and here is after. Obviously, the biggest boost to character
and realism, and also the process for adding this is incredibly flexible and fun. Here is how to set it up. First, add in a blank image texture and
name it damage. This will be the mask. Now, let us create the material that will sit underneath the plaster where the
holes of damage will be, and I would like it to be a brownish, dirty plaster. Plaster Gray 04 from Polyhaven will work perfectly. I will drag in the diffuse, roughness,
and height, and add it to the box mapping setup like before. Here is what the material looks like. Now, I will add in a Mix Shader in a Mix
node, plug the attributes of the gray plaster into the bottom sockets, and the
rest of the shader into the top sockets. Now, plug the new damage mask image
texture into the factor sockets of both Mix nodes. Make sure the damage mask is selected, and let us go into texture painting. This time, instead of painting on with default settings, we are going to use a
custom brush. You can download the brush for free from
the description. To add the brush, let us head over to the
tool button, and you can find texture mask, hit new, and import your brush image. Change the mask from mapping to view plane, and then check rake. Then, scroll down to falloff and change it to constant. To change the size of the brush, hit F, and to change the intensity, hit shift F. Okay, that is all the annoying stuff out of the way, it is time to get painting. I generally like to wear away corners and sharp edges, or really anywhere that I
would imagine the building would have faced some friction, like perhaps where
people have walked by and scraped the bottoms with their feet. I cannot understate how much I love this process, I will for sure spend a few
hours honing it all in and making my building unique. Unless you are going for something abandoned, I would recommend not going
overboard here, as with everything, subtlety is key. Alright, I finished painting my damage, and here is my result. Okay, this is what the node tree is looking like so far, here we have the
base material, plus the painted wall addition, and now here is the new damage setup. Here we have the damage mask, which is plugged into the mix factors, and here is
the gray plaster material. Now it is time for the final step, which
is truly the stamp of realism on this building, and it is decals. It took me forever to find the right decal workflow, it was always either
restricted by functionality, or took too long, but now I have the perfect
technique, and I am excited to share it with you. Here is the building before the decals, and here is after. You can see I have added dripping grunge, graffiti, dirt, etc, and honestly, it
enhances the character so much. Alright, so the setup for this is
actually quite simple, but it is really important to get the settings right. First, hit shift A, search, and image texture. Hit new, name it decals, set the
resolution to 4096 by 4096, which is 4K, or 2048 by 2048, which is 2K, if the 4K
resolution is too heavy on your computer, and then under color, make sure the alpha
is set to 0, that part is really important. Now add a new principled BSDF, and plug
the decals image texture into the base color. Add a mix shader node, mix it into the
rest of the shader, plug the principled BSDF into the bottom socket, and the
alpha of the decals image texture into the factor, and that is the setup done. Now with the decals image texture selected, let us head into texture
painting mode. Hit on tools, and scroll down to texture,
and hit new. Now you can import any of these decals
that I provided for you to download in the description, make sure the mapping
node is set to stencil, and hit image aspect. You can move your stencil around with
right click, rotate with control right click, and scale with shift right click. I would recommend going up to cursor and checking override overlay under texture
opacity, this way you can paint on the stencil without obscuring your view. Okay, that is all the technicals out of the way, and now we can start painting on
our decals. First things first, I like to add in
drips from edges and ledges. For example here, I'll go to the ledge of
the window and paint in drips coming down. Now I'll add on some dirt at the bottom,
this time using a different stencil, and this added a lot of realism too. Have fun with this process, and again, subtlety is key. Now we're ready for the graffiti, which follows the same process as the grunge decals. Add a new stencil, this time I'll navigate to the graffiti folder, and
let's bring in this guy. I'll head to the bottom of the wall and
paint this in. I find it fun to imagine myself as the
graffiti artist and where I'd realistically want to tag. If there was graffiti on some wall that wasn't accessible to humans, for example,
it might look unrealistic, so I try to keep that kind of stuff in mind. Alrighty, here is an overview of the complete node tree setup. Here you can see we have the base material with color variations. Here is the painted wall, here is the damage, and finally, the decals. Getting a closer look at the decals, we have the image texture that we created to
paint on the decals plugged into the principled BSDF, and the alpha of the
decals image texture plugged into the factor of the mix shader. Alright guys, I am really happy with how this building turned out. The materials feel super detailed, the damage is crisp, the decals help bring
everything together. That is the main part of the building
done, but I really want to show you the bonus step for layering on a whole new
level of realism, and that is edgeware and dirt occlusion. In the course, we modeled this awesome Middle Eastern architectural feature
called a Mashrabiya, and it sits prominently here on the front of the building. Taking a closer look, you can see some really intricate chipping paint effects
and dirt layers underneath. Here is the Mashrabiya before and after
these extra elements. Now, just to catch you up to speed, the
base material creation for the Mashrabiya is identical to the building. First, I developed wood materials, and then mixed them together with other paint materials. Here you can see I have used a chipping paint grunge texture as the mask to
replicate chipping paint. Once this process was finished, I started
with the edgeware. I will show you how to get this set up now. But quickly, before we get into that, I will give you a node tree overview of the
Mashrabiya material. Here we have the brown planks material as
well as the paint material, which is mixed together with a peeling paint
grunge texture. Alright, all caught up. First, add a bevel node and a geometry node. Then add in a vector math node and set it
to dot product. Plug the bevel into the first socket and
the geometry node's normal output into the second socket. Now, connect the dot product to a color ramp and the color ramp into a math node,
which is set to multiply. Now, just use the color ramp and the
multiply to dial in the edgeware. It is so satisfying to me for some reason. Here, I found a really nice set up. Now, for extra detail, plug a map range
into the radius of the bevel and take one of your grunge texture setups from
earlier and plug it into the map range. Now, by controlling the map range, you
can make your edgeware grungy and realistic. Now, let us use this edgeware setup as
the mask between two materials. For the Masturbia, I used an older brown
wood underneath the paint and revealed it by using edgeware. And here is the result. Okay, let us have a closer look at the
node tree as well so you can properly visualize how the edgeware system works. Here is the base material I showed earlier and here is the new edgeware setup. I am using a rough planks material to represent the edgeware and here is the
actual edgeware system that is mixing it all in. Feel free to pause the video and copy the nodes if you need to. Okay, so now let us set up the dirt which is also really important for realism. Here is before adding the dirt and here is after. First, add in an ambient occlusion node and plug its color output into a color ramp. By controlling the distance attribute of the AO and the color ramp, you can dial
in something nice. And then, of course, for extra realism,
add a math node and set it to less than. Duplicate the grunge texture setup we
used for the edgeware and plug it into the bottom socket. Now, edit the map range until the dirt has grunge. Now you can use this dirt setup as the mask between the rest of the shader and a
dirt material by plugging it into the factor of the mix shader. Okay, final node tree overview with the new dirt additions. Here we have the base material, the edgeware setup, and now the new dirt setup. Taking a closer look, you can see we have the ambient occlusion node which is given
a more realistic look with a grunge texture. And then backing out a bit, this dirt
system is plugged into the factor which is mixing in this dirt material. The dirt material, by the way, is just a principled BSDF set to a brown color with
the roughness turned up. Okay, here is our complete building and I
think it looks absolutely amazing. I really hope you guys enjoyed this video
and got something out of it. Like I've said countless times now, this
workflow is how I go about texturing any building or object in Blender. And once you have it dialed in, you can achieve crazy levels of realism. Speaking of realism, it gets even better once we add in the networks of pipes,
wires, and props. If you'd like to learn how to create this
as well, which is arguably just as important as the texturing stages, make
sure to check out the course at cgboost .com slash urban. In my course, we don't only model and texture the building featured in this
video, but a ton of others too, each unique in their own way, which eventually
complete a massive city environment. There's truly so much packed into this
course and you'll get a ton out of it no matter your skill level. Thanks so much for watching guys and good luck creating your buildings.
