Material, Shading and Texturing Tips for Blender

all right let's look at some simple and effective tips and tricks you can Implement in your shading workflow that will help you take your materials to the next level so let's go by the way this video is sponsored by Squarespace but we'll talk more about them later in the video for now let's begin the video by firstly talking a little bit about the new and upcoming update to the principal bsdf node and the fixer that that brings to the blender 4.0 update first and foremost I think the current version of the principle bsdf note has always had a huge energy conservation issue one clear example of that can be seen when you increase the roughness value on a glass material you will see it gets darker really quickly at higher values meaning it loses the energy relatively faster which is not how real life glass materials behave I guess and you could enable the multi-scatter cgx mode in the older version as well to get that physically accurate effect but it has been known to be a little buggy in the past and overtly heavy on your system and occasionally even generate noisy artifacts in the final renders so these issues have been addressed in the newer version of the node and the blend Wiki actually says that this mode is now a safe default pick in blender 4.0 which is great news other big changes have been brought into the sheen category of the note there's now a new Sheen roughness slider than the new node and also the sheen tint option is now a color slot the sheeness as I like to call it is now calculated more accurately as it can visibly seen here in the comparison and you get a little more control too through the sheen roughness sliders now so your cloth materials are definitely gonna get more physically accurate with this new update and the Wellwood bsdf note is now replaced with the sheen bsdf node which comes now with a new microfiber option so even that's a plus for your cloth materials the old node also apparently had a lot of issues with inaccurate metallic fresnel and even overall frenel was strange as it states here on the wiki and a lot of other issues that are mentioned here too and I don't think all of them have been addressed in the new node here in the 4.0 Alpha version right now because I couldn't see any visible difference here on my end so I'll keep an eye out for any progress that happens here and keep you guys updated as well but let's now move on to the next thing which is also an update slash tip along the same line that being a big issue with a very commonly used node in blender I think most of you might have already witnessed this in some shape or form in your projects basically the normal node in the Shader editor is kind of wacky it kind of loses its mind when you try to go above a value of 1 in the strength field and this was noticed by the 16 year old blender map with nugget here on Twitter I guess not Twitter anymore I think I need to say nugget here on X which is just weird to say but anyway nugget not only pointed out the issue but provided a solution for it too for free here on his handle and it already is scheduled to be implemented by default in blender 4.0 but just in case you are impatient you can follow the note setup here from this post that I will link in the description once you do you will clearly see the normal maps are not doing that weird thing anymore they used to do before when you increase the strength above one and it doesn't just fix upper values it also helped Implement negative normal maps by going below zero so that's a great addition as well so yeah huge props to hot dog nugget firstly for a crazy good username right and then to his contribution to a widely used yet broken node in the Shader editor so let's move on to the next step which kind of bothers me that people don't use it enough in their workflow which is the object info note and specifically the random slot in it I'm sure you've heard about it a thousand times by now so I'm just here to give you a reminder about it and a very helpful use case I found for it I usually use it on foliage that I want to spread around manually but don't want it all to look too similar so I just put a hue saturation on in front of the main texture and then drag the saturation value through this random slot or you can use a color ramp in between them or a map range node as I have here for a little extra control and I set it up so it very subtly changes the saturation and value of the grass every time I duplicate it hence making the grass look not way too uniform on top of that if you add this geometry note setup that I copied from the stack exchange post that helps rotate the object a little bit every time it's duplicated and moved a little bit that helps increase the randomness even mode so while I'm using the object info node whenever I can and I hope I have encouraged you to use it too in your projects okay let's move on to the Next Step that kind of confused me when I first heard about it I think you must have noticed that blender has been supporting dot PSD files for image textures for a long time now I don't really get why someone would want to use a 21mb file instead of a 3MB PNG file but I'm kind of dumb and I'm sure this tip is no shocker at all to most of you watching but here it goes anyway so if you have a texture as a PSD file you can easily make changes in the texture map here in Photoshop and then quickly save that PSD file and then here in blender you refresh the texture and it's immediately there right in front of you and I know it's not a huge deal because all you had to do was export the image here from Photoshop and override the older image but you get what I'm trying to say here right you are saving maybe a few seconds but to me even that is a lot sometimes especially in situations where I know I'll be altering the texture a lot throughout the project so yeah I hope this helps a tiny fraction of the audience who are equally as dumb as I am anyway while we're talking about making quick alterations here's another tip why not use this object field in the texture coordinate node and attach an empty here so you always have a controller right in front of you here in the viewport and if you have a situation like I had in this scene where I knew I'd want to try different angles here for the wooden floor the spinned empty controller comes really handy to make some very quick changes and try out different sizes and angles for the texture without ever leaving the 3D workspace isn't that kind of nice so definitely try it out sometime and while we are in this scene let's also talk about vertex pain for a little while another feature that I sometimes absolutely forget exists in blender but can be really useful for a lot of shading purposes it's now part of the sculpt mode and is accessed using the specific paint brush here in the sculpt mode I suggest you create some color palettes here and paint your heart's content and you don't even have to be good at it because you can later use the smudge brush to hide all the crap that you smeared on your model and it just instantly makes it pretty it's one of those features that seems like only professionals use but I would suggest you give it a swing when you can it's a fun time especially on a stylized model like this so give it a try that's all I ask of you just give it a try once and thank me later now before we move on I would like to take a few seconds and talk about today's sponsor Squarespace now I've said this before and I'll say it again if you are looking to make your own website be it for an online store or a portfolio showcase or maybe just for a simple blog Squarespace is the best choice out there you have countless templates for any Niche you can think of all powered by their new fluid engine which is their new drag and drop editor that makes customizing these templates a breeze and it doesn't matter if you know how to code it doesn't matter if you are a tech savvy person or not Squarespace 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the time you don't even need to do that just a color ramp from the same image is more than enough for roughness and bump sometimes so yeah if you are in the middle of a project maybe this was just a nice little reminder that this Avenue does exist maybe for your ongoing project but let's move on to the next thing which is about creating procedural mask for your models and I'll be honest this topic did kind of scare me in the past because all the tutorials I watched regarding this topic were kinda complex for me at least because I can barely digest a Note 3 with more than three or four nodes and what I realized is most of these marks don't even require very complex notaries so for an example for an edge mask all you got to do is subtract two bevel nodes one of them needs to have zero radius and one of them needs to have a slightly higher radius and that's it you plug that into a color ramp and you've got yourself a pretty decent Edge mask I think and now you can plug any grunge map or scratch map into the radius of the upper node to add some scratchiness in the mask too if you want and for a curvature map which if you don't know just measures the convexity or concavity of a model can literally just be a pointiness node driven through a color ramp node and that's it it's not perfect but for us lazy 3D generalists this is more than enough really in most cases and on top of that we can even add an ambient occlusion mask which is again just the amino occlusion node with the color ramp and you've got yourself some nice contact Shadows for the model too now what else do you need and you know what what's funny is you don't even have to go through all this trouble sometimes I'm gonna be honest I sometimes completely forget that you could just make a new custom texture map right here and just to be in the texture map yourself you can then add scratches or Cloud texture mask over it here in the texturing panel and just paint away and then you don't even need to rely on any of these finicky procedural masks anymore so yeah don't forget this route exists too if procedural textures scare you sometimes but let's continue riding this train of forgetting important shading tips and tricks and talk about the easiest way you can add some details into your textures which is through decals I don't know how I keep forgetting that decals exist and that I can just add a bunch of leak and grunge decals to my scene and take it to the next level without ever touching the Shader editor how handy is that so yeah don't forget about decals either I also sometimes forget that the subsurface field is not just for human skin you can use it anywhere you like like here in this mini keyboard almost everything you see here has a bit of subsurface added to it and I feel like that's what's really giving this render its iconic look the buttons feel really squishy and I want to press them and I think that's all thanks to the subsurface feel so yeah don't forget about that either and don't forget about trying the different subsurface mode here from this drop down to random walk usually gives the best results but give the other two methods of fifth two sometimes they can be surprisingly good for different lighting scenarios now the last thing on this forgetting important Fields list for me is me forgetting to set the right ior values for the different materials in my scene again it's not usually a big change visually but it can be in different lighting scenarios so find the right ior values for your different materials and set it up as soon as you can just so you are on the safer side and lastly the only tip I have left for you now is to remind you to use the layaway node in your emission shaders I think ducky has said it a thousand times already in his video so I am just here to reiterate it use a layer weight node with your emission shaders to give them that nice gradient effect and avoid that flat and ugly looking emission effect you get by default you can even add a grunge map to the radius of the layer weight node to get an even cooler effect if you want so keep that in mind for your future emission materials and I guess that's it these are the tips I had in mind for this video and if at this point you are thinking that this is just all too much for you to remember and you would just prefer some pre-made materials here's a list of my favorite blender material libraries top on that list will always be the blender kit add-on it's free and has just a crazy amount of materials available for you more than enough to suffice all your material needs in all your projects so definitely check them out if not them then you always have the polyhaven website and the ambient CG website for some free PBR textures don't forget about the free version of the real-time materials out on my ducky not the free version of the Sanctus Library materials both of them are packed with really useful and Powerful procedural materials so keep them in mind as well same goes for the free version of the polygon add-on they are constantly adding more and more free materials to their Library so don't forget to check them out as well and while you're at it also download the community material pack made available by curtiswold for some more free materials all of them just amazing libraries just packed with amazing Niche materials so give all of them a try I promise you won't be disappointed and before we end the video check out some links in the description for some paid add-ons and resources that I I know will come in handy in your shading and texturing workflow if you are ready to spend a few bucks add-ons like PBR painter and fluent materializer enable a substance painter like workflow within blender which can be really useful if you can't afford the Absurd Adobe browsing plans but are okay with spending some money on a single Perpetual license there's also add-ons like quick texture made available by Jama Guru babes come root that enables some crazy shortcuts that will allow you to do almost everything you can in the Shader editor without ever leaving your 3D viewport so you can check that out as well and I've also linked some of my favorite imperfection and grunge and roughness Maps so you can even delve into that if you want but yeah I think that's it that's all I had planned for this video thanks for watching till the end if you did and I hope we'll catch you guys in the next video bye

Channel: stache

Views: 126,585

Keywords: blender 4.0, shading tips blender, shading tutorial blender, new principled bsdf node, material tutorial blender, substance painter blender, texturing tutorial blender, beginner shading tutorial, beginner material tutorial, how to texture in blender, edge mask in blender, curvature map in blender, ambient occlusion blender, pro materials in blender, material addons blender, material library for blender, photorealism, texturing blender, shading blender, materials blender, pbr

Id: i3NLgs8iWCw

Length: 12min 42sec (762 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023