Realistic Details in Blender with One Powerful Node

ever feel like your blender scenes lack depth in realism no matter how much detail you add this one simple node will change everything today we're tackling a common problem making your scenes feel more realistic and detailed we've all been there working hard on a scene only to realize it looks flat and lifeless but don't worry I've got a solution that's easy and Powerful imagine being able to add intricate details like dirt rocks and grime around objects with just one main node sounds magical right well it is and I'm going to show you exactly how to do it I used to struggle with making my my scenes look realistic I would spend hours trying to manually add details but it never looked quite right it was frustrating and timec consuming so let's get right into it first make sure you have ambient occlusion enabled in render properties now let's work on our default Cube to test this idea out let's first head into materials and create a new material name this anything you like head into shading editor find an empty space within your material press shift plus a and find the ambient occlusion node pull out of AO and find a color ramp adjust the black to just pass the center like you see here drag another node out of color and search for a mixed color node ensuring the second color is set to mix then drag the result into your base color make sure your color ramp is connected to the factor then the B will be your base color for example white then your secondary color will be a so for this we will set to black but as you can see nothing has happened as it is not up against any other object so let's add a plane scale it up and you can now see the magic working add the material you have just made to your plane to see more depth if you want to see the difference hover over your mixed color node and press M to hide the input hit M again to bring it back now this Cube looks a little boring and doesn't allow you to really see the node working to its full capacity let's add some Loop Cuts with command plus r on Mac or control plus r on Windows then extrude random areas we're already seeing more depth in our Cube but that's just the beginning stick around because we'll also show you how to achieve the detailed look from the start of the video Let's Take it up a notch by adding a texture node search for a noise texture and connect the fact output to the distance input adjust the scale and detail to see the texture node come into play you can adjust the black and white sliders to change the distance of your ambient occlusion node on your color ramp and also change the secondary color in the a input to get the look you want but the options don't stop there we still have more to explore before we get to the really exciting stuff to give your objects Edge wear simply reduce the samples to one or two and enable inside now adjust your color ramp sliders modify or remove the noise texture and experiment to achieve the perfect look this technique is fantastic for creating rough edges on metal surfaces such as rusted beams or weathered Machinery now let's apply this to a real material let's start with a plane add a material you like I use blender kit for my materials just type in the material search within blender and drag and drop it onto the object I've left the link in the bio of this video for you to learn more about it if you need to unwrap your material by going into edit pressing you and selecting unwrap now we need our material that will be on the edges like dirt or debris for me to get the material it'll add a Cube search for the material in blender kit drag and drop it on then head into the shading Tab and find the name of the image texture all you need is the base image for this so here's the name Rubble okay so delete the cube go back to your plane and do the same as before add an ambient occlusion drag out of AO and get a color ramp pull out of that and get um mix color node of course ensuring you have it set to mix connect your primary material to B the color ramp to factor and the results into the principled bsdf base color adjust the color ramp so you can see the effect happening then we will need to add a cube just to see it working now we will add an image texture node find our base material which for us is called Rubble select that and connect that into a then just adjust your color ramp for the best look you want to achieve you may notice it's not the desired size you can do that by adding in a note Wrangler with control+ t and adjusting the scale the note Wrangler tool is built into blender so all you need to do is enable it in your add-ons so here I have duplicated the plane to show you how it merges two objects together seamlessly and again to show how big of a difference this makes go into render properties and disable ambient occlusion and see the huge difference Also let's just add the material we have here to this Cube scale it up and see how it makes life so much easier in adding depth and detail but let's say we want to change the secondary material All You Need Is That Base texture for me I I will add a new material to this empty Cube so we'll head over to blender kit and search for a new material locate the material name and simply swap out the secondary image texture and that's it you now have a powerful setup to add depth and detail to any material this simple setup can be memorized or copied to any other material you have to make your scenes pop got any questions or ideas drop them in the comments don't forget to like And subscribe for more blender tips and tricks [Music]

Channel: Poly Playground

Views: 45,975

Keywords: HowToBlender, LearnBlender, BlenderHowTo, BlenderTutorials, BlenderTutorial, BlenderTips, BlenderBeginner, ambient occlusion, edge wear blender, rough edges blender, realsitic render bledner

Id: 42K8Hc3fbtA

Length: 5min 1sec (301 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024