What Are PBR Materials ?

PBR stands for Physically Based Rendering. It’s a way to create materials that look realistic under all lighting conditions. You know that plasticky look some renders have? PBR helps avoid that.

A standard PBR setup usually includes:

• Base Color (Albedo): The color of the material without lighting or shadows.

• Roughness Map: Tells Blender how shiny or matte the surface should be.

• Normal Map: Adds small surface detail without changing geometry.

• Ambient Occlusion (AO): Enhances crevices and shadowed areas.

• Height/Displacement Map: Adds actual geometry detail (if enabled).

With these maps combined, your materials behave much more like real-world surfaces. Metal looks like metal, stone looks like stone, and skin looks... not like plastic.

Setting It Up in Blender (Step-by-Step)

• Start by Adding a Material

  • Select your object → Go to the Shader Editor → Click “New Material.”

• Add Image Texture Nodes

  • Use Shift + A → Texture → Image Texture.

  • Load your Base Color map and plug it into the Base Color of the Principled BSDF shader.

• Repeat for Roughness, Normal, and AO Maps

  • Roughness goes into the Roughness input.

  • For Normal, connect the Normal Map node in between.

  • AO can be multiplied with the Base Color (MixRGB node) to enhance depth.

• Enable Displacement

  • This part is often skipped, but it’s a game-changer!

  • Go to the Material Settings → Set Displacement method to “Displacement and Bump.”

  • Plug your Height Map into a Displacement node → Connect to the Material Output’s Displacement input.

• Tweak and Preview

  • Use the Material Preview or render with Cycles to see accurate results.

  • Adjust the strength of your maps until the material looks just right.

Where to Get Quality PBR Textures?

Ah yes, the million-dollar question.

You can create your own (I do a lot of photogrammetry, which you can learn more about in future posts), or you can download completely free, CC0-licensed PBR texture packs at ShareTextures.com.

We’ve got everything:

• Real scanned woods, stones, bricks

• Grunge, sci-fi metals, fabrics

• Seamless textures with full PBR support

Plus, all texture sets come with the maps Blender loves — no conversion necessary.

Pro Tips for Better Renders

• Use HDRIs for environment lighting to better preview your PBR materials.

• Don’t forget to UV unwrap your model properly — the best textures won’t help if the mapping is distorted.

• Always keep your normal maps in Non-Color mode in Blender!

• If you’re doing animation, test how the material reacts under different lighting angles.