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How to Texture in Blender — Transcript

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0:00In this video, you'll learn the basics
0:01of texturing in Blender. The very same
0:04techniques that are used in AAA games
0:06and Hollywood movies. You'll finish with
0:08a practical customized brick wall and a
0:11set of skills that can be used for
0:12virtually any 3D surface. And best of
0:15all, this tutorial requires no plugins
0:17and no paid products. Just a default
0:20Blender 4.2 installation and two
0:22textures which are both free. So, if
0:24you're ready to level up your skills,
0:26fire up Blender and let's begin.
0:34So, with a brand new scene opened up,
0:36let's begin. Now, if you have already
0:39seen my donut tutorial, which I
0:42recommend if you haven't already, um
0:43then you will know that a texture is
0:45part of your material. And your material
0:48is found right down here in your
0:50material properties, right? And you've
0:52got some, you know, you can change the
0:53color of your material. And if you want
0:55to see it in your viewport, you have to
0:57go to your look dev mode, um and then
0:59you can adjust this here. Um but to do
1:02texturing seriously, we can't use this
1:04because it's too simplified, right? We
1:06need to see the nodes, the node layout.
1:09So, we need to go to our shading tab at
1:10the top there, which is just the exact
1:12same values, but it's in a node layout
1:15here.
1:16Um now, I've never been a big fan of
1:17this on the left-hand side, so I'm going
1:19to right click, join area, and then just
1:22collapse it. Okay. Also, I actually
1:24don't want to do it on a cube. I don't
1:26want the light, don't want this. I'm
1:27going to select everything with A,
1:29delete it, and I'm going to replace it
1:31with a plane. And then I'm going to
1:33rotate this. So, R, X, and 90. Just type
1:38in 90.
1:39Um and it's now 90° flat on so that we
1:42can create a brick wall eventually. All
1:44right, new material and let's begin.
1:47Now, before you can talk about textures,
1:49you have to talk about the shader.
1:51Because the shader, this thing right
1:53here, is like the operating system for
1:57your material. Every single property,
1:59everything that goes on on the
2:01appearance
2:03of your object happens in here.
2:05Everything has to be plugged in through
2:07here, okay? So, as I just said before,
2:09right? You can adjust these values here.
2:11You can make it look like a mirror. You
2:14can make it look like chalk, right? By
2:17adjusting the roughness slider there.
2:19You can make it look like metal or
2:21nonmetal, etc. I'm sure you're already
2:23familiar with this, right? So, what
2:24we're doing, just turn all this junk
2:26off, is we're defining a constant value
2:30across the entire surface for this
2:32roughness amount here, right? So, from
2:34the very top of our mesh all the way to
2:36the bottom, all the way across it, it's
2:38getting a flat value of whatever we
2:40define right here.
2:42And importantly, a texture is doing the
2:45exact same thing, but on a pixel level.
2:49All right.
2:50Let me show you. You don't have to
2:51follow this. I'm just going to show you
2:52as an example.
2:53Um I'm going to add in an image texture.
2:57And rather than open something on my
2:58computer, I'm going to create a new
3:00image, which you can do. Um and I'm
3:03going to give it a flat color of a gray
3:06at .2, okay? Like this. Hit new.
3:11Um and importantly, I'm going to change
3:13my color space to non-color data, which
3:16um is just important so it doesn't apply
3:17like a gamma correction on top of it. Um
3:19so, this is what we've got. That's what
3:21the image is that I'm going to use. It's
3:23a completely flat gray shape peg, right?
3:26Let's say. Now, if I with a roughness of
3:29.2,
3:30if I take my output of my image and I
3:33override my roughness, so it's now going
3:35to be using my texture instead of this
3:37value, can you guess what will happen?
3:41Nothing.
3:43Absolutely nothing. As I flip between
3:45them, there is no change because this is
3:48a .2 value and this roughness is a flat
3:51.2 value. It's just doing it on a pixel
3:55level, per pixel level. But importantly,
3:58because this is a texture, of course, I
4:00can go into texture paint mode and I
4:02could do a bunch of fancy stuff in here,
4:05right? And what this is doing, looking
4:07at our texture over here, you can see
4:10it's adding in extra values. So, the
4:12white is like a value of one for our
4:15roughness. So, it becomes like chalk on
4:17that point. A value of sorry, a black
4:20value is like a value of zero. So, it
4:22becomes like a mirror on those values,
4:24right? So, at a per pixel level, it is
4:27changing those values. And where it gets
4:30interesting is, of course, you can use
4:31that not just for one value. You could
4:33take this and, you know, plug it into
4:35the base color, right? So, it now
4:37becomes the actual color of your mesh.
4:40You could also
4:42add in a bump node like this. Take the
4:45color, use it as height, which is going
4:47to be fed into the shader normal. It's
4:50just like a
4:51It's like fake fake bump. We'll get to
4:52it later. Um
4:54right? And I could give this something
4:56like this. Disconnect this, right? So,
4:58now I'm just adjusting the bump of this
5:01and I'm painting in
5:03what looks like
5:05height information into my mesh, right?
5:08That's the joy of texturing, right? And
5:10by the way, don't worry about this
5:11stepping issue. That's just It's because
5:13of
5:14uh it's an 8-bit image, right? You can
5:16Anyways, we're not we're not talking
5:18about that. We'll we'll We'll get into
5:19bump later. But this is the fundamental
5:21principle of texturing, right? It's
5:24converting these flat boring numerical
5:28values into varied values, which are
5:31more complex and interesting, just like
5:34the real world is.
5:35And all of the properties in your
5:37shader, right? Your your scattering,
5:39your you know, all this stuff that's
5:41hidden, that's like advanced, all of
5:43that can be driven by a texture and add
5:46to the complexity and the realism of a
5:49material. All right, now let's talk
5:50about the types of textures. There are
5:52two types of textures. There are image
5:55textures like this, like using a JPEG or
5:57a PNG or something like that.
5:59Um and then there are procedural
6:02textures, right? These guys right here.
6:04Um some of these, by the way, I just
6:06used in like the world
6:08setting, like the environment one. IES
6:10is only used for lamps. I don't know
6:12why, but they're all here even though
6:13they couldn't be used for a mesh. But
6:15anyways, I'm talking about stuff like
6:17the noise texture, okay? If we uh
6:19control, shift, and left click on any
6:22node, by the way, that will let you
6:23preview it on your mesh. Um we can see
6:25what it is generating here. It is
6:27generating, just like before, just like
6:30on our thing here, it's generating
6:32values from zero to one. Black's a zero,
6:35white's a one, and it's doing it on like
6:38a like a noise base. It's using math and
6:41it's being generated by Blender um just
6:44for our shader here. So, you get like
6:46some simple values here that you can
6:47play with um and very quickly um adjust
6:51the look of a texture, and that can be
6:53used in a shader just like anything
6:55else, right? Use it across here, and now
6:58we've got some interesting looking uh
7:02like a
7:03Yeah, I don't know what it is. It's just
7:05It's just like a speckle the like a
7:07dirty mirror, I guess, is what it looks
7:09like right now. Um or you could also use
7:11it to create, for example,
7:14um
7:14like stucco, right? By adding it as a
7:17bump map. And I'll just turn this like
7:19way down.
7:21Um
7:22Why am I not seeing it? Oh, there we go.
7:24Right?
7:27Something like that, and then I turn
7:29that up. And then I'm going to go a
7:30little bit higher now, right? And that
7:32starts to look like a like stucco, like
7:34plaster on an exterior of a building or
7:37something. Or even plaster in an
7:39interior. Yeah, anyways. It's a It's
7:42Procedural textures are very simple.
7:44They're They're adding patterns and
7:47they're very good for adding, yeah, like
7:49subtle amounts of detail. They're also
7:51good for blending with other textures.
7:54Um but generally speaking, you're not
7:56using a procedural texture by itself to
7:58create a realistic-looking
8:00surface. Now, I've actually seen a lot
8:02of beginners get led astray because they
8:04look on ArtStation or they look on
8:05forums and things, and they see people
8:07do amazing, realistic-looking materials
8:11with like node layouts with hundreds of
8:13nodes, and they're creating through math
8:16and combining this one with this one
8:18with this one with this one
8:19something that looks like a real complex
8:23material. But in practice, that is
8:26almost never done in production. That's
8:29controversial. It depends on the
8:31product. If it's if it's a game and they
8:32need custom materials for part of a
8:34pipeline, then yes, they will. But if
8:36you're working on like a VFX shot or an
8:38animation or something, you're not
8:40spending days, sometimes weeks, creating
8:43one material for one surface. It's just
8:45impractical. So, understanding
8:47procedural textures is definitely a
8:49valuable skill, but I think there's
8:51really a limit. I don't think people
8:52need to know that much about them. to
8:54know how to combine them and the math
8:56behind them and things like that. But
8:58most of the time, you're going to be
8:59using an image texture for your base.
9:01Most of the detail is going to be in
9:03there, and then you're using procedural
9:04on top of it. So, image textures. Let's
9:08talk about it. Let's say we want to make
9:10a brick wall, and to make this
9:12interesting and not just like a simple,
9:14easy tutorial,
9:16let's make it realistic for what you
9:18probably need. Not a square wall, which
9:21you would never have in a scene.
9:24You want it to look like a maybe the
9:25side of a warehouse, let's say. So, I'm
9:28going to select this edge here on the
9:30edge. I'm going to hit E to extrude it,
9:33and then X just for its X axis, holding
9:36down control to snap it to 2 m, right?
9:40And then I'm just going to hit shift R,
9:42which will repeat your last action. That
9:44is shift R.
9:46Um to do it twice, and then I'm going to
9:48select this edge along the top here as
9:49well. E, Z, holding down control, make
9:53it 2 m taller. So, now we should have,
9:56when we hit N to bring this up, an 8 by
9:584 m wall. Okay, so I want it to look
10:01like brick. What do you do? Well, what a
10:03lot of beginners do in their journey of
10:053D, they go to Google and they go brick
10:09texture, right? And they go to the
10:10images and they go, "Ooh, what sort of
10:12brick do I want?" Right? And then they,
10:14you know, they find a texture that they
10:15want and they go, "Perfect, that's the
10:18brick. I'll download it." And by the
10:20way, don't do this. I'm just going to
10:21use this as an example. Um, add an image
10:23texture, set this to
10:25the one we just downloaded and I connect
10:27it to my base color, right? Cuz that's
10:29where the color is. And okay, this is
10:31not the fault of the texture. Um, this
10:33is because we haven't UV unwrapped this.
10:35So let's quickly do that. I'm going to
10:36select my entire mesh, select everything
10:39and then I'm going to hit U and then
10:41select unwrap. By the way, if you don't
10:43understand UV unwrapping, it's not going
10:45to be part of this tutorial. Sorry to
10:46break the news to you. Uh, it was going
10:48to be like 3 hours long if I was going
10:49to do like UV unwrapping as a proper
10:51topic. Um, anyways, going to go to the
10:53UV editing tab here. Basically, this
10:55aligns with this. So we just have to
10:57rotate this so that it matches like the,
11:00you know, the it's in the correct
11:02direction, right? Which you can tell cuz
11:04there's a little line there. That's the
11:05edge. Right? Okay, now this is a 8 by 4
11:09m uh wall, right? So how big is that
11:13brick wall? Probably about 2 m, right?
11:16So I'm just going to scale that up
11:18like so and that's it. So that's the all
11:21the UV unwrapping we're going to do for
11:22this tutorial.
11:23Um, just to just to cover the bases, all
11:25right? So that doesn't look like brick.
11:29That barely looks like brick. Um, a
11:32number of problems. The first, as you
11:34can see, is there's noticeable seams.
11:37And that's because textures that you get
11:39online were not designed for 3D. They're
11:42usually designed for websites or for
11:44throwing into the back of a Photoshop
11:46file or something, right? And what we've
11:49done is we've tiled it. And it doesn't
11:51matter how perfectly they take the
11:53photograph if it's overcast and they
11:54even get the bricks to be perfectly
11:56aligned, it will never work. It'll just
11:59never work without some form of cleanup.
12:02So you can take it into Photoshop, you
12:04can do an offset and then you can use
12:05the clone brush and you can try to blend
12:07it that way. Um, it takes about an hour
12:10to 2 hours. At least that's what our
12:11artists spend on at Polygon. Um, and
12:14it's it's time-consuming. It's it's not
12:16fun. But even if you did that, the other
12:18issue you would notice is that this
12:21looks like it was printed on cardboard.
12:24It doesn't look like real brick because
12:26looking at our shader, of course, it's
12:29not. It's just going straight into the
12:31base color and it's just using a flat
12:34continuous roughness value. It doesn't
12:36have any bump information in its normal
12:38input. And you could certainly try. You
12:41could plug that into the roughness input
12:44and go, "Ooh, well, I've got some
12:46information there. It's the wrong
12:47information." Um, you could also plug it
12:50into a bump map, right? And it'll just
12:53like basically do a grayscale operation
12:56um to try to guess what that information
12:59um should be for the bump. And it's
13:02definitely better than nothing, but it's
13:04not the best. You can see it's assuming
13:08because the mortar is lighter than the
13:10brick that that is sticking way further
13:13out than the brick when it's probably
13:14the opposite is true, right? So that's
13:18why most artists realize very quickly
13:20you don't usually use a texture that you
13:23get from Google. What you need are
13:25seamless PBR textures. PBR textures are
13:30simply textures that were designed for
13:323D usage. And rather than downloading
13:34one image, PBR textures are a set of
13:37images, usually like five to 10 images
13:40that each do different things to the
13:42shader. And there are a number of places
13:44that you can get PBR textures from, but
13:46I'm going to be biased and recommend
13:48Polygon. And I'm biased because it's my
13:50own website. So over the last 9 years,
13:53my team and I have invested hundreds of
13:55thousands of dollars in perfecting the
13:58art of texture capture. So we've created
14:01a set of hardware and pipeline solutions
14:04to accurately capture real surfaces in
14:06the real world, which means we don't
14:08take a single photograph of pretty much
14:10anything. We use specialized rigs with
14:13like a polarized ring flash so it
14:16doesn't have reflections and we take
14:18hundreds of photographs of every
14:20surface. Then we use photogrammetry
14:22software to rebuild the surface so you
14:25get all the accurate height information
14:27that's really there in the real world.
14:29We bake that out into PBR maps, then we
14:32clean them up, we standardize the
14:34values, and it is the only way to
14:37accurately capture surfaces. It is
14:39expensive, it is time-consuming, and it
14:41is a very specialized skill that most
14:44artists should not waste their time
14:46doing. Honestly speaking, from somebody
14:48who's tried it, it's not really that
14:50useful for anything else besides
14:51building a texture library.
14:54As you can probably guess, Polygon is a
14:56paid product. We have a number of plans
14:57available. You can also buy packs of
15:00downloads if you just want to download a
15:02few things.
15:03Um, but for this tutorial, we are going
15:05to be using a free texture. This guy
15:08right here. So you need a account at
15:11Polygon, just a free account, and then
15:13you can download this. And this is the
15:14only texture we are going to be using
15:16for this tutorial. You do not need to
15:18buy anything from me in order to follow
15:20along, but if at the end of this
15:21tutorial, you want to start building a
15:23scene, you want to really take texturing
15:25seriously, you can come and subscribe
15:27and then download more textures. Okay,
15:29so click the link in the description to
15:30get to this page and then what you're
15:32going to be downloading is your 8K
15:34resolution because we're going to need
15:36all that juicy detail because of the
15:37size of our wall.
15:39Um, you can, if you wanted to, change
15:41your settings from JPEG to be PNG.
15:44There's not really going to be much of a
15:45difference, really. It's a much more
15:47lightweight format, JPEG. The only one
15:49that really matters for is displacement
15:51to be TIFF, which the default is already
15:53set at. So just hit download and then
15:55you will get a zip file like this, which
15:57you can then just extract and then
15:59you'll get a folder, which inside of
16:01that folder, you will see 8K and then
16:03here you have all of your PBR maps. Um,
16:07and we're going to use most of these.
16:09The only one that we're not going to be
16:10using is ORM. If you're curious what
16:13that map is, you've never seen it
16:14before, um, it's occlusion, roughness,
16:17and metallic and it's only used for real
16:20time. So it's this map, this map, and
16:23this map, but it's stored in the RGB
16:25channel, which is just more lightweight
16:27for real-time engines like Unreal Engine
16:29and Unity. Um, but we are not going to
16:31be using it for Blender. We're also not
16:33going to be using the material X file
16:34because you only use that if you know
16:35what you're doing, which we don't need
16:37it. So, yeah. Okay, so back at Blender,
16:40you don't need to have uh this. You just
16:41need to have a shader set up, but you do
16:43need to have a plane, which as I
16:45mentioned before, needs to be 8 by 4 m.
16:48So make sure you've done that. All
16:49right, so I'm going to show you how to
16:51set up a PBR material inside of Blender.
16:55Um, and I'm going to do it the slow way.
16:56There is a plugin for Polygon which does
16:58it in one click and I'm going to show
17:00you that at the end, but I want this
17:02tutorial to be helpful for people who
17:03are using textures from anywhere because
17:06PBR shader set up is really important to
17:08understand. So there's a few ways to add
17:10an image texture. One is to do the way
17:12that I've been doing it so far, shift A,
17:14texture, and then go image texture, and
17:16then click on open. And this first one
17:19that we're going to be importing is the
17:21base color JPEG, okay? So make sure it's
17:23underscore ending in that and then hit
17:25open.
17:27Okay, and I'm going to drag this, as you
17:28can probably guess, into the base color
17:31input. Pretty self-explanatory. All
17:33right, now you probably won't see
17:35anything as good as this so far because
17:37your UV unwrapping is not potentially
17:38set up. So just go to your UV editing
17:42tab at the top there,
17:44um, and we're going to on the mesh hit U
17:47and then click unwrap. And as I
17:49mentioned, this isn't a UV unwrapping
17:50tutorial, but just, you know, basically
17:52getting it set up for a wall. Uh, we
17:54need to rotate it, right? So that it's
17:56the correct orientation um and scale it
17:58up. The other thing that Blender doesn't
18:00really make it very easy to spot, but
18:03you can get to a point where the up on
18:06your UV editor is not the up on your
18:09mesh and it's often not easy to tell
18:11which is which. So if you click the
18:12little sync at the top there, top
18:15left-hand corner, that little icon, that
18:17will mean that when you are selecting
18:19parts of your mesh, you will see the uh
18:22selection over here on your UV image
18:24editor. And you can see that I have
18:26rotated it the wrong way. So I'm going
18:28to select everything, rotate this in my
18:31editor, and then holding down control so
18:33it snaps to 5° increments, get it to
18:35minus 180°, and now you can see, as I
18:38click across it, the correct vertice
18:41corresponding over there is selected.
18:44All right, the other thing I need to do
18:45is to scale this to a sensible uh
18:48amount.
18:49Now out on Polygon, we publish the exact
18:53sizes of our textures and you can see
18:55the physical size, 2.5 by 2.5 m. Now I
18:58know, because of we started with a plane
19:01that was 2 by 2 m, that's the default,
19:04um, I know that each of these squares
19:05here represents 2 m. So if I want to get
19:09this like really bang on accurate, what
19:11I would do is I would set it so that
19:12it's, you know, the size of a square,
19:14roughly speaking, and then because it
19:16actually needs to be 2.5 m, I'm going to
19:19scale it up by 1
19:23.25,
19:25okay? .25 because it's half what
19:292 m?
19:30You have to That that's the exact
19:32amount. It's like 25% is what you have
19:34to scale it by. I was going to try to
19:35explain it and then I'm like, "Ah, I
19:36can't explain it." Anyways.
19:38But it's a small thing, but it just
19:40means that now our texture matches the
19:43exact physical dimensions of the real
19:46texture in the real world. And just,
19:48yeah, it just helps when you start
19:50adding other things to the scene. Quick
19:52interjection. Actually not quite. It's
19:56only if you scale this then in the 3D
19:58view. So with the plane selected, scale
20:01that by the exact same amount 1.25
20:05which would mean that your plane would
20:07then be 10 by 5 which is correct. And
20:11then just make sure you apply the scale
20:13so that these values here become one.
20:16But then
20:17that is correct and it will be the
20:18physical correct
20:21dimensions for anything else you add to
20:22the scene. All right, back to my shading
20:24tab over here. I'm going to show you
20:25another way to add a texture here for
20:27the next map. If you got Windows
20:29Explorer or whatever opened up, if you
20:31just go and click on the map you want to
20:33import and I'm going to be importing the
20:35roughness
20:36roughness map next. I'm going to click
20:39and then just holding it down just drag
20:41over and then alt tab to blender and
20:44then just release it inside of your
20:45shader over here. Release it and it
20:48should appear.
20:49All right. And by the way, something
20:51you'll probably notice is that when you
20:52click on another node, there's like it
20:55stalls Blender stalls for like 2
20:57seconds. You can see before it before it
20:59appears. Very annoying and it's doing
21:01that because we have on the left hand
21:03side our image viewer opened which is
21:05why I don't like the image viewer being
21:07opened. So I'm going to right click and
21:09then go join areas and then just drag it
21:11across so it's gone. So now we don't
21:13have that delay when we click on
21:14something.
21:15Awesome. Okay. So your roughness map,
21:18can you guess which part of our shader
21:19it goes into? Haha, it goes into the
21:22roughness of course. And
21:24excuse me. Now you can see
21:27as we look at our mesh that there is
21:29some slight differences in the
21:31reflection, right? It looks a little bit
21:33more shiny here and less shiny there.
21:36But actually this is not correct.
21:39So the color space of your texture
21:42basically means Blender's expecting it
21:44to be like a standard camera photo which
21:47is sRGB 2.2 gamma.
21:50Without getting too much into the color
21:51science, it means it's doing an
21:52operation on this map that shouldn't be
21:55there because a roughness map and
21:56actually every single PBR map except
22:00your base color will almost always not
22:03be in 2.2 gamma. It will be in what is
22:05called raw or in Blender's case a non
22:09color space. Okay, so we're just going
22:11to click it and then select our color
22:13space as non color. And now it's
22:15actually correct. I know it looks worse.
22:17It looks like all that detail is gone.
22:19But it's at it's not about what looks
22:20better or what you can see. It's what's
22:22actually correct and this is actually
22:24what's correct because this brick here
22:26is actually quite a porous brick and
22:28this mortar is also porous and there's
22:31not really much difference between the
22:32roughness. And that's not the bit that
22:34matters. What matters though is that the
22:36overall roughness value. We don't have
22:38to guess what it is based on this here.
22:40It's defined for us in our PBR map.
22:43That's the bit that matters here.
22:45All right, let's do another texture and
22:47I'm going to show you the third way I
22:48like to add image textures.
22:50Rather than doing this and then
22:51selecting it which is annoying, I just
22:53hit shift D and just duplicate that node
22:56there and then just click open on that
22:57new node. All right, so this one I'm
22:59going to be importing the underscore
23:01ambient occlusion map. This black and
23:03white
23:04texture there.
23:06Okay, if I control shift left click on
23:08this, you'll see what it is. Mostly
23:10white but with very very small amounts
23:13of dark detail there. And this is a
23:16cavity map. It's basically wherever
23:18there's like deep pockets inside of the
23:22the brick, it's creating shadow there.
23:25And why is it doing that? Well, because
23:27when we photographed the textures, we
23:29used a flash which is is designed to
23:31flatten and remove all shadows from it.
23:34And then that can result in textures
23:36that feel a little bit like they're
23:38lacking something. So the ambient
23:40occlusion map is adding in some of that
23:42detail. And you actually don't always
23:44need it because if you're using physical
23:46displacement, it might not be needed
23:49because there will be you know real
23:51shadows and and whatever in the the
23:53cavities of your mesh. But we're going
23:55to add it and I'll show you how to do
23:56it. So
23:57I'm just going to drag this out a little
23:59bit so that we got more room.
24:00And also
24:03yeah, it needs to be up here. So
24:04actually I'm going to with the roughness
24:05and the ambient occlusion node there
24:07selected, I'm going to rotate. Look at
24:09that. You might not know that you can do
24:11that but like the hot keys of Blender,
24:12they work everywhere which is kind of
24:14crazy. So I'm just rotating it up
24:17because what I'm going to do, selecting
24:19our shader here again, I need to combine
24:21it to add into the color information
24:25that we've got here. So I need this to
24:27be combined with this. So when you're
24:29working in texturing, when you're
24:30working with materials inside of
24:32Blender, the node that you use to
24:33combine thing combine things is shift A
24:38color mix color. Okay. So this you use
24:42all the time and in fact we're going to
24:44use it all the time in this tutorial. So
24:46what I can do with this is now I can
24:49combine any two color inputs together.
24:51So I'm going to take my color and put
24:52that into the bottom input.
24:55And now this you can see it's now
24:57spitting them out into one single output
25:00combined together. And this factor
25:02amount controls whether I see all of the
25:04one on the right or all of the one on
25:07the left. But that's not what we want.
25:10We don't want to see one or the other.
25:11We want to see them combined. And which
25:14way we combine it depends on the
25:15texture. This is a mostly white texture.
25:19The only information that we care about
25:21is the dark values. So if we look at our
25:25mix shader node here, you've got a
25:26number of blending modes. And if you use
25:28Photoshop or other image editing
25:30softwares, you probably I just realized
25:33I got my webcam stuck up here. Don't
25:34need that. Blocking my view a little
25:36bit.
25:37But
25:38if you work with Photoshop or other
25:39imaging applications, you know the
25:40blending modes already. They work across
25:42all of them. The one that we're looking
25:44for is multiply. So multiply means it's
25:47just going to ignore all of the light
25:49values and it's going to only use the
25:51darker value. So anything over a
25:53basically 255 completely white value is
25:57going to be used there. And now this
25:59factor amount here,
26:01it can be all the way to one. Okay,
26:03because that means that we're using 100%
26:05of that cavity like the the shadows over
26:08the top of it. If you wanted less, you
26:09could have somewhere in between. But
26:11crank it all the way up to one almost
26:12always. The other thing that we need to
26:15account for
26:16is again the color space should not be
26:18sRGB. It should be non color data
26:21because there's no gamma correction,
26:23there's nothing on it. It's just linear
26:25information that is stored inside of
26:27that texture.
26:28Okay, so very small like from here, you
26:31can't tell the difference. But sometimes
26:33you can and this tutorial is designed to
26:36help you with no matter what texture
26:38you're adding into Blender, an ambient
26:39occlusion, that is how you combine them.
26:41All right, now the next texture I'm
26:43going to be adding, shift D and then
26:45click on open. You don't have to do
26:47this. You can skip this part but I need
26:48to show you because other times it makes
26:50sense. Underscore metallic map. And the
26:53reason you don't need to worry about
26:54this now
26:55is that I'm going to drag out and put
26:57this into the metallic input. And you
27:00will see
27:01absolutely nothing. Okay, because
27:04there's no metal on our mesh at all
27:06obviously because it's a brick wall. But
27:09if it if it was a metallic map, you
27:10would also want to set your color space
27:12to non color data.
27:14But absolutely no difference whether
27:16it's there or not. It's just going to be
27:18adding to our render if there's no
27:19information that's valuable so you can
27:21just delete it. Okay, so far haven't
27:24really got realistic looking brick. It
27:25looks much the same. But it is
27:28physically accurate. The next two maps
27:30are the ones that really matter and that
27:32is your bump detail. Okay, so I'm going
27:34to hit shift D, duplicate this and then
27:36click on open. So this purple looking
27:39image here is your underscore normal
27:42map. Let's hit open.
27:45Again, make sure your color space
27:46because it is PBR map, it needs to be
27:49set to non color data because it's not
27:50the base color. Okay.
27:52So this is going to add bump. And the
27:55the place that it is used in your shader
27:58is your normal input over here. Okay,
28:01when we've done that, it looks terrible
28:03and that is because Blender needs
28:06another node in between there to there
28:07because you can see the color of this
28:10output here. That's kind of a clue in
28:12Blender if you've connected something
28:13incorrectly
28:15is when the color doesn't match where
28:16it's going in. Okay, so yellow to
28:18purple, not good. So what we need to add
28:20in is a vector
28:22normal map node. Make sure it's not
28:24normal but normal map. Okay, so click
28:27and drop that in. And now you can see it
28:29is correct and it looks way more
28:32interesting than it did before. Strength
28:34of zero, you can see how it looks and a
28:36strength of well, should be strength of
28:37one, right?
28:39So that is your bump detail. Very
28:42interesting. All right, now the next map
28:45is also some bump detail. So I'm going
28:47to hit shift D, duplicate that down and
28:50then I'm going to add in finally
28:53oops, which one is it? Underscore
28:54displacement. Make sure it's the correct
28:56one cuz they look similar, roughness,
28:58ambient occlusion. It's underscore
29:00displacement.tif.
29:02And just like before, it needs to be set
29:04to you guessed it, non color data.
29:07So
29:08to use the displacement, it needs to
29:11actually go not in our shader. It's the
29:13only one that actually exists outside
29:14the shader. It goes directly into the
29:17displacement input of our material
29:20output node there. It's all the way down
29:23there. Let's just move it up all the way
29:25over here just so it's closer. So I'm
29:26going to take that and put that into the
29:28displacement input just to show you that
29:30that's the wrong way to do it.
29:33It's yellow to purple which means there
29:35needs to be another node in between it.
29:37So it's vector displacement. That is the
29:40node that drops in here.
29:42And make sure this goes into your height
29:45input. Okay. And then this scale slider
29:48here will define the strength
29:51of of this displacement basically.
29:54Okay. Now, here is something that I have
29:57just learned recently and it's something
30:00that I think almost every single artist
30:02is getting wrong
30:04because even the node wrangler that
30:07comes with Blender gets this wrong.
30:10So, the normal map and the displacement
30:13map should not be used together. You
30:16should be using one or the other. Okay?
30:19And the reason for that is that assuming
30:22they are authored correctly and they are
30:25the same then it is doubling the
30:27information because the normal map, if
30:29we have a look at that, it is bump
30:31information and if we look at our
30:33displacement map, uh we actually can't
30:34look at it through that point, um but it
30:36is the exact same information but it's
30:38just represented in a grayscale form.
30:41So, if you use them both together, you
30:43are just doubling the intensity of the
30:45bump when it's usually not authored in
30:48that way. It's not designed to be used
30:50in that way.
30:51Um the other reason to not use it like
30:53this um is because displacement can be
30:56used to physically displace a mesh,
30:58which is what we're actually going to do
30:59in a second. Um and when you do that, it
31:02actually a normal map on top of that
31:04kind of breaks it. Um and I noticed this
31:06issue and so I I emailed Brecht, who is
31:09the lead developer of Cycles, and I
31:11said, "Look, I think I've found maybe a
31:12bug or something with this." And he said
31:14like, "No, when you have physical
31:16displacement, which we're going to set
31:17up in a second, um you shouldn't be
31:19using a normal on top of it because it's
31:21just going to wreck it." And I was like,
31:22"What? That's crazy. Like the node
31:25wrangler does this. Uh Megascans
31:27importer does this. Is everybody doing
31:29it wrong?" And he said, "Well, we could
31:30add an extra option." So, apparently
31:32they're going to add in some support so
31:34that you could potentially use both a
31:36normal map and a displacement, but you
31:38still shouldn't because if they're the
31:39same information, there's no point in
31:40using both of them together. So, what
31:43that means is we have imported the
31:46normal map here cuz I wanted to show you
31:47what it is for, but in most cases I
31:49actually no longer recommend using it
31:53because as I said, they're the same
31:55information and the displacement map is
31:57actually a much more versatile map of
31:59the two
32:00um because you can do true displacement.
32:04All right. So, this, as you can see
32:05looking at it, right? We've got some
32:07bump, right?
32:09Okay? But you'll see that if you look at
32:12it flat on, like, "Hey, our wall is
32:14paper thin there." Okay? So, it's not
32:16physically displacing. We're not
32:18actually getting any real brick and
32:19that's part of the reason why this kind
32:21of looks pretty bad. It doesn't look
32:23like a nice brick wall yet. Um so,
32:27the way you change this is down here.
32:29I'll have to move my head out the way,
32:31but uh underneath your material settings
32:33you'll see displacement and the option
32:35is bump only or displacement only or
32:39displacement and bump. Okay. So, let's
32:41use displacement just to show you what
32:42happens. Nothing. Absolutely nothing
32:45happens.
32:46Um And And by the way, I have to assume
32:48this is a a little bug here. 4.2 only
32:51just came out today um and it says
32:53unsupported displacement method, but it
32:54is displacing it so I have to assume
32:56that is a bug. It only appears when
32:58you're in Eevee mode anyway, but
32:59anyways, ignore that if you see it. Um
33:01it is actually working. The reason that
33:04this is not uh seemingly doing anything
33:07is because what this is looking for is
33:09to physically displace the geometry and
33:12the geometry is this. So, each of these
33:14little points is getting altered ever so
33:17slightly in relation to the grayscale
33:20information that it's being fed um in
33:22this map here. And because of that, it's
33:24basically like it's working with How
33:26many pixels is that? 1 2 3 4
33:2915 pixels.
33:31Right? 15 little tiny pieces to move.
33:34So, we need to add a lot more um detail
33:37basically. So, your add modifier, go to
33:40your modifier stack, sorry. Yeah. Click
33:41the wrench, modifier, generate,
33:44subdivision surface.
33:46Um and you'll see by the way when you do
33:47this, you get these rounded corners,
33:49which are very ugly. So, change it to
33:51simple and then it won't round the
33:52corners for you. And then we're going to
33:54change uh if you crank it all the way up
33:57to six, it will be better, but it still
34:00won't be visible. So, let's crank it to
34:01eight and then you will finally start to
34:04see something. Uh and this by the way is
34:06just a new feature of Eevee. Um it's the
34:08first Eevee like cuz of Eevee next, it's
34:10the new version of Eevee. It's actually
34:12got true displacement for the first ever
34:14release. So, be excited that we can do
34:16this now. Um it used to just be a Cycles
34:18only feature. Anyways, so with this,
34:21look.
34:22Have a look, right? Physically
34:24displacing our mesh, right? So, each of
34:28those bricks, because that height
34:29information was recorded and it was done
34:31correctly with photogrammetry software,
34:33not using some cheap process like
34:35Substance Sampler that just guessed it.
34:37These are the real brick heights that
34:39are being um yeah, basically used on our
34:42on our mesh here.
34:44Um and the value that Polygon authors to
34:46uh for new textures is 0.2 for the
34:49scale.
34:50Anyways, so what's the difference
34:52between
34:53uh bump? So, you bump, you know,
34:54obviously is not displacing the mesh at
34:56all, okay? So, should you use then
34:59displacement or displacement and
35:01displacement bump? You should be using
35:03both.
35:04Okay. And the reason for this, it's all
35:06that that little message disappears cuz
35:07it's it's was doing displacement and now
35:09displacement bump. Anyway.
35:11Um
35:12but it's uh
35:14this is the fake bump. So, it's just
35:16applying this to the normals of it,
35:18right? Which is just the same as using a
35:20normal map. Um so, it's without getting
35:22too technical, it's a shader fake
35:24operation to pretend like the light is
35:26creating shadows where there isn't any.
35:28That's what bump only is. Displacement
35:30is the true bump, but unless you've got
35:33like an ultra high res mesh to like like
35:36atomic level or whatever or like as in
35:38the number of pixels you've got in it,
35:40you will always be missing information,
35:42which is why you need displacement and
35:44bump and then you're getting the best of
35:45both worlds. Um it just might not be
35:48visible uh when you're looking at
35:51uh like from from this level basically.
35:53It might be a little bit invisible.
35:56Um
35:57Yeah, in fact, if anything, I think
35:58that's the one that's unsupported maybe.
36:01Maybe they got the error messages messed
36:03up. I think they did. I think it looks
36:05like for Eevee uh displacement and bump
36:07doesn't actually work together. But
36:09anyways, for the rest of this tutorial
36:11we're going to be using Cycles
36:12regardless. So, we're going to swap to
36:14Cycles and then
36:16if you're in look dev mode, it's always
36:18going to be using Eevee. So, to see
36:20Cycles, you have to go to your rendered
36:23view mode at the top right hand corner
36:24there and then wait for it.
36:27And you will see black because there's
36:29nothing in our scene except a plane. So,
36:31we're going to go to the world settings
36:32now and then change the color, this this
36:35little yellow dot here. Going to click
36:37it and then I'm going to say sky
36:39texture. All right. So, this is that
36:41fake
36:42you know, just a fake world thing with a
36:44little sun. Anyway. So, I'm going to
36:46rotate it around. Sorry, adjust the
36:48rotation here just so that I've got it
36:50sort of like coming from
36:52that kind of angle, like that. Um it's
36:55always way too hot. Um so, I'm going to
36:58adjust the strength here to be 0.15.
37:01Like so. And now look at that. Look at
37:04our glorious wall in all of its detail.
37:08Beautiful. Um
37:10All right. Now, the other thing I'm
37:11going to do is I'm going to right click
37:12cuz you'll see you get these like little
37:13lumps here, right? And what it's doing
37:15there is um
37:17uh it's doing flat shading, right? Cuz
37:19we started with a plane, right? So, it's
37:20just treating this like it is a flat
37:22shade. And if you follow the uh donut
37:23tutorial, you know there's such a thing
37:25as smooth and hard uh sorry, smooth and
37:28flat shading. So, what we need to do is
37:30swap it to smooth shading because it's
37:32now creating all this extra geometry we
37:34need to add it. So, let's add that and
37:36you'll see it looks a lot better, a lot
37:38cleaner and a lot nicer. And now you
37:41should be able to see if we go back
37:42here, I'll swap to displacement only,
37:44right? That's just the geometry by
37:47itself. Right? Crazy. So, now we switch
37:49to displacement and bump. And it looks
37:53marvelous, really marvelous. The only
37:55thing by the way, and some people will
37:57probably call this out in the comments
37:58if they haven't watched this far,
37:59they've already written the comment. Um
38:01there is one advantage to normal maps
38:03and it's also part of the reason that
38:04they are used in games is that a normal
38:07map you can get away with an 8-bit image
38:09and it can still look quite clean.
38:12Um and what I mean by that is it doesn't
38:14have any stepping issues. So, a
38:17displacement map, because it is
38:19grayscale data, it's not angling it at a
38:22I actually asked this question on
38:23Twitter and somebody answered with a
38:24very great visual that shows the
38:26difference between them, but uh a an a
38:2916-bit TIFF is is needed
38:32um because it's using gray It's like
38:35binary steps of height. And what it
38:38means is is that you can see very If you
38:41zoomed right in there, you can see like
38:43slight stepping. It's actually really
38:46not that apparent here, but you can see
38:47like tiny little squares here. They're
38:49basically invisible. Well, actually,
38:52there is something you can even do to uh
38:54prevent that and that's to switch to
38:56cubic interpolation, which actually the
38:58Blender documentation uh suggests and
39:00you can see it's slightly um less
39:02visible there. The stepping is actually,
39:04oddly enough, it was most visible um we
39:07were when we were looking uh in the uh
39:10Eevee look dev mode. So, see these
39:11little Yeah, see these little like like
39:13looks like topology like little
39:15mountains or whatever. That's what that
39:16is. Um and oddly enough, it kind of
39:19looks more obvious in cubic mode inside
39:21of Eevee.
39:22I don't know, but it is the correct say
39:24it's supposed to be uh cubic. Anyways,
39:26jumping around here, but I just want to
39:29explain it. So, when you're using a
39:30displacement, set it to cubic um and
39:33it's great. And that's it.
39:35So, you should have for your shader
39:38displacement and bump, a scale of 0.2.
39:41This should be non-color data. This
39:43should be going into your displacement
39:44input and I will put it up on the screen
39:46here.
39:47This is a PBR shader that is correctly
39:50set up and you will see we are not using
39:52the normal map. It is there. It's always
39:54downloaded with with files because some
39:57people want might want it for real time.
39:59And also if you were never going to use
40:01this displacement, you weren't even
40:02going to be combining it with other
40:04textures which is the other reason for
40:06using displacement. Makes it very easy
40:08to combine stuff is what we're going to
40:10use later on. Then a normal map could be
40:12useful. We're not going to be using it
40:14for the rest of this tutorial. We're
40:15just going to be using base color,
40:16ambient occlusion, roughness, and
40:19displacement. Okay, so this is the
40:21manual way to set up a texture and it's
40:25important to know this because you need
40:26to understand how things will go
40:27together. But I want you to also know
40:29that this is not normal. You don't when
40:30you're building a scene manually
40:32dragging four, five, six maps just to
40:36create one material. That's just a waste
40:38of everyone's time. Um so I want to show
40:41you that although it's not required for
40:42this tutorial, you can just watch this
40:44next part. Most artists when they're
40:46building a scene, they aren't manually
40:48building it. They are using plugins to
40:51automate it. So there are two which I'll
40:53show you right now. You just watch this
40:55next part basically. Okay, so the first
40:58way to do it by the way we'll keep this,
41:00right? We'll keep this up here and we'll
41:02call this brick, all right? And then I'm
41:04going to click this little shield icon
41:06to create a fake user which by the way
41:08is how you save something. So that if
41:10you then delete this material, right?
41:13And then add a new one,
41:14um it's still there, right? It's not
41:16going to disappear cuz it's got a little
41:17F which means
41:19fake user. They should have called
41:21There's one criticism that a lot of
41:22people have of Blender that's not very
41:24clear. It's a very annoying thing. You
41:26save a file and it's disappeared. But
41:28anyways, so I'll show you that this way.
41:30Okay, so one way to automate this
41:32process that we've just done is to use
41:36edit preferences, go to your add-ons and
41:38enable the node wrangler, okay? Um it's
41:43underneath add-ons node wrangler. It
41:45should come with Blender automatically.
41:46You just have to enable it. And then
41:48when you select your shader, you have to
41:50have it selected, you hit N in your
41:52properties and then underneath down here
41:55on the tabs, you've got node wrangler.
41:58And then you should see a button. You
41:59won't see it if it's not selected, but
42:01you have to have the shader selected and
42:02you'll see add principled setup. Then
42:05you just select the files that you want
42:07to add and then hit principled texture
42:10setup. And then you just have to wait
42:12like, you know, 2 seconds and then it
42:14will have done most of the dirty work
42:17for you. Now as I mentioned, it has got
42:19something wrong which is that it's using
42:21the displacement map and the normal map
42:22together. And as I mentioned, you should
42:24only be using one or the other. But
42:26that's pretty simple. Just holding down
42:27control and then right click dragging
42:29across will disconnect that setup for
42:32you. Okay, so now it's using that.
42:34You will have to then change it to
42:37whatever bump you want, displacement and
42:39bump in this case. The scale is
42:42automatically set at one which it almost
42:44never needs to be.
42:45So set it to 0.2 if it's a polygon
42:47texture, but otherwise just adjust it to
42:50suit.
42:51You will also they've also got the
42:52setting wrong. It shouldn't be linear.
42:53It should be cubic, okay?
42:56But that is roughly the setup that we
42:58just created. It's added in some maps
43:00that we don't need. We don't need the
43:01metallic map. It also hasn't done the
43:04ambient occlusion for us. So it's it did
43:06like half of it, right? There's still a
43:09lot of like fiddling around. Um but you
43:12know, pretty good and that is a method
43:13that works for all texture types. One
43:16major downside to this method that I
43:18don't like is that you still need to use
43:20your browser. You have to go to Google,
43:22type in textures, find the textures,
43:24download a zip file, then unzip the zip
43:26file, and then bring it in. So the
43:29second method that I'm going to show you
43:30is the polygon add-on which obviously
43:33only works for polygon assets,
43:35but does it all inside of Blender. So
43:38you can browse, search, download, and
43:41one click import and setup without
43:44needing to go to any other software. So
43:46first click the link in the description
43:48and then download this zip file. Very
43:50small size. Don't unzip it. Instead go
43:53to edit preferences add-ons and then
43:56click the little it's not clear in 4.2,
43:59but there's a little drop down arrow in
44:01the top right. And then in there you'll
44:03see install from disk. Then just locate
44:05that zip file and hit install from disk.
44:08Give it a second and then it will appear
44:10right here. For this I am using version
44:121.7. Yours might look different if
44:14you're watching this later on. But
44:15anyways, once it is installed, you don't
44:17need to have your shader opened at all.
44:20Just hit N in your properties
44:23and you'll see a little polygon tab.
44:25It'll first time you use it ask you to
44:26log in via the browser. So you click
44:28that. It'll open up this and then that's
44:30it. So now the way it works is if I've
44:33got credits, if I've got a subscription,
44:35then basically I can just buy directly
44:38from here
44:40and it'll then just download everything
44:41you need
44:42and then once that's finished, you just
44:44click apply.
44:45Then if I go to my
44:47go to my render view mode, you can see
44:49that it's just applied it. One click,
44:50super easy. The other thing is you don't
44:52even have to have credits, but you can
44:54preview materials. So this little eye
44:56dropper, sorry not eye dropper, eye icon
44:59there will let you just download a quick
45:01preview of it. It's got watermarking,
45:03but
45:04yeah, you can see you can get an idea of
45:05what the texture is going to look like
45:07to make sure that it's going to be a fit
45:08for your scene before you download it.
45:10Um so yeah, the reason I like it, I mean
45:12obviously I'm biased, but it means I
45:13don't have to open up the browser,
45:16download a zip file, and then unzip it
45:18because that does take a lot of time
45:19when you're building a whole scene of
45:21things.
45:22But anyways, that's there if you want
45:23it. We're not going to use it for the
45:24rest of this tutorial. So I'm going to
45:25go back to the one that we just created,
45:27the one called brick. Bring this up and
45:29here we are again. Okay, we are 45
45:32minutes into this video and we haven't
45:33even got to the fun stuff yet. We've
45:35really just talked about shaders. We've
45:37talked about PBR textures and some of
45:39you watching this were like, when we
45:40going to actually make this thing look
45:42cool? That is right now. Okay.
45:45So we can finally now talk about
45:47manipulation. Manipulating a texture to
45:50work for us, to work for our scene
45:52because not only is that like just super
45:55important to make the scene actually
45:57feel real like so where you've got, you
45:59know, a wall and another wall meeting,
46:01you've got like black mold that builds
46:02up there like how it does in real world.
46:05But it's also solving another problem
46:07for us, right? Breaking up repetition
46:09because even though this is a seamless
46:11texture, there's a limit to how many
46:13times you can tile something before your
46:15eye will be able to spot repeating
46:17elements, right? You can see you've got
46:18three rows of these bricks that are
46:21different and therefore your eye is
46:22spotting it.
46:23So there's always a limit to, yeah, a
46:25seamless texture and you can spot that
46:28pretty quickly, right? So
46:30tweaking a texture does that. But it's
46:32also just super fun. This is what being
46:34an artist is about is being able to
46:36control it and be creative and like, you
46:38know, really have fun. So this is the
46:40bit that I enjoy the most and you
46:41probably will as well. All right, so
46:43let's talk about the basics. Basic
46:45manipulation of a texture.
46:47And the simplest thing that a lot of
46:49people want to do is they want to alter
46:51the color of a texture, right? Like
46:53maybe you're working with like wood and
46:54like it's just it's a great grain of
46:57wood, but it's the wrong shade. You want
46:58something darker or lighter. Like being
47:00able to manipulate the color is super
47:02important, right? So to do that, you
47:05know, you could take your base color
47:08into an image editor like Photoshop and
47:10then do some operations there. But that
47:12would be silly because that would be
47:13destructive. You'd have to be saving
47:15files and then, you know, transporting
47:17it back and forth
47:18because you can do that inside of
47:20Blender and it would be non-destructive
47:22so you can tweak it later on. So that's
47:24what we're going to do. But you don't do
47:25it on this node here. You do it in your
47:27node setup, this node tree that we've
47:29got here. You place in extra nodes to
47:32manipulate things between there and our
47:35shader. So let's make some space. So I'm
47:37going to just drag over this and hit G
47:41to just move it across like that.
47:44And the place that we're going to put if
47:46we want to manipulate our texture is
47:48basically between here and where the
47:49shader starts. And you know, you could
47:51really do it if you wanted to on just
47:53this row here. But yeah, the ambient
47:56occlusion is just adding in shadows. You
47:57might as well just do it after our
47:59multiply. So between here and here.
48:01Okay. So the node to do a really simple
48:05basic operation to the color is shift A
48:08and you're looking underneath color the
48:10hue saturation value node. I love this
48:13node because super simple and you can do
48:15a lot with it. Um
48:18So you can see by default the values
48:200.511 and 1.
48:21They have no effect and we can see that
48:23by disabling our node which you can do
48:26with a node selected if you hit M M for
48:30mute. It will mute the node. And you can
48:32see as I flip back and forth, there is
48:33no change, okay? So saturation of one is
48:36just as it is. So if I increase this,
48:38I'm obviously making it more saturated.
48:40And if I go the other way, it's, hey,
48:41more desaturated, right? Um the value is
48:44just like almost like brightness, like
48:46like how kind of luminant pixels are,
48:49right? I think you can actually go above
48:51the the value there of two if you just
48:54like click it and then type in another
48:55value. You can go even brighter if you
48:57really want to break things. Um but you
49:00can do a lot with just just these three
49:03values here. So the top one is hue and
49:04that's for really like so that's
49:06shifting the hue, okay? And you can see
49:08if you just play with it, you can
49:10quickly make this look
49:12very funky. Normally what you want to do
49:14is just change it ever so slightly. So
49:16if I was to
49:18Actually, let's just increase the
49:19brightness just so we can see it a
49:21little bit better. Um if I just shift
49:23the hue holding down shift,
49:26shifting the hue with shift, that'll
49:28enable me to just move it left and right
49:30with subtle values holding down shift.
49:32And as I go to the right, you can see it
49:33becomes a little bit yellow.
49:35If if too far, it starts to look green,
49:37but you can get just a little bit of a
49:38yellow tint to it just by moving it to
49:41like a, you know,
49:42.04 values that way. Um, and then if I
49:45went the other way, obviously, it starts
49:46to look a little bit more like a richer
49:49red color, almost getting into like a
49:50pinky purple. Um, so this is something I
49:53do a lot. So, if I go like this, and
49:56then I desaturate it a little bit, and
49:58then I bring down the uh so the value of
50:01one is where we started.
50:03Right? If I go like that, that has
50:05completely changed the appearance of the
50:07brick with just some very slight
50:08changes. So, if I hit M, that's going to
50:10mute it. So, this is how it looked
50:12originally, and then this is how it
50:13looks with some uh saturation. Maybe
50:16that doesn't look like a lot to you, but
50:18to me that that's a fairly big change,
50:20all right?
50:21All right, but let's say also with this
50:23that um maybe I didn't want this this
50:27color shift this color change to happen
50:30to the entire um brick that I've got
50:33going on here. And actually, let's just
50:34make it a little bit brighter. So, let's
50:35say instead of it being a like a darker
50:37uh change, it's now just make it a
50:39little bit brighter.
50:40Um, and let's go
50:44yeah, something like
50:46yeah, something like that, right? That's
50:48Yeah, that that's a pretty That's
50:50transformative enough that we our eye
50:51can kind of spot the difference there.
50:53So, let's say yeah, I want to make it to
50:55just certain parts of I want to make
50:56this look almost like a like there's
50:58patches to it where maybe the sun has
51:00hit different parts of it, and it's just
51:02faded in those patches.
51:04So, this is where we talk about masking.
51:07So, a mask is just a general term for
51:09whenever we want to have um certain
51:11effects in just certain areas, okay? And
51:15the way we would do this is by using
51:18another texture and then putting that
51:20into this node. And the place that you
51:22would want to put that in is down here
51:24where it says fac. It's not clear, I
51:26don't know why they went with fac. I
51:28guess it's it's short for factor, but
51:30it's not obvious that that's what that
51:32does. But it's it's a val It's a
51:34numerical value for now, um and it's
51:37going from zero to one. So, a a value of
51:39one just means it's
51:41all of this, right? 100%. If I go all
51:43the way to zero, it's now none of this.
51:46So, if I hit M to mute it, there's no
51:48difference between before and after
51:50because this is having zero effect. So,
51:52I could if I wanted to, let's say I like
51:54the look of this, but I just went too
51:56far and I wanted to quickly change it, I
51:57could do that. But because this has an
51:59input, I can put anything into that. Any
52:02black and white texture will now control
52:05where this kicks in, okay? So, as you
52:09remember from the start, we created a
52:10noise texture, and that was black and
52:11white. So, let's do that. Let's use a
52:13noise texture to control this. So, I'm
52:15going to hit shift A, texture, and go
52:18noise texture. The most versatile of all
52:21procedural textures that artists use a
52:23lot. I know I do.
52:25Um, okay. So, if I take the factor of
52:27this and put that into my factor of my
52:31uh hue saturation value node, watch what
52:33happens.
52:35Doesn't seem like a lot, but this is the
52:37original texture, and this is it now.
52:39And you can see there's a little bit
52:41kind of patchiness, but it's subtle. So,
52:44let's control shift left click on the
52:46noise texture. And this is showing us
52:48how our noise texture looks. Now, you
52:50might notice that it looks kind of
52:52stretched, and this is because we are
52:54now working with a um a surface which is
52:57not 1 by 1 by 1. And it's without
52:59getting too technical on uh coordinates,
53:02by default, it's using a generated
53:03coordinate system which is just looking
53:05for
53:06objects that are 1 by 1 by 1. And if
53:08they're not, you have to do an operation
53:10in there to like make it so that it's
53:12that. But in our case, we've actually
53:14got UV coordinates that make sense for
53:16this. So, we we can actually just use
53:18that. So, this vector, if I drag out
53:20from here, and then I just click on
53:22texture coordinate, which is uh one of
53:24the suggested ones there, um I can just
53:26click that, and you can see it's texture
53:28coordinate plugged into the UV, and it's
53:29now fixed that problem. The other way to
53:31bring that in, if you didn't see it in
53:33your pop-up, shift A, and then go to
53:35input. Don't know why it's in input,
53:37doesn't make sense, but uh texture
53:38coordinate is in there, and then you
53:40could just drag it in um like that.
53:43Okay. So, it's now using that. So, that
53:45means that now the scale is a bit wrong,
53:47but let's say yeah, I want some big, you
53:49know, black and white patches across it.
53:51All right. So, I've changed the scale of
53:52it. So, now if I look at it, I should
53:54see, hopefully,
53:56some little patches. The reason I can't
53:59though is that this is
54:01it your eye is able to spot these value
54:03differences, the zeros here to the uh to
54:05the ones, but it's it's mostly, if you
54:08could see the values on I wish there was
54:10a way to actually see like the like the
54:11numerical values of areas, but it's like
54:14it's very so it's all areas of gray.
54:17There might not actually be one section
54:19in here which is pure one or pure zero,
54:22like pure um white or pure black. It's
54:25all just shades of it across it, and
54:28it's very subtle. So, what you often
54:30want to do is to increase the contrast,
54:32and uh one node that a lot of artists
54:34love for this purpose is shift A,
54:37converter,
54:39color ramp. Okay. So, let's just drop
54:41this in, and I'm going to drop it in
54:44between our noise texture and our hue
54:45saturation, okay? So, this is our mask,
54:48right? And then this is our uh
54:50operation. Okay.
54:52I'm going to control shift left click on
54:53the color and just to see what we're
54:54looking at. So, if I drag in these
54:57handles here,
54:58what you'll notice as I drag in the
55:00white the white handle, you can see that
55:02it's like it starts to like almost clip
55:04the white guys, it's very subtle. So,
55:06let's drag in the uh the black handle
55:09all the way to the middle there, right?
55:13And this is like it's it's it starts to
55:16like clamp, like where does the
55:19Yeah, like where does the true black
55:21values start in our texture there. So,
55:24we're now just increasing it to like the
55:25middle points. So, those areas that were
55:27around yeah, .4 in value are now getting
55:31a a value of pure black. And this value
55:34here, the values that were around .5
55:37beyond as well are now being clipped in
55:39at one. So, it's just a a very easy way
55:41to control how harsh this this mask is.
55:45So, now when we look at our shader, you
55:47should be able to spot now
55:49those differences. And actually, let's
55:50just increase it so you can see it,
55:52right?
55:53So, it's now a lot more obvious um
55:56where those those values end. So, it's
55:58really just a matter of like like now
56:00these handles become like the feather of
56:03my mask as I drag out.
56:05Right? And you sort of maybe want it to
56:07be
56:08like I don't know, maybe let's go here.
56:11And then for my noise texture,
56:13because by default, this is very looks
56:15kind of low res, very kind of mushy. But
56:18if I increase the detail to four, I get
56:20like more detail on these edges here.
56:23And then I can increase the roughness,
56:24which is just kind of like
56:26See, I don't really know what the
56:27roughness does. I should probably uh
56:29look that up. Yeah, okay, that's not
56:30helpful. Blend between smooth and noise
56:32pattern and rougher with sharper peaks.
56:35Yeah, I mean, it just feels sharper a
56:37little bit. That's kind of it. I mean,
56:39it doesn't really You don't have to
56:40understand it, um but that's the
56:42explanation we've got. Um, but yeah, it,
56:45you know, just adds, makes it look a
56:46little bit sharper.
56:48Um, but yeah, you you can play with
56:50that, and you can get some more
56:51interesting patterns there. One thing
56:53I'd caution, by the way, is a lot of
56:54people just go like really ham on this
56:57detail amount here, right? Um, because
57:00it feels like oh yeah, like more more
57:02detail is better. But something I
57:04learned from uh a course uh that
57:07actually the Blender Institute put out,
57:09um is that this drastically increases
57:13shader computation time. Like a value of
57:16uh I think it's it's on like
57:18logarithmic. So, a value of two I'm
57:21sorry, three, I think is like twice as
57:24computationally expensive, and a value
57:26of four is twice more than three was.
57:28So, basically, if you're using like six,
57:30it's something like
57:32what is that? From what two was, it's
57:35like twice four
57:39it's like 16 times as computationally
57:42expensive as what two is. I could be
57:43wrong on that, but anyways, the point is
57:44is I wouldn't go over like five or six
57:47in your detail cuz you can very quickly
57:48blow out your shader computation time
57:50when you hit render. Anyways, just want
57:52to caution that cuz I have seen a lot of
57:54artists just go like, "Yeah, more
57:56detail." Not realizing, as I didn't,
57:59that that is drastically increasing uh
58:01stuff. Anyways. All right. So, that's,
58:03you know, that's okay. It's all right.
58:05It looks a little bit too harsh there,
58:07but yeah, that that's We've got some
58:09like patchinesses. I mean, I would
58:11almost call this just like breaking up
58:13repetition. Um
58:15but yeah, that's it's it's a it's an
58:17okay effect. So, what I will do, and
58:19this is something that I would
58:20definitely suggest to people because a
58:22lot of people find nodes overwhelming,
58:24and it's because they they build this,
58:25and then they go, "Oh, now I want to add
58:27some black mold." And then they do more,
58:28and then they do more, and then they
58:29they zoom out, and they go, "Oh my gosh,
58:32I can't understand this. There's so much
58:33going on." So, you have to label what
58:35you're building as you build it, okay?
58:38So, if I select these four here, if I
58:40hit shift P, which you can do if you've
58:42got the node wrangler um add-on
58:45installed, right? Make sure you just uh
58:47enable that, and you will see it. Um,
58:49you hit shift P, and then you will
58:51everything selected gets a frame. You
58:53can also just go group, and then go Oh,
58:55sorry. Layout, and then say frame, and
58:57then put your nodes inside that frame.
59:01Anyways, uh I'm going to hit N to bring
59:03up the properties on this frame that is
59:05selected, and then for the label, I'm
59:07going to type in
59:09sun fade, right? Just so that I know
59:11what it is. Okay. Great. Our first
59:13manipulation. Baby's first manipulation
59:17by Fisher-Price. Anyways, um
59:19let's now add another effect, which is
59:23uh black mold. Okay. And actually, it
59:26might help at this point uh to bring in
59:28some image reference. I'll put a link to
59:30this, um but it's, uh, reference that I
59:32found.
59:33This guy right here. Okay. Um, and you
59:36can see this is this is what real brick
59:38brick looks like on the side of a
59:39building. It's obviously, uh, seen some
59:42better days, um, but you can see as we
59:44zoom in here we've got like some just
59:46black patches, right? They kind of build
59:48up on some of the brick. We've also got
59:50some white patches that's, uh, kind of
59:52like efflorescence is what they call it.
59:54Kind of like where like the minerals
59:56from water the water disappears and that
59:58leaves minerals behind. That's my
59:59understanding. Uh, and then we've also
1:00:01got like desaturated brick in here,
1:00:03right? So, those three elements, black
1:00:05mold, desaturated elements, and
1:00:07efflorescence that can really help, uh,
1:00:09make this look like an interesting
1:00:11texture, okay? Um, but let's say I don't
1:00:13want to do like just a simple value
1:00:14adjustment and make the brick look
1:00:16darker. I want to actually make like act
1:00:18feel like elements on top of it that are
1:00:19just like a purely black on those parts.
1:00:23So, for that I'm going to make some
1:00:24space here.
1:00:26And again, between here, my last
1:00:28operation, and here I can add in another
1:00:31operation, okay?
1:00:33Now, if I want to introduce another
1:00:34color, um, the way I would do that is by
1:00:37using shift A, the node that we used
1:00:40before to blend in our, um, ambient,
1:00:42sorry, yes, ambient occlusion is the,
1:00:45uh, mix color node. Okay, super common
1:00:49node as I mentioned before, um, that is
1:00:51very versatile and it's used a lot for
1:00:53masking. It's actually really just
1:00:55convenient that we've got this factor
1:00:57input here for this hue saturation
1:00:59because most nodes don't have that,
1:01:00right? If you use like the, uh,
1:01:02brightness and contrast and you wanted
1:01:04to do a factor operation, you couldn't.
1:01:06You have to use it through one of these
1:01:07nodes. So, a mix shader is what you
1:01:10often use when you want to like combine
1:01:11two things, um, together because it has
1:01:14two inputs and it has a factor here,
1:01:17right? So, that's where your mask goes
1:01:18and then you've got two, uh, effects
1:01:20here, your original and then your
1:01:22affected thing. That's generally the the
1:01:24the setup there. Okay, so what I'm going
1:01:26to do is I'm going to take my output
1:01:28from my sun fade and I'm going to put
1:01:29that into the top input, okay? And let's
1:01:31have a look at this.
1:01:33Okay. So, what this is enabling us to
1:01:35do, the factor is, as I mentioned
1:01:38before, a a value of zero is just using
1:01:40100% of the texture without any
1:01:42influence of the bottom and then as I
1:01:44drag this up it's more and more and more
1:01:45until it's 100% of the bottom influence,
1:01:48okay? So, I want this to look like,
1:01:50yeah, like let's say some black mold
1:01:52that's kind of building up on our brick
1:01:54there. So, I'm going to go with a solid
1:01:56black texture. But, you know, you could
1:01:58put green in there, make it look like
1:02:00sludge or slime or whatever that's kind
1:02:02of built up, but I'm just going with,
1:02:03uh, solid black, okay? And now I'm going
1:02:06to connect this with my shader over
1:02:08here, right? And this is, uh, what we've
1:02:10got so far. Basically, this is also how
1:02:12you would make painted, uh, brick.
1:02:14That's literally it. This color now
1:02:16becomes whatever color you want your
1:02:18brick to be, um, cuz we've just
1:02:20overridden what we have as the base
1:02:22color. Um, in fact, actually, if you
1:02:23just had solid brick like that, you'd
1:02:25actually just get rid of the color input
1:02:27and then just use this as your color of
1:02:29your brick. Exact same thing as, uh,
1:02:31what we've got going on here. Um,
1:02:32anyways, so this this is going to be
1:02:34black and then this is going to be what
1:02:37wherever we want this black mold to
1:02:39appear. Now, we could use a noise
1:02:42texture, right? We could take, you know,
1:02:43the output of this color ramp if we were
1:02:44really lazy, just put in the exact same
1:02:46spot as where you've got this, right?
1:02:49And that would give us this kind of
1:02:50look, but, you know, assuming we're
1:02:52working on a scene with like a building
1:02:53and maybe we've just got a flat wall.
1:02:55We've also got windows on the wall,
1:02:57right? And wherever there's a window,
1:02:59right? There's maybe more moisture build
1:03:01up in the corners, uh, wherever there's
1:03:02a door there might be another type,
1:03:04right? Um, there's going to be white
1:03:06efflorescence in different parts. These
1:03:08kind of things you have to choose where
1:03:10that goes. So, you need to actually have
1:03:12an option to paint, to actually choose I
1:03:16want this part of the mesh to have this
1:03:18thing. And for that you need to do
1:03:20painting, okay? Now, there are two types
1:03:23of painting, um, and one of them I'm
1:03:25actually very new at, but I love it. Um,
1:03:28the first type is the one that I've I've
1:03:30used for years and years and it's, yeah,
1:03:32it's it's very common and it's very
1:03:34useful, um, and it's just called image
1:03:36painting. So, you go shift A and then
1:03:38you go texture, image texture, right?
1:03:41And then just like before at the start
1:03:43when I created a new texture, you go new
1:03:45texture. And by the way, don't do this
1:03:47cuz we're actually going to use the
1:03:48second method in a second, um, but I
1:03:49want to show you this as a viable way to
1:03:52paint, um, but why I don't actually
1:03:55recommend it for a lot of environment
1:03:57textures because it's, um, it's really
1:03:59only useful for like if you're taking a
1:04:01model and then you're going to be using
1:04:02it externally like in a real-time engine
1:04:04or something, you might do your
1:04:05texturing this way, um, because then
1:04:07you've got the image texture, um, but
1:04:09anyways, so I'm going to hit new.
1:04:11Um, I would have to make it non-color
1:04:13data because I'm going to be using it as
1:04:15a mask and then I would take this and I
1:04:16put this into my factor input over here.
1:04:19And now because this is a black image,
1:04:21we are now seeing 100% of this over
1:04:24here, our original texture. So, now I
1:04:26could go to texture paint, control tab,
1:04:28and then, uh, go to texture paint over
1:04:30here. And I could paint. But what you
1:04:33would notice straight away is that, uh,
1:04:35it's not painting where you would expect
1:04:36it to paint, but it's not a bug, it's
1:04:38not something wrong. It's because it's
1:04:40using our UV coordinates, which we
1:04:43configured not for painting, but for,
1:04:46um, uh, tiling a brick. So, that's why
1:04:49we've got a tiling effect on our texture
1:04:51cuz it's putting it that brush stroke on
1:04:53like all of these coordinates at the
1:04:54same time because it's tiled, right? So,
1:04:57this is the first issue that I don't
1:04:59like is you now have to make a separate
1:05:00UV map and I will call this one, uh,
1:05:03mask, right? And then I have to create
1:05:05another input, uh, UV map actually and
1:05:09then define which UV map use this
1:05:12instead of that and then I will, uh,
1:05:14create UV unwrap.
1:05:17Uh, oh, I have to go the UV image
1:05:19editor, not the image editor, UV image
1:05:21editor.
1:05:22And then like this. Oh, sorry. No,
1:05:25actually, no, it was correct the first
1:05:26time. Yeah, I'm not I'm not tiling it,
1:05:28okay? Um, and now that I've done that,
1:05:30let's go back to texture paint mode and
1:05:34fill it with the color black, right?
1:05:38Cuz that's what I'm painting into,
1:05:40right? And now I can paint where that
1:05:43goes. Right.
1:05:45But something that you will notice with
1:05:47this is, uh, one, that was very fiddly,
1:05:49but two, it's only using half of our
1:05:51image here. And this is the big issue
1:05:53with this is that you've often got
1:05:55something that is long, like a long
1:05:57road, a long wall, or, uh, a a model
1:06:00that's right like got UVs in different
1:06:02different place and it has to fill has
1:06:04to abide by UV coordinates. And as I
1:06:06mentioned this isn't a UV unwrapping
1:06:08tutorial, but you can see that it's it's
1:06:11using half of our space here. The other
1:06:13big issue is is that if I did all my
1:06:15painting exactly how I wanted it and
1:06:17then let's say I'm working with a client
1:06:19and the client says, "Hey, move that
1:06:20door that is modeled here and move it to
1:06:22the the left or the right or maybe
1:06:24extend the building, right?" Well, now
1:06:26this UV map doesn't work anymore and I
1:06:29have to repaint it. Have to delete
1:06:31everything, re-UV unwrap it, and then
1:06:33repaint it. And that is very annoying
1:06:36and fiddly. And we're only using half
1:06:38the space and it's just it's it's a
1:06:39waste. It's not the most ideal, uh, way
1:06:43to do this. So, I'm going to delete my
1:06:45UV map here. So, we've just got the
1:06:46original and I'm going to delete this.
1:06:49And I'm going to delete my image because
1:06:52we are going to be using vertex
1:06:54painting. So, control tab, hold that
1:06:57down, and you should see vertex painting
1:06:59at the top. Um, now in order to paint
1:07:01into it cuz we're looking at the shader
1:07:03mode, look dev mode, it's not referenced
1:07:05in here yet. So, let's just go to the,
1:07:07uh,
1:07:07what is that? What's the mode called?
1:07:09It's just called solid view mode, right?
1:07:11I always forget. I know the icon.
1:07:12Anyways, um,
1:07:14so, this is vertex paint mode, um, but
1:07:17by default there's not really anything
1:07:18to paint into. So, at the top here
1:07:20you've got attribute. So, just click
1:07:21down. I'm not sure this face corner
1:07:23thing, uh, it just did a, I don't know,
1:07:25defaults as that. So, I'm going to
1:07:27delete that, um, and instead create a
1:07:29new vertex, uh, sorry, color attribute.
1:07:33I just think of it as a vertex paint
1:07:35layer, really. Um, and let's just give
1:07:37it a name. Let's call it, uh, I'm going
1:07:38to call it black because we're going to
1:07:39be painting into some black areas. We're
1:07:42going to create black mold using this.
1:07:43I'm just going to call it black. Haha.
1:07:46All right, um, so, with this I can, with
1:07:49a brush added with a white, uh,
1:07:53paint selected, I can paint
1:07:55onto my mesh. Now, it's not working as
1:07:59you would hope. Uh, and the reason for
1:08:01this is that vertex paint uses your
1:08:03vertices, okay? So, just like an image
1:08:06has pixels, right? You let's say you've
1:08:08got 1,024 by 1,024, those are pixels. In
1:08:12this case, it we've got vertices and
1:08:15although we have a subsurf modifier
1:08:17here, um, it's not using that. It's
1:08:20using the actual mesh that we've got
1:08:22here. So, we it's like we're working
1:08:24with an image that has what is that? 5
1:08:27by 3? So, we've got 15 pixels to work
1:08:30with. So, we don't have enough
1:08:32resolution to to paint into. Um, so,
1:08:35we're going to subdivide this mesh here.
1:08:37But before we do that, because we've got
1:08:39a subdivision enabled over here, if we
1:08:42were to subdivide it we might
1:08:43accidentally crash Blender. So, uh,
1:08:45first of all, because we're going to be
1:08:47subdividing it, we don't need this
1:08:49higher res eventually. So, let's just
1:08:50set this to four and four. Um, and then
1:08:53I'm actually just going to turn it off
1:08:55from my viewport for now because we
1:08:57won't need it until we start to, uh, get
1:08:58to the pretty render stage. All right,
1:09:01so now with this, selecting everything,
1:09:03I'm going to right click and say
1:09:04subdivide.
1:09:06Then in this little, um,
1:09:07what do you even call it? The last last
1:09:10step tool.
1:09:12Um, I'm going to increase this. It maxes
1:09:15out at 10, but if you type in 20, you
1:09:17can type in any number over the top to
1:09:19override it. So, I'm going to go with,
1:09:20uh, 20. So, that sounds like a lot, but
1:09:23remember this is like pixels that we're
1:09:25working with, um, and Blender's actually
1:09:27gotten really good. Um, like I think
1:09:29when I started like 20 years ago, like
1:09:31Blender like really struggled with
1:09:33resolute like mesh uh density. And this
1:09:36would like really throw render times.
1:09:37Nowadays, this is like it it almost adds
1:09:40nothing to the render time. It's that
1:09:41it's that lightweight. So, that's good.
1:09:43So, now that we've got that, now when we
1:09:45go back into vertex paint mode, uh and
1:09:48we're in solid view mode, provided this
1:09:50is selected at the top there, we should
1:09:51see us being able to paint onto our
1:09:54mesh. Um, and that's great. Now, you can
1:09:56actually use colors, you know, it's it's
1:09:59just it's almost like uh
1:10:01you know, an image that has a an RGB
1:10:03channel or whatever. So, you can if you
1:10:05wanted to paint colors and then actually
1:10:07reference that in your base color over
1:10:09there if you wanted to do some
1:10:10painting like that. But in our case, of
1:10:12course, we are um we're just creating uh
1:10:15a mask. So, let me just turn the
1:10:16saturation off. Okay. So, uh I also want
1:10:19to now just clear it cuz I've done a
1:10:20bunch of stuff. So, if you go paint and
1:10:22then say uh set vertex colors, that's
1:10:25going to fill it with your foreground.
1:10:27So, I don't want that. So, I'm going to
1:10:28do it again uh flipping it, control X.
1:10:30By the way, so I'm uh hitting X to flip
1:10:32between those two um like that. So,
1:10:34that's a very important one to remember.
1:10:36All right. Okay. So, let's just do um
1:10:39yeah, I don't know. Let's just do some
1:10:40quick little painting. Just pretend
1:10:42there's like some mold at the top. We'll
1:10:43uh we'll make it look pretty in a sec.
1:10:45Uh first, I want to reference it in my
1:10:47shader over here.
1:10:49So, we don't have like an image to bring
1:10:51in or anything to load. Instead, we go
1:10:52shift A and then go input and then at
1:10:55the very top, if you don't see it there,
1:10:57uh attributes, you should see it
1:10:59referenced there as uh the one that we
1:11:01created. Okay? If you don't, you can
1:11:03also just add in an attribute node and
1:11:05then just type it in. But yeah, say
1:11:07attributes black and it should appear
1:11:09right there. And now, if we go to look
1:11:11dev mode, what I'm going to do is
1:11:13control shift and left click on this.
1:11:16Um, it's going to default to the color
1:11:17input, but we're going to look at just
1:11:18the factor input. By the way, if you see
1:11:20color and factor together, you'll notice
1:11:22they're like the same. But color will
1:11:24show you like in a case of an image like
1:11:26the R G and B together. And then uh
1:11:28factor is just going to be like a
1:11:29grayscale version. So, we're just using
1:11:31grayscale, so that's what we're looking
1:11:32at.
1:11:33Okay. So, that's it. So, then basically,
1:11:34if I want to reference that on my uh
1:11:37mask, I'm just just like before with my
1:11:39image, I'm dragging it into the factor
1:11:40input. And look at that. So, now in
1:11:43vertex paint mode, I can just
1:11:46paint like this. And it's really cool.
1:11:49I've also got like a smear brush, right?
1:11:50If I wanted to create like a leaking
1:11:52kind of
1:11:53uh pattern, I could kind of create some
1:11:55I don't know why it it does like a
1:11:56pretty severe
1:11:58like it almost adds opacity to it when
1:12:00you smear down with like too strong of a
1:12:03strength. It's very very weird. But
1:12:04anyways, like a low strength, you could
1:12:05make like some pretty simple like
1:12:07smudges, you know, that kind of look to
1:12:09it. Um,
1:12:11and that's pretty good. But you'll know
1:12:13looking at this that it's still
1:12:15low res, right? It's kind of soft,
1:12:18right? And that's because, you know,
1:12:20we're we're work it's it's really just
1:12:22referencing the brush, right? Which has,
1:12:24you know, a standard falloff. You could
1:12:26I mean, when I first tried to like when
1:12:28I was getting used to texture paint, I'm
1:12:30like, "It's all about the falloff. I got
1:12:31to make an interesting stroke and an
1:12:33interesting texture I got to put in my
1:12:35brush." But remember, we're we're
1:12:36limited to the resolution that we've got
1:12:38of our mesh there. We don't want to go
1:12:41too high, too crazy. Um, but you you
1:12:44think that's probably what you need to
1:12:45do. If you need if you want to create
1:12:47like uh interesting um
1:12:49you know, like a black mold that appears
1:12:51in like the crevices like in our
1:12:53reference photo, it keeps disappearing.
1:12:57This guy, here we go. And I'll put a
1:12:58little thing on it and I'll pin it so it
1:13:00doesn't disappear. Um, if you want to
1:13:01create something like this where you can
1:13:03see it kind of like builds up on the
1:13:05individual bricks.
1:13:06Um, if you want to create that, well
1:13:08then you might think, "Yeah, I need that
1:13:09resolution." But actually, you don't.
1:13:11You just need to understand
1:13:13uh shaders and and math, really.
1:13:16So, I discovered this by accident during
1:13:19um
1:13:20uh my tutorial that I made on The Last
1:13:22of Us Abandoned Style House. Um, I had
1:13:24this exact problem and I was just
1:13:26fooling around and I stumbled on it. So,
1:13:29okay, to add detail to this, essentially
1:13:31what we want to do is between here and
1:13:33here, we're going to add basically like
1:13:35another mask. So, it's going to be a
1:13:37mask on top of a mask. So, this is our
1:13:40original mask going into here where it's
1:13:41doing the black effect. But then between
1:13:43here and here, I'm going to add in
1:13:45another
1:13:46color mix color node like this, drop it
1:13:49in.
1:13:51And then here, I can reference another
1:13:53texture to do some sort of operation. I
1:13:55could subtract, multiply, do whatever.
1:13:57And I can reference something down
1:13:58there.
1:13:59Um, and originally, I was like blending
1:14:01it with a noise texture just like, you
1:14:02know, just add some kind of random edge
1:14:04to it. Um, and it definitely looks
1:14:06better, but I started to realize looking
1:14:08at more and more reference that, you
1:14:09know, the texture's influenced like by
1:14:12the texture, the brick, right? It builds
1:14:14up on individual bricks. It gets into
1:14:16the crevices of the brick. That's really
1:14:19what you need to do. And we have our
1:14:21texture here. Why not reference it? Um,
1:14:25and we also, because we've got a PBR
1:14:27texture, we don't just have like the
1:14:28color information of the brick. We've
1:14:29got the actual geometry of our brick
1:14:32using the displacement map. Okay? So,
1:14:35this guy here, right? Just to have a
1:14:36look at that for a brief second, it's
1:14:38mostly middle gray value. Um, but I can
1:14:41grab that and I can put this into my
1:14:43bottom input um over here. All right.
1:14:45So, let's just have a look at this. This
1:14:47is, you know, it's just using a mix at
1:14:49the moment.
1:14:51Um, the first thing I want to do,
1:14:53actually, you know, let's just yeah,
1:14:54talk about this. So, with with a mix
1:14:56blending mode, that's not what we need.
1:14:58Um, you could do like a multiply and use
1:15:00the dark values to subtract from it,
1:15:02right? And that would be better. You can
1:15:04see some of the bricks starting to show
1:15:05in our mask there. That's good. Um, but
1:15:08the thing that I stumbled on
1:15:09accidentally was color burn.
1:15:12Okay, when you do this, look what
1:15:13happens. It's it's almost like it's
1:15:15doing that that multiply thing, but it's
1:15:17doing something else with it. Um, and
1:15:19it's quite
1:15:21uh
1:15:21it it's hard to understand. So, I've
1:15:23actually got a demonstration here. Okay,
1:15:25so this is just to show you what color
1:15:26burn does. So, I've got a painted mask
1:15:28here with a solid black, a middle gray,
1:15:31and then a pure white on the right-hand
1:15:33side here. So, three kind of paint
1:15:34colors. And then I've got a noise
1:15:36texture, which is going to be uh blended
1:15:39using a color burn operation. Okay? So,
1:15:41that's what it's doing there, okay?
1:15:43Um, so it's it's you can see the edge of
1:15:46this pure white value there, it's now
1:15:48taking in some of the detail of the
1:15:51noise texture, and it's feeding it um
1:15:54it's it's just sort of adding detail to
1:15:56that edge there. So, even though this is
1:15:58like a pretty low res um
1:16:00looking mesh, we've got added detail in
1:16:03this edge there. Um, and what it's
1:16:05doing, according to the manual, is it's
1:16:07first inverting the noise texture. So,
1:16:09it's taking a noise texture like that,
1:16:11it's inverting it, it's then dividing it
1:16:13by the top input, and then it's
1:16:15inverting it back again, which gives you
1:16:18this edge there. I don't know if that
1:16:20helps you understand it. It didn't
1:16:21really help me.
1:16:23But frankly, you don't really need to
1:16:24know it. You don't really need to
1:16:25understand exactly how it's working. You
1:16:27just
1:16:28the more you play with it, that's how
1:16:29you're going to really get to come to
1:16:31grips with it.
1:16:33But anyways, the first thing we need to
1:16:34do is because we've got some influence
1:16:36there, but it's but it's not quite
1:16:38enough. And the reason for that is that
1:16:39this displacement value, it's mostly in
1:16:42the middle grays. And the reason for
1:16:43that is that the
1:16:45uh displacement map is not normalized.
1:16:48So, it's not zero to one, which is what
1:16:50you expect from most grayscale. It's
1:16:52using a 20 cm and I know this cuz
1:16:56Polygon is my company and that's how we
1:16:57author it. So, it's assuming that
1:16:59there's a maximum amount of displacement
1:17:01of 20 cm for all types of textures. And
1:17:03because brick is a very small amount of
1:17:05displacement, we're using mostly middle
1:17:07gray values. But then if you were using
1:17:09like like cliffs or rocks or something,
1:17:11then you would be getting that full
1:17:12range there. But what it means is that
1:17:14it's there's not really enough detail in
1:17:16there for it to get the full effect of
1:17:17the color burn. So, what we need to do
1:17:19is add in a color ramp node to bring
1:17:22those values closer together. So,
1:17:24looking at this, I'm going to bring this
1:17:26in to get it basically just more
1:17:28contrasted than it is currently.
1:17:30So, just drag this in.
1:17:33Something like
1:17:35this.
1:17:37Right? So, I've got like a lot of like
1:17:39gray values in there.
1:17:41Okay? And then now if we look at this,
1:17:43look at that effect now.
1:17:45And look, if I do a uh some painting
1:17:48effects now, look what happens.
1:17:50Like we we're using a pretty low
1:17:51resolution, right? That many pixels to
1:17:54paint into, but we've got all the detail
1:17:56from the brick coming through in our
1:17:59mask. Isn't that cool? And then looking
1:18:02at it through the eyes of our proper
1:18:04shader with the with the black effect
1:18:06there, you could see we're now able to
1:18:08paint onto the individual bricks. But in
1:18:11my case, I actually wanted to paint um
1:18:13although this reference photo does kind
1:18:15of look like this, I want to paint into
1:18:16the crevices and kind of invert it. So,
1:18:18that's quite easy to do just by taking
1:18:20this color ramp here and just inverting
1:18:21it, dragging it to the left, and then
1:18:23dragging this one out. And now,
1:18:27I am able to paint
1:18:29primarily
1:18:30into the crevices, into the uh the grout
1:18:33of
1:18:35my brick there.
1:18:36And so, this is how you get interesting
1:18:39textures
1:18:41in Blender. It's really, you know, this
1:18:43tutorial's called texturing. As you can
1:18:45probably tell, it's mostly understanding
1:18:48shaders.
1:18:49Um, because
1:18:51if you're using something like Substance
1:18:53Painter, right? You're painting into
1:18:55images, which are then, you know, it's
1:18:56an interoperable format, an image, and
1:18:59so it's designed to be used in external
1:19:02uh software packages. So, it's, you
1:19:03know, it's putting all this data into
1:19:05images. Um, but it, you know, for
1:19:08something this size, if you wanted to
1:19:10bake that into an image, it would be
1:19:12ginormous. Images wouldn't make sense.
1:19:14So, for games and most cases, VFX,
1:19:17everything like that, you do your detail
1:19:19um by by understanding a shader, right?
1:19:22So, this kind of effect happens all
1:19:26inside of your shader here like this.
1:19:29Um but there you go. That's kind of the
1:19:30gist of it. And if the black value is a
1:19:32little bit too strong, you can set this
1:19:34to multiply.
1:19:37Right, which won't change anything. It
1:19:38looks exactly the same as it did with
1:19:40mix. But now this black value here, if
1:19:43because multiply will only take a darker
1:19:46it'll only take the dark value and it
1:19:48will ignore the lighter value. Now this
1:19:50black value here almost becomes the
1:19:52strength of my mask. Um which would be
1:19:55the same by the way as adding in another
1:19:57mix node
1:19:58color mix node with like two black and
1:20:00white colors and then like just using
1:20:02the factor as the opacity. But it just
1:20:03saves us this node cuz we can now take
1:20:05this and now if I increase this
1:20:08you can see if I go all the way to one
1:20:10side it's disappeared entirely. And now
1:20:12this yeah, it just becomes the opacity
1:20:14of this this darkening effect there.
1:20:17So, that's basically it.
1:20:19Um and if you want more or less of this,
1:20:21you can play around with these sliders
1:20:23as well.
1:20:24You know.
1:20:25Um
1:20:26But yeah, that's kind of the gist of it.
1:20:30Um and if you want to see
1:20:32that's the mask that we've got. That's
1:20:34what we're painting into. And you can
1:20:35see like there's not a lot of detail in
1:20:37there.
1:20:38The color burn effect really works in
1:20:40low strengths. Like very subtle like
1:20:43again going back to the example, it's
1:20:44these middle values here. That's where
1:20:46all the detail needs to go in there. Um
1:20:48so just keep that in mind if you're
1:20:50using like a strength of one, um you
1:20:52will find that this doesn't really have
1:20:54much of an effect. Like the mask just
1:20:55comes in super strong. It's those small
1:20:58subtle strength values
1:21:00um that that it really starts to shine.
1:21:03Um but really at this stage this to get
1:21:05a good effect, you're going to have to
1:21:07look at reference. Understand reference.
1:21:09We're using just a wall at the moment,
1:21:11but understand and see how it builds up
1:21:13and how it you know, you get little
1:21:14patches of things um
1:21:16and you get like yeah, like chunks
1:21:19missing and you got big shapes and small
1:21:21shapes and medium shapes and that's
1:21:24really it it that's what really good
1:21:26texturing is about is understanding
1:21:29uh design um but yeah, also
1:21:30understanding reference and how to make
1:21:32it work for your scene.
1:21:35All right. I think I've made that worse.
1:21:37Anyways, let me pause just while I clean
1:21:39this up. Anyways, there you go. Um but
1:21:41you can see my uh my mistake was trying
1:21:43to paint into the mask uh without seeing
1:21:46the effect that it's having on it. So,
1:21:47it definitely helps to look at the
1:21:49shader while you're painting so that you
1:21:51can truly understand how it's going to
1:21:52be affecting it. Um but there we go. All
1:21:54right. So, now all we need to do is
1:21:56label it. So, just like before, I'm
1:21:58going to drag this out. I'm going to
1:21:59select the uh the nodes which are
1:22:02relating to this effect. I'm going to
1:22:04hit shift P which you can do when you've
1:22:06got the node wrangler installed. Click
1:22:08on the frame, hit N and then I'm going
1:22:10to give it a name. And I'm going to call
1:22:11this black mold.
1:22:14All right. Now let me full screen this
1:22:16so that you can get a gander of uh where
1:22:18we're up to. We've created a sun fade.
1:22:21Um we've done a simple black mold
1:22:23operation. And uh now the final really
1:22:27common thing that you need to learn is
1:22:29how to compile one image on top of
1:22:32another that has alpha. Okay. So, what
1:22:36we're going to do is we're going to add
1:22:37some graffiti to our wall. So, I've
1:22:39included a link in the description where
1:22:41you can download this tag that was made
1:22:44by someone
1:22:46um that we are going to use to put on
1:22:48our wall. So, it is a PNG and it's just
1:22:52simple black on top of a transparent
1:22:55background. So, super common thing that
1:22:57you might need to do.
1:22:59So, we need to add it to our node setup
1:23:01first of all. So, we're going to hit
1:23:02shift A then go texture image texture
1:23:04and we're just going to click open. Here
1:23:06is our PNG. I'm going to hit open.
1:23:09And uh now we need to find a way to add
1:23:12it. So, essentially it's going into our
1:23:13base color, right? That's the color that
1:23:15is uh I mean yeah, graffiti is color,
1:23:17right? So, it wouldn't wouldn't add
1:23:19anything else. Um so uh yeah, how would
1:23:21we how would we do that? Uh we do it
1:23:23with a mix color node. So, again as I've
1:23:27said before super common color mix
1:23:29color. Pretty much whenever you're
1:23:31thinking like I got to combine
1:23:32something, it's mix color. It's always
1:23:33mix color. So, you just drop it in here.
1:23:37And there we go. Now you would think
1:23:39like okay, I put this into the bottom
1:23:42input, right? Okay, you do that and then
1:23:44you go oh this this didn't work. What's
1:23:47happened, right? So, you have to think
1:23:49about it, right? So,
1:23:50what we are taking is something that is
1:23:52on a transparent background, okay? So,
1:23:54we need to use the transparency of it.
1:23:57And if we have a look at this image
1:23:59here, we can see that it's it doesn't
1:24:02have like the color information is just
1:24:05pure color it's just black essentially.
1:24:07It's pure I mean there's like a I don't
1:24:08know a faint outline or something, but
1:24:09it's pure black. But underneath that
1:24:11there is an alpha output. So, if we
1:24:13control shift left click again, it'll
1:24:15then just show that. And now we can see
1:24:17we have got black and white, okay? What
1:24:20do you know about black and white? It
1:24:21can be used as a mask, okay? So, going
1:24:24back to here, what we want to do is
1:24:26actually just sever this. So, I'm going
1:24:27to control and then right click drag
1:24:29over that to just knife it away. Knife
1:24:31it away.
1:24:32Um and then instead of taking the color
1:24:33output, I'm going to take the alpha.
1:24:36And then you would think oh yeah, put
1:24:37that into the uh you know, the base at
1:24:40the bottom there. But then this is again
1:24:41is not what we need to do.
1:24:43You can probably guess what we're going
1:24:44to do. It's not putting into the B
1:24:46input. We're going to put it into the
1:24:48factor input. Like so. And that is how
1:24:52we're able to get that um that look
1:24:54there. Now if you're working with a
1:24:56graffiti tag or some sort of alpha that
1:24:58had an actual color information, you
1:25:00would then take the color of this and
1:25:01then put this into the B input. So, it's
1:25:04then taking the color and then it's
1:25:05using that with the alpha that it
1:25:08uh yeah, that we've used as the factor.
1:25:10But in our case, doesn't matter. It's
1:25:11just pure black. So, actually we could
1:25:14get rid of that and we can then make
1:25:15this color here be whatever color we
1:25:17want our graffiti to be. Um because
1:25:20really the although it is black and
1:25:21white, um we're really just using the
1:25:23alpha information. That's really where
1:25:25the key information is. Um and because
1:25:28we're using it you know, in this way, we
1:25:30can choose and make this color whatever
1:25:32we want. Make it a hot pink, right?
1:25:34Whatever we whatever we want. Um but now
1:25:36let's fix the the next problem, right?
1:25:37Like why is it tiling like this? Well,
1:25:39it's tiling because the default way that
1:25:41we do uh texture coordinates is using
1:25:43our UV
1:25:45uh sorry, the the UV map, right? And the
1:25:47UV map was set up for tiling of our
1:25:50brick. Now you could create a separate
1:25:52UV map just for this, but actually we
1:25:55don't need to do that.
1:25:56Okay, we can keep our existing UV map.
1:25:58We just need to manipulate the
1:25:59coordinates that we've got currently.
1:26:02Um first though, we can fix the
1:26:04repeating issue here um not by doing any
1:26:07sort of like extra node setups. That
1:26:08used to be the way you had to do it in
1:26:09Blender. Add like a whole thing and set
1:26:12it to clip and all this stuff. Now on
1:26:14your image texture node, there is an
1:26:16option here for repeat. So, we just need
1:26:18to change that from repeat to clip. And
1:26:20that's it. So, we've now got just one
1:26:22instance of it which is the instance
1:26:25that was used
1:26:27I'll unpin this.
1:26:30Wherever
1:26:31I can't even see it. There's so many
1:26:33vertices.
1:26:34Basically yeah, wherever the actual UV
1:26:36grid floor is, it will appear there cuz
1:26:38it's basically like yeah, it's like
1:26:41having the tag right there on that that
1:26:43square. So,
1:26:45yeah, anyways, you you get the idea.
1:26:47Man, that's really hard to see. Okay.
1:26:50Anyways, it's it's it's appearing right
1:26:51there. But let's say this is too big,
1:26:53right? It's it's too big. In fact
1:26:55actually, I was going to mention this as
1:26:56well. It can help to texture things and
1:26:59when you're building a scene to actually
1:27:01use some sort of scale reference. So, I
1:27:03have this CC0 man which I've added into
1:27:06my asset browser
1:27:08and then saved it as part of my Blender
1:27:10install. So, I'll include a link to this
1:27:12as well, but it's just a scale reference
1:27:15that is
1:27:17uh can be helpful to understand what
1:27:18what scale we're actually working with
1:27:20here.
1:27:21Okay. Um why is that he's still so far
1:27:24away?
1:27:25Let's put him over here.
1:27:27And then let's move this wall up.
1:27:29Okay, there we go. All right. So, the
1:27:31that's a pretty big tag. Pretty big tag.
1:27:33All right. So, let's say we want to uh
1:27:35change the scale of that and maybe the
1:27:37position as well. So, what we need to do
1:27:39is first of all bring in the texture
1:27:41coordinates
1:27:42and set this to UV which will change
1:27:45nothing. Should change absolutely
1:27:47nothing um because that's what it's
1:27:49using by default already. But then
1:27:51between here and here we need to
1:27:52manipulate that. And we do that by
1:27:54adding in a vector mapping node. And by
1:27:57the way, don't feel bad if you're like
1:27:59how would I know that that's like you
1:28:01just learn it from watching tutorials
1:28:03like this. And then next time you're
1:28:05thinking of doing something like that,
1:28:06you're like yeah, that's how I do it. I
1:28:07whoops, I do a mapping operation. Okay.
1:28:10So, I can change the scale of this by
1:28:12dragging down on all these inputs here.
1:28:14And then I can just drag left or right.
1:28:16It's too far so I'm going to hold down
1:28:18shift to make it smaller. And then I'm
1:28:19just going to increase it. So, as I
1:28:21increase it, it's like it's increasing
1:28:23the times that it's tiling of the UV
1:28:27coordinates, right? If that's the
1:28:28easiest way to imagine it. So,
1:28:29increasing the scale makes it appear
1:28:30smaller.
1:28:31Um and then the location here changes
1:28:33the position on the wall.
1:28:35Right? So, I can change this.
1:28:38Oh no, that was too quick.
1:28:40But uh you get the idea, right? Oh,
1:28:42maybe it's a little bit too low now.
1:28:44Let's make it a little bit higher. So,
1:28:45it's like the height that somebody might
1:28:48you know, tag something. And yeah, where
1:28:50wherever you want to put it. Wherever
1:28:52you want to put it.
1:28:53Um and also the order in which you want
1:28:55to put it. If you wanted this to look
1:28:57like old graffiti that had been there a
1:28:59while, very decrepit thing and then the
1:29:01black mold appear on top of it, then you
1:29:03would put this over here before
1:29:05um the black mold operation. But in our
1:29:07case, I think it makes sense for it to
1:29:08be after it. All right. Before we move
1:29:11on, what's the one thing we need to do
1:29:13always? Label our work, right? So, we've
1:29:17got four nodes here that just directly
1:29:19relate to the graffiti. So, I'm going to
1:29:21hit shift P on those, then select the
1:29:23frame, hit N, and I'm going to type in
1:29:26graffiti. And that simple little thing
1:29:29will just make life a bit easier when
1:29:31you're zooming out and reading um
1:29:33everything. Okay. Well, so far, what
1:29:35we've been focusing on is adding into
1:29:38our color map here. But, it's also very
1:29:41common to want to add and change uh a
1:29:45roughness map, which is, as you might
1:29:47remember, a completely well, in our
1:29:49case, it's almost completely
1:29:50white-looking map, but it's it's a
1:29:52grayscale, right? So, black values is
1:29:55shiny, and then white values is dull.
1:29:57And often, you've got a scene maybe it's
1:29:59a rainy scene, right? Everything's just
1:30:01wet, and it's like this wall here, it
1:30:04needs to be more wet. Um right? And if
1:30:07you look at this, you go down to your,
1:30:09you know, you got your map over here,
1:30:11and you look over it, and you go,
1:30:13"Ah, that's annoying, right? My sli-
1:30:15lider is gone." And this was what I used
1:30:17to do when I started. I'm like, "Ah, I
1:30:19need to change it. Well, I'll just
1:30:20remove it." And then I've got my slider
1:30:22here, right?
1:30:23And this does, you know, it solves the
1:30:26problem, but the detail that you have in
1:30:28that map is now lost. Now, um granted,
1:30:30in our case, it's probably not going to
1:30:32be that much of a difference because
1:30:33there's not a lot of detail in there.
1:30:35There is some, but uh it's it's
1:30:38important to understand how can you do
1:30:39that? How can you retain the detail in a
1:30:41map, but still be able to change it? Um
1:30:44and really, it's just a simple image
1:30:47operation to make that grayscale image
1:30:51here that we've got, make it look darker
1:30:53or make it look lighter. Um so really,
1:30:56what you need to do between here and
1:30:58there is to just add in another node.
1:31:00And there's a number of nodes that could
1:31:02do it. You could do a brightness and
1:31:04contrast. You could do an RGB curves.
1:31:07You could even do like a color ramp
1:31:09operation if you wanted to. But, the
1:31:11simplest I found um that I would
1:31:13recommend for most people is just the
1:31:15hue saturation value node. Um so, drop
1:31:18it in there.
1:31:19Obviously, you don't need to touch hue
1:31:21or saturation. That's not going to do
1:31:22anything with the grayscale image, but
1:31:24the value node there. So, if you keep it
1:31:26at one, that's going to be obviously
1:31:28unchanged. But, if you wanted to make it
1:31:30shinier, you just change the value, and
1:31:33you reduce that. If you wanted to make
1:31:34it uh look more dull than what you've
1:31:37got, then you just increase it like
1:31:38that. And so, this value here just
1:31:41becomes almost like, you know, having a
1:31:43slider over here. But, because we
1:31:47figured out how to do it smartly, um we
1:31:50are not just deleting all the data that
1:31:52we can have in this roughness map. Cuz
1:31:54these little These little details that
1:31:56come in these PBR maps, it helps. It
1:31:58adds complexity to a material um that
1:32:01can just it it'll help the material feel
1:32:03more realistic if you can retain that
1:32:05that data. So, that is how to do that
1:32:07very simple um operation. Now, in our
1:32:11case, actually, I don't think this
1:32:14um
1:32:15I don't think we actually want to adjust
1:32:16it. So, I'm actually going to delete
1:32:18that. I'm going to hit control X, which
1:32:20is how you delete something, but retain
1:32:21its connection. But, what I do want to
1:32:23do
1:32:24is I want to do something that will
1:32:26really help this wall um
1:32:28look nice. And that is to have the black
1:32:30mold that we've got here influence our
1:32:33roughness map, okay? So, rather than do
1:32:35a, you know, broad strokes change to the
1:32:37roughness for the whole thing, I want it
1:32:39to just appear where we've got our um
1:32:43uh grunge our our black uh thing. So,
1:32:46basically, wherever I've got this
1:32:48control shift left click on that, that's
1:32:50my mask, I want to influence my
1:32:52roughness map. So, have a think about
1:32:54that first. How would you do that? How
1:32:55could you have that mask influence our
1:32:58grayscale map here?
1:33:00Um
1:33:01and the answer is shift A, mix color,
1:33:04the most overused um not overused, the
1:33:07most used. It's It's not overused
1:33:10because it's so versatile, and it's used
1:33:12for so many things. But, yeah,
1:33:14basically, you want to alter something,
1:33:16bring it in. Your handy trusty mix color
1:33:18node.
1:33:20Uh I'm taking my roughness, I'm putting
1:33:22it into my top input, and then I'm going
1:33:24to take my output. Let's just move this
1:33:26over, and I'll Yeah, what the hell, I'll
1:33:28close that. I don't think I need that
1:33:29now.
1:33:30Um and I'm going to take my output from
1:33:32my mask, and I'm going to put that into
1:33:35my factor
1:33:36on my mix node down here, okay? So, it's
1:33:39going from there all the way down to the
1:33:41mix node. All right.
1:33:43And now, what is that doing? That means
1:33:45that wherever there is uh the white
1:33:48values in that mask there, it's going to
1:33:51use the B, whatever is in our B input.
1:33:54And wherever there is the black values,
1:33:56it's going to use the initial uh
1:33:58roughness map. So, if we have a look at
1:34:00our shader, you can see. And now, this
1:34:03here becomes what roughness do you want
1:34:06that leaky pattern
1:34:08to leave behind. And isn't that really
1:34:10cool, right? So, you can make it look
1:34:12more dull, like more diffuse than the
1:34:14rest of the wall by making it uh
1:34:16basically yeah, like it seems like
1:34:18around .7 is where the initial um
1:34:21uh roughness map exists. So, if I wanted
1:34:23to, yeah, make it look more dull, I
1:34:25could have that effect. Or, I could make
1:34:27it look more wet than the rest of the
1:34:29wall. But, really, any change whatsoever
1:34:32is going to make this material just feel
1:34:35more realistic. These little details
1:34:37like this, um they really do add visual
1:34:41interest to the material. And it's how
1:34:43you get um awesome-looking materials
1:34:46that actually work for a scene. Um
1:34:49and just just feel real. Like, when you
1:34:50play a game, the reason these these
1:34:52environments just feel like amazing is
1:34:54because they got stuff like this
1:34:55everywhere. Every material has the
1:34:58different properties driven by different
1:34:59parts um and different textures and
1:35:02things. And by the way, this process
1:35:04here, using a mix node with a roughness
1:35:05map, and then having something drive um
1:35:08an extra roughness uh alteration here,
1:35:11that's exactly how you use uh surface
1:35:14imperfection maps. So, Polygon has some,
1:35:16but other sites do as well. But,
1:35:17essentially, it's just masks. It's just
1:35:20masks essentially. They're designed to
1:35:22be used um on top of another shader. So,
1:35:25it's probably not actually going to be
1:35:27useful um for our uh shader here, but
1:35:29you can imagine like if I took this uh
1:35:31stains liquid generic, um and then I
1:35:33downloaded this. Inside of that
1:35:35download, I'd get a map that looks
1:35:37basically like this, black and white,
1:35:39right? So, how would you use that,
1:35:41right? You drag it down here, and then
1:35:43instead of it being, you know, if I
1:35:45wanted to just have broad strokes over
1:35:47the cross the whole surface, you take
1:35:48that and use that like a mask over the
1:35:52the whole surface. And now, I got to set
1:35:53that to non-color data. By the way, I'm
1:35:55just showing you this. This is not
1:35:56something that's part of the tutorial
1:35:57you have to download, but it's just an
1:35:59example. Um you can see that now we've
1:36:02got this like liquid uh
1:36:05yeah, this kind of pattern over the
1:36:07entire wall, and that is one effect,
1:36:10right? It's probably not the best case.
1:36:12I think uh you know, for our scene, it
1:36:14makes more sense to have the actual uh
1:36:17leaky pattern affect it, but that's you
1:36:19you get the idea, right? It These just
1:36:21become masks, which can be used across
1:36:24um a material. All right, but I'm going
1:36:26to set this to be an almost
1:36:29almost the same as the rest of the wall,
1:36:31but just a very slight amount there.
1:36:33Awesome. Okay, so this is where we're
1:36:35at. This is the current node layout that
1:36:37I've got from my end if you want to
1:36:39check yours with it. Um but now, I want
1:36:41to give you a challenge. I want you to
1:36:43try to add two more effects to your
1:36:45material, okay? So, having a look at
1:36:48some uh reference image, you can see
1:36:51that we we've done the black mold, but
1:36:52what about this white uh effect, this
1:36:55white sort of build-up? Um and it
1:36:57actually has a name. It's called uh
1:36:58efflorescence, right? And it's where uh
1:37:01the salt inside bricks is drawn to the
1:37:04surface through moisture, and the
1:37:06moisture evaporates, and then you just
1:37:07get this salt build-up on the bricks.
1:37:10Um so, how could you How could you have
1:37:13that effect in our setup over here?
1:37:16Um the other effect I want you to try to
1:37:18add is uh des- uh
1:37:21yeah,
1:37:22uh vertex-painted
1:37:26Look at these bricks, right? This kind
1:37:28of yellowy pale-looking bricks look
1:37:30totally different to the red bricks
1:37:32around it, right? So, have a think about
1:37:34how you could add those two effects,
1:37:37okay? Have a think about it.
1:37:39Have a think about it. How would you do
1:37:42that? So, pause it now. I want to give
1:37:44you the challenge to cuz this is how you
1:37:46learn things. If you follow a tutorial,
1:37:47you can end up with almost like false
1:37:49confidence that you're understanding
1:37:50things, and then the tutorial stops, and
1:37:51then you go, "Ah, I don't know how to do
1:37:53it myself." So, have a try now at trying
1:37:55to do those two things. Pause the video,
1:37:58and then I'm going to show you the
1:37:59answer that I come up with, um and then
1:38:01you can just compare it and see how you
1:38:02go. So, pause it now, and then I will
1:38:04see you once you've given it a try. All
1:38:07right, hopefully you took a shot at it.
1:38:08Now, I'll show you the answer that I
1:38:10would come up with. Essentially, to
1:38:12create the efflorescence and the
1:38:14desaturation, I would duplicate this
1:38:17little group of four nodes that we've
1:38:19got there, and just duplicate it twice,
1:38:21um and paint in and create separate
1:38:24vertex colors for those things. So, I
1:38:26would uh duplicate this.
1:38:28Um the graffiti I'm going to still going
1:38:30to have the graffiti happen after it.
1:38:32So, I'm just going to disconnect that,
1:38:34and I'll put that over there. Then, um I
1:38:37would call this
1:38:39white efflorescent,
1:38:41which I'm sure is the wrong spelling.
1:38:43Doesn't matter though. Then, I need to
1:38:46create another uh separate vertex color.
1:38:49So, I'm going to call this uh I'll just
1:38:51call it white, and then go into vertex
1:38:54paint mode, add a new vertex color,
1:38:57and call it white. Um and when you're
1:38:59typing in the names by yourself, just
1:39:01remember it's it has to be exact. If
1:39:03this is If there's a space in there, if
1:39:05it's the wrong caps as well, if you've
1:39:07got a capital letter and you don't have
1:39:08it up there, it's not going to find it.
1:39:10So, just keep that in mind. Um and then
1:39:12I also need to make sure I connect my
1:39:14displacement, just like I have over
1:39:16there, so that it's being used um across
1:39:18it. Uh and the graffiti, I'll just keep
1:39:20that over here. And then I'll take this,
1:39:22put this down here. And now we should be
1:39:25able to
1:39:26paint
1:39:28into
1:39:29oops
1:39:30over here.
1:39:31Um and let's just have a look, make sure
1:39:33this is coming through. Yep.
1:39:35Excellent. All right, so this can be our
1:39:37efflorescence. Um but what I want to do
1:39:40is actually make it not appear in the uh
1:39:42crevices of the material, because if we
1:39:44look at reference photos
1:39:47it kind of builds up on the front of the
1:39:49brick, right? It does sometimes go into
1:39:51the crevices, but it's mostly on the
1:39:53front. And it'll just be nice to have
1:39:54two things in our material, one building
1:39:56in the crevices, the black, and then one
1:39:58building on the top, which would be the
1:39:59white. Um so, I'm just going to flip
1:40:01those around
1:40:03like that. And that's how you invert it.
1:40:05You don't have to add an invert node or
1:40:07anything like that. You just flip it
1:40:08around inside your uh color ramp over
1:40:11there. Okay? And now this value here,
1:40:14it's set to multiply, so we won't see it
1:40:16unless we set it to screen. And now
1:40:19screen is like the invert of multiply,
1:40:22similar to add, by the way, but add can
1:40:23give you values over one, which we don't
1:40:25want. Um but yeah, so now if you set
1:40:28this to black, it's basically nothing,
1:40:29because there's no light values in there
1:40:31that are going to show through. So, then
1:40:33this just becomes how yeah, how extreme
1:40:36do you want that efflorescence um effect
1:40:38there. And then I would just paint in
1:40:40here wherever I want that effect to uh
1:40:44to appear. Right? How do you want it to
1:40:46look? Now yeah, you could go super
1:40:48advanced with that, but you get the
1:40:49idea. So, that's the efflorescence. And
1:40:51then I would just do the exact same
1:40:53thing again um but for my desaturation,
1:40:57right? We've already got the sun fade
1:40:59effect, you remember we did that from
1:41:00the start, but this is going to be a
1:41:02more Yeah, it's going to be painted in,
1:41:04essentially. And we're going to tell it
1:41:06where do we want um where do we want
1:41:08that effect? And actually, we don't need
1:41:10this screen node. So,
1:41:12I'll just do it one by one. So, I'm
1:41:13going to call this desat desaturation
1:41:16and then I'll call my attribute desat
1:41:19and then I will add another vertex group
1:41:22and I'll call this desat, exact same
1:41:24spelling, no spaces, nothing else. And
1:41:27then I'll just do Yeah, I'll just do
1:41:28like a simple
1:41:30quick little thing here.
1:41:32So, I'm not using my screen node, I am
1:41:33using a hue saturation value node
1:41:36instead. And I'm going to take the
1:41:38output of the uh the color burn, that's
1:41:41going to be the mask. Right, so this is
1:41:43going to go into my factor input, cuz
1:41:45this is a black and white mask. And by
1:41:47the way, I know I'm going a little bit
1:41:48fast here,
1:41:50um but I'm hoping you can follow I'm
1:41:52going to show you the final node setup
1:41:53at the end. Um but I'm hoping you can
1:41:55follow it. This needs to go into the
1:41:57color, yep, which we've already got. And
1:41:59then this goes into our base color,
1:42:00oops. Down here.
1:42:03It's very hard to uh
1:42:56we're able to paint wherever we want
1:42:58this little desaturation pass.
1:43:01And this is, you know
1:43:04this tutorial is mostly technical but
1:43:06you'll find that the how you do
1:43:09texturing depends on the scene. Now,
1:43:11we've got a wall, so there's no relation
1:43:14of where this stuff goes, but if you've
1:43:15got a scene, you've got trees, you've
1:43:17got doorways, you've got windows, you've
1:43:19got all this stuff, which will influence
1:43:21where your texture goes, because you
1:43:23look at reference and you go like, hey,
1:43:24around a window, there's black mold. And
1:43:27then hey, in the corners or up this the
1:43:29middle of the buildings, right? We've
1:43:30got this white efflorescence. In our
1:43:33case, I'm just making it up, um but I'm
1:43:35just trying to create the appearance of
1:43:37something like maybe this I can see
1:43:39there's this whole section here where
1:43:41there was like blank uh like there was a
1:43:44building here and now it's been removed.
1:43:46So, maybe there's like a whole square
1:43:49section on this thing. Anyway, I'm not
1:43:51trying to create a pretty image, cuz
1:43:53it's a simple wall but I'm trying to
1:43:55create some of it. I can see there's
1:43:57like rows of bricks which get
1:43:59desaturated.
1:44:01Um
1:44:02and it's something that you notice
1:44:05good art has big, medium, and small
1:44:08shapes, noticeable patterns um
1:44:13but little things like just trying to
1:44:14capture some of that chaos that we've
1:44:15got in our texture there and painting it
1:44:17in.
1:44:18All right, and then the final thing, we
1:44:19got to have our graffiti back, right?
1:44:21So, I'm going to take my output, my
1:44:22final output there, drag that into my
1:44:25mix, and then take that and put that
1:44:27into the base color, and we should see
1:44:29our graffiti back on the wall.
1:44:31Okay, so this is our node setup and
1:44:33we're coming to the end, um but I want
1:44:35to show you one final trick, one final
1:44:37technique that you can really use to uh
1:44:40make something look good. Because so
1:44:41far, all the stuff that we've done, all
1:44:42these extra textures, you know, we made
1:44:44a sun fade, black mold, a lot of that's
1:44:46just going into the color, right? The
1:44:48base color here. And then the other one
1:44:49that we did was we influenced the
1:44:51roughness map by making that uh you
1:44:53know, that water leak kind of thing, so
1:44:55that's going in there. The third way, um
1:44:58the third really, the big influence for
1:44:59this type of texture is to have
1:45:01something influence the bump, the height
1:45:03of our texture, right? So, I want to
1:45:06show you that. Quickly, before I do
1:45:08though, I want to call out uh I'm
1:45:10working on a Blender for beginners
1:45:12course. So, um it's currently in
1:45:14progress. If you want to join the wait
1:45:16list for that course, click the link in
1:45:17the description, enter your email here,
1:45:19and then I'll notify you once it's
1:45:20ready. And it's just going to be for
1:45:21beginners. Um if you enjoy this style of
1:45:24teaching, where it's like long
1:45:25explanations for how to, you know,
1:45:27really fully understand something, and
1:45:30you want to do that for modeling,
1:45:31lighting, all that stuff, um that's what
1:45:33this course is going to be about. So, if
1:45:35you want to be notified, click the link
1:45:36in the description and then just join
1:45:37this list. So, looking at reference of
1:45:39the brick again the one way that we
1:45:40could really use um bump height
1:45:43information in our texture is uh you can
1:45:46see up here
1:45:48we've got some of the brick is missing.
1:45:50This is known as spalling, okay? So,
1:45:52where some of the bricks kind of like
1:45:54break off and then it's just kind of
1:45:56like held together by broken brick and
1:45:58mortar whatever, right? And so, some of
1:46:00this desaturation look that we've put in
1:46:02there is actually bricks that are
1:46:04missing from the wall, they've snapped
1:46:05off or they've broken off, whatever. And
1:46:07so it's it's very hard to see cuz it's
1:46:09blurry, but those bricks would be sunken
1:46:11in, basically, right? So, what we're
1:46:13going to do is I know this node setup is
1:46:15getting crazy, but with our desaturation
1:46:19mask there, control shift left clicking
1:46:20on that we're going to use that. So,
1:46:22wherever there is this desaturation,
1:46:24we're going to make that look like
1:46:25spalling. In fact, before I forget, we
1:46:27might as well just rename this little
1:46:29group here and I'm going to call this
1:46:31spalling, okay? Um because it's already
1:46:33working pretty well, like we've got like
1:46:35some light pattern that's appearing
1:46:36there. Let's just use that to influence
1:46:38the displacement. So, come down to our
1:46:40displacement down here. And just as a
1:46:42recap, right? The displacement is being
1:46:44driven by a displacement PBR map, okay?
1:46:48And it is grayscale, okay? So, when
1:46:50you're thinking of combining something
1:46:52together and having an an impact, you
1:46:53first want to understand how is that
1:46:55existing like in this shader, how is it
1:46:59using it? And the key piece of
1:47:00information is that lighter values are
1:47:02higher in height and darker values are
1:47:05lower in height, they're indented uh
1:47:07cavities, which is why in this brick
1:47:09here, you could I mean, it's very, very
1:47:10subtle. Um but the cavities are darker,
1:47:13right?
1:47:15So, if we want to make this this part of
1:47:18our mesh, oops, control shift left click
1:47:20on that. If you want to make that look
1:47:22indented then we have to combine it with
1:47:25our displacement map down here. And how
1:47:27do we combine something? Our trusty
1:47:28node, shift A, color mix color node, the
1:47:32most versatile of all nodes. So, we're
1:47:34going to drop it in here before it goes
1:47:36into our displacement input. Okay, so
1:47:37the top input is going to be the PBR
1:47:39map, that's fine. And then I'm going to
1:47:40take my output, let's just make this
1:47:42bigger so we can really see it. The
1:47:44output from my color burn right there,
1:47:47I'm going to drag that all the way down
1:47:48to the bottom there and put that into my
1:47:50bottom input down there, okay? All
1:47:53right, now let's just control shift left
1:47:55click on that mix color node, just to
1:47:57see what we've got. Okay, so on the
1:47:59left-hand side, that is 100% of the PBR
1:48:02map, and then this is our mask, okay?
1:48:03So, the key then, if we want to make
1:48:05them influence each other, this has to
1:48:07be something that will uh take the light
1:48:10values and use that as a subtraction on
1:48:13uh this value here. And previously, I I
1:48:16did it like complicated way, I'm like,
1:48:17okay, so you can only take the dark
1:48:19values, you have to like first of all
1:48:20invert it and then use a multiply thing
1:48:23and that would do it but there is an
1:48:24easier way, and that's just to set this
1:48:27to Where is it? Subtract, okay? So,
1:48:30subtract, unlike a multiply node that
1:48:33only takes the dark values subtract will
1:48:35take the light values and it will then
1:48:37subtract the luminance from this one,
1:48:40the the top input. So, basically now
1:48:42this factor amount here, you can see has
1:48:44done it. So, it's basically it's like
1:48:45it's inverted and made it multiply. But
1:48:47so, the light values in the bottom input
1:48:49are now being used just like a
1:48:51mathematical calculation, it's saying
1:48:52subtract the luminance um in those
1:48:55areas, okay? So, now this becomes
1:48:57uh it's impacting the height. And this
1:49:00factor becomes Yeah, like how how deep
1:49:02do you want those crevices? So, going
1:49:04back to our shader
1:49:06and by the way, you might want to, uh,
1:49:07enable,
1:49:08uh, the subsurface so that you can see
1:49:10it a little bit better.
1:49:12Let's just zoom in here.
1:49:15Like that.
1:49:16So, obviously, we don't want to go too
1:49:17deep.
1:49:18But, so with a value of zero, right?
1:49:21It's just using It's doing nothing. No
1:49:23subtraction whatsoever. And then as you
1:49:25slowly increase it, it is subtracting in
1:49:27just those areas.
1:49:29Which is super cool. And you can see
1:49:31it's it's a it's a simple effect. Like
1:49:32it's not it's not complicated, right?
1:49:35But, it just means those little tiny
1:49:36bricks that we've painted in there are
1:49:37now going to be subtracted. Um, and if
1:49:39you want to make it look even more like
1:49:41spalling, you'd go up to here where
1:49:43we've got our, uh, hue saturation value.
1:49:46And we can say, "Let's make it brighter
1:49:48so that it looks like like concrete
1:49:50underneath."
1:49:51All right, like bright
1:49:53concrete in just those areas, right?
1:49:55Where it's the it's broken away and
1:49:57we've got like gray. And And it's
1:49:59probably newer, right? Cuz it's maybe
1:50:00happened later on. So, all the grunge
1:50:02that's on the top here, um, hasn't
1:50:04fallen yet into these parts, right? So,
1:50:06you can do a pretty simple effect like
1:50:08that. And then the one other thing you
1:50:10might want to impact is which parts of
1:50:13this does it impact, right? Like how
1:50:14sharp is those areas, right? Because
1:50:17this is, uh, sorry, going back to here.
1:50:19This is the area. So, I can just like
1:50:22tweak that and say more or less.
1:50:27You know.
1:50:28You get the idea, right? Uh, let's just
1:50:31go back to here.
1:50:33Oh, yeah, that actually looks way worse.
1:50:35Let's drag that over. It's just a fine
1:50:37balance, but really it's just it's
1:50:38controlling
1:50:40just controlling which parts
1:50:43come into it.
1:50:46Anyways, you get the idea. You can play
1:50:48around with it, have some fun. You can
1:50:50increase the amount of height,
1:50:53right? Of this part. Um, you can
1:50:55actually help if you, uh, shift P on
1:50:57just a single node just to help you
1:50:59understand in the future what it's for.
1:51:01So, you could say spalling
1:51:04height
1:51:06subtraction.
1:51:08Do you call it dip?
1:51:09Crevice height? I don't know. Something
1:51:12like that. But, that's that's basically
1:51:14it. So, that's we we've done a bunch.
1:51:16We've influenced the color. We've
1:51:17influenced the leaks, the the roughness,
1:51:19and now we've influenced the height
1:51:21information.
1:51:22And that's really it. So, I'll show you
1:51:24one final thing cuz when you get to this
1:51:25stage, it's like, "Ah, too much going
1:51:27on." And with this like the cables, they
1:51:30can kind of like overlap each other and
1:51:32it's hard to see like where is that
1:51:35connecting? And you can kind of get
1:51:36here. So, what a lot of artists do is
1:51:38they use, um, what's called rerouting.
1:51:41So, if you hold down shift and then is
1:51:44it right? Yeah, right click. Hold down
1:51:46shift and right mouse drag across, uh,
1:51:49one of these lines and that will put a
1:51:51little point there. And then you can
1:51:53just hit G to move that point. And you
1:51:55can just reshape it a little bit. So,
1:51:57now it's easier to see that black mold
1:51:58goes down. It goes over here. Um, and
1:52:01then you can just like clean it up
1:52:03essentially. You can have that go down
1:52:05there. Some people do stuff like this.
1:52:08Right? Um, spalling going straight down,
1:52:12I guess. I mean, I don't know if you can
1:52:13really clean that up any better. Um,
1:52:16maybe this.
1:52:18Pull that over to there so it's easier
1:52:20to see what's going on. You get the
1:52:22idea. You can clean it up as, uh, as
1:52:24much as you want. But, just really the
1:52:26important thing is to shift P and just
1:52:28label these. Um, leak.
1:52:32Leak.
1:52:33Uh,
1:52:35wetness.
1:52:37Right? So, that I know that this is
1:52:39going to be influencing the leak pattern
1:52:41and where that is, uh, making it look
1:52:43wet. Um, but there you go. So, that is
1:52:46it, guys. I hope that you found this
1:52:48tutorial useful. If you did, hit like
1:52:51and subscribe. And if you want to, uh,
1:52:53join the waitlist for that Blender
1:52:55course, click the link in the
1:52:56description as well. Hope to see you
1:52:57there.
1:52:58Thank you for watching.
1:52:59I'll see you next time.
1:53:06Woo!

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