Blender Material Node - PBR section

[B05015learning3D]

Hi,

I was doing a library asset with PBR texture when I saw the "ARM* option (AO for roughness and metal) on PolyHeaven and I wanted to ask if the plugging is correct or is there a better option for it ?

The render look a bit more darker with arm on

[Myn]

Welcome to the community!

ARM textures encode the different textures into red, blue and green colour channels.

Ambient Occlusion: red
Roughness: green
Metallic: blue

You can use a Separate Colour node to get each channel and plug it into the relevant input. I’m not at a computer now or I’d show a screenshot, but plug the Image Texture output into a Separate Colour node, then connect the Green output into your BSDF’s Roughness input.

[B05015learning3D]

Thanks for the answer

So with that node I don’t need the stand alone AO, I just plug the ARM into a seperate RGB then the red channel goes into a Mix RGB (Red channel * Diffuse) then same with roughness, And for the metallic I’ll juste plug the blue channel into the principled BSDF, right ?

[Myn]

Yep that looks right, although for the roughness just plug the green straight into the Roughness input of the BSDF. You don’t need to mix it with anything. If you already have a roughness texture then you don’t need to mix in the one from the ARM, it should just be the same.

[B05015learning3D]

ok so don’t need the roughness image texture, ARM looks like a really good deal (three images texture in one (AO, Roughness, Metallic))

Is there difference between ARM and the " traditionnal method " ?

[Myn]

Not really, the only difference is that you’re working with one image instead of three. That means only loading one image into Blender/your game engine, and only managing one image file on your hard drive.

[B05015learning3D]

Thanks for the answer, it’s saving me a lot of headache

Can I ask you a question about surface imperfection ?

[Myn]

Sure. If I can’t answer then I’m sure someone else will jump in.

[B05015learning3D]

Thanks

So I’ve checked about surface imperfection (still on PBR) and I found that they have roughness opacity normal map too.

for the ex. I’ve chosen a glass BSDF with a color ramp to highlight the imperfection.

If I had a roughness texture to plug in, normaly I should use a color ramp (map rang) to control if I want the glass part or the imperfection part to be rough, right ?

For the opacity texture I saw that PNG is better than JPG, saw a small “better” change at close up for the PNG, so I used JPG for diffuse, roughness, AO, normal GL, what do you think about PNG files ?

and last one, is my plugging correct ? what’s your method ?

Sorry to bothering you with all those questions

[B05015learning3D]

but it doesn’t work mixed with an another texture like if i want to put it on top of a metallic one for ex.

[Myn]

I normally texture procedurally so I would add surface imperfections using a musgrave or noise texture to start with. A super quick one below. It’s using a procedural musgrave, but the principles would be the same using an image texture.

Starting off with your surface imperfection texture, use a colour ramp to control how much of it to use. You could use that straight into the roughness or use a Mix node, or also add it into a Bump node or Mix Colour node. It all depends on the look you’re going for.

JPEG vs PNG: The Blender manual says:

Use PNG if you intend on-screen output or encoding into multiple video formats. Use JPEG for on-screen output where file size is a concern and quality loss is acceptable.

Hope that helps

[B05015learning3D]

I prefere procedural texture too, much more control over the texture that I want to create.
but before going back into procedural I want to learn all that I can on PBR.

Thanks for the answer, really helpfull.

I’m gonna keep trying to mix imperfection PBR on top of other texture like metal for ex.

[Dwayne]

I think you mean image(Technically bitmap) textures. Procedural textures can be PBR too. Just wanted to point that out since that seems to be a common misunderstanding about PBR. PBR doesn’t mean image. Although images are commonly used when creating PBR materials.

[B05015learning3D]

Thanks

[Marc_Carlyon]

Apologies that i missed this question and glad you guys manage to find a solution to this.
Just wanted to pop in and say nice job on the node tree being so tidy! Mine usually end up like a plate of spaghetti!

[B05015learning3D]

Hi,

No worries, Maybe you can help me too on those image texture (thanks again to Dwayne for the explication ).

first one with ARM (thanks again to Myn for the help )

Second one with Surface imperfection

It seems like the plugging is correct, but it look like it can be improve (especially the Surface imperfection), what do you think of it ?

Thanks by the way for the node tree