Making Realistic PBR Materials - Part 1

Credit: Jurrassic World VFX Breakdown

Credit: Jurrassic World VFX Breakdown

Believability is a big part of making a great looking render. And just as we discussed in Photorealism Explained, materials are a huge part of whether or not the final render looks realistic or not!

This goes beyond just photorealism too. It applies equally to stylized cartoony stuff.

Disney actually developed a Physically Based Shading workflow for Wreck it Ralph, to make the world feel more believable:

For Wreck it Ralph, a physically based shading workflow was developed to make the materials feel more real

For Wreck it Ralph, a physically based shading workflow was developed to make the materials feel more real

So physically based materials are important for every artist.

The best part though? You only need to do this tutorial once. Then you can just save it into your default blender file, and have beautiful materials forever :)

Final Result

This tutorial is mostly material theory. But I also demonstrate how to assemble your own node group can be used to make realistic materials like this:

Download the brick texture here

Download the brick texture here

Links from the post:

View the Slides from the Presentation

Download the final material

Node Screenshots

The Complete Node Group setup:

Inside the node group:

Inside the "Reflection" Node Group:

Inside the Fresnel Node Group:

The Bonus "Less/More Slider" Node Group:

Make something cool using this PBR material? Post it in the comments below!