IMPROVE YOUR TEXTURING

60 BOX MAPPING

Use box mapping together with tiling textures to quickly texture your model without the need to unwrap it. Just set the image node from Flat to Box and connect the vector input to the Object or Generated coordinates. Then you can start layering more textures on top of each other.

61 POINTINESS AND AO

You can mimic Substance Painter’s curvature and Ambient Occlusion based effects directly in Blender by using the relevant nodes, multiplying them with a grunge map and passing the result through a colour ramp to create a custom mask to blend your tiling textures or materials.

62 GREAT FREE TEXTURES

If you’re doing, for example, architectural visualisation and are looking for high-res textures for your interior surfaces, it’s often helpful to visit the websites of furniture and wood manufacturers. They sometimes offer all of their products, e.g. wood, marble etc. as free textures that you can use.

63 VERTEX COLOURS FOR BREAKING UP TILING

When you texture models with box mapping (see above), often the tiling becomes too visible, making the model look uniform and boring. So I use vertex colours to quickly paint custom masks to blend, for example,