Basic Materials

Usage of most materials using the Principled Shader. Apart from the Displacement section, this setup works for both Cycles and Eevee.

Base Color

The Base Color map defines the color of a surface. It should be plugged into the Base Color input of the Principled BSDF. Make sure the image file’s color space is set to Color.

Roughness

The Roughness map defines how rough a surface is. It should be plugged into the Roughness input of the Principled BSDF. Make sure the image file’s color space is set to Non-Color Data. Optionally, you can add a Gamma Node to easily the roughness of the material. Lower gamma means rougher surface and vice versa.

Height

The Height map can be used to create detailed shadows and highlights on a material or to actually displace the geometry of an object.

If you want to use it for create detailed shadows and highlights, it should be plugged into the Height input of a Bump node, which then should be plugged into the Normal input of the Principled BSDF. Make sure the image file’s color space is set to Non-Color Data. Using the Strength slider of the Bump node, you can control the strength of the effect.

If you want to use it for actually displacing the geometry of your object, it should be plugged into the Height input of a Displacement node, which then should be plugged into the Displacement input of the Material Output node. Make sure the image file’s color space is set to Non-Color Data here as well. Using the Scale slider of the Bump node, you can control how much the geometry should be displaced.

Also, make sure that the Displacement method in the Material Settings is set to either ‘Displacement’ only or to ‘Displacement and Bump’.

Normal

The Normal map defines in which direction a part of a surface is faced, which is used to create detailed shadows and highlights.

Normally, it should be plugged into the Color input of a Normal Map node, which then should be plugged into the Normal input of the Principled BSDF. However, all normal maps on cgbookcase.com are ‘DirectX’ normal maps, but Blender uses ‘OpenGL’, which means we have to invert the Green channel of the normal map. You can do that by adding an RGB Curves node between the Image node and the Normal node and then changing the curve in the ‘G’ channel to match the curve in the screenshot below. Make sure the image file’s color space is set to Non-Color Data.

Theoretically, you can use a normal map in combination with a height map. I recommend only using one of them, since in most cases, the effect they create is very similar.

Metallic

The Metallic map defines which parts of a material are metallic, and which are not. It should be plugged into the Metallic input of the Principled BSDF. Make sure the image file’s color space is set to Non-Color Data. Only materials that are both metallic and non-metallic have this map available. If a metallic material doesn’t have this map, change the metallic value in the Principled BSDF to 1.

Ambient Occlusion

The Ambient Occlusion (AO) map can be used to fake soft shadowing in the bumps of a surface. It isn’t really needed to create realistic materials in Blender (especially with Cycles), but you can still use it to darken the tiny shadows in the surface.

If you want to use this map, it should be multiplied from the Base Color map using a MixRGB node, with the Ambient Occlusion map being the second color input, so you can easily control the strength of it with the slider of the MixRGB node.