3. Empty your mind and relax, focus on the references, try to understand and to analyze the main shapes and deformations that are in the reference. For example, cobblestones are tiled because there’s a repetition, variations in each shape, the shapes are beveled in the edges.

4. A big graph node doesn’t mean you’re a substance master, keeping it simple and organized is better, you may find a terribly mixed graph node and a lot of nodes connecting on each other but the material doesn’t look good at all! The goal is to make a perfect material that’s realistic.

What are the steps to create a material?

Like with Lego, you start from larger details to smaller/micro details, in modeling you start from a blockout then you detail your meshes, it’s the same.

The first thing is the height map generation, break down every form from the largest one to the smallest one, create the main shapes and start adding details like warps, deformations, variations, tiles, or whatever and then blend them together to a final height map.

2. The second thing is the Normal Map generation, which is a conversion from the final height map + adding smaller/micro details like spots, rough areas, dirt, etc. (remember more intensity in the normal map makes your material look ugly)

3. The third thing is the Ambient Occlusion Map generation. It is usually connecting the node which is connected to the normal map node (grayscale), to the Ambient Occlusion Node. For those who say Ambient Occlusion isn’t important, it will help us later in the Albedo Creation. Also, it’s important to give a nice look where there’s too much light to kill the flat look.

4. The fourth step is Roughness and Metalness Maps creation. It depends on the material you’re creating, just select the areas where there’s more roughness and give it a white value or the opposite.

5. The last step is the Color/Albedo Creation. Some folks just use the height map and they connect it to a gradient map, then they pick the gradient from the reference this is totally wrong. It’s not like: “Hey, look at my albedo map there are millions of different colors”. It’s not like that, but you have to think of this as of drawing that material. Color creation is also similar toe these steps, from the main color to the smaller/micro-detailed colors. Work smart: use Selectors, Curvature Sobel, Normal Map, Ambient Occlusion. These will help you achieve the best look of your Albedo Map, like adding dust, edge dirt, edge damages, the color of deep areas, the color of highest areas, the color of some areas that we can select them from the normal map (then we convert them to a grayscale map then we color them the way we want). I’ll explain how to use these nodes later with some examples. Blend them together and don’t forget to use masks because masks won’t let color layers overlap. Use colors that belong to an environment. Snow in a desert, that’s crazy, right? Use the colors that match the environment you’re working on.

How do I know which nodes should I use?

this depends on what you’re going to do or what you want to make, for repetitive shapes use Tile Sampler, Tile Generator, Splatter, Tile Random. These nodes help you create cliffs, rock materials, tiles… Most of the time I use Tile Sampler Node.