3D Textures – PBR Shader Type Maps
PBR (Physically-Based Rendering) uses consistent lighting behavior to make materials look realistic in any environment. Stick to metal-rough or spec-gloss workflows and make sure your maps are calibrated properly (e.g., roughness should be in linear space, not gamma corrected).
Each material has 9 map channels that collaborate for materials of the PBR Shader Type. Open Texture Settings section in the Modify > Material tab to see these channels.
Base Color map
- The most frequently used texture mapping method. It wraps the bitmap image onto the 3D geometry surface while displaying its original pixel color.
- Any bitmap image, such as scanned images or images captured by digital camera, can be used as diffuse map to represent photo-realistm.
- Users can also use image software to make pre-rendered texture effects such as shadow, bevel, bump, lighting or weathering effects. This approach can effectively simulate real-world effects while greatly saving system resources and rendering time.
Bump map
- When you import an image to the Bump channel, a dialog will request for the image format. Choose the Bump option if the image you want to import is in a grayscale mode.
Normal map
A Normal map is made from a high polygon model. Its color representation will affect surfaces like a regular bump map while providing higher degrees of detail.
AO Map (Ambient Occlusion)
This texture mapping method enhance the concavity and convexity of an object by appending additional shading around the seams or overlapping edges.
Metallic Map
Metallic maps can determin the reflectivity of a surface ranging from completely insulate to metallic. White parts of the map stand for reflectivity while black parts of the map stand for diffusion.
Roughness Map
Roughness map is used to describe the coarseness from the definition of the microsurfaces. The surfaces mapped with white are relatively rough while the ones mapped with black are perfectly smooth.
The combinations of the Metallic and Roughness can thus depict almost every material in the real world.
Displacement Map
You can create monochrome image maps with popular image-editing tools such as Photoshop. By using grayscale height maps, you can push and pull the surface of a 3D model to achieve the ideal look you desire.
Using a vector-based displacement map can produce undercut details on your model. Unlike the height displacement map (monochrome) simply stretches out geometry, vector displacement produces refined curves and edges, creating an unparalleled sense of detail to your model.
Glow map
- This texture mapping technique allows users to control the glow shape, color and strength.
- Glow maps will blend with your original diffuse maps, so the lighter the diffuse color (or glow color), the stronger the glow effect.
- A bright diffuse map in combination with a bright glow map might cause overexposure.
Blend Map
You may add any kind of images as the Blend map to blend with the Diffuse map, which increases the details and subtleties of the object. iClone also provides three methods, Multiply, Addition and Overlay, for blending.
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