PBR Advanced 2.0

(By: 3D BlueHat)

The All-In-One material shading system that offers more!

Now PBR Advanced comes with it's own addon!

(More info at the bottom of this page.)

(Please be patient while the new User's Guide is being updated and more example images

are created for this product page.)

Save time making gorgeous realistic materials.

     PBR Advanced works in a similar way as the Principled BSDF.  Why build multiple PBR based shaders for many of the most common types of materials when you can have one uber shader for almost anything.

     Have instantly more realistic materials as well as more features and more control over material creation by using PBR Advanced instead of the principled shader.

     In my own experience, I have found that any model that I have downloaded from any source that already has materials, always looks far better and more realistic by swapping out whatever shaders are driving the textures and the look of the material with PBR Advanced.  Just replacing the shader(s) alone makes a big difference and by making a few adjustments, when necessary here or there, for example roughness values or surface density, the results can be amazing in comparison to the original. 

     Ever since I first created the PBR Advanced material shading system, I have used it exclusively in all of my projects. And with version 2.0 it's better than ever.

     I am confident that anyone who uses PBR Advanced will appreciate it's features, results and usefulness.

     Save time with material creation and enjoy the additional control and features of PBR Advanced.

     PBR Advanced 2.0 is an all-In-one shading system that is as easy to use as the Principled BSDF, but offers more control and has many improvements as well as more features such as:

• Surface Density
• Angular Roughness
• Sheen with more control
• Velvet with Roughness
• Translucency with Depth
• True Glass with Dispersion
• Glass Shadows with Tint
• A new Clearcoat System with Color and Depth
• Emission with more features
• IOR input that not only influences transmission, but also reflections
• Energy Conservation
• Fresnel that is influenced by roughness
• Specular intensity that is also influenced by roughness

(Each of these will be explained in detail in the new User's Guide)

     PBR Advanced 2.0 is an All-In-One shader, but it was also built with a modular design for convenience so that if you want to build your own materials in the shader editor, each component can be used separately along with your own node groups.
These components include:

• Fresnel - (with roughness and angular roughness)
• Layer Weight - (with roughness and optional IOR input for the fresnel blend factor)
• Depth - (useful for creating a volume effect)
• Backfacing IOR Fix - (uses the reciprocal of the IOR for backfaces)
  
• Alpha - (to quickly add an alpha transparency input to any material)
• Backface Culling - (quickly add backface culling to a material)
• Refraction (a physically correct refraction shader replacement)
• Dispersion (add dispersion to any glass shader)
• Reflections (add reflection layer to any material)
• Diffuse - (A diffuse shader with my surface hardness control)
  
• Subsurface Scattering - (a subsurface scattering shader replacement with additional features)
• Translucency - (a translucency shader replacement with depth control)
• Velvet - (a velvet shader replacement with roughness control)
• Sheen - (add sheen effect to a cloth type material)
• Glass Shadow - (this is useful for transmissive materials)
• Metal - (a standalone metallic shader)
• Multiscatter GGX Fix - (Glossy shader that fixes the 0.02 roughness issue)
  
• Glass - (a standalone glass shader)
• Emission - (an emission shader replacement with additional features)
• Slider Calibrator - (can be used to quickly set the minimum, maximum, and midpoint values of any float value range)
• C.C.S. - (clearcoat system with color and depth control)
• Concept Wood - (a simple procedural wood texture for conceptualization purposes)
• Ocean - This is a new experimental addition to PBR Advanced and is a work in progress.

     Also included with PBR Advanced 2.0 are these additional products:

ColorRange - Click HERE for more information about this product.

PBR Advanced Car Paint - Click HERE for more information about this product.

Now with the new PBR Advanced Addon!

     Now, PBR Advanced comes with it's own addon for quick conversion of pre-existing materials in one click.  The addon is an additional tool for PBR Advanced that allows you to select as many objects as you want in the 3d viewport and with the press of one button, the addon converts all of the materials of all of the selected objects to the PBR Advanced Shader at once.

     The conversion process involves finding all of the Principled BSDF and Glass BSDF shaders in each material and replacing them with a PBRA 2.0 shader while preserving all applicable input values and links. Optionally, this can also include any Principled BSDF and Glass BSDF shaders that are inside of any node groups being used in the materials as well.

     This addon has saved me a lot of time with converting large numbers of materials in scenes that were originally not using PBRA, and I just had to share this with my customers to show my appreciation and to speed up your workflow when working with older projects or in any situation where this feature can help in any way. I have had to spend soo much time manually swapping out the original principled or glass shaders, copying and pasting input values, transferring the linked inputs, etc., in order to apply my PBR Advanced shader to countless objects. And I thought, "There HAS to be a better way...".  So I made a way, clicked a button... and took a nap... because well, I needed it.

     This is my first addon using python, and I will be continuing to test and experiment with it and possibly add more features in the future.

     It installs the same way as any other Blender addon. Just place the PBR Advanced Addon zip file wherever you want to keep it and in blender go to Edit, Preferences, and click on the Addons tab where you can click the Install button and navigate to where you placed it. After you install it, be sure to Enable it by clicking it's checkbox in the Addons list.

     After enabling the addon, you will find a new tab called "PBR Advanced" in the side menu (press "N") in the 3D view port.

NOTE: You must have the PBRA 2.0 node group in the current blend file to use the addon.  It will detect whether or not it is present and display either "PBRA not found" or "PBRA Ready" status.

     All you have to do is select which objects you want to convert or just press "A" to select everything in the viewport and press the "Convert to PBRA" button. And your done in an instant.

     This alone results in a noticeable difference especially in complex scenes or with high quality meshes with good textures, etc.  From there, you can make any other adjustments to tweak your materials as you wish.

     In my experience, the most common slight adjustment that I make, if any, is roughness or on occasion a slight color adjustment.  This is because the principled shader usually causes the color to seem desaturated due to the way it's specular function works and how it handles reflections, and since the original materials were likely made unknowingly compensating for that, if may look slightly different when using it's "true color" (as I refer to it), especially if the "Surface Density" is increased. 

     (Also the subsurface scattering inputs work slightly differently that the principled shader, so it might be a good idea to just double check materials with subsurface for the desired appearance.)

     NOTE: I have recently implemented the "Surface Density" pre-set to the PBR Advanced addon.  Now before converting your materials with the addon, a new slider can be set to the surface density that you want the converted materials to have for the selected objects.

     Since I have not completed the new User's Guide yet, here is a quick note about what "Surface Density" actually is.

     The Surface Density setting of the PBRA 2.0 uber shader is a feature that I added that has helped me when dealing with materials such as ceramic, painted metal, porcelain, wet surfaces, and a whole host of other materials that have a less porous surface.  It works by mixing the diffuse layer of the material with a fully rough glossy bsdf before the specular reflection layer is added, which alters the look of the surface.  With some materials this seems to give more realistic looking results.  This is a per material basis and if the Surface Density is left at 0.0 it does nothing, so this is only optional.

(Scene by: Davide Tirindelli)

     If your scene has multiple objects with materials that can benefit from this feature, now when they are converted to PBR Advanced, you won't have to manually change that value if you already know what you want it to be.

     I am still working on new documentation, such as the new user's guide, etc.  If you have any questions in the mean time, feel free to email me and I will respond to you as soon as I get the chance.

     I've worked very hard on this product and continue to look for ways to improve it however I can to produce gorgeous results with less time and effort while giving more flexibility when it comes to Physically Based Rendering.

(Eventually I will make a video demonstration of both this product and it's custom addon, whenever time permits.)

Any feedback, whether directly or via the Blender Market is greatly appreciated.

(Oh, and remember to rate my product, so I'll have an excuse to celebrate over tacos!)

- 3D BlueHat -