How to Create and Use Textures in Blender

📌 Textures used: Poly Blender Texture Collection

📌 Principled Texture Setup: there’s a really quick way to set up a whole texture set with the Principled BSDF shader using a Blender add-on called Node Wrangler. Full instructions can be found in How to Create Material and Use Textures in Blender Cycles.

This guide outlines the process of using Poly-generated textures in Blender. As an example, we’ll focus on the textures we used to create the room in the render seen in Image 1. The process involved setting up two textures — one for the wooden floor and one for the plastered walls. Check out 5. How to Create Textures for Interior Design for a detailed look at how these textures were generated in Poly.

Image 1: This scene was created in Blender using Poly textures.

Step 1: Basic Image Texture Setup

This section will describe the basics of importing any image texture into Blender’s Shader Editor. Later sections will give specific details on setting up individual texture inputs in the Principled BSDF shader, using the room scene shown above as an example.

Setting Up an Image Texture Node

To start, go to the Shading tab. Then, in the 3D viewport, select the mesh you want to apply a material to. Then click on New in the Shader Editor. This will create a new material and add the Principled BSDF and Material Output nodes to the Shader Editor.

Image 2: The Image Texture node with the texture file loaded.

To add a texture, use the keyboard shortcut shift-A to add a node, and then search for the Image Texture node. Clicking on this node or pressing enter will add it to the node tree. Click on Open in the Image Texture node to bring up the file explorer, and then navigate to the texture you want to load. Click on Open Image to assign it to the Image Texture node. Now you have an image texture that can be used as an input to other nodes in the Shader Editor, to create a realistic material.

Setting Up Texture Mapping

The next step is applying the texture to the mesh and setting the position and scaling. To do this, we need to use the Texture Coordinate node and the Mapping node, as shown in Image 3. The Texture Coordinate node lets you choose from different mapping options between the mesh geometry and the image texture being applied. In this example, we’re mapping the texture to the UV coordinates of the mesh, so we’ll use the UV socket. The Mapping node is used to adjust the location, rotation, and scale of the image texture relative to the texture coordinates.

Image 3: This screenshot shows the Image Texture node connected to Texture Coordinate node and the Mapping node.

Assigning Multiple Materials to the Same Mesh

It’s useful to assign more than one material to different faces of the same mesh. This can be done by using material slots in the Shader Node Editor. First you need to create a new slot for each material by clicking on the plus-sign (+) icon. Then you need to assign the mesh geometry to different slots. While in Edit mode, select the faces that you would like a material to be applied to. In the Slot drop-down menu, ensure that correct material slot is selected, and then click on Assign to assign the geometry to that slot. Do this for each slot. In our example, this was useful for assigning different textures to the the floor and walls.

Image 4: The different material slots used for the room.

Step 2: Setting up the Base Color

Basic Setup

Add an Image Texture node, a Texture Coordinate node, and a Mapping node. Connect them as shown in Image 3. Load the color map generated by Poly to the Image Texture node. Set the Color Space to your preferred setting; in this example, the Linear color space was used. Connect the Color socket of the Image Texture node to the Base Color socket of the Principled BSDF Shader node. Adjust the mapping parameters until the texture is positioned and scaled as required.

Adjusting Hue Saturation and Value

In Blender, the hue, saturation, and value of the color map can be adjusted via the Hue Saturation Value node. Simply connect it between the Image Texture and the Base Color socket of the Principled BSDF, and then adjust the values as required to tweak the colors. The full node setup for the Base Color input, including the Hue Saturation Value node, is shown in Image 5.

Image 5: The full node setup used for the Base Color socket in the Principled BSDF Shader.

Step 3: Setting Up the Roughness

Basic Setup

Add a new Image Texture node and open the roughness map downloaded from Poly. Ensure that the Color Space of the roughness map is set to Non-Color. As we already have the Mapping and Texture Coordinate nodes, we can reuse these. Plug the Color socket of the Image Texture into the Roughness socket of the Principled BDSF shader.

Adjusting Roughness Levels

You can fine-tune the roughness levels by adding a Brightness Contrast node between the Roughness map and the BDSF Color socket. This allows you to tweak the brightness and contrast of the image texture. Adjusting brightness shifts the overall roughness level of the texture as a whole, making everything either more or less rough by a constant amount. Adjusting contrast tweaks the overall range of roughness values in the texture. Remember that black values correspond to a roughness of zero; white values, to a roughness of one.

Image 6: The updated node tree including the roughness map image texture with brightness and contrast adjustments.

Step 4: Setting Up the Normal Map

Add a new Image Texture node and open the normal map downloaded from Poly. Ensure that the Color Space of the normal map is set to Non-Color. As we already have the Mapping and Texture Coordinate nodes, we can reuse these. Add a Normal Map node. Plug the Color socket of the image texture into the Color socket of the Normal Map node. Set the Space menu to Tangent Space. Finally connect the Normal socket on the Normal Map node to the Normal socket on the Principled BSDF Shader. Adjust the strength slider as required to get the normal map look the way you want it.

Image 7: The updated node tree including the normal map image texture.

Step 5: Setting Up the Height Map

First, ensure that Displacement is enabled — navigate to the Material Properties tab of the Properties toolbar on the right-hand side of the viewport. Under Settings, go to the Surface drop-down menu. Change the Displacement setting to Displacement Only.

Image 8: Displacement settings under the Material Properties tab.

Next, add a new Image Texture node and open the height map downloaded from Poly. Ensure that the height map’s Color Space setting is Non-Color. As we already have the mapping and texture coordinate nodes, we can reuse these. Add a Displacement node. Plug the Color socket of the height map image texture into the Color socket of the Displacement node. Set Space to Object Space. Finally, connect the Displacement socket on the Displacement node to the Displacement socket on the Material Output node. Adjust the Midlevel and Scale sliders as required to get the displacement looking the way you want it. Image 9 shows the final node tree used to create the textures used in the room scene.

Image 9: The updated node tree including the height map image texture and setup.