PBR Painter 3 has now just been released with some amazing new features, including multipainting (!!!), layer folders, improved baking, new smart masks and much, much more!

Questions or comments? Join the PBR Painter user community in the Discord Server!

Overview

PBR Painter is a straightforward yet powerful addon designed to enable quick and easy PBR texturing within Blender. It uses a layer-based, multichannel approach which lets you modify all of the channels of a PBR material (albedo, roughness, displacement, normals, emission etc.) simultaneously using the addons simple UI. Materials can be created from scratch, by importing pre-made PBR texture maps, and/or by generating procedural textures separately for each channel.

PBR Painter automatically generates and manages complex node setups that allow you to have complete control over every aspect of every channel, allowing you to combine normals of stacked layers, control the opacity of any channel of any layer, create complex layered mask systems and much more. This gives you complete freedom over all aspects of the material properties, without ever having to manually create a single node.

Main Features

Featuring its own independent workspace, PBR Painter has an intuitive yet feature-packed layout. The image below shows an example of the addon UI:

Within this workspace, the possibilities for PBR material creation are essentially endless.

Want to construct complex materials layer-by-layer, using simple low-poly models? No problem:

Want to procedurally generate highly-customizable edge-wear in Cycles AND Eevee? Easy:

Organic and soft-body texture painting? Sure:

Procedural material generation? Of course!

Photorealistic procedural puddles!

Create smart materials and import directly from the Blender asset browser?!?! WOW!

Need to segment your material using an ID Map? It’s never been easier:

With all of the awesome new features PBR Painter 3, there has never been a better time to try out PBR Painter for yourself. 

There is so much more in PBR Painter than can fit on this one page, so if you want to learn more, you can find everything you need to know by taking a look at the official PBR Painter YouTube channel, or by visiting the Discord Server and chatting with other users.

Important - please read

PBR Painter will work with Windows, macOS or Linux. However, for macOS, Blender uses a stricter limit on the number of image texture nodes that can be rendered with Eevee. This could be restricting when working with imported textures. 

Changelog

Please note that by purchasing PBR Painter you will have access to every update that is released, forever and for no extra cost.

Also, when installing a new version, please remember to always uninstall the previous version completely, then restart Blender after installing the new version. 

Follow PBR Painter on twitter (@PBRPainter) for regular updates and notifications of new releases. Or even better, join the Discord server!

PBR Painter has come a long way since it's humble beginnings... and if you don't believe us, check out the whopping list of changes since it was first released in January 2021 (and these are only the major changes!):

v3.0:

• Complete rewrite of the addon, producing a more efficient, robust and scalable product 
• Introduced dynamic channels, so that only used channels are included in the node group (also better handles compatibility across Blender versions) 
• Added folders for combining multiple layers into groups, with folder-level mask stacks 
• Added "multipaint" option, allowing simultaneous painting of multiple channel textures (ideal for multi-channel decal projection painting) 
• Significantly improved baking functionality, adding new features such as multi-object baking, more user-friendly baking, etc. 
• Improved integration of mesh maps, allowing better control of which mesh maps are used and where 
• Made the addon more robust to accidental node deletion, layer node group deletion etc. 
• Added optional colour ramps, HSV correction, RGB curve correction etc. to all channels 
• Improved how deleted layers are stored/accessed 
• Added option to use node group as a channel 
• Added new smart masks 
• Improved node previewing system 
• Many minor changes related to improved user-friendliness of the addon 
• Added channel packing configuration library, allowing storage of infinitely many user-created configs
• Ensured backwards compatibility, so previous PBR Painter materials can be used (and imported from asset browser) seamlessly 

v2.4:

• Asset browser integration
• UDIM support
• Smart masks
• New and improved mask UI
• New baking tools
• New pie menu
• Improved addon preferences
• New texture painting tools

v2.3.1-8:

• Several minor bug fixes
• Added option to select how images are automatically saved by the addon
• Added option to turn on/off automatic shader compilation per material
• Improved performance of layer bumping
• Added options to change file naming convention for baked textures

v2.3.0:

• Added a new ID map system with multiple colors
• Modified material slots UI to automatically determine when to be in texture paint mode when selecting a material
• Moved addon outside of texture paint mode to open up access to new features
• Developed a dedicated workspace layout for PBR Painter
• Added preview option for each layer, rather than just when using procedural textures
• Added filled layer option, removing the need to fill every layer (painted layers as you know them will still remain!)
• Created a new setup for painted layers, giving easier access to the built-in painted mask via the mask stack
• Added option to ignore layer's masks for a given channel
• Replaced single channel layers with the option to paint over image textures in multichannel layers
• Restructured the UI to give easy access to the main channels (color, roughness, metallic etc)
• Added option to use another layer's mask in the current layer's mask stack
• Added option to use different UV maps for textures, masks etc
• Added option to bake textures and masks to a different UV map
• Added option to import a layer, or all layers, from another material
• Added option to import a mask, or all masks, from another material
• Integrateed with 3.0 asset browser, to allow for saving and loading smart materials, layers, masks etc. (still to be added to/improved upon in future
• Added option to use node group as a mask
• Added new icons etc. to improve the overall appearance and user-friendliness of the addon
• Added ambient occlusion option during baking 
• Added options to use different edge detection methods for preset edge wear masks
• Added vertex color option for ID maps
• Added new "View Mode" option, accessible via the three dots button next to the layer stack. You can now select either Material (which is the standard view) or Single Channel. 
• Added vertex color as an option for ID map, with the Fill Selected Faces feature. This will fill the selected faces with the vertex color that is selected (very useful for quickly creating ID maps for materials).
• Added the option to create an Exportable Material when baking. This will setup a new material (or use a material from a dropdown menu) with the baked textures, ready to export via 

v2.2:

• Improved addon performance by automatically cleaning up unused images and node groups associated with deleted layers
• Added option to bake and/or merge all PBR Painter materials on mesh to single texture set
• Revamped mask system to enable layer masks on custom layers and imported material layers
• Improved overall addon efficiency and performance
• Streamlined UI for brush settings
• Added extra procedural options
• Added buttons for preset texture resolution (1k, 2k etc)
• Added drop down for mapping mode (point vs texture)
• Added option to import a material node setup as a layer 
• Added option to adjust color settings for albedo textures (hue/saturation and RGB curves)
• Streamlined access to other materials in the model's material slots
• Improved background layers to be more streamlined, efficient and easy to use
• Fixed a few minor bugs with importing materials
• Fixed a bug causing ID maps to sometimes not turn off correctly
• Added a preset "Edge Wear" mask
• Added a few new options to different parts of the UI (e.g. option to have new layer auto-filled, option to change merged mask name etc.)
• Added color ramp to Normal channel when using a bump map
• Fixed a bug causing multi-texture import to fail for "glossiness" textures
• Fixed a few bugs with baking
• Fixed a bug with the new box mapping rotation system (normals were being calculated globally rather than locally, which was causing the box mapped textures to change when the object was rotated)

v2.1:

• Introduced option to instantly import and assign a set of textures automatically
• Introduced option to instantly link multiple channels to the layer mask automatically and simultaneously, speeding up the procedural workflow
• Introduced new addon preferences (autosave now in addon preferences)
• Moved background layer panel to more discrete button in UI
• Introduced additional mapping options for masks
• Introduced a mask multiplier for each channel, for finer control over channel masking
• Introduced a range of preset procedural mask options (currently scratches, grunge and cracks, more to be added), which are tunable and can be incorporated into the mask stack
• Improved UI by adding visual cues showing which channels are switched on/off in a layer
• Improved texture importing
• Overhauled baking system for performance improvement and a smoother user experience.
• Minor bug fixes relating to baking textures.
• Added option to use relative or absolute texture paths in PBR Painter (located under addon preferences).
• Fixed bug causing an error during unregistering, and causing the clearcoat and clearcoat roughness panels to be hidden.
• Some minor bug fixes
• Added option to overwrite previously baked textures during baking
• Changed naming convention for merged textures for clarity

v2.0:

• Major overhaul of addon for a huge boost to performance
• Restructured UI for a more intuitive, more user-friendly and less busy interface
• New option for importing a height/bump map in the normal channel
• Brand new masking system, using layered system to build complex and highly-specific masks
• More options for each specific mask (which can individually be added to the layered setup)
• New displacement threshold mask, which applies a mask according to the displacement of previous layers (very cool!)
• New option to use a custom layer, which lets you build your own layer from scratch using your own node setups, which can then be painted as a layer as per normal (important for advanced users who need highly specific node setups)
• New copy/paste functions for procedural texture setups, for copying between channels and/or between layers
• Improved how deleted layers are stored for improved addon performance and efficiency
• New automated external texture saving after baking using a user-defined file directory
• Fixed a bug with the autosave feature which was causing it to not save when the mouse was over the 3D viewport.
• Added option to set the time between autosaves
• Fixed a bug with duplicate mask
• Fixed a bug that was occasionally causing an error when using a custom brush
• Fixed a bug with the specular tint channel when using link to mask
• Fixed a bug when using merge masks that was causing the active image to switch away from the painted mask for the layer
• Fixed a bug when duplicating an alpha map mask with box mapping selected
• Additional bug fixes related to normal baking
• Added the option to boost the strength of baked normal textures, which can be used to add stronger details or if the baking is producing maps that are too weak
• Fixed a bug that was sometimes causing an error after deleting then restoring a layer containing masks
• Fixed a bug with external texture baking that was sometimes causing the color space of saved textures to be incorrect

v1.1:

• New option to paint a procedural texture for each separate PBR channel (noise, voronoi, musgrave or wave), with tools to tune/scale/rotate these as necessary
• Additional mask options (procedural noise, voronoi, musgrave or wave) that can be used in combination with all currently available masks
• New autosave feature which, when turned on, automatically saves modified textures periodically, to avoid accidentally losing work
• New duplicate layer button
• Optional color ramp node when using a roughness, specular or metallic texture, for fine-tuning the texture (e.g. make a roughness texture more glossy)
• Box mapping now available for imported textures, with access to a seam blend slider for creating seamless materials
• New bake button to be used for baking the current material textures without having to use the merge visible button
• Improved naming of baked textures to be more specific and streamlined
• Option to adjust normal strength for each layer individually
• Bump mapping available as an option in single pass layers
• New button to instantly invert any color ramp in the addon.
• Fixed bug that was occasionally causing an error when switching between paint and erase, or when adding a layer
• Introduced the option to change the blend type between layers, for each channel in a layer
• Reduced dependency on internal operations for better compatibility with future Blender versions

v1.0:

Release version