Today are going to talk about 7 of the best Blender PBR addons for texture painting. You can use them to create high-quality materials for assets and scenes in a short period of time and in the best possible quality.
Why choosing to adopt Blender PBR addons for texture painting in your workflow?
Texture painting in Blender is one of the final phases that participate at giving life to any 3D model made with the 3D package. If you ever checked our previous post about the best Blender artists and their artworks, it would be a no brainer that this phase is mainly known as “baking” for 3D artists in general, and it certainly does take a big chunk of their time. Although it’s really fun and satisfying, it can become very repetitive and time consuming.
In other words, going for Blender PBR addons will definitely be your best bet. Not only it will help you save tons of time, but it will also help you achieve that beautiful realistic look for your 3D art. You might also want to check our previous post listing the best Blender addons for texturing and shading if you want to tackle the topic in depth. We made an extensive list of 14 awesome addons that will definitely be a massive help when shading and texture painting in Blender.
But today’s topic will cover Blender PBR addons dedicated to texture painting specifically, let’s start the count with:
7 – Grungit: texture painting in Blender made easy
This is a simple Blender PBR addon for adding wear and tear effects to your hard surface models quickly and effortlessly. The fact that its functions are narrowed makes it easier to use, quick and it doesn’t impact your workflow that much. And since we’re talking about hard surface modeling, here’s a list of some really great Blender addons for hard surface modeling that would perfectly match Grungit.
If you want to add more realism to your models then this addon is one way of doing that, because it is topology independent and fully customizable. In addition to that, you can use the advanced mode for more manual control.
Also one of the perks of using this addon is that it has very fast render times, especially when working with Eevee since it is highly compatible with it. So if you need these types of effects with your textures and you want something quick and easy, Grungit might be the answer.
Check the addon here if you want more information: https://blendermarket.com/products/grungit?ref=247
6 – Substance Painter Live Link
Substance Painter Live Link is an addon that enables a connection between Substance Painter and Blender. It allows you to set up textures sets easily as well as updating them directly from Substance Painter. And if you’re not very familiar with Substance Painter, you can check our previous post where we made a full detailed comparison between Substance Painter and Mari. The best way to know more about a tool is definitely by comparing it to another one, since comparison is the best way of explanation.
The Live Link will create or update the materials automatically. Allowing you to tweak your textures in Substance Painter and update them really fast without having to rely on multiple exports. This addon can save a lot of time in going from basic shaders to multiple texture sets in many assets and scenes. Which can be very helpful for a lot of artists.
You can find it on Gumoroad and additional information here: https://gumroad.com/l/fTRFN
5 – Smudgr Pro: mind blowing power for texture painting in Blender!
Smudgr Pro is a Blender PBR addon that can be used for adding photo realism to your models and materials quickly. Especially if you don’t have time or if you are not experienced enough to do it yourself. Because you can use one of the presets available by default, Or you can use the extensive features for manual editing to get the exact look you are after.
Sometimes 3D models don’t have to be perfectly clean, flat, or scratchless if we want it to look more believable. That’s why clean models look less realistic to the human eye and something always seems off. In other words, reaching realism in Blender isn’t really a piece of cake.
But this Blender addon for shading comes in to fix these kinds of problems. By helping you to quickly add surface imperfections like dust, smudges, fingerprints, and so on.
You just need to select a part of the model or the whole thing if it is just one piece. After that, select a particular material and add a Smudgr Pro setup. There are actually a few presets you can choose from, like: brand new, dusty, very old, and so on.
For example, to add dust, you just select the material and then add dust. You will see some dust with a custom white color and a random influence map that you can change manually at any moment if you want. Because there are few to choose from. We actually posted a detailed article about this particular Blender addon for shading and realism (yes, because it really is mind blowing!).
You can control scale, rotation, the density of the dust in addition to other parameters. Furthermore, if you are not satisfied you can even paint your own from the influence map parameters after you activate it.
If you’re interested in Smudgr Pro, you can find it here: https://blendermarket.com/products/SMUDGR?ref=247
4 – PBR Painter
This is another great Blender PBR addon also dedicated to making texture painting in Blender better and smoother. It is quick and easy to use because its main purpose is to enhance Blender’s PBR workflow by offering intuitive and smart tools that allow you to do things faster and a lot more fluidly.
Like many of the popular texture painting software, and texture painting in Blender is actually pretty similar: it uses a layer-based, multi-pass painting approach. Which lets you paint all of the channels of a PBR material (albedo, roughness, height, normals,…etc.) simultaneously.
This addon gives different options because materials can be created from scratch, by importing pre-made PBR texture maps, and/or by generating procedural textures separately for each channel. Allowing you to combine normals of stacked layers, control the opacity of any channel of any layer, and much more.
As a result, this addon gives freedom of being creative rather than focusing on the details since it automatically takes care of some complex stuff. Since it automatically generates advanced node-setups that allows you to have complete control over every aspect of every channel.
Take a look at PBR Painter and get it here: https://blendermarket.com/products/pbr-painter?ref=247
3 – Layer Painter
Layer Painter is a Blender PBR addon that uses Eevee to give real-time feedback while creating materials in Blender’s viewport. For this, the addon offers a layer stack as well as procedural masks and painting features.
Layer Painter adds a layering system with PBR channels, which makes creating materials a totally different experience than how materials are usually generated in Blender. That means that there’s no need to worry about complex node trees which can be intimidating and hard to work with compared to the layer stack system (which a lot of people are familiar with). If you prefer working with nodes however, you can check our previous post about the Node Wrangler along with more than 30 best Blender addons of all time.
The concept is similar to Substance Painter’s approach and takes the concept of layers in a 2D program to create materials for 3D objects. Layer Painter addon works in the LookDev mode to give you real-time feedback when creating the materials.
Find it here: https://blendermarket.com/products/layerpainter?ref=247
2 – Ravage
Even though this Blender addon for PBR texture painting is new, it has some promising features that allow you do interesting things similar to what you can do in software such as Substance Painter.You can add basic materials or smart materials to your models and then start details using many tools such as masks, baking, adding text, and so on.
Ravage comes with panels and tools to easily access menus and features that are deep with Blender’s interface but necessary for the texturing process. Its familiar workflow is easy to understand for those who used popular texture painting software such as Substance Painter. Or even for those who don’t have a ton of experience for this type of work!
You can get the addon here: https://blendermarket.com/products/ravage?ref=247
1 – Bpainter
BPainter is an addon that can simplify the process of texture painting in Blender and can make it a lot easier. Even though Blender offers some good painting tools, you still need to set up a lot of things before you can dive into painting. Many functions are only a very low level and you need to set up a lot before you paint.
One of the things that can distinguish BPainter from Blender’s painting tools is offering an intuitive layer system similar to that of other 2D painting apps. Which allows artists to focus on the process rather than being distracted by the UI Clutter. Of course, there are other ways to reduce the clutter for any phase of the workflow: you can use Blender addons for management and productivity. There’s no doubt that it’s a very effective way to cut through all the unnecessary burdens of the setups if you would like to tackle the problem from the roots.
Not to mention that BPainter delivers a Brush Library that is available in any blend file. A good thing is that BPainter is shipped with a set of textures. Also, it is possible to add custom textures very easily, making your texture painting in Blender truly enjoyable.
Find it here: https://blendermarket.com/products/bpainter?ref=247
