The purpose of this article is to guide you through Sketchfab's implementation of PBR, as well as the Sketchfab material editor. It is not intended to teach you how to use PBR in general. There are many great resources on PBR theory and practice, including Allegorithmic's PBR Guide.
What is PBR?
Physically Based Rendering (PBR) is a method of shading and rendering that provides a more accurate representation of how light interacts with surfaces. It can be referred to as Physically Based Rendering (PBR) or Physically Based Shading (PBS). Depending on what aspect of the pipeline is being discussed, PBS is usually specific to shading concepts and PBR specific to rendering and lighting. However, both terms describe on a whole, the process of representing assets from a physically accurate standpoint. - Wes McDermott, Allegorithmic PBR Guide, Vol. 2
PBR is a methodology, not necessarily a hard standard.
PBR on Sketchfab
The PBR material tools are available in 3D Settings.
- From your model, click Edit 3D Settings or add "/edit" to the end of any model URL.
- Select the Materials panel in the top left.
See also Materials and Textures.
Shading mode must be Lit for PBR lighting and reflections to work. Using an Environment to light the scene is typically the best option. See Scene and Lighting for more details.
PBR Maps
PBR has two main workflow options: Metalness and Specular. See PBR Maps.
Anisotropy
Anisotropic reflections are stretched across a surface due to patterned roughness on that surface. Some common use cases are hair and brushed steel. See Anisotropy.
Roughness / Glossiness
The Roughness or Glossiness channel describes a material's surface irregularities and how they affect the reflection of light. See Roughness / Glossiness.
Displacement
The Displacement channel can move a model's vertices. See Displacement.
Normal Map / Bump Map
The normal map or bump map channel adds bumps, dents, and other details to the surface of a model. See Normal Map / Bump Map.
Sheen
The Sheen channel simulates the way light interacts with lots of small threads which absorb and scatter colors. See Sheen.
Subsurface Scattering / Skin
The Subsurface scattering (SSS) channel simulates the effect of light scattering inside an object. It is useful for translucent materials like skin, wax, and ice. See Subsurface Scattering / Skin.
Clear Coat
The Clear Coat channel simulates the effect of a thin reflective layer on top of a surface. A common use case is the transparent coating on top of car paint. See Clear Coat.
Ambient Occlusion (AO)
The Ambient Occlusion (AO) channel defines large areas of occluded light. See Ambient Occlusion (AO).
Cavity
The Cavity channel defines small areas of occluded light. See Cavity.
Transparency / Opacity / Alpha Mask
Sketchfab supports several transparency modes: Blending, Refraction, Additive, Dithered, and Mask.
See Transparency for details.
Emission
The Emission channel can make a material glow. See Emission.
Faces Rendering
The Faces Rendering option allows you to display just one, or both, sides of a material surface. See Faces Rendering.
Saving
Once you've made your adjustments, including position and orientation, be sure to update your model's thumbnail image and default position with Save View and/or save your changes with Save Settings. You can return to your model by clicking either the model's name or Exit.
Also see:
Comments
44 comments
@osadajanayna You'll need your model to be UV mapped for textures to work correctly. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with Clo, so I don't know if it's possible in that software. You can learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_mapping
@be4post Hi Matthieu, can you please share the link to the model so I can have a closer look?
It would be great if I could do all my look dev on sketch fab then export these settings for use in a three.js project.
If you enable Download on your model, the glTF version that we generate will include all the material settings that you defined in 3D Settings.
Hello, why does the material on the site sketchfab not be able to read and indicate the desired texture channel, with RGB and Alpha? it would be optimized for any engine in general, PNG and TGA reads the file format.
I create the textures in Substance Painter and Designer METALL_ROUGH and SPEC_ROUGH and photoshop, they are very convenient and easily applicable, your can add a checkmark that will switch the channel like in Marmoset Toolbag 3. it would be great!
Under Faces Rendering, the link to Cartoon Outlines is broken:
http://blog.sketchfab.com/post/111457595804/creating-a-cartoon-outline-for-sketchfab?utm_source=help_center&utm_campaign=help_center_content
Thanks! I'll fix that right now. The new link is: https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/creating-a-cartoon-outline-for-sketchfab/
Hello! Interestingly, are you planning to make triplanar mapping for textures in the settings so that it is easier to configure without a full-fledged UVW Unwrap?
Hello! It's not currently planned. Can you tell us more about your needs?
a pity that you are not planning, it would be very cool to tune UV or Tile
I would like to be able to change the color of the vignette, and to be able to add Fog to the scene)
Guys, I wanted to re-fill the same model with only a different animation, but the previous model had extra Materials, can I delete them so that they don't interfere, if there is no such possibility, then it would be great to implement this function for many people, noticed that textures can be removed, but there are no materials
Have you tried re-uploading it with the new animation already? If you remove the extra materials in your new version and re-upload it, I think it should be ok.
Also, we are working on supporting UV transform options this year.
Will SketchFab support Metalness as a grayscale map and Smoothness as Opacity within the same map some day? This is the non-PBR method Unity uses.. if the Smoothness field just had a checkbox that said "Read Alpha Only" we could simplify our 3d asset process so much..
In the next generation of our viewer / editor, every grayscale texture channel can be assigned an image channel (RGBA). This is in heavy R&D at the moment, and is not likely to be released for a year or more.
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