How to Make Your Models Look Realistic With Procedural Textures in Blender

Ever heard of procedural displacement? Use this technique to make your 3D models look more realistic in Blender.

Blender is a free-to-use 3D creative suite for making 3D models, game assets, motion graphics, and much more. After creating your 3D model, its default state will probably be gray and boring. That's why in Blender, you add textures and materials to give it life. However, that could end up looking cartoon-like and unrealistic.

To make it look more realistic, we can use an advanced feature called procedural displacement. In this article, we'll take a closer look at procedural displacement and how you can use it in Blender. For our example, we'll be creating a biscuit model with procedural textures.

What Is Procedural Displacement?

The word "displacement" means the act of moving something from its place or position. In the context of 3D modeling, it refers to changes in the location of vertices. Rather than manually moving these yourself, we can have the computer generate the displacement. Why would you want to do this?

It adds more detail to your model. For example, you can use it to create those realistic-looking patterns and cracks on a biscuit.

While you could add a UV-based or image-based texture to your model, procedural textures are a simple way to add realism and detail to your work. And it will do the heavy-lifting for you since it is computer-generated.

Let's get started...

Add a UV Sphere and an Area Light

Firstly, delete the default cube and add a UV sphere instead. This will work on most models. In this article, we will start with a simple 3D model that's accessible to Blender beginners.

We renamed this UV sphere "Biscuit". Right-click the model and select Shade Smooth. Now switch the Renderer to Cycles.

Next, add an Area Light so it's easier to preview the results later on. Check out our in-depth guide on how to add light in Blender.

Add a New Material

In the Shader Editor, create a new material. Click on the New Material button as shown below.

Click on the field next to the Fake User button. We renamed this material "Biscuit Texture", you can rename it to whatever you want.

Click on the box next to Base Color to set the base material color. Here, the biscuit model's color is set to a light orangey-brown.

Next, increase the Roughness value found in the Principled BSDF node.

Add Displacement Nodes

To add detail to the shape or surface, we can use displacement shaders. There are two types of displacement methods; True Displacement and Bump Mapping. The latter only gives the appearance of displacement as it uses a "bump map" to create a fake displacement through light and shadow effects.

The former, as its name suggests, is not a fake effect. It displaces the actual mesh geometry before rendering. This method also gives the best quality results if the mesh is subdivided. However, this method is also quite memory-intensive. In this case, we want to use both of the methods together.

We will use actual displacement for the bigger displacement and bump for the finer details. As you can see in the example below, in settings under Objects, you can set theDisplacement to Displacement and Bump.

We've used a Texture Coordinate node to change the mapping of this texture. The Texture Coordinate node is used for the coordinates of textures, typically used as inputs for the Vector input for texture nodes. To add one, press Shift + A and search for "texture coordinate".

Make sure you have connected Generated from Texture Coordinate to the Vector input of Subtract. Then connect the Vector output of Subtract and connect it to the Vector input of the Noise Texture, so it actually uses the object data.

We also added various Math nodes. These will perform some math operations; in this case, it changes the scale of the biscuit model. Adjust the values to reshape the sphere to be a cookie shape.

Now go ahead and add the basic biscuit texture. We did this by adding a Noise Texture and connecting it as a displacement node. To add one, you simply press Shift + A and search for "noise texture".

Increase the scale of the noise texture, you'll see detail spread evenly across the biscuit. We will use this texture as the "bump" of our material.

If your model is looking a bit strange, make sure you've moved the light source around. As shown in the image below, we've moved the Area Light to be above the biscuit model.

Tweaks and Adjustments

You can also further adjust the settings in the noise texture node. For example, we've set the Scale to 12.000, the Detail to -5.000, the Roughness to 0.500, and the Distortion to 0.250.

Next, we are going to add another Multiply node, a Voronoi Texture, and a Map Range.

Connect the Vector output from Scale to Color1 in the duplicate of Multiply. Then connect Color of the Noise Texture to Color2 of Multiply.

After doing so, change Multiply to Linear Light. Next, change the Feature Output of the Voronoi Texture from its default F1 value to Distance to Edge. To add more detail, add the following nodes and change their values as shown below.

Press Shift + A and navigate to Mesh > Plane to add a plane. Just as we changed the Base Color of the biscuit model before in its Principled BSDF, we can change the Base Color of the plane.

First, click on the plane in the 3D Viewport, then you should see its Principled BSDF in the Shader Editor. Click on the box next to Base Color to change its color.

In the example below, we have changed its color to light pink.

For more detail, we'll next add a color ramp to create the darker colors at the bottom to make it look like a baked biscuit. Press Shift + A and search for "ColorRamp". Connect it to the other nodes in the Shader Editor as seen below. Specifically, make sure its Color output is connected to Base Color of Principled BSDF.

Next we'll add a Subdivision Surface Modifier to the biscuit model. To do so, click on the Modifier Properties tab, this is marked by the wrench icon as seen in the image below. Click on Add Modifier and then click on Subdivision Surface. Change its values as shown below.

As a finishing touch, adjust the values of the two Add nodes to make the texture softer. We've adjusted them to 0.5 and 0.7 respectively.

Make Realistic Models With Procedural Texturing

Procedural texturing will make your models look more realistic. Refer back to this guide whenever you want a refresher on how to make Blender objects look realistic with procedural displacement.