We are going to talk about 14 of the best Blender addons for texturing and shading. 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.
How can these Blender addons for texturing and shading be useful?
Some of these addons are for speeding up the process of painting and creating materials, others are for generating better and higher quality results, and we are going to start the countdown with:
14 – Super texture
Our first entry in the list of Blender addons for texturing and shading is Super Texture. To clarify, it’s an addon for generating multiple PBR maps from a single image. It will automatically provide the a lot of texture maps for 1 image such as Diffuse, Roughness, Specular, Height, Normals and Bump map.
Baking using super texture is very easy to complete with very few requirements. Entirely built from material nodes, this addon provides a lot of flexibility and speed with native Blender support.
And it is able to generate instant results formatted correctly and ready for PBR materials.
Paid/$15 : https://blendermarket.com/products/super-texture?ref=247
13 – Zero Brush
Zero brush is an addon that provides Blender artists with a simple menu. Allowing them to press a button to begin sculpting, creating particle hair, or texture painting in either Blender Render or Cycles without having to set anything up.
Materials, UV maps, images, textures, node setups, and settings are all automatically generated where needed with Zero Brush.
This addon works contextually and intelligently. Most of what Zero Brush does is done behind the scenes so you can stay focused on creating cool stuff.
Paid/$35 or $70 : https://blendersensei.com/zero-brush/?ref=247
12 – Cycles texture paint layers
This is one of the Blender addons for texturing that are fully free. It allows you to quickly create and manipulate layers in Blender’s texture paint mode. You can texture paint entirely in the 3D View with the full functionality of layers, while nodes are being generated behind the scenes. And you don’t have to go through the process of arranging and rearranging nodes to paint on different textures.
Free: https://blenderartists.org/t/cycles-texture-paint-layers/1126636/25
11 – Material pipeline
Material pipeline is an addon that can help Blender artists and designers speed up the process of adding materials to their assets and scenes. With the package that contains 100 different PBR materials and utility FX node groups to get started and save some time.
It is possible to access these materials in two ways. You can either append the material from the Library .blend file like you normally would, OR you can import all the textures comprising the material into your material node-tree with the ONELVXE Texture Bridge.
This add-on can be a good tool for those who don’t know how to work with or create complex node-based material setups.
This node group can be used to craft nearly any material imaginable including non-metals, car-paint, refractive materials such as glass, skin (SSS), emission type materials and nature type materials.
Created for PBR, the node group allows for global shader control. Such as roughness, specularity, and color, while reserving more specific control for other shading models. It’s certainly one of the best Blender addons for texturing out there.
Paid: https://www.onelvxe.com/material-pipeline/
10 – Material nodes
The Material Nodes Addon is a collection of 47 useful node groups that can be used as building blocks for making your own unique materials.
This addon is For those who want to quickly get rid of the look of standard materials. In addition to those who are downloading textures and want to correct their values or bring some more variety to the textures. The Material Node groups have a very important function which is to speed up the process of building up materials. It’s safe to say that it’s a common feature between all the Blender addons for texturing here.
And The provided node groups are easy to plug in your node tree. Moreover, to offer artists better control over their scenes and more flexibility, it is possible to improve existing shaders.
Paid/$15 : https://blendermarket.com/products/material-nodes-addon?ref=247
9 – Baketool
This add-on can be useful For those that work with Interactive Ambient, Architectural Visualization, Games… and need a Blender Baking Solution for their Assets, Full scenes and other functions as well.
What this addon can do can be done in Blender. However, the way that Cycles works is slow and can be problematic sometimes when dealing with large scenes.
Baketool has pretty much everything that artists and studios need to bake their assets and scenes effectively. It definitely comforted our choice of putting in on this list of the best Blender addons for texturing.
Paid/$14.95 : https://blendermarket.com/products/baketool/?ref=247
8 – node custom builder
NodeCustomBuilder is good for saving important node trees in case you want to reuse them again and again. It’s not only the nodes that are saved, but all the settings of the individual node are stored also. This addon will be a timesaver when working with nodes in Blender. Whether it be nodes in the shader or in the compositing editor.
Paid/$2 : https://blendermarket.com/products/nodecustombuilder?ref=247
7 – MaterialiQ
Materialiq is a collection of Materials for Blender designed from the ground up to take care of time-consuming tasks. Like those usually involved with creating and changing materials. Instead of that, it allows artists to focus on other important aspects of the scene.
In Materialiq, about 90% of the materials use the same NodeGroup that lets you do the usual changes in exactly the same way. It is possible to change diffuse, roughness texture strength also normal map strength, colorize it, play around with brightness /contrast /hue /saturation of the texture.
Some of the nice features that come with this addon are the ability to Save Memory or Improve Performance. By Lowering Texture Resolution and having the control to Replace a Material Globally or Only On Selected Objects. Which is also good for flexibility and saving time.
In addition to that, Material colors in the viewport and the Node Editor (Shader Editor) resemble it’s rendered appearance for consistency and easier scene navigation.
Paid: $22-66 : https://blendermarket.com/products/materialiq?ref=247
6 – Node Wrangler
Node wrangler is an add-on comes with Blender. Even though it is an old one it is still important and very useful. In other words, this is why it earned a spot on the best Blender addons for texturing and shading. There are so many shortcuts that can be used to be able to do different things, and these are some of the most useful ones:
Ctrl+t : to connect the texture setup.
Ctrl+shift+left click: to see its color value unaffected by light
Alt+right drag: to connect the nodes without even touching them
Alt+s: is used to cycle all the connections through
Shift+alt+right drag: select a specific connection from the menu
Ctrl+shift+right drag: to set up a mix node
Ctrl+0: is also used to add a mix node.
Shift+s: to switch your nodes altogether.
K: to connect a node to multiple nodes at the same time.
Shift+p: to keep nodes tidy by framing them.
F9: to change the level and color.
It’s one of the best addons that come with Blender, among many others. If you want to know more about the topic, we posted an article listing top 40 Blender addons. You can check it by clicking this link.
5 – Rapid PBR Material creator
Rapid PBR Material Creator is an addon that simplifies the creation of PBR materials.
It can solve some of the problems that blender artists deal with. Like wasting a lot of time dragging multiple textures from the directories to Blender one by one. Ortweaking and joining tones of nodes to create one material.
This addon makes the whole process way simpler by allowing artists to reload materials instantly If you already edit textures externally in another texturing application Or baked a new version of textures in Substance Painter or any other software.
Rapid PBR can be really useful for Blender artists. Because without it, you need to reload each texture individually. Which is an absolutely frustrating and extremely time-consuming process. We are sure that you will agree with us on putting it among the best Blender addons for texturing and shading.
Paid/$10 : https://blendermarket.com/products/RapidPBRMaterialCreator?ref=247
4 – Bpainter
BPainter is an add-on that can simplify the process of painting 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 blenders 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.
Also, 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.
Paid/$40 : https://blendermarket.com/products/bpainter?ref=247
3 – Layer Painter
Layer painter is a Blender addon that uses Eevee to give realtime feedback while creating materials in Blenders view port. For this, the addon offers a layer stack as well as procedural masks and painting features.
Layer Painter adds a layer 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.
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 realtime feedback when creating the materials.
Paid/$20 : https://blendermarket.com/products/layerpainter?ref=247
2 – substance painter live link
Substance Painter Live Link is an add on 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.
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 add-on 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.
Paid/$25 : https://gumroad.com/l/fTRFN/
1 – extreme PBR
Our last entry in this list of Blender addons for texturing and shading is Extreme PBR. It’s dedicated to blender artists who need to use a lot of PBR materials. Without having to deal with the process of creating these materials over and over again which can be time-consuming and complicated as well.
Extreme PBR can manage more than 1100+ PBR materials ready to use which is good enough for most projects. The controls in the sidebar panel allow you to switch out materials, set and manipulate UV’s, edit the material properties, add displacement, and do a lot of other things you will need to do to quickly texture a scene.
This can easily be one the best blender add-ons for people that want quick and easy access to ready and good quality materials like architectural visualization artists and designers.
Paid /$39-59 : https://blendermarket.com/products/extreme-pbr-addon-for-blender-279-2?ref=247
