In this video, you'll learn how to combine different materials together using the PBR Mixer nodeGroup included with the Poliigon Material Converter. You'll also learn how to deal with texture repetition using the mosaic rotation feature of the UberMapping node.
Steps
Mosaic De-tiling
The UberMapping node includes a de-tiling feature for breaking up texture repetition. By default, it's set to 0, which means it's disabled. As you increase the angle it will randomly rotate different 'tiles' of the texture to break up the repetition.
The Mosiac Noise bends the edges of the tiling to assist with hiding the seams that are created by this method.
It's ideal for large areas of terrain and any materials that don't have recognizably repeating patterns like ground materials, some plasters/concrete, etc.
PBR Mixer
Included with the converter is a PBR Mixer nodeGroup. This has been designed to assist with Blending multiple materials together whilst still only using one final principled shader.
To set up a blended material, follow these steps;
With no object selected, import at least two materials that will blend well together. They will not be applied to anything but will be loaded into Blender for access in a moment.
Select the target object and create a new material.
In the node editor press Shift+A, navigate to the 'Group' sub-menu and select one of the materials, this will bring in the material nodeGroup for that material into the node editor. Place it and then repeat the process to bring in the next material.
Add and connect up whatever mapping nodes you like, in this example I used our Ubermapping node for both which can also be found in the 'Groups' sub-menu.
Press Shift+A again and once again, navigate to 'Groups'. This time, select the PBR Mixer.
Connect the Color, Roughness, Normal, and Displacement outputs for both materials into the PBR Mixer as pictured above.
Connect the Color, Roughness, Normal, and Displacement outputs to the final shader/displacement node.
The 'Fac' value will decide on the blend between the two, in the pictured example a simple noise texture and color ramp are used however a painted mask would work equally well.