This Blender System Brings Dozens Of Physically Accurate Metals For Free

Metallic BSDF+ uses 5,403 nodes and data from research papers.

Material vendors will hate this one. 3D Artist known as SavageCG truly lives up to the name with this insane project: a complete rework of Blender's Metallic BSDF node, which adds multi-layer roughness for more realistic reflections, physically accurate material presets for a wide range of common metals and alloys, plus extra effects and controls for enhanced realism and easier customization. "No drugs, just ADHD", the creator commented.

All physically based materials are created using technical data taken directly from original research papers. And the craziest part is that it's available for free. According to SavageCG, over 30 metals that have been scientifically studied for their physical properties in 3D rendering are currently included, with more planned for future updates. They also emphasized that absolutely no AI was used in this project.

The artist says this setup is also very optimized. It uses Menu Switch nodes to disable unused parts and save performance, and effects like scratches and brushed metal use anisotropy instead of bump or displacement. SavageCG plans to make it an online asset library that can update automatically with new features.

"I plan to add more material wear effects in the future. Ambient occlusion, burnished metal, rust, etc. Right now, it is intended to be used as a physically accurate base for your metal materials. Additionally, if you want to use the current material effects, bear in mind that a texture coordinate node is needed to use the effects, just like with any image texture in Blender. I will be releasing a written tutorial in the .blend file in the next few days, so check for that in the future too. Right now there are 30+ material presets, with more on the way."

Click here to download SavageCG's Metallic BSDF+. SavageCG shared the papers and videos used as references for this project, so head over to the original Reddit thread for more details.

Also, in case you missed this, Blender 5.2 LTS was released last week with exciting new features, including Geometry Nodes-powered physics, Thin Wall mode, a Texture Cache system, and more:

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