Question regarding the "use one material for the entire model" advice

Hi, I was a little confused by the comment saying it's recommended to use one material or as few as possible besides the special ones like lights, glass etc.

How do you use the same material for an entire model like the motorcycle if you need certain parts to be metallic, others more shiny or rough, or different colors etc? In previous texturing courses or exercises like the shading a room one, I had to create new materials for nearly every part of the room since they were all significantly different.

Thank you for clarifying!

  • Jonathan Lampel replied

    Great question! It's definitely fine to use multiple materials for more complex objects like the motorcycle, especially if it's not going into a game where the performance matters a lot more and you're using procedural textures which make it difficult to mask out different parts. But, for game assets or other projects that would benefit from keeping things simple, that's where you would use your PBR textures such as metalness, roughness, etc. to differentiate each part. Does that clear things up? 

    1 love
  • Mathieu Dugon(mathieudugon) replied

    Oh that totally makes sense, I sort of forgot about the textures filling in all the details and PBR properties by themselves. Thanks!