PBR
Physically Based Rendering
Also known as: Physically Based Rendering · Physically Based Shading · PBS
Definition
PBR (Physically Based Rendering) is a shading and material workflow that simulates how light interacts with surfaces according to real-world physics. Instead of authoring colours per lighting condition, an artist defines a material via separate texture channels — typically base colour, roughness, metalness, normal, and ambient occlusion — and the engine handles consistent lighting across any scene. PBR is the universal standard for modern game engines (Unreal Engine 5, Unity HDRP, Godot 4) because the same material looks correct under any lighting rig.
In production
In production, a PBR material is built in Substance Painter or Substance Designer, exported as a set of textures, and assigned to a shader in the engine. Studios target either Metallic-Roughness (used by UE5, Unity, Godot, glTF) or Specular-Glossiness workflows.
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Texture Artist
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Tools that use PBR
See also
Roughness Map
Surface microfacet detail
Metalness Map
Conductor vs dielectric switch
Normal Map
Per-pixel surface detail
Albedo
Base colour without lighting
Channel Packing
One texture, multiple maps
Metal/Roughness vs Specular/Glossiness
The two PBR texture workflows
Emissive Map
Texture for glowing surfaces
Principled BSDF
Blender's all-purpose PBR shader