The biggest PBR material libraries already contain thousands of materials. Between Substance 3D Assets, ambientCG, Poly Haven, Poliigon, Quixel Megascans, Textures.com, and dozens of smaller libraries, there is a good chance that a common material already exists somewhere.
We think the problem starts with the word somewhere.
Finding a concrete library entry is easy. Finding the exact concrete you have in mind can mean searching several libraries, opening dozens of nearly identical thumbnails, downloading a few candidates, and eventually realizing none of them are quite right. Traditional material libraries can keep getting larger, but they are still catalogs. The material has to exist before you can find it.
twirl takes a different approach. We are building a PBR material library where you can search through existing materials and generate the material you need when the search comes up short. Instead of defining the size of the library by how many files have already been uploaded, generation means the possible library is effectively unlimited.
What is the largest PBR material library?
There is not a particularly useful single answer because material libraries count different things.
Substance 3D Assets includes a large collection of professionally authored materials alongside models and other assets. ambientCG and Poly Haven focus heavily on freely available assets with permissive CC0 licensing. Poliigon combines materials with models and HDRIs and integrates directly into Blender. Quixel Megascans built its reputation around scanned real-world surfaces and assets.
There are plenty of other useful libraries too. Textures.com has been around for years and covers far more than PBR materials. ShareTextures, CGBookcase, 3DTextures.me, and TextureCan provide additional downloadable PBR libraries, while BlenderKit and Extreme PBR are particularly useful when you want materials integrated more directly into Blender.
We use these kinds of libraries ourselves. If a good scan of the exact surface already exists, downloading it usually makes more sense than generating another version.
The limitation is that every one of these libraries has an end.
A library can have 10,000 materials and still not have yours
Material searches become difficult surprisingly quickly once you move beyond broad categories.
You might not need concrete. You might need old poured concrete with hairline cracks, faded yellow parking paint, dark tire marks, exposed aggregate, and slightly damp areas. A library could contain hundreds of concrete materials without containing that one.
The same thing happens with wood materials, tile, metal, stone, fabric, plaster, asphalt, brick, and almost every other material category. Downloadable examples include board-formed concrete and hardwood floor when you need a concrete-or-wood starting point.
This is where we think generation belongs inside a material library rather than beside it.
With twirl, you can search the library first. If something already matches, use it. If it does not, describe the surface and generate a new tileable PBR material from the prompt.
The result can live in your library alongside the materials you already found. Over time, the library becomes a combination of existing materials and surfaces generated specifically for your projects.
Why we call twirl an unlimited material library
We are not claiming that twirl currently stores more premade material files than every other material platform. That is not what unlimited means here.
Traditional libraries measure their size by the number of materials already in the catalog. Generation changes that constraint because the catalog no longer defines the complete set of materials you can access.
If you search for weathered ceramic tile and find one you like, you can use it. If you need the same tile with uneven green glaze, chipped edges, darker grout, and years of grime around the joints, you can generate that variation instead of waiting for someone to add it to the catalog.
That makes the useful size of the library much harder to define with an asset count. The existing library is still important, but it becomes the starting point rather than the boundary.
twirl vs other material libraries
Substance 3D Assets makes sense when you want professionally authored, configurable materials and already work inside the Substance ecosystem. Poly Haven is one of the first places we would look for a high-quality CC0 scanned surface, while ambientCG is particularly useful when you want a broad free PBR catalog.
Poliigon, Quixel Megascans, and Textures.com offer much larger ecosystems around textures and 3D assets. BlenderKit and Extreme PBR are worth looking at if your priority is finding and applying materials without leaving Blender. ShareTextures, CGBookcase, 3DTextures.me, and TextureCan are also useful places to check when the larger libraries do not have what you need.
twirl is built around a different question. Instead of only asking how we can put more materials into a catalog, we want to remove the point where the catalog runs out.
The workflow becomes simple: search what already exists, generate what does not, and keep the materials worth using.
Material libraries should grow with your work
A public material catalog is mostly the same for every artist. A generated library can become specific to the work you actually do.
An environment artist might gradually build a library around damaged concrete, asphalt, dirt, stone, painted metal, and weathered architecture. A product designer might accumulate plastics, fabrics, brushed metals, rubber, painted finishes, and unusual manufactured surfaces. An architectural artist might build a completely different collection around flooring, plaster, tile, stone, wood, and facade materials.
We think that is more useful than trying to win a static asset-count competition.
There will always be a place for scanned materials, carefully authored procedural materials, and huge downloadable libraries. We do not need to replace those. We want twirl to solve what happens after you have searched them and still cannot find the surface you had in mind.
The largest useful material library is the one that does not end when the search results do.
That is what we are building with twirl.
Sources
- Adobe Substance 3D Assets
- ambientCG
- Poly Haven
- Poliigon
- Quixel Megascans
- Textures.com
- ShareTextures
- CGBookcase
- 3DTextures.me
- TextureCan
- BlenderKit
- Extreme PBR
- twirl PBR Material Library