A common material you might need in architectural visualization, product design, or game dev is perforated metal — a metal sheet with evenly spaced holes. In this tutorial, we will walk through the steps to create a realistic perforated metal material in Blender 5.1. We’ll use an image texture to control transparency, allowing the metal surface to have perforations (holes) that can be used in various 3D models.
Step 1. Set up the Scene
1. Open Blender and create a new scene
2. Press A to select all objects in the scene and press X to delete them
3. Press Shift + A to add a new mesh and add a plane
4. Scale the plane by pressing S, then type in the size you want (i.e. S + 5)
5. Rotate the plane around the X-Axis by 90-degrees – using R + X + 90
Step 2. Prepare the Texture
1. A perforated metal texture is simply a black-and-white image where black areas are transparent (holes) and white areas are opaque (metal).
2. Open your imaging software of choice and make a 1K (1024 x1024) or 2k (2048 x 2048) texture
3. Make a background layer that is white – this will be the metal
4. Use the ellipse tool to make spheres or the rectangle tool to make squares or rectangles and fill them with black – these will be the transparent areas
5. Export the image as a PNG
Step 3. Create the Material
1. Make sure you are in material preview mode
2. Split the viewport and open the shader editor
3. Make a material and name it appropriately
4. Use SHIFT + A to add a mix shader and a transparent shader
5. Drag-and-drop your exported PNG into the shader editor
6. Connect the texture image into the Factor of the mix shader
7. Connect the transparent shader into the top shader input of the mix shader
8. Connect the principled shader into the bottom shader input of the mix shader
9. Connect the mix shader into the surface input of the material output
10. Change the base color of the principled shader
11. Increase the metallic to 1 and decrease the roughness
Conclusion
You’ve just created a perforated metal material in Blender using textures and shaders. This technique is highly flexible and can be used in many scenarios, from product design to creating complex industrial surfaces. By combining the power of Blender’s node editor with texture mapping, you can easily control how the metal looks and behaves in your scene, from its shininess to how the perforations interact with light.