PBR View

PBR View is the physically-based counterpart to OpenGL View: a real Cook-Torrance shader driven by the model's actual material data, plus image-based lighting from an HDR environment. Turn it on with PBR Preview (key P); Shift+P then opens the PBR Settings window instead of OpenGL Settings. It contains six closed-by-default accordions: Directional Light, Emission Light (together on Directional & Emission Light), Shading Model, Image Based Lighting, Post Processing, and PBR Layer View, plus a Load/Save PBR Preset (.ppp) button pair. Shading Model (Ultra) swaps the default shader for Adobe's OpenPBR BSDF, a real layered physically-based model, as an alternative to try alongside it.

Loaded Mesh vs. Generated Mesh under PBR Preview

On the Loaded Mesh — which carries real UVs, tangents and materials — PBR Preview renders its true multi-material PBR textures. The Generated Mesh has none of that on its own, so until you've baked something it instead renders with one flat, textureless default material — still correctly lit by the same directional light and IBL environment, just without texture detail. Once Transfer Texture or Create Normal Map has produced bakes, the Generated Mesh automatically switches to showing those instead of the flat default. PBR Preview also stays on across the Loaded/Generated view toggle, rather than silently dropping out for whichever mesh has no material data of its own.

Interaction with Realtime Subdividing

With Realtime Subdividing also on, the live subdivided preview carries only subdivided positions — no UVs or per-triangle material indices survive subdivision — so PBR Preview falls back to the same flat, textureless default the un-baked Generated Mesh uses. It's still correctly lit, just without per-material texture detail the subdivided topology has no correspondence for.