PBR Textures; can I mix them with basic MS.Paint images?

Question

I've been having a go at some PBR textures. Nothing too complex at all, rather just following this simple and easy to do tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8uSR8V8olw

Now, being a total beginner to PBR textures, and overall having a pretty basic understanding of textures in general, for example, as of now I'm making textures in Paint.Net or MS.Paint, and adding an image texture to the Principled BDSF. This sometimes can sometimes give the textures a rather plastic looking result.

Finally getting to the point; Is there, and what is the way I can mix my PBR textures and MS Paint textures together? In short, I'd like to mix a metal PBR texture with one of my MS Paint images.

Thank you to those who offer a helping hand in this query.

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways you can mix them. The way I would suggest is to keep your PBR material setup connected to the Principled BSDF, and then run your MSPAINT image through a Diffuse BSDF and mix the two using a Mix Shader.

As you can see from the image, I mixed them using a converted Black and White version of the original image as a mix factor. This is in the case you don't have a mask for your MSPAINT image (if needed), you can create one using a RGB to BW node and a ColorRamp.

Another way you can do this (which is handy if you only want to mix BaseColors, but have the rest of the PBR properties "apply" to your mixed image) is to mix the BaseColor texture of your PBR set with your MSPAINT image (using the same mix factor methodd, if desired) using a MixRGB node: