Faking Geometry with PBR Decals – Free PBR Texture Pack

How I replaced dozens of 3D models with a single texture atlas.

This started as part of a project I was working on, where I needed a fast and lightweight way to populate walls with electrical fixtures without modelling every outlet and switch individually.

Instead of placing dozens of separate objects throughout the scene, I modelled each element in high detail, baked the geometry into a complete PBR texture set, and assembled everything into a single texture atlas.

The result is a decal that reproduces the appearance of real geometry while remaining incredibly lightweight and easy to place anywhere in a scene.

The Process

Every outlet, switch and wall fixture was modelled individually before being carefully UV unwrapped and baked into a shared texture atlas.

The final atlas contains all of the maps required for physically based rendering, including:

• Base Color
• Normal
• Roughness
• Metallic
• Ambient Occlusion
• Height

Once applied as a decal, the entire collection behaves like a detailed piece of geometry while actually existing as little more than a textured surface.

Why Use Decals?

Small environmental details can dramatically improve realism, but they also increase scene complexity and production time.

Decals provide an efficient alternative by preserving the visual richness of high-poly assets while keeping environments lightweight and easy to build.

They’re particularly useful in games, architectural visualization and other real-time applications where optimization matters.

Project Preview

Below you’ll find a few snapshots from the creation process, from the original high-poly models and texture baking to the finished decals applied inside a real-time scene.

Download

I’ve included the complete decal sheet used in this project as a free download.

Feel free to use it in your own work, experiment with it, or take it apart to see how it was built. If you create something with it, I’d love to see the result.