[Mask] Edge Wear Textures

Edge wear is the most physically predictable weathering there is. Whatever an object bumps into, gets set down on, or is gripped by will lose its coating at the corners first, because that is where contact pressure concentrates. A generated curvature mask captures the geometry side of that, but on its own it produces a sterile even outline — real paint chips off in irregular bites with hard edges and occasional flakes. These masks supply that irregularity. This collection covers chipped paint edges, scuffed corner wear, rub-through bands, and flake patterns.

License

Free for personal and commercial use. No attribution required. Commercial games, film, product visualization, and client work are all permitted. No credit, no backlink, no permission request needed. You may not resell or redistribute the texture files themselves as a texture pack.

What's in this collection

• Chipped paint — hard-edged irregular losses exposing the layer beneath. Painted metal, machinery, vehicles, props.
• Corner scuffing — softer abrasion concentrated at convex edges. Furniture, cases, handled equipment.
• Rub-through band — continuous wear along a contact line. Door frames, stair nosings, tool handles.
• Flake pattern — lifting, curling coating loss with a visible boundary. Old paint, powder coating, rusted-through finishes.

All tiles are seamless in both directions and delivered at high resolution.

Where edge wear masks are used

Material authoring. Edge wear is the first thing added on top of a clean base material in almost every PBR workflow, and it is what separates an asset that looks manufactured from one that looks owned.

Game asset production. Weapons, vehicles, props, and environment modules. In stylised art directions, edge wear is often the primary readability device, drawing the silhouette of an object in a lighter value.

Film and VFX. Hero props and set dressing where a coating history has to hold up in close inserts.

Product visualization. Refurbishment, durability, and lifecycle imagery where showing wear is the point rather than a flaw.

How to use these in Blender

1. Import as Non-Color data and multiply the mask against a Geometry → Pointiness output so the wear appears only where the mesh is genuinely convex.
2. Feed the combined result into a Mix Shader factor between a painted material and an exposed substrate.
3. Use a Color Ramp to sharpen the transition. Chipped paint has a hard boundary, and a soft gradient reads as dirt instead.
4. Offset the chip mask slightly and use it to add a thin raised lip on the paint edge with a bump node — real coatings have thickness.

How to use these in Substance Painter / Designer

1. Add a Curvature generator to a layer mask, then insert the texture as a grunge input in the generator's mask builder.
2. Reduce the generator's global balance and let the texture supply the variation, rather than dialling the generator up until it produces an even outline.
3. Stack a second, larger-scale mask to interrupt the wear so some edges stay untouched — uniform wear on every edge is the giveaway of a generated pass.
4. Add a height offset on the worn layer so the exposed substrate sits fractionally below the coating.

How to use these in Unreal Engine 5 / Unity

1. Bake the combined curvature and mask result into a texture rather than computing it at runtime for static assets.
2. Use it in a Lerp (UE5) or blend shader (Unity) to mix a painted layer with bare metal, including the Metallic and Roughness difference between them, not just color.
3. Drive the wear amount from a material parameter so the same asset can ship in several condition states.
4. Combine with vertex color for per-instance variation across repeated props.

Tips for edge wear masks specifically

Wear exposes a different material, not a different color. When paint comes off metal, the metallic and roughness values change too. Blending only the base color is the most common reason edge wear looks painted on rather than worn through.

Interrupt the outline. Curvature-driven wear traces every edge equally, which no real object does. Breaking the mask with a larger-scale pattern so some edges stay pristine is what makes the result read as history rather than as a filter.

Think about how the object is handled. A rifle wears at the grip and muzzle, a crate at its bottom corners, a door at the handle height. Placing wear according to use beats any amount of procedural sophistication.

Browse the collection

Mask textures are organized into volumes, each containing multiple packs. New volumes are added continuously.

View the full Mask collection →

Related: Metal textures for the substrate revealed beneath paint, Abstract textures for noise sources to break up masks.