I’m trying to create some pbr textures to use them for concept art on some basic geometry without having to unwrap and deal with UV maps. My problem is that I can’t really create them to look as good as they do on UV map. In my example you can see that UV maped bricks have clear and good separation between the edges. However if I create the same thing in Object mode with Box projection I get jagged edges everywhere. I tried blend option and it only blurs things.
What am I doing wrong here?
Are you using adaptive displacement? If yes, what does the base mesh look like?
If the base mesh has cracks and ledges, that would explain the artifacts, because box projection will map the texture on the sides of those features, creating a discontinuity that won’t displace very well.
I just tried it and it seems that for every texture except displacement, the box mapping is applied after the geometry is displaced, which means that the color gets mapped to the sides of the displaced geometry. This means that you can’t have a matching set of textures with displacement if you use box mapping.
I wish I had a different answer, but this seems like a limitation of Blender.
@Frostensen I don’t know if this will help. I remember having similar issues with Displacement and the thing that worked for me was to derive Object coordinates from Generated ones:
In the Multiply vector node type your model X/Y/Z dimensions.
Nah, doesn’t work. Same results I’m afraid 
Wait a second. Did you plugged your height map into Height in Displacement node?
If yes then try plugging it to Scale instead and then change height manually, for example to 0,5.
Nah, doesn’t work either 
Could you please elaborate this a bit for me, as I’m not sure I understand it.
I mean, what do you use box projection for if it’s going to mess up your height map?
Even without displacement, it still has its uses.
It’s good for adding small surface imperfections, like scratches and dirt, to smooth surfaces. If you are making a scene with, let’s say, a bunch of smooth plastic or metal objects, you could use box mapping to add subtle roughness variations on all those smooth materials to make them more realistic without needing to UV them.
I see, so for creating displaced geometry I should either use UV’s to get the proper result or one of those procedural materials or perhaps Substance material that has height baked into normals. From what I see regular texture maps won’t really work.
If you were to use an image texture that’s rather uniform, it would probably look good enough. Box mapping is just not very suitable for brick textures, because they are directional and have sections that look different from each other, which will make any poor mapping look obvious.
