Are you wondering why your scene in Blender is showing a purple or pink color? There are different ways that cause your scene and models to look pink or purple, but the reasons behind them are the same. I’m here to teach you how to resolve this problem and avoid making the same mistake in the future. This also happened at the beginning of my journey to learn Blender.
This will not only fix your problem but also be helpful for beginners to learn a new method of exporting Blender scenes and models without any errors.
Why is my Blender scene or models showing pink colors?
Your models or the entire scene in the viewport cause these purple-pink colors because your scene is missing the texture added to your models or the scene. By default, Blender does not save your textures in a .blend file because doing so significantly increases the file size. When you add a texture to a model from a particular folder, Blender saves the path of that texture and reflects that material on your models. If the texture or Blender file’s path changes, you will encounter this pink and purple color issue.
Why are the textures on my Blender model fine but the viewport is pink?
Sometimes, when we open our old blender files, we will see every 3D model, and their textures look fine, but the entire scene turns purple-pink. This is because the path of your HDRI has changed or the HDRI texture is missing. This problem mostly happens when you use the default Blender HDRIs, and when you upgrade or downgrade your Blender version, the file path of your new Blender version will change and the HDRI will be missing.
Every texture you’ve added to your model and scene will be used from your computer, not from the Blend file. Before sharing the textures, you must export them into a .blend file. When you share it with someone without exporting textures to the blend file, this pink or purple color will show up in your scene.
How To Fix purple or pink color in Blender viewport?
There are 3 types of fixes to this purple-pink color issue in the Blender viewport. You need to fix it according to the problem that you are currently facing. I recommend learning all of these fixes, so you can avoid the viewport coloring issue permanently in the future.
- Fix your 3D model’s missing textures
- Fix the HDRI background missing texture
- Fix the viewport color issue after exporting your Blender file to another location or sharing it with somebody
1)Fix missing textures in Blender – For 3D models
There are two methods to fix this problem and both methods are for different scenarios. If your model is missing some textures and all the textures are from the same folder then you should use the Find Missing Files option in order to fix the pink color. or If your textures are in different folders then you should follow the manual method.
a) Fix missing textures in Blender with the “Find Missing Files” (Automatic)
Adding each and every missing texture into Blender is a time-consuming process, but there is an option called “Find Missing Files” to complete this task automatically. To do this, you must know where the textures are located. Once you find the correct folder, you can proceed with this step.
- Step 1 – Go to Files
- Step 2 – Hover your mouse onto External Data
- Step 3 – Select Find Missing Files
A pop-up window will appear when you select the “Find Missing Files” option
- Step 4 – Select and open the folder that contains missing textures
- Step 5 – Once you are in the proper folder, Click on “Find Missing Files“
When you click on Find Missing Files, Every texture that is missing in your blender scene will automatically restore to their appropriate texture locations
b) Manual way of fixing missing files in Blender
If your textures are added from different locations, you can still use the Find Missing Files option for PBR textures, In case the texture is individual then you should manually locate them and add it to your scene.
- Step 1 – Go to Shading Tab, where you can find your Image texture
- Step 2 – Read the name of your missing texture on top of the Image Texture node. If you feel that name sounds familiar to you and know where it is, you can add that texture again by clicking on the ‘📁’ Folder icon and adding it.
- Step 3 – If you don’t know the name of your texture and where it is located but you believe it is in your folders somewhere else, Then Copy the name of your texture from the Image Texture node. Go to File Explorer, paste the name in the search bar, and find and import it. (Yes, It is the hard way but If there are no options to do, this is the easiest way you can accomplish to find your missing textures)
2)Fix the HDRI background missing texture
Fixing a missing HDRI texture is extremely easy. All you need is the texture path information. There are two methods to do it If you used a default HDRI.
- If you didn’t know where the Blender HDRIs are located, here is the default path information.
” C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender 3.3\3.3\datafiles\studiolights\world ” ; (The current Blender version that I’m using is 3.3, so choose the correct folder according to your current version) You can find the missing default texture from the above path. - If you are using downloaded HDRI then you should check your HDRIs location where you will often keep it and use it in your scene, or Search the same name on the internet and Download it If you didn’t find it on your computer.
3)Fix the viewport purple color issue after exporting your Blender file to another location or sharing it with somebody
When you want to share your blend file with someone, you must export all your textures and lighting into the blend file in order for it to work perfectly. There is an easy way to do that with a single click.
- Step 1 – Go to File
- Step 2 – Hover your mouse onto External Data
- Step 3 – Click on Pack Resources to add all the files into the blend file.
- Step 4 (Optional) – There is also an option called Automatically Pack Resources. This will pack every time you add anything to your scene. and don’t forget to save your file.
Hey, you made it to the end. I hope this post was useful to you; if so, please share it and read my other Blender-related posts.
