Quote from: zaxxon on February 25, 2017, 10:57:34 AM
It would be great if Planetside can implement some of the PBR pipeline into TG so we could use some of these assets to their full extent
That shouldn't be difficult, even if we don't have a shader with "PBR" in the name. Which PBR workflow do you prefer, and can you point us to some assets for testing?
Matt
Sorry for the lag in getting back to you Matt. Hope this doesn't constitute a hijacking Cypher :).
I realize that Physical Based Rendering (PBR) is a hot and sometimes loosely used term these days. While not a technical guy per se, I do try to follow the current trends in rendering. I know that the TG renderer already uses physically based rendering as in specular and roughness (and probably a whole lot more outside of my understanding). What I really want to accomplish is to use the increasing number of available scanned assets to their optimal quality in TG. The Quixel Megascan libraries are tremendous assets and relatively inexpensive. I now own virtually all of the 3D scan content from them and have used some of them in my last few TG renders. But, I know I'm not getting the most out of them. As in many things in TG, the inability may be entirely caused by my lack of understanding of how to properly use the controls. Using the Megascan assets as an example though, I'm left with a number of maps that don't easily plug into TG's texture map workflow. Megascans two PBR workflow options are the same as the Allegorithmic options of either Specular/Roughness or Metal/Gloss. The Specular/Roughness maps from Megascans are: albedo, bump, displacement, roughness, fuzz, normal, normal bump, specular. The Metal/Gloss maps are: albedo, bump, displacement, cavity, fuzz, gloss, normal, normal bump.
I've attached a couple of images to illustrate my current efforts using a Megascan asset. First is a comparison with my TG render alongside the sample image of the same asset from the Quixel website. It's a lovely asset and I think it looks pretty decent in the TG render, but to my eye the sample is clearly better. Discounting the different lighting and lens setting, the detail areas are worth comparing. However when I compared my test renderings in TG, I'm hard pressed to see much of a difference between no maps applied to all the maps that I could apply (given my understanding of applying texture maps in TG).
A simple (simplistic?) response to your offer is: if possible, create a texture loading template for the various map types for both Specular/Roughness and Metal/Gloss PBR work flows.
I suspect that the two normal maps play a big part in the final image quality. I don't know if those can be supported in the current TG render engine. Once again I only have a limited understanding of the technicalities involved.
If the current TG renderer indeed can accomplish that, I would truly appreciate a tutorial showing how, if not I'd love to see the capability added to the 'Roadmap'. Again, thanks for replying to one of my off hand comments. :)
I'm a little hazy about this as well but I think you can plug the normal maps through displacement vector nodes and into the input of the default shader ...
The bump map and/or the displacement map should improve the render if it's applied properly. If it doesn't change the appearance much then perhaps the multiplier needs to be higher.
I don't know if they expect you to use both the displacement and the bump; I wish more renderers (and assets) would treat bump and displacement as one thing and automatically optimise the balance between bump and displacement according to the renderer's implementation. But since they don't, it might be best to add bump map and displacement map together and feed the result into the displacement input.
The normal maps shouldn't be used as bump/displacement maps because they encode a different thing. It would be best to use either the displacement map or the bump map or possibly both added together. I'm not sure if these particular assets expect you to use normal maps and displacement/bump, or if they provide both so you can use whichever your renderer supports, but it's most likely the latter. In the case of Terragen, we don't support normals maps yet, so you should ignore them.
Usually you should ignore the cavity maps because they are intended for some game engines to approximate micro shadows and reflection occlusion because they don't have the computation budget to calculate them properly. However, you might find the cavity map useful for doing interesting texturing tricks.
Matt
I used the cavity map with a color adjust to darken cavities a bit more. And if you add a tiny procedural grain, masked (or not) by the displacement/bump map, you can get just a little more microbump. I think that would pull the first example more into the Quixel quality.
Quote from: Matt on March 03, 2017, 08:07:02 PM
... I'm not sure if these particular assets expect you to use normal maps and displacement/bump, or if they provide both so you can use whichever your renderer supports, but it's most likely the latter. In the case of Terragen, we don't support normals maps yet, so you should ignore them.
...
Looking at the difference between the bump map and the displacement map it looks like the displacement map is on a very muck larger scale, probably intended to be used with the lower LOD models with sub division surfaces.
The high res megascan models don't need the Displacement map but benefit from the bump map (as displacement in Terragen) ... I think ...
Actually I have no idea why you'd need a normal map with a high res model in TG but there may be uses ...
By the way I really like the MegaScan Rock models, almost certainly going to grab some and see if I can modify the maps.
Thanks Matt. Between your suggestions and Dune's I'll keep at this. I actually did add the bump and displacement into the displacement input using a merge shader without much noticeable effect. I will push the multipliers some more as my test ranges were already more than double my usual levels.
It was my prior understanding that TG didn't use normal maps, and you've definitely confirmed that. My past experience with normal maps was with zbrush and Mudbox to create more detail on a low poly object with a normal map from a higher poly version. After digging into this a bit more, and there is a ton of info online, there appears to be some varying opinions and a lot of variation in usages. There are also a number of work flows that use these maps in combination. The most recommended was displacement+normal bump, though displacement+bump (using different images) was noted as well. I've copied a few snippets from a CGTalk Forum discussion ( CGTalk:http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php?t-858824.html ) on the differences and uses of bump, normal, displace maps:
"Normal maps and bump maps are (nearly) the same thing. They both define the per-pixel normal of the rendered surface. The difference is that a normal map defines it explicitly with a float3 value encoded into the RGB values of the map. A bump map implicitly defines the normal as the vector result of deltas in the scalar height from one pixel to the next on each axis."
"Normal maps change the surface normal of the polygon they're applied to, hence the name. That means lighting on a normal mapped surface will behave as if the surface has parts facing in different directions even if it's just a single flat polygon."
"The normal map contributes the vector directing the push, and the elevation map contributes the scalar representing the distance to displace by."
Well, all of that is interesting but not applicable to TG at present, but Matt did say "we don't support normals maps YET" (my emphasis ;)).
Cyphyr: I think the Megascans libraries are terrific, and huge. With more coming. Based on their point based subscription model the example asset I used cost $3.00 US. Not bad.
The different maps that come with the models are, as Matt indicated, for different
rendering solution the different apps use. Game engines, modeling/animation apps,
sculpting soft they mostly use different approaches. And thus you have to find the
best ones for the app you want to use.
Richard is right about the displacement maps, they are indeed for the lower level and
not for the high poly version.
Normal maps can have more than one purpose, again depending on your target app.
There are examples were they are used to control lighting and other stuff, very
confusing and way beyond my scope.
What Ulco suggests is a very sound way to go for use in TG, at least from my point of view
and level of experience so far. Let me add that it proved best to use the high poly version
generally.
I have been playing with their assets as well and started building a library base on it. As it has been already said, the displacement map is only meant to be used if you are using a lower LOD than the high definition mesh. It is probably extracted from the difference between the first LOD and the high res mesh. If you use for example the lod1 mesh and apply the displacement map, you will have a result very close to the high definition mesh.
From my test doing so reduces memory usage (which makes sense as high definition mesh can be quite heavy), but increases render times. But the result with a lower lod+displacement is never going to look as good as the high resolution mesh, mostly because of the displacement not being raytraced by terragen at the moment.
The option I like the most is using the high res assets and only use the bump map for the extra details. As this is meant to simulate very small details, I adjust the scale based on the size I would expect the details to be in real life.
[attach=1]
So for example on those rocks the displacement multiplier is only set to 0.008, which means the bump map is there to simulate details of a magnitude of 8mm. Of course the bigger the asset, the bigger the multiplier as the details represented in the bump map will become less and less refined. A bump map on a stone might represent details of a few millimeters, but the same map on a huge lof might represent details several centimeters deep.
Be carefull with the scale of their assets as most of the one I bought were not at the right scale. Also their color maps display a very yellowish tint most of the time, I am not sure if they either shot with the proper white balance or if they graded the textures at all in the end.
To sum it up regarding the PBR worflow, I think you just have to be carefull as it sounds more like a marketing thing that a real standard :)
Hey Kyl, that's very helpful. While the theory of all this is interesting, and how these maps are used in other applications is as well, the bottom line for me is how to utilize the assets to their best in TG. I hope you'll share some of your set ups, your examples look quite nice. :)
That's quite simple, really. I use a default shader and several image files to plug the color, displacement (bump) , specular and roughness maps to their respective "function" slots.
Leave the color map as "convert to linear" in the color tab of the image file, but change all the other to "data is linear". As the specular, roughness and bump maps are meant to be pure function describing a physical attribute, they should not be corrected the same way the color map is.
Adjust you bump strength so you can start to catch the fine details. I usually do that by unplugging the color map and change the diffuse color to dark grey so I can read the details more easily. Change your roughness to the maximum the slider allows, 0.8. This means that anything white in the roughness map will give a very broad specular, and anything dark will give a very tight one.
As this will be controlled by the map, the slider becomes a simple multiplier affecting how "shiny" you want the object to look.
And that's pretty much it! Now you can use the slider to control the look of your object and play with the diffuse and specular balance.
This is where you have to be carefull if you want to stay physically correct. If you put the diffuse strength to 1, you will end up with a very blown-out looking object. You have to check the values of your maps and see if it makes sense. For example in any rocks maps, you often have the highest value reaching 1 in the very bright areas. This means that some part of you object will reflect 100% of the light. This never happens in real life as even the brightest things in nature rarely go above 70%. A rock would probably reflect something like 25-35% of the light reaching it. So that's why I like to use the diffuse color as a multiplier to drive the albedo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo)
We should probably start a new thread to talk about that as this is getting quite far from the original speedtree topic ::)
That's great kyl, thanks. I also think that this thread has wandered a bit, perhaps Oshayn can move some of this, or when one of us posts more examples it can be the start of a new thread.
Ok so I have subscribed, looks like I can cancel at any time and there is a lot of models/surfaces you can pick up for your basic 50 points.
They offer free two surface creation/management tools, Megascan Bridge and Megascan Studio. Has anyone got any experience of these tools and comments?
Particularly the asset management tool. I like to run my own assets and don't want this taking over in any way. Can I add my own assets and will it still work if I cancel mu sub?
Cheers
Kyl
Thank you very much for this very comprehensive explanation of your mapping procedures!
I have used the node network in Blender and have been trying to use bump maps for displacement in Terragen, using them as the displacement image rather than adding them in the function node as an image map. WOW what a difference! (Function usually to me means blue node set up or more complicated functions...so ) I have also seen the balloon distortion by using the wrong multiplier, ha, so funny and scary.
With the addition of the material examples by Hannes, fleetwood, AP and others to the Terragen Materials Library, I have been experimenting with many new (to me) methods as well.
Shown, successful displacement on a Terragen rock using black and white image map and color image texture,,,,tree displacement on bark (image map and PF color function) Both of these objects previously textured in Blender with cycles node setup and now very closely matched in TG4!
Great link to Wiki about albedo, now we know!
After all the helpful comments, especially from Kyl :), here's what I've arrived at. The comparison image looks close enough in detail to the original for my purposes. The basic set-up is fairly simple and should allow for enough 'tweakage' to handle most of the Quixel 3D scans. There may be other and better settings to display these assets in TG, but to my eye these work at a more than acceptable level. If you haven't checked out the Megascan libary, it's well worth the time.
I think the terragen one looks better.
Nice result! Yours is definitely sharper.
Also I forgot to mention that bur for example in in your roughness image map shader, you should change the projection type to "object UV". If you leave it by default it is not going to match the color texture as it will be projected from the top, which is going to look really weird!
Hi Doug,
The way you are using both a displacement image and displacement function, The Default Shader will multiply them both together. I don't think that's what you want.
The same for your roughness image and roughness function.
Matt
Hi Matt, I guess my approach was to keep adjusting the settings and 'eyeballing' the image. Not very scientific for sure. So if my misuse of the shader logic produces an acceptable image, would proper settings improve the image? :) I did about 40 render variations of various settings and the combination attached seemed the best looking of the lot; given the ones I used, what would be a more optimal range?
Thanks Kyl I'll change that and re-render.
Well, given that the image map shaders had the wrong projection mode, they are probably just confusing the results and I would just take them out. Simply plug your image filenames into the image fields of the Default Shader and tweak the multipliers from there.
Having said that, if you use the Image Map Shader plugged into the function input you have more options for colour space (gamma versus linear), and that might get you closer with the roughness and bump. But I doubt it matters on this particular asset. If you do go down that route, use them instead of the built-in image field, but not both at the same time.
Matt
Thanks Matt, I'll do as you suggest.
See below
I've probably killed enough brain cells in this exercise. ;) However, I think that I can better reproduce the quality of the assets in TG which was my goal. I did as Matt suggested and used just the image maps in the default shader slots with good results. I also used the functions without the image maps in the default slots (except for the albedo map), also with good results. Tempting the fates, I used both the default image slots as well as the function slots for specular and displacement. Finally I added one more example which had a higher displacement multiplier. To my eye the images are pretty close, there is a detail blow-up of the area in the asset that was my comparison point and honestly I really don't see much difference. The simplest solution to just use the default shader slots is probably the best (easy beats complicated :)). here's the breakdown:
Example A: Using only the image slots in the default shader. Albedo in color image slot. Specular map in reflectivity slot, no roughness image, roughness set to .8. 'Bump' map in Displacemt image slot, did not use provided displacement image.
Example B: Function driven (mostly). Albedo in default shader color image slot. No specular image in reflectivity slot, roughness image connected to roughness function. No displacement image in displacement image slot, 'bump' image connected to displacement function.
Example C: Dual map use in Specular and Displacement. Albedo in default shader color image slot. Specular image in reflectivity slot, roughness image connected to roughness function. Displacement image in displacement slot, 'Bump' image connected to displacement function.
Example D: Same as Example C except for higher displacement multiplier: .67 to 1.5. Higher multiplier on Example A distorted the texture.
attached the wrong image above, damn... I did say I had damaged some brain cells though.
This is great for the objects, has anyone had any luck with Substance Designer or Megascans ground materials? Here's a material exported from SDesigner. When I load it into a default shader in its appropriate areas, I personally can't get it to look usable. I know J Meyer posted some time ago a simple node network with a dry earth megascan 3d scan. That particular one worked fine and Some do seem to work, however other more complex ones just don't. So in the interest of time I tend just to revert back to using it as a simple image overlay repeating on XY call it a day. Anyone ?
I think I used the AO to mask a surface shader under the default with a color adjust as child.
That's what I get out of it on the fly.
[attach=1]
Tgd attached. Make sure to look at the 'colour' tab settings of the 'Height' image map shader.
You don't need the 'metallic' and 'normal' images in TG.
Quote from: j meyer on January 23, 2018, 01:32:26 PM
That's what I get out of it on the fly.
[attach=1]
Tgd attached. Make sure to look at the 'colour' tab settings of the 'Height' image map shader.
That was the difference right there Joe, This looks very good, Thanks Bud!
I exported them at 4096, See attached
Just downloaded a test rock with textures from Quixel. Tried in Blender and it worked okay. Tried in TG and...huh nothing. Can someone tell me to where to plug the albeido texture with what settings? I tried pretty much everything but no luck. Seem I miss something elemental...
Albedo is basically the same as diffuse, color, or "base" texture. It can go into the Colour Image slot of a Default Shader. But if you are not getting any materials loaded in when you bring the OBJ model into Terragen, unless it's a very simple object without UVs, then it's probably not something you can just fix in Terragen. The source application (Quixel in this case) needs to provide material groups that correspond to UVs of the model and Terragen will turn those into "Parts Shaders". Without those your textures will normally just apply to the entire object, so even if you successfully loaded an Albedo/Diffuse texture, it might not apply the way you want/expect it to.
In Blender are you importing an OBJ? Does the OBJ have a MTL file with it?
- Oshyan
Quote from: archonforest on January 22, 2019, 02:29:26 PM
Just downloaded a test rock with textures from Quixel. Tried in Blender and it worked okay. Tried in TG and...huh nothing. Can someone tell me to where to plug the albeido texture with what settings? I tried pretty much everything but no luck. Seem I miss something elemental...
Always a good idea to check the .mat file that is created with OBJ's. Sometimes the pathing is off. Best practice is to place the images and the object in the same folder and remove any pathing info from the .mat file.
Once loaded check the internal network of the object and load the images(if not already loaded) in to the defuse, specular, roughness and displacement slots of the default shader.
See if it works in Poseray first.
Thanks for the answers.
There is an .mtl file Oshyan and yes the obj was saved from Blender.
I have no clue how to check an mtl file cyphyr nor how to open it. If you can tell me that would be useful for sure.
And Poseray saves the day. Again. So I went through Poseray and saved a new obj from there. Then loaded into TG and viola the color map showed up. Now trying to see how to fine tune the other maps so the rock looks somewhat decent. Re-reading this topic again to see what should be done. So far nothing close to the one the other showed.
I would like to ask something else here. I got an 8K map for this rock. This should be a super high resolution map. I thought this will make the rock object super sharp and thus I can do some close up renders. Well I tried but the render is pretty low resolution and even blurry here and there. Then I opened the albeido file and it is also not sharp at all. For me it is makes no sense. An 8K map for me should be insanely sharp and detailed. (At least this is my theory) Can someone tell me what is going on?
You can open up the .mtl file in notepag or any text editor. Just make sure you save as an mtl file after editing (just press save should do it).
Also Poseray is a great solution.
Which rock did you download from Quixexl?
If it's one of the free ones we could swap settings without breaking any EULA's since we all have the files anyway.
Quote from: cyphyr on January 23, 2019, 03:46:31 AM
You can open up the .mtl file in notepag or any text editor. Just make sure you save as an mtl file after editing (just press save should do it).
Also Poseray is a great solution.
Which rock did you download from Quixexl?
If it's one of the free ones we could swap settings without breaking any EULA's since we all have the files anyway.
I have this: "Scatter_Rock_Granite_phxuF_8K_3d_ms"
Managed to have the albeido but have hard time to get any details and displacement. Even though I using the same settings that are shown in this topic. Guess I missing some basic here.
Great that is one of their free samples, however I'd say it is not the best to work with really. These are "Scatter Rocks" so are intended for use in a populator or instancing program, spread in great numbers
The 8k maps are spread over 10 rocks so each rock is only getting about 0.8k at best of resolution.
Also you do have to separate out each rock individually before use so you have 10 different rock files.
I'll have a play and post up my setting shortly :)
Quote from: cyphyr on January 23, 2019, 04:41:37 AM
Great that is one of their free samples, however I'd say it is not the best to work with really. These are "Scatter Rocks" so are intended for use in a populator or instancing program, spread in great numbers
The 8k maps are spread over 10 rocks so each rock is only getting about 0.8k at best of resolution.
Also you do have to separate out each rock individually before use so you have 10 different rock files.
I'll have a play and post up my setting shortly :)
Ohh this is very interesting about the map spread over the rocks. This actually makes sense. Thanks! Waiting for your post to see how it works for ya.
Ok here is my basic PBR setup.
I may be wrong but my understanding of PBR work-flow is that the images contain the relevant data for Albido (defuse colour) specular and roughness and that therefore these should not have their values changed as they are plugged through Terragen's shader network.
Therefore the albedo goes in the defuse channel and that channel colour is set to white 1 (see ScreenCap1).
The Reflectivity image is on the Specular tab so we put the specular image in there and set its value top the max (0.8). The image is actually very dark, almost black, so setting the value to 0.8 will still only give a very low reflectance.
Similarly the roughness image goes in the roughness channel with the value set to 1. The image is very light in this case which makes sense for rough granite. Setting the value to 1 means you will be using all of the values set in the image to scatter the light.
Displacement is NOT used since Terragen dose not support it on imported objects.
I have also created a surface layer for the ground using the rm4kshp_4K (Old Concrete) which is also free on the MegaScans site.
Obviously none of these settings are locked and you would need to tweak them to your own personal needs.
You can also make your own versions of the MegaScan files by layering them in Photoshop (or similar). Try using the cavity map to accentuate the albedo and specular maps for instance.
I hope this helps
The attached file does not include the MegaScan Assets, they can be downloaded for free from the MegaScan site.
Scatter Rocks (they will have to be separated into individual rocks and saved out as obj's from your modelling application of choice) here: https://quixel.com/assets/phxuF
Old Conctete ground texture here: https://quixel.com/assets/rm4kshp0
Thanks Richard! ;)
Quote from: cyphyr on January 23, 2019, 06:46:41 AM
Displacement is NOT used since Terragen dose not support it on imported objects.
If you use the displacement map it will be rendered as bump mapping. This is probably better than not using it at all. Displacement amplitude may need to be adjusted.
Quote from: Matt on January 23, 2019, 02:19:14 PM
Quote from: cyphyr on January 23, 2019, 06:46:41 AM
Displacement is NOT used since Terragen dose not support it on imported objects.
If you use the displacement map it will be rendered as bump mapping. This is probably better than not using it at all. Displacement amplitude may need to be adjusted.
Thanks Matt. I'am using the disp map as it gives a better look. Playing with the setting now to figure out what looks better.
Thanks Matt, I stand corrected. :)