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Physically Based Rendering in 3DC?


3dcal
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Hi,

 

the newsletter says

Physically Based Rendering is coming soon to 3D Coat

I've always associated PBR with certain renderers, e.g. Lux, Octane, Mistuba, etc.

 

But this thread sounds like PBR in 3DC is going to be accomplished by special PBR materials using the current renderer?

 

 

 

 

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Hi!

Yes, the v4.5 had PBR support

more info related here

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17076

 

 

And it is done via layer-based system, not node based. It is more suitable for understanding by artists.

 

141493297002.jpg

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What is coming in 3Dcoat is not just PBR display/support but true pbr painting as well.

 

 

The materials are just painted/projected multilayered ,multichannels stamps (that were called before "materials" in 3Dcoat)

Additional channels and painting conditions were added to the old spec,Depth,Color channels...now you will be able to paint metalness channel and masks ect..at the same time .

 

 

The exported maps (metalness,Glossness/rougness,Diffuse, normal) will replicate the same painted look in other pbr renderer/engine like 
Unreal4 and Marmoset Toolbag2 ect...

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I don't understand how you can get PBR without a PBR renderer (yet), but it sounds great, and

I'm looking forward to using it. :)

shader in paintroom is pbr ..so what you get  in render room is a pbr shader lighted by a selected cubemap...exactly like marmoset toolbag2 or substance painter. In voxel room pbr shader needs to be applied to your sculpt so you can paint using pbr channels (metalness). 

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Will we be able to edit the shader or do we just change the cube map?

 

I didn't know about Marmoset......will try it out. ;)

In ther version i tried its not possible to edit the shader maybe it is planned I dont know...

In substance Painter it works the same...its more about getting your maps values right than tweaking the shader itself.

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I am working with more or less pbr pipeline in gamedev and doesn't find  it anything special.   It's rather limiting and restrictive and in fact doesn't input anything you couldn't do before. 

 

  I'd be much more interested if 3d coat continue to improve its  basic  tools.     For example the current "materials"  are quite enough for me  but its placement gizmo is not.    For being really usefull it needs an  ability to place its transformation center randomly regarding to the texture , much like zbrush can do .   The same for UV islands.   After Blender for example it seems so inconvenient  be unable to set the center of transformation in a corner of an island.

 

Other thing why I prefer Zbrush for texture PAINTING (not sculpting) is its 2,5 d mode where you can quickly compose a new thing from existing materials thanks for z blending. 

3d coat  looks so close to outdo it with its maximum depth layer blending mode  but for some weird reason I can Z combine depth of layers but can't do the same with color values.    Colors blending  is still unrelated to depth blending.  

It seems so easy to fix  would 3d coat support a kind of "live" nondestructive layer masks inputs .  Even Photoshop can somehow do it now( although extremely inconvenient )

 

I need also some "smart"  resolution independent objects in the soft . Most of my work is not actually painting but rather composing textures from what I already did years before. 

 

Brushes of 3dcoat are nothing special either. Just a little bit better than Photoshop ones.  There is so much room for improvement,     Just looks at what were skeletal brush strokes in Creative house expression / microsoft design where you can set multiple randomly repeated fragments withing a single "strip" in terms of 3d coat.     

 

Also the multiple brash selection does work pretty nice but would it be much more useful to just have  nozzles, image hose, image tube, animated brush , whatever it's called in other painting soft.

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Other thing why I prefer Zbrush for texture PAINTING (not sculpting) is its 2,5 d mode where you can quickly compose a new thing from existing materials thanks for z blending. 

 

I really dont understand how you prefer texturing in Zbrush; there is no way to paint in either normal map channel or specular channel ,no blending modes for layers,really crude photoshop interaction,extremely undeveloped layering system.... nobody I know in gamedev uses zbrush for texturing ,only sometimes to polypaint a diffuse base .

Lets say you have to paint for Unreal Engine 4 ;how can you effectively preview metalness painting without pbr support?  Zbrush does not even support IBL cubemaps.... 

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Throwing shit is not what I intended to do.  I just wanted to express my opinion regarding PBR direction  everybody seem so exited.   Those pbr shaders are never close to actually be perfectly realistic in its real time variant. And often you want to do something physically incorrect to simulate something your shader can't  do  and you can't  too since everything is already hard coded.    Something looking a bit like  anisotropic specular  on a kind of rails for example  without doing it fps expensive.    At the same time old fashioned shaders  allow you more freedom  and if you don't do anything silly and follow more or less the same "physical" principles they look pretty much the same.

 

One more thing is that PBR or not you  will tweak your specular in your engine. it never looks 100% the same.  You generally have to tweak even albedo values and make them a bit "incorrect"  to tone down some harsh extremes.  Everything white for example. 

 

Regarding Zbrush. Yes, it's extremely inconvenient in many areas. Problem is you tolerate it since it gives you  few unique tools/approaches  that overweight everything other.  Ability to scatter and quickly render( not just depth bake ) small geometry details or hairs which never look the same good being painted 3d coat way. Or 2,5d mode  when you could transfer your "tools" "composition" into psd layers , then reapply "specular" materials , go 2,5 d again and get glossiness/ roughness  values in photoshop.  Looks like a mess but in fact gives some real advantages.

 

I actually bought 3d coat in hope to get something more straight and convenient   but after years I still use it only for simple props mostly.  And never for  huge and complicated environment textures.   Mostly because many things are not convenient enough.  Like material gizmo.  And I would prefer they improve in that direction.    I would preview in the engine nevertheless. 

Edited by kirkl
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What is so wrong with the material gizmo that you don't like? It got a pretty huge boost quite a while ago and works well.

The same as with island gizmo in uv room. You can't place it randomly regarding the projected image. it's always in the image center .   For example, I have a wall and a window sculpted and a big photo of building, Now i need to precisely  project a specific window from that photo ( somewhere in the corner of the image) onto my sculpted window .  But if I try to do so I even don't see the gizmo because it's always in the center of the image  and outside of my screen  if I go close enough.   

 

Wonder if it's a big deal to do it zbrush way.   I know zbrush projects within  screen resolution, can't project depth/specular at the same time and to be honest I hate it there too.   But that small thing of having center of transformation wherever you currently  need it  makes it so easy to use so it overweights all the disadvantages.

 

Even Photoshop can scale layers from randomly placed center if you use digit inputs instead of the gizmo.  Maybe we could have something similar

Edited by kirkl
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0001674: Add Manipulate only Gizmo to Preview Option Menu

 

Trello vote card



Kirkl:
 
Will you please respect the thread topic, keeping all info related to Original PBR question ?
 
If you need to ask or suggest about 3DC feature requests, fell free to open new thread about.
 
Ty
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