Looking for some PBR creation advice

[Riddell]

For the last few weeks I've been researching PBR and trying to make realistic textures in 3DC, some I'm really happy with, some less so. One thing that I wonder about however is how you are supposed to generate the correct maps, other than the albedo/diffuse? For example, my general process has to to source a texture file online, remove as much shading information as possible and then make it tilabe.  For generating the displacement, roughness, metalness maps etc, I'm really just desaturating the albedo and modifying the curves.

 

I know there is software like bitmap2material which generates the maps for you however even they are a "best guess" and don't reflect the actual surface properties of the input material. Looking at the (excellent) PBR tutorials on the Marmoset website, how are you supposed to generate maps like this: http://www.marmoset.co/wp-content/uploads/lenstextures01.jpg

 

I was also having a check on this Unreal thread about PBR workflow and I'm stunned at the quality of textures that people can create. Do you think it's possible that 3DC's PBR painting is capable of producing such high detail? Looking at the rock textures, how on earth do you get that much displacement without sculpting?

 

Thanks.

[Tony Nemo]

 

I was also having a check on this Unreal thread about PBR workflow and I'm stunned at the quality of textures that people can create. Do you think it's possible that 3DC's PBR painting is capable of producing such high detail? Looking at the rock textures, how on earth do you get that much displacement without sculpting?

 

Use a Displacement map.

[digman]

Any Jpg image will have lots of compression artifacts. This is the most common format when downloading from the net... at least from a number of free sites.

 

If you are looking for the highest quality, you would start out with a Raw image format.

Picture taken on a cloudy with with a polarized filter on the camera. 

Lightroom (Abode) for importing the raw file, working on it and then converting to a lossless image format

It really depends upon how deep in the process you want to go and the above is just the tip of the iceberg.

There number of tutorials on the net for capturing good images for PBR or images in general for textures.

 

Maybe your information on Bitmap2material is incomplete. It is a very much hands on operation with lots of control for all aspects of the image you are creating for PBR. It is not just not a click with the mouse and you auto have your maps... Yes, you judge by your eye of course but there is math behind the scene.

 

The result is just 45 minute of work from start to finish from a jpg image I picked off the net...

Looked around and found an image.

Photoshop to crop the canvas size to 2k.

Bitmap2material for creating the albedo and all the other maps.

3DC and setting up the basic smart material... I was in microvertex mode so I used the heightmap for real displacement.

Used the default 3DC cube.

Rendered in 3DC with a different Env. map.

 

It came ok for a  2k jpg image and the original image did have some extreme dark shadows in the rock crevices, I would normally try and not use an image with that dark of shadows to work as my base image.

I am not saying the quality matches the ones you posted but, the base image was not that great because of the compression artifacts and it was quick work... A higher quality better base image would greatly enhance the final result.

 

Ist image... left side original image, right side 3DC Paintroom with smart material applied, No AO

2nd Image--- Rendered in 3DC.

Edited January 17, 2016 by digman