MSFS Blender object without pbr material

[Av8rThor]

In Blender when you ad a Mesh blender will create automatically a UVMap

yes i understand that. MY point is/was. I was making texture maps using the ao bake and uv outline to manually add texture and/or graphics in a paint program. Even the models in msfs, have tons of faces and appear to be "textured" with very few having the uv export hand texture rebake and build normals into a building look.

 

[fabs79]

Another good place for free PBR textures is https://cc0textures.com/ (currently more than 1100 textures there...)

Wow I didn´t know that one, looks really promising.

 

[WildLynxPilot]

Anyone knows if it is possible to add a custom building without pbr material since I dont have substance painter?

In my sceneries very few buildings have the entire PBR set of textures. Generally I am working with textures made from photographs of the real buildings, and thus I only have applied the albedo texture. I have never baked any textures, only applied UV mapping. In my opinion it works fine, and the buildings look very good. So my answer would be Yes, you can make custom buildings without PBR materials. This video shows some examples in my upcoming version of EFHN:

 

[AlpineScenery]

For non-metal buildings, the biggest difference I noticed is just when you get close up the reflections are much more defined and complicated looking (sometimes over-done) with PBR. For chrome and metal, it's just kind of hard to match the PBR results. Otherwise, the base texture is still very important (arguably the most important), so PBR still is just adding to it rather than total magic.

I also think when people get to "reference level" ability (I'm not nearly there), like say Chicago O'Hare by FSDT, the PBR makes more difference because they have optimized the creation process. Another example of an airport with some really nice texturing work was PAKT from Northern Sky Studio, this airport is better than most airports in the MS store. Though I do think he should have used some Aprons to improve the ground textures right around the runway, but the airport itself is absolutely outstanding if you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it.

 

[Av8rThor]

SO NICE, HERE IS A QUESTION..oops anyway, is the building with the blue sign in front... auv unwrapped and painted texture? I know we can make our own textures and create normals from them with software, but my success with that process is a bit sketch. PBR looks way better but i find it impossible after tiling to get the uv small enough to go a on 4096x4096 where I could then add in albedo only tings like signage or whatever. this building is a "quasi-pbr" one and the quality is just not doing it for me..

 

[WildLynxPilot]

Why cram all the stuff into one 4096x4096 instead of having a couple of smaller textures? Is there some FPS or other benefit from it? I am using separate textures for my objects, even a couple of separate files for one object if it is complicated or needs some high quality details. My texture files are mainly 1024x1024 or 2048x2048, many even smaller 512x512 or 256x256 where detail is not important. Haven't found a good answer to those questions yet...

 

[BattleMetalChris]

Why cram all the stuff into one 4096x4096 instead of having a couple of smaller textures? Is there some FPS or other benefit from it? I am using separate textures for my objects, even a couple of separate files for one object if it is complicated or needs some high quality details. My texture files are mainly 1024x1024 or 2048x2048, many even smaller 512x512 or 256x256 where detail is not important. Haven't found a good answer to those questions yet...

It's less of an issue these days, but historically cheaper graphics cards didn't like huge textures so it was best to break them up to get your assets to work on lower-end cards.

 

[WildLynxPilot]

It's less of an issue these days, but historically cheaper graphics cards didn't like huge textures so it was best to break them up to get your assets to work on lower-end cards.

Yes, I know. But how is it today, in MSFS particularly? It seens that many try to fit everything into one 4096x4096 only. Is there some benefit from it?

 

[AlpineScenery]

I would guess it would not make any difference on modern cards, having many smaller textures may increase the initial load times from the disk. There may be tiny performance differences, but I would be way more worried about generating LODS than something like that.

I haven't tested LOD models vs. No-LOD, but there are some default objects in the game I have tested, and it shows pretty bad. For instance, there is non-Lodded test grass that will really bring an airport to a crawl. Some of the grass and bushes they made are just way too high resolution with way too many poly's as well.

In that case, I assume its the draw calls killing the performance, so although FS-2020 can handle many more tris/polys than say the old sims, it's still not that hard to find its breaking point when doing a custom airport.

 

[Av8rThor]

I would guess it would not make any difference on modern cards, having many smaller textures may increase the initial load times from the disk. There may be tiny performance differences, but I would be way more worried about generating LODS than something like that.

I haven't tested LOD models vs. No-LOD, but there are some default objects in the game I have tested, and it shows pretty bad. For instance, there is non-Lodded test grass that will really bring an airport to a crawl. Some of the grass and bushes they made are just way too high resolution with way too many poly's as well.

In that case, I assume its the draw calls killing the performance, so although FS-2020 can handle many more tris/polys than say the old sims, it's still not that hard to find its breaking point when doing a custom airport.

Exactly. In making my airport, it slowed to a crawl with the grass and bushes. I will now place only pertinent ones. Grass in front of the FBI looks cool in an ad but how many people “walk” the airport. Most land taxi and takeoff. So startup location need a to be good, taxi paths as well up to runway. All else is background

 

[AlpineScenery]

Exactly. In making my airport, it slowed to a crawl with the grass and bushes. I will now place only pertinent ones. Grass in front of the FBI looks cool in an ad but how many people “walk” the airport. Most land taxi and takeoff. So startup location need a to be good, taxi paths as well up to runway. All else is background

I did overlay grass to match the airport I was working on, so they could see some brown grass over the green grass, because the real airport looked like that. So in my case I needed the extra overlay grass to give it a bit of spice, but I think it's too performance heavy and sadly had to get rid of it.

Here is one trick I found, there is one Bush (I think Bush 09 maybe), that you can make super big and cover a large area and it will look like multiple bushes and not be too performance heavy.

However, Asobo went nutty on the # of Polys and texture resolution on the grass and bushes, so I am making my own bushes now and trees too. Look at some of the individual grass blades from the Scenery Objects list, it looks like someone went into their yard with a microscope, picked a piece of grass and modeled it exactly like they were trying to model a building (except in even higher detail), the actual blade of grass is modeled down to the root, man that is too much.

 

[Av8rThor]

Why cram all the stuff into one 4096x4096 instead of having a couple of smaller textures? Is there some FPS or other benefit from it? I am using separate textures for my objects, even a couple of separate files for one object if it is complicated or needs some high quality details. My texture files are mainly 1024x1024 or 2048x2048, many even smaller 512x512 or 256x256 where detail is not important. Haven't found a good answer to those questions yet...

Not trying to cram. By enlarging UV to fit a tillable per texture that looked proportional to the struction in the UV screen the outline of the roof was three times the size of 4096. Of a scene it all down the wall took 5 bricks instead of the 50 that should be there. It not a mater of cramming rather scale. Now if I could scale the pbr textures down like when I make a custom texture in photoshop and map that to the UV instead of mapping it to the texture scale.. that make sense?

 

[WildLynxPilot]

Sorry, but did not uderstand that...?

 

[AlpineScenery]

Not trying to cram. By enlarging UV to fit a tillable per texture that looked proportional to the struction in the UV screen the outline of the roof was three times the size of 4096. Of a scene it all down the wall took 5 bricks instead of the 50 that should be there. It not a mater of cramming rather scale. Now if I could scale the pbr textures down like when I make a custom texture in photoshop and map that to the UV instead of mapping it to the texture scale.. that make sense?

I don't fully get what you are asking either, but I'll give it a shot anyhow.

You can make a texture take the entire width or height and repeat it by dragging the UV island and making the island wider than the texture. You can do this to any texture, it doesn't matter if it is Albedo/Normal/Metallic, Blender 2 MSFS automatically has the mapping of the Albedo UV as the same to each other underlying UV. You just have to be careful when pasting / repeating your initial Albedo texture horizontally in Photoshop that you use Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal or the textures will often be mismatched.

I still am at a total loss why so few payware developers use this technique, it makes any corrugated steel texture look 10x higher resolution even if it is not, and takes up 10x less space on the UV map. Instead I tend to see 4096x4096 for one corrugated texture, I guess its because they want that "shaded" look like in CYLW (which I love the airport), but I also want my corrugated metal to look good close up. Best of both worlds, use the shaded texture blend it in a row below that, and then you can do the shaded look. I think a lot of developers are baking textures, then running the baked textures through the PBR process, but I'm not sure.

 

[Av8rThor]

I don't fully get what you are asking either, but I'll give it a shot anyhow.

You can make a texture take the entire width or height and repeat it by dragging the UV island and making the island wider than the texture. You can do this to any texture, it doesn't matter if it is Albedo/Normal/Metallic, Blender 2 MSFS automatically has the mapping of the Albedo UV as the same to each other underlying UV. You just have to be careful when pasting / repeating your initial Albedo texture horizontally in Photoshop that you use Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal or the textures will often be mismatched.

I still am at a total loss why so few payware developers use this technique, it makes any corrugated steel texture look 10x higher resolution even if it is not, and takes up 10x less space on the UV map. Instead I tend to see 4096x4096 for one corrugated texture, I guess its because they want that "shaded" look like in CYLW (which I love the airport), but I also want my corrugated metal to look good close up. Best of both worlds, use the shaded texture blend it in a row below that, and then you can do the shaded look. I think a lot of developers are baking textures, then running the baked textures through the PBR process, but I'm not sure.

Yeah I think we are on the same page. One thing about pbr textures, if they include any kind of “rust spots” or similar then if you run that over a large piece, long hanger for instance, then you see a pattern.

 

[AlpineScenery]

Sometimes you can see patterns, but eventually you learn the trick of how to smudge stuff that doesn't look patterned. The main thing is to get the contrast balanced, any unbalancing or highlights will stick out like a sore thumb. Rotational tricks and varying sizes on the UV maps, use knife tool or loop cuts to sub-divide mesh to do complex UV mapping if you want to keep UV smaller. You can use smudged patterns that have a transparency layer below them, and you can put a lot of smudges in a small area. You can also use the other maps to add smudges, but I find that too difficult and unpredictable.

The thing is, most hangars have such few Polys that you mise well cut them up a bit for more advanced UV mapping tricks, and save texture space instead of poly counts, well sometimes.

 

[Av8rThor]

Yes I did increase the polys with several loop cuts. My textured is a corrugated steel, which most hangers have for roofs. This hanger is about a hundred foot long (more of a shed) with only two walls on either end. Problem in order to get the creases of the corrugated metal the right proportion width wise, I have to increase size of the uv to make it happen. Example, texture is 2k (2048(), if my poly is 1 k (1042) then the texture appears huge on the model, if my uv poly is 4k then the texture tiles and appears smaller. Problem is, all tiles overlap to fit on a texture map (actually overhang) and there is no way to do an ambient occlusion, texture layout etc. Somehow I am missing something on how to apply multiple pbr(s) on a single object and retain scale in order to bake it and hand paint the “smudges dirt etc.” Check the picture below, see the pattern on the pbr model. If I scale to fit there are about four corrugated lines per quad. The roof Hase 14 quads, even as one quad it had the same look. The painted one is with a uv map and graphics pasted into it, that accomplishes the look but not the quality. The pbr is quality but I cant get the look without tiling.
!

 

[AlpineScenery]

Yah, not an expert in texturing really.

I've been having issues with PBR stuff too, mainly the smoothness/roughness map. I am only using Materialize though, not Substance Painter (at least not yet). I might buy Substance Painter shortly, it just takes so long to make the PBR textures that a quick fix I've been using is just a slightly different workflow, when I need shininess I've just been lowering the roughness setting and a normal map, rather than messing with the smoothness/roughness.

I can get PBR perfect looking in Blender, but when I take it to FS 2020, there are differences sometimes, even if I invert the grayscale of roughness and -Y the normal, that doesn't always seem to be working correctly. Not sure might be doing something wrong. I initially just used Albedo + Normal for most things, a few full PBR too with ASM (AO_Rough_Metallic --- sometimes it worked right for me), but I had planned to go back and add the other maps, not sure I even will unless I find a faster workflow.

I am dealing with about 50 custom buildings though, that's a lot of texturing work

 

[pks1414]

Sorry for jumping in on this, I have finally worked out how to apply the various textures to my hanger. I gave up on trying to get everything working with the AO method used by Bill Womack as I couldn't get my head around how the various PBR textures that I had made with Materialize could be applied so I went back to my old method, the hanger is split into 3 with the actual main part having about 6 Material slots. The textures that were attached to those were then applied by selecting say the walls of the hanger, unwrapping those on to the texture for the walls and assigning them, I then added the 3 textures in the MSFS slots. It works in Blender but I have yet to export to MSFS so it could go pearshaped. The only question I have is do I just make a copy of the Albedo texture black for the emissive slot (unless there are lights on. (And I though building stuff for FSX in 3ds Max was hard

 

[Av8rThor]

i REALLY LIKE THAT, THINK IT LOOKS GREAT sorry bout caps.... . No need to have an emissive texture unless you want to emit light... just leave it out. attached albedo and rgb and you are good.

so here is a look at my problem, I am thinking that my textures are just to large of a scale... thank you commercial products lol.
I mocked up my building really quick to show the ration to UV to texture I am think the only way to use these textures is to tile them so that they are smaller in a given area.. thats suck to tile all the different maps...