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MCX and PBR texture slots?

linbuckfan

linbuckfan

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Hi Arno and all, I have some confusion I am hoping you guys can help me clear up. I think I have the combining texture problem covered, but I am confused about which slot to put the new texture sheet in. Should it be the metallic slot or the detail slot? Also for some reason, no matter how much I have the texture dulling the reflection it is always as bright and reflective as the window material. I don't know which setting I'm either not setting or setting wrong. Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated. thanks. SEW
 
Pyscen

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Hello...

The Metallic Map (which contains the Metallic, Ambient Occlusion, and Smoothness Map) should go into the Metallic Map slot. Make sure the settings within MCX are set accordingly under the PBR section (such as, "Is PBR Material" and "Opaque"). Concerning the brightness etc... It might help in knowing what settings have you tried within MCX. Try setting the "Metallic" setting lower than 0.5 and the the Smoothness also lower than 0.6 (both within MCX under PBR for the textures in question).
 
linbuckfan

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Awesome, thanks for the quick response, you guys are awesome. I have been doing everthing pretty much right, except the Opaque and the metallic and smoothness settings. thanks again. SEW
 
linbuckfan

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one more quick question, will the smoothness source always be albedo alpha or what circumstances would I choose metallic alpha?
 
Pyscen

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I don't know of any particular reason why you would use one over the other at this point. Though I suspect in future updates by LM, the albedo alpha will disappear (maybe?),... not sure on their thinking of having 1 or the other being used.
 
linbuckfan

linbuckfan

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I don't what I'm doing wrong, but its something. I export textures from substance painter, I put them into blender and everything looks great. I slot them in mcx and it looks ok in mcx but the model is not showing up in game. I use the place and convert in mcx and I have yet to get the model to show up, am I using the wrong texture format or what, any ideas?
 
arno

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Are you sure you entered the right coordinates? A missing texture can also give issues, did you put them all in the texture folder in DDS format?
 
linbuckfan

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I will double check all that as well, I found also that after I exported them from substance back to blender when I loaded them into MCX had to vertically flip every texture to get them to properly fit on the model. is that something everyone has to do? and maybe when I flipped them I turned the normals inward. I don't know, I think I'm grasping at straws at this point.....lol
 
MANOCHVARMA RAMAN

MANOCHVARMA RAMAN

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Pyscen said:
Hello...

The Metallic Map (which contains the Metallic, Ambient Occlusion, and Smoothness Map) should go into the Metallic Map slot. Make sure the settings within MCX are set accordingly under the PBR section (such as, "Is PBR Material" and "Opaque"). Concerning the brightness etc... It might help in knowing what settings have you tried within MCX. Try setting the "Metallic" setting lower than 0.5 and the the Smoothness also lower than 0.6 (both within MCX under PBR for the textures in question).
Click to expand...
Did you mean that on the basic albedo map these texture will be on the following particular channel?

Metallic=Red channel,
AO=Green channel, and
Smoothness= Alpha channel

Is that correct?
 
arno

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Not in the albedo map, but in the metallic map.
 
Pyscen

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Hello...

Manochvarma...

The simple answer is yes... The Metallic Map, the textures that make it can come from the Albedo map, but more so from a diffuse map. The albedo map is more to do with the colors of the material used. When I say material, I'm referring to what its made of. What is the model made of... is the question. Everything has a luminance value, it's the color that is represented in the albedo map.

Is there a specific texture of, that you are working with?
 
Last edited:
MANOCHVARMA RAMAN

MANOCHVARMA RAMAN

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Pyscen said:
Hello...

Manochvarma...

The simple answer is yes... The Metallic Map, the textures that make it can come from the Albedo map, but more so from a diffuse map. The albedo map is more to do with the colors of the material used. When I say material, I'm referring to what its made of. What is the model made of... is the question. Everything has a luminance value, it's the color that is represented in the albedo map.

Is there a specific texture of, that you are working with?
Click to expand...
Hi Dough,

Thank you for the explanation. I’m currently trying to learn how to make a PBR texture. So there is no any specific model I have created. I just trying to load a building texture from a scenery’s diffuse map and then trying to create a PBR texture. I have tried in X-Plane 11 but I couldn’t get the desired effects. Still struggling to find out where I did the mistakes.

Just to get some info from you, let say I wanted to create a steel material effect, so what colour suggestion will be for the diffuse map? Just the RGB code so I can imitate it here.
 
Pyscen

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Hello Again...

For "Steel" the color representation within the Albedo map would be in the ballpark of R106, G102, B98.

Within the Metallic Map (keep in mind, these are only generalizations; not exact) :
  • The Reflectivity (linear) or Metallic (Red Channel) texture would be R234, G233, B232.
  • The Cavity or Ambient Occlusion (AO) texture (Green Channel) - ** See Below **
  • The Blue Channel is Empty or R0, G0, B0 (Black).
  • The Microsurface/ Roughness or Smoothness (in Substance Painter it refers to as Glossiness - which I'm not sure of anymore - but that is another thread) texture (Alpha Channel) would be R177, G176, B177.
** Generally, the Ambient Occlusion (AO) would be created from a diffuse map (a diffuse map that has directional light information or if not, by way of a Height Map), but if the "Steel" is a sheet of metal with no AO then it would be R255, G255, B255 - White.​

I got this from this reference/ tutorial: https://marmoset.co/posts/physically-based-rendering-and-you-can-too/
Another reference to look at is:

Hopefully, that will help you...
 
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stevo

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Doug said 'The Microsurface/ Roughness or Smoothness (in Substance Painter it refers to as Glossiness - which I'm not sure of anymore - but that is another thread) texture (Alpha Channel) would be R177, G176, B177.'

In Substance painter it refers to it as both roughness and glossiness, you have the choice of either, roughness being from the metallic workflow and Glossiness being from the Specular workflow. Roughness is an inverted glossiness and visa versa. I think microsurface is the general term but its often referred to as Gloss, Smoothness or Roughness. I think Smoothness is more a game engine term, likes of P3d or Unity use it, whereas the ill-fated Flight Sim world (which used both workflows) used roughness and microsurface as its naming (Roughness when working with a Metallic workflow and microsurface instead of Glossiness for Specular workflow).

Glossiness and Roughness is more a workflow naming. Note:Even in this image the Albedo is called the Base Colour
gdc-2016-endtoend-approach-to-physically-based-rendering-16-638.jpg


No matter what the naming its still just the same thing, Glossiness/smoothness/roughness/microsurface all mean the same thing, just depends which workflow youre working on, or in the case of P3d it seems to be Metallic workflow with a Specular Glossiness instead of a Roughness. In X-plane it is referred to as a Roughness but watching an official tutorial it is in fact a Glossiness map???.......gets a bit confusing keeping up with it.......o_O

That's my findings on that anyhow....

Stevo
 
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stevo

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Came across a free tool last night, it's called Materialize, it takes an image and converts it to a PBR type texture. I haven't tried it but in the tutorials it seems pretty powerful. According to their website it was used on the PlayStations Uncharted series of games to create textures.

Here's a link to the tutorial page
http://www.boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/tutorials.php

Stevo
 
MANOCHVARMA RAMAN

MANOCHVARMA RAMAN

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stevo said:
Came across a free tool last night, it's called Materialize, it takes an image and converts it to a PBR type texture. I haven't tried it but in the tutorials it seems pretty powerful. According to their website it was used on the PlayStations Uncharted series of games to create textures.

Here's a link to the tutorial page
http://www.boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/tutorials.php

Stevo
Click to expand...
I have tried it but it seems the normal map can’t be inverted (Photoshop has that option). I’m not sure there are any ways to do it. If it has please guide.
 
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