P3D V4.4 PBR materials feature needed in MCX PLZ!

[RED COOL]

@arno is it possible to have PBR live preview !

 

[LD Sceneries]

Hello Arno.

Here you are a small pbr test
.x and .mdl file

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/sdk/modeling/3ds_max/modeling/modeling_pbrmaterials.html

 

[arno]

@arno is it possible to have PBR live preview !

No, that will not be supported soon. I'll make sure the settings can be written and read. But supporting PBR rendering in the MCX preview is a big change that will end up on the wishlist.

 

[arno]

One more request to those that have the gamepack running already. Can somebody export a simple scene with two boxes where one has a PBR material and one has a FSX material? I read you can mix them in one MDL file. Want to see how that is stored.

 

[LD Sceneries]

i hope that help you.

 

[RED COOL]

@arno can you plz reply here once the update is done so i can test it
thnx =)

 

[arno]

I will, but it will at least take a couple of days. Many places of the code need to be updated.

 

[RED COOL]

I will, but it will at least take a couple of days. Many places of the code need to be updated.

take your time and make it perfect you are doing great

 

[arno]

Hi,

I'm working on this. Two questions for people who experimented with PBR a bit already.

1. What is the difference between the BumpTexture a material already had and the NormalTexture that PBR uses? Would I need two slots in the material for them?
2. Same for the difference between the DiffuseTexture and the AlbedoTexture. Are they different enough to have two slots?

 

[Lagaffe]

Hi,
For the moment i cann't answer on the first point but Albédo should be the same as Diffuse without shadows or ambiant occlusion that painters add for FSX.
Albédo is a pure color without additions. So you need effectively two slots.

 

[DaveWG]

From what I've seen so far, both the bump and normal maps, and diffuse / albedo maps are basically the same, with the exception that the "smoothness" map can either be stored in the albedo alpha channel, or the metallic alpha channel.

You shouldn't need two slots, as you'd be using one or the other, not both on the same material.

 

[Pyscen]

Arno...

You have said in another thread about possibly having both types of textures (PBR and Standard FSX structure) for a single model, does that mean that maybe both the Diffuse and Albedo / Bump Texture and Normal Texture slots are needed (1 for each - 2 additional slots)? I would think in that case that 2 additional slots might be required. So that one could use one or both in a single model. Maybe that would cut down on confusion on what is being used either PBR or standard texture types at a given time within a model.

 

[GaryGB]

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/p3d-v4-4-pbr-materials-feature-needed-in-mcx-plz.444210/post-811481

When you install the SDK (ex: Z:\SDK_P3Dv4), you can find at the root directory a file Z:\SDK_P3Dv4\ConfigSDK.exe that you hav to launch as Administrator and you must valid by Yes at the question asked.
For that you should hava P3D v4.4 installed in order to write in some files under Z:\SDK_P3Dv4\ the correct path to P3D.exe.

If you don't make this step, your SDK isn't well configured and you cannot use Max as you want. It is as simple as that.

Hello:

This may prove to be an important point related to SDK installation for updating threads / wikis on that topic.


IIRC, one needs to manually run "ConfigSDK.exe" with the MS SDKs to 'activate' the SDK and write SDK file / folder paths into the Windows Registry.


I had gotten the impression that the L-M P3D SDK executable installers automatically ran "ConfigSDK.exe."

Have you found that this is not actually the case, and that one must indeed manually run L-M P3D SDK "ConfigSDK.exe" in order to configure additional functionality required for certain other aspects of using the SDK (ex: 3DSMAX / GMAX) aside from writing SDK file / folder paths into the Windows Registry ?

GaryGB

 

[Lagaffe]

Well, I made this step automaticly since I begin to develop: it's a reflex and I have never attempted to run Gmax or Max without this step.

 

[tgibson]

From the P3D SDK documentation: http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/LearningCenter.php

"The paths in the documentation and some tools will only be correct if the SDK is installed to the default folder. If the SDK is installed to a non-default folder, be aware that some documented paths may not be correct, and run the tool ConfigSDK.exe (in the SDK folder) to update the paths of a number of the configuration tools to the correct folder. Before running ConfigSDK.exe make sure to run Prepar3D.exe at least once first (as the tool requires certain registry entries to be present), and that the Prepar3D runtime has been installed to the same computer."

 

[GaryGB]

Excellent info (by both Didier and ...) Tom; thanks for the heads-up on that requirement with SDK installation even if ConfigSDK.exe has been run !


Now we just need some kind soul to update the info for P3D SDK installs somewhere in the SDK Installation sub-forum.

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forums/sdk-installation.111/

GaryGB

 

[arno]

From what I've seen so far, both the bump and normal maps, and diffuse / albedo maps are basically the same, with the exception that the "smoothness" map can either be stored in the albedo alpha channel, or the metallic alpha channel.

You shouldn't need two slots, as you'd be using one or the other, not both on the same material.

Thanks for the thoughts. I think it indeed makes sense to combine the albedo and diffuse texture slots as one in the material editor. That would also allow conversion to different formats more easily. When a PBR model is converted to another format the best attempt would be to put albedo as diffuse texture anyway. The same applies for bump and normal I think.

I'll add a new material filtering in the material editor, so that you can easily find the PBR related settings when trying to work with them.

 

[arno]

Arno...

You have said in another thread about possibly having both types of textures (PBR and Standard FSX structure) for a single model, does that mean that maybe both the Diffuse and Albedo / Bump Texture and Normal Texture slots are needed (1 for each - 2 additional slots)? I would think in that case that 2 additional slots might be required. So that one could use one or both in a single model. Maybe that would cut down on confusion on what is being used either PBR or standard texture types at a given time within a model.

Yes, but you can never mix them in one material of course. Some materials can be PBR others can be the FSX/P3D materials. But that's two separate materials in that case.

 

[arno]

Hi,

Small update on the implementation again. I have the reading of the PBR settings implemented from X file and from MDL now. Next I'll need to update the X file exporting to also save them.

I had to refactor how MCX works with textures quite a bit, so I also need to do some more testing to make sure I didn't break things like the drawcall minimizer .

The test models posted in this thread hardly use textures, does somebody have a small test model that uses all three PBR texture slots?

 

[nz255]

... does somebody have a small test model that uses all three PBR texture slots?