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P3D V5 New PBR Material Property

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I have been seeing it mentioned in a couple of places that their is a new PBR Material Property.
As far as I can figure out, it has to be this reluctance map?
Has anybody figured it out yet?
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arno

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Hi,

The new material property in the MDL file is that there is a flag indeed that indicates of the metallic map has reflectance, which is stored in the blue channel of the metallic map.

I don't know enough about modelling with PBR materials to say how you would have to use it though. I just know what is stored in the MDL file.
 
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Hi,

The new material property in the MDL file is that there is a flag indeed that indicates of the metallic map has reflectance, which is stored in the blue channel of the metallic map.

I don't know enough about modelling with PBR materials to say how you would have to use it though. I just know what is stored in the MDL file.
Thank you Arno, I have a Vague Idea of what it is used for, will do some testing to figure out exactly how it works.
 
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In order to test, that properties flag would have to be set first. Is there a way short of going the 3ds Max route to do that? Arno, are you working on implementing this for MCX?
 

arno

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Hi,

MCX has already been updated to support this new material attribute. You need to make sure the P3D v5 SDK is used of course.
 
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Wow, that's great. Off for some testing we go then! Many thanks. (Sure hope it is "reflectance" and not "reluctance", but with P3d one never knows...)
 
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Using the new MCX I get the 'Metallic Has Reflectance' switch but both the Material Editor and the Exporter options list only P3Dv44, not v5 as options. When exporting to v44 the Model header says ...v44..., but the model keeps the Metallic Has Reflectance switch setting. Loading the mdl in v4.4 is still possible, but the texture with the blue channel set to white is discolored almost black. Anybody else get similar findings?
 
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arno

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Hi,

The P3D v5 SDK does still export MDL files with the header as PV44. That is why I did not add it as a new version in MCX, but just extended the v4.4 MDL format export.

P3D v4.4 will still be able to load the MDL file, but it is not aware of the new material attribute. So I'm not sure if you can use the v5 MDL and texture in v4.4 without issues.
 
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Yes, my mistake, the 'almost black' appearance I mentioned was due to a renamed texture. Can confirm that v4.4 now loads the mdl created via the v5 SDK without any noticeable change.
 
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First of all thanks to Arno for incorporating this feature so quickly in MCX.

Looking at the SDK documentation, I can not find any reference to the blue channel. Have you managed to see how this is handled and what the effect is? Is it a channel that one can use to define the reflectivity of the surface? If so what are the reference values? Is it white for full reflection and black for no reflection or vice versa?
 

arno

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Looking at the SDK documentation, I can not find any reference to the blue channel. Have you managed to see how this is handled and what the effect is? Is it a channel that one can use to define the reflectivity of the surface? If so what are the reference values? Is it white for full reflection and black for no reflection or vice versa?

Can't answer this one, since I'm not really a modeler. How the textures are used as no impact on the MDL format.
 
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I have experimented a bit with the new map in V5. I’ve created small building with a non-metallic service as walls, aluminium window frames and windows and slides the building in 3 parts. All parts of the ‘old’ PBR materials were the same, except from the reflectance to see what the effect was. You don’t see a massive difference, except from then there’s a stroke light, a light like a sun rise which comes in on the service on a shallow angle. I used the RGB values I found in this article: https://academy.substance3d.com/courses/the-pbr-guide-part-1 Quite an interesting read I’d say. Don’t know if LM implements the concept described in the article the correct way though. The concept is talking about an RGB value, where as P3D’s engine uses only a BW value, the one that’s displaying the blue channel. The way I’ve worked was converting the value of, let’s say 50, 50, 50 for a brick wall to 0,196 value for the Blender input. As 255 is 100%, then 50 is 19,6% of a 255 value of a color. This results in a dark gray color, so very little reflectanten. The result of my test came out quite nice if I say so myself.

And don’t forget to read the part two, it’s worth your time!

Verzonden vanaf mijn iPad met Tapatalk
 
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Pyscen

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I have experimented a bit with the new map in V5. I’ve created small building with a non-metallic service as walls, aluminium window frames and windows and slides the building in 3 parts. All parts of the ‘old’ PBR materials were the same, except from the reflectance to see what the effect was. You don’t see a massive difference, except from then there’s a stroke light, a light like a sun rise which comes in on the service on a shallow angle. I used the RGB values I found in this article: https://academy.substance3d.com/courses/the-pbr-guide-part-1 Quite an interesting read I’d say. Don’t know if LM implements the concept described in the article the correct way though. The concept is talking about an RGB value, where as P3D’s engine uses only a BW value, the one that’s displaying the blue channel. The way I’ve worked was converting the value of, let’s say 50, 50, 50 for a brick wall to 0,196 value for the Blender input. As 255 is 100%, then 50 is 19,6% of a 255 value of a color. This results in a dark gray color, so very little reflectanten. The result of my test came out quite nice if I say so myself.

And don’t forget to read the part two, it’s worth your time!

Verzonden vanaf mijn iPad met Tapatalk

You might want to read - starting from this point on the Specular Reflection:


Even though it's in the Blender section - the maps are the same :)
 
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