quixel megascans service launch?
polycounter lvl 10
So recently I have been seeing lots of advertising for quixels megascan service. It has been mentioned in Vertex 2 magazine that they have over 6000 scanned textures and also it has been mentioned in the new PBR tutorial by Marmoset. So what do you think when they are going to launch the site and also Im wondering is it going to be free like Cgtextures or with some limitations and priced textures.
Replies
Soon I hope, the stuff I've seen is really nice.
Hopefully we'll hear more at this years GDC
It's because they have a setup for cross polarized photography as I understand it, so it's not just a photo of something, but actual correct albedo/reflectance/normal (maybe also roughness?) maps
I mean is it going to make really big difference for games, which are usually dynamic, and user do not focus on any single object anyway, and more over where you use 1k textures, and pack all the fancy masks (roughness/specular) into single channels (dxt1 compression) where they loose even more quality. Or scale them down, to save on memory.
I can see it usefull for movies and other more static scenes.
Not really sure how you're coming to any of these conclusions, the same applies to all art content created in any form for games.
Anyone who went to the quxiel booth at gdc was able to get the info
Megascans will be a service that offers the highest quality textures to individuals and companies this service is a website that you will use to browse and view the materials you would like to download. The website is linked to an application that will be used to download the textures. You will be able to choose what type of map file *ex:normal/spec/diff) you would like to download of that specific material and in what resolution you would like it in. The type of map file you would like to use is not limited to us really at this moment we can output every current type of map file being used almost.
The textures are in their raw state being outputed and tiled at 16,000x16,000 in full 32 bit hdr. The amount of texture detail no matter what resolution you select to download it at based on your bandwith/package in the service is the highest quality you can get and is un matched anywhere. With the quality being high we also fight for perfection as well and with that in mind have made sure that the textures are all 100% nuetral to one another and can be blended together seamlessly and effortless.
Even though the service is not yet available to the public we have been working with studios already and have already been helping some get their engines fine tuned for the pbr stage in the evolution of gaming and film. The service however is not yet openly available to the public yet but we have been working with a select few community members to make tweaks and testing use of the scans. If you would like your studio to use the service please have them visit the megascans website and setup a request or send a request to me ryan@quixel.se but this however does not mean that everyone email me with a request to use the scans for something this is just for studios needing access early to the scans. The public service should be up shortly and I am sorry that you can't use it yet but we still have some kinks to work out and we hope that you can bare with us with the delays.
If you would like to see it in action and are attending this years GDC we will be having a booth in the expo hall next to the Marmoset guys. We will be showcasing a ton of megascan stuff this year and look forward to seeing what you guys think about it. If you know that your studio would like to talk more about this maybe even at GDC then you can have them email me at the email above too and we can setup a meeting. I hope this clears up some of the confusion for you guys and I hope that it doesn't create more haha. But to answer the guys question about what is all the fuss about? It's not really about fuss, it is just a new way to look at texturing. The Cgtextures and going out and doing this yourself is still a great methods of getting textures. This is just another public service that we are offering people to use to get textures.
The only difference right now is convince and quality at this point. Doing it yourself or using other methods right now can't get you the quality and results that we can get for you. The service is still being decided how it will operate. But for the most part it is just that a service you will make and account from free/paid-bandwidth and download what you are allotted for and use what you need. If you don't want to use the service that is completely fine and ok. This is just another way to get textures to use on your projects, but we are working full time around the clock to bring the best textures possible as well as the most materials that we can to help you. Thanks for your time and sorry about the wall of text.
Sounds like this is a whole new beast! Excited to see what's to come.