Texture Dilemma - Achieving realism for Sai Weapon

bkost

Final Result




Hey friends,

I'm working on a weapon and on the process of texturing the blade. After creating the Diffuse, AO, Normals, and Spec it still looks very amateur. I want to level up my texturing work.


 
I'm wanting to replicate the look and feel of the Sai with a leather grip. And I'm looking for help on how to achieve realistic renders, mainly focusing on Texture Map Creation. Here is an imgur album of my maps - http://imgur.com/a/QxLDw

Thank you

3dReaper

I would focus on the metalness workflow for PBR.

Improve the density of your model as well, it looks a bit too low poly especially on the curved sections.

After reviewing your textures, you have loads of wasted UV space. Re map your mesh and use as much of the 0 to 1 space as possible.

Did you make a high poly version of the sai and bake that detail down onto your low poly? It does not appear you did.
Some great reference for PBR texturing:
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fb9_KgCo0noxROKN4iT8ntTbx913e-t4Wc2nMRWPzNk/edit

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/02/18/working-with-physically-based-shading-a-practical-approach/

http://www.artisaverb.info/PBT.html

bkost

Hi @3dReaper  I really appreciate the reply and helpful feedback! After re UVing and getting a slightly HQ normals I came up with this... I think the leather is what is holding this model back, I'll have to fidget with it some more.

bkost

Here's another update! I'm happy with this result
While working in 3D coat, I found flipping from different maps to paint on them separately helped tremendously.
 

bkost

Now that I'm sort of understanding the PBR workflow I am having some fun! I tweaked the piece even more xP



And here are all my maps for anyone curious, If you weary of getting into a PBR workflow it does take some time understanding it but it is well worth it!

Chimp

3dReaper said:

I would focus on the metalness workflow for PBR.

I'm not sure that's really solid advice, the choice between the two main variants of PBS is not down to whether or not you have metallic areas of your models, they both do metals. So far as my own experience shows, the Spec/Gloss approach is actually nicer - there's weird artifacting present along transitions between metal and non metal when the Metalness style shader and inputs are used. That said I'm aware there are a lot of shaders out there and people are tackling these things. All that's beside the point anyway, both styles do metallics.

What you want to focus on here is the PBR inputs themselves -- looking at the latest shots i'm seeing pretty flat values, and strange choices.

1. Not sure why you're using diffuse, you should be doing albedo. why blend ao in when you have an actual AO input in your shader? Albedo should be basically pure colour -- definitely no lighting information.

2. Roughness (or if you were doing spec/gloss, then Glossiness) is one of the most important maps for representing surfaces and here you have given it very little love - you have pure black on the handle! the handle should be a place where you can really demonstrate wear, having it rougher where the hand grips it and more worn etc. TBH across all the maps the handle has got barely any love at all. In fact, are your values inverted? the metal should be very smooth with the handle being quite rough,not vice versa? maybe your shader does the values opposite tho so i dunno.

3. Also, not sure why you've got some metallic values for the leather?!

I'd suggest looking at some of the PBS material examples that come with Substance Painter -- you can tweak all the values and see how they respond in the viewport, cos it looks like these maps are hand made and suffering for it due to a lack of experience with pbs

final_fight

Your metalness texture is wrong - it shouldn't have values lower than 235 RGB. Otherwise reflactance values in albedo map should lower too.

final_fight

Have you checked Allegorithmic's PRB Guide?

bkost

@Chimp

Hi I truly appreciate you taking the time to do this write up for me. At the time, I had no idea what the difference between Diffuse and Albedo was. And I've realized adding to your roughness is a big deal.. 

@final_fight

Hey man, I do not understand what you mean by 253 as a measurement. Measurements like this guide?


From what I gathered, black is for dielectrics and white is for metals. "Otherwise reflactance values in albedo map should lower too." - what do you exactly mean? 
-----
Last night and this morning I soaked up some more information for PBR, I'm slowly getting the understanding of it... 
I watched Andrew Maximov's PBR breakdown on youtube and went through his written breakdown (you can even DL his gun model that he references)  http://www.artisaverb.info/PBT.html

Here is another update