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Learning PBR

polycounter lvl 5
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Coontang polycounter lvl 5
I recently stumbled across this introduction to PBR a topic which was entirely new to me, and I decided if this is where next gen games are going, best to learn it sooner rather than later. So I began looking into it and decided the best thing is to learn by doing.

I started with some material tests in Marmoset 2, which is as far as I know the best (only?) thing currently able to do it.

My 1st attempt at metal

roughmetal.jpg

And something with a mix of dielectric and conductor

crackedpaint.jpg

I'm working on a flintlock pistol to texture with PBR and for fun I made a few more tiling materials and applied them to the current stage of the high poly. To me it looks amazing and I can't wait to finish this up properly. (yes I made the cocking mechanism into a swan :p)

flintlock1.jpg

flintlock3.jpg

flintlock2.jpg

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  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    Today I made some scrollwork to go on the flintlock. I'm aiming for it to be a very extravagant weapon but I'll sculpt in a lot of damage as if its owner has fallen on hard times or something.

    The 1st 2 were made by setting the pattern as an alpha in zbrush. The 3rd one was made in max using the design as a template.

    flintlock4.jpg

    flintlock5.jpg

    flintlock6.jpg
  • ayoub44
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    ayoub44 polycounter lvl 10
    Great stuff
    i don't really understand this PBR thing .. is just same textures but with some little minimize the ao in the diffuse ... ect .
    it's really confusing !!
  • Fenn
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    Fenn polycounter lvl 3
    I am amazed. I haven't gotten into texture yet, but this is making me drool. I only have one nit pick. On the first picture of your last post. The plate behind the swan has two flat head screws. The screws look like two half moons only. You need a circle raised up. I don't know how to explain it well.
  • stevston89
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    stevston89 interpolator
    You probably shouldn't just tile these materials on the surface. Something like a gun should have very specific areas of wear. The wood grain should flow logically across the entire model. The cloth shouldn't intersect itself. I get you trying to learn materials, but you should go about it in applicable way. I would recommend doing a full high poly to bake a normal map to a low poly. The intricate details would still be baked down there is no reason to spend all of those polys on such a shallow detail. Also the way you are currently handling it is causing a bunch of seams.
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    ayoub44 wrote: »
    Great stuff
    i don't really understand this PBR thing .. is just same textures but with some little minimize the ao in the diffuse ... ect .
    it's really confusing !!

    I'm barely getting my head around it either! There's so much maths and physics involved in the documentation out there.
    Fenn wrote: »
    You need a circle raised up. I don't know how to explain it well.

    I know what you're trying to point out, when I get it into zbrush I'll be cutting out the holes in the plate so the screws fit flush.
    stevston89 wrote: »
    You probably shouldn't just tile these materials on the surface.

    I'm planning to make this properly, I've been making the high poly whilst making test materials and then just slapping the materials on the high poly with a uvw box map to see how it looks. The final model will be properly unwrapped and textured.
  • stevston89
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    stevston89 interpolator
    Ok good. Couldn't really tell from your posts. Keep it up then! Also take a look at these:

    http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-theory

    http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-practice
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    I think I'm almost done with zbrush on this now. I've pretty much just attacked the edges of everything with trim dynamic and dam standard brushes as well as the split in the handle and an axe wound at the front.

    I was considering adding more surface texture in things but zbrush is already chugging and it can probably be done just as well with crazybump.

    If anyone has any feedback it would be much appreciated.

    flintlock_zbrush_1.jpg
    flintlock_zbrush_2.jpg
    flintlock_zbrush_3.jpg
    flintlock_zbrush_4.jpg
  • Twotents
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    Twotents polycounter lvl 4
    I have been spending a suprising amount of time on PBR lately. I just can't but help to marvel at the results of PBR art works. The work flow is pretty much the same as it is for a general asset from what I have learned (then again I may be doing this completely wrong as there isn't a lot of resources to pull from yet) The gloss on the wood is a little "plasticy" Bam i made a new word :P Maybe try inverting your specular map and putting it in the gloss map section in Marmoset Toolbag 2 and play around with the strength. I think you can get some more results from the light scattering off of the grain. Other than that awesome model mate. Keep up to good work, oh and btw the Swan flint lock, just epic, that right there is what makes interesting art :D
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    Haha I'm glad you like the swan! I'm planning to fix my materials before using them as a base for the final texture so I'll take another look at the wood, thanks for the suggestion.
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    My workflow on this project:

    -Creat High Poly base in max, use to test materials in marmoset
    -Finish high poly in zbrush
    -Perfect tiling materials, correct values, tile perfectly, all done with textures -> no adjustments inside Marmoset
    -Create Low Poly, test bake from HP in xnormal
    -Assign a colour to each part of the high poly depending on material, to bake to low poly as material masks
    colourful_flintlock.jpg
    -HP bakes in Xnormal
    -Duplicate UVs to 2nd channel
    -Map Tiling materials to low poly in max on channel 1. For each material duplicate the object for each map and assign that map.
    -Bake Materials to 2nd Channel, asemble in photoshop using colour masks baked in xnormal
    -Test in Marmoset
    -Add dirt using Substance Painter
    --I AM CURRENTLY HERE!
    flintlock_texture_wip_1.jpg
    flintlock_texture_wip_2.jpg
    Albedo, roughness/gloss, metalness, normal, cavity, occlusion
    flintlock_texture_wip_3.jpg
    -- STILL TO DO
    -Finalise Texturing
    -Present Nicely, possibly animated
    -Collect Underpants
    -??????
    -Profit!
  • EarthQuake
    Images/site down?
  • tynew
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    tynew polycounter lvl 9
    To be honest I think you have way too much detail going on and it's killing your metals. It looked much better before material wise. Right now it doesn't even take advantage of the PBR like your previous version did.
  • D4V1DC
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    D4V1DC polycounter lvl 18
    ^ agree.
    Otherwise nice.
  • shlim
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    shlim polycounter lvl 3
    With metals, if you are going for 'a well used' look. I would look at how 'well touched' areas would appear polished. The same goes for some medals.

    Skin is rough, and the friction from constant touch will rub away the oils and dirt that accumulate on metals that show as dark and black discoloration.
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm trying to figure out where exactly I've gone wrong. So here is an image of the same HP as before with the materials setup as I had them before baking, as I changed them from what I posted previously. If you think the older version looked better I still have those versions of the materials.

    flintlock_hp_final_materials.jpg

    And this is the low poly with just the bakes, no substance painter dirt.

    flintlock_baked_materials_base.jpg

    I decided to set up the old scene with the same lighting as the above 2 images for comparison, now I'm thinking me messing with sky light could be an issue.

    flintlock_hp_old_materials.jpg

    Thanks for any help.
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    A small update as I think I'm heading in the right direction. The keen eye of polycounters tends to prove me wrong though :D

    flintlock_texture_wip_4.jpg

    flintlock_texture_wip_5.jpg
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    I got a bit stuck with my texturing so messed about with presentation. Think I might leave it for a while now and work on something else.

    More Images

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1W7KiymS4s"]Flintlock PBR Turntable Marmoset Toolbag 2 - YouTube[/ame]
  • Adam L. Gray
    I think with PBR, what they're referring to is more or less the same thing as PBL (Physically based lighting), letting a cubemap/reflection light your model. Also similar to IBL, occasionally used in rendering for some viz stuff.

    Though, I'm not sure if the PBR is a further yet simplified version of it, or perhaps the other way around. They also used something similar in Bioshock Infinite. And.. take all I say with a grain of salt here.. I'm relatively new to it myself :P

    But, my tip would simply be, take a peek at the vizualisation/rendering side of things, and how they work with materials.. it does actually give quite a bit of helpful info when working with this :3
  • Luke003
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    Luke003 polycounter lvl 8
    Hi there. I think your model is coming along nicely. I feel like the wood would really stand out more if there were more contrast in the variations of glossiness across the surface. I would assume since it looks heavily used it would probably get really oily and slightly polished in some places, leaving those areas quite glossy. It's looking really good, but the wood in the last couple screenshots is standing out as looking a little dull to me. Could just be me though.

    Also, I really appreciate you including a breakdown of your workflow. I'm trying to get familiar with PBR (and texturing in general) myself, but I got a little lost when you described baking tiling maps to different UV channels. Could you explain that a little more?
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    Thanks for the feedback. I'll keep it in mind when I come back to this. For now though I'm definitely going to move on to something different, not sure what but it will surely involve more PBR.

    As for my material baking I will try to explain a bit better.

    I had created materials previously which were tilable, and each included an albedo, roughness, normal, occlusion, cavity and metalness.

    I UV mapped my low poly just like normal, and then I copied the UVs to the 2nd UV channel in 3ds Max. I could then apply another UVW Unwrap modifier and use UV channel 1 to map the parts of the low poly to the tiling materials I had created.

    Metalness, AO, Cavity, Roughness, Normal, albedo
    material_bakes.jpg

    I then used render to texture to bake these maps out to the UVs in the 2nd Channel which were my final UVs for the model.

    Hopefully that's made things clearer, I've tried explaining this to people in person with the files in front of me and they still don't understand what I'm on about sometimes :D
  • Luke003
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    Luke003 polycounter lvl 8
    Thanks for the explanation, I totally get it now. :) Going to try that on my next project.
  • MDGM
    Coontang wrote: »
    I got a bit stuck with my texturing so messed about with presentation. Think I might leave it for a while now and work on something else.

    More Images

    Flintlock PBR Turntable Marmoset Toolbag 2 - YouTube


    how did you do the bullet and particles in marmo 2 been looking for something like that for a personal project.
  • Coontang
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    Coontang polycounter lvl 5
    It's actually made in max. The bullet is just a sphere and the rest is generated with particle flow and converted to an object using the "mesher" compound object.

    10s5e76.jpg

    So the smoke is just a load of planes and the sparks are just little elongated spheres.

    Then the rest is done in marmoset materials. The smoke is all the same texture except at the back it is set to "dither" alpha mode and at the front it's set to "add". Then there's a light on the front smoke to give the glow effect.
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