Wow! It looks like you all have really streamlined the process, UI, and oh yeah it looks a lot faster. And I love that you are basing it on scanned textures and "real-world material defintion" (as you called it) versus the procedural stuff from dDo 1 (which was still cool, but this looks amazing).
I wasn't really convinced by the original Ddo because it felt way too procedural, but this looks amazing! Definitely pre-ordering asap. How much would a subscription to megascans be for freelancers/hobbyists? And would there be any way to do DIY "megascans"?
I wasn't really convinced by the original Ddo because it felt way too procedural, but this looks amazing! Definitely pre-ordering asap. How much would a subscription to megascans be for freelancers/hobbyists? And would there be any way to do DIY "megascans"?
I also want to know these answers and any limits on how much a hobbyist can dl from megascans such as per day etc.
Hell's horses that ddo workflow video is cool. Using scanned data by masks is awesome; definitely a much better workflow than mucking around with photo overlays and blending modes. The better base that can be automated = more time for hand painted stuff, which is excellent. I guess some people might worry that lots of people using the same scanned content might make assets look similar; but I assume the megascan library will grow steadily with time (and if things are looking similar you probably need to do more hand-painted details).
Wow everyone... I can't tell you how much it means to me to see this thing being so well received. Hopefully some of you will swing by GDC or the Polycount meetup so that I can thank you in person for all your enthusiasm and support. Meeting some of you during last year's GDC was really one of the greatest highlights of the entire year for me.
916J,
The open beta will be available for everyone once released! Pre-ordering simply gives you a few extra goodies such as exclusive NDO & DDO preset materials as well as instant activation as the new tools release.
Visceral & Lokter,
Correct, when you own nDo2 already you are entitled to a 100% free upgrade to the new NDO as well as 3DO, which comes bundled with all tools for free. If you would want to have the full suite you can then get DDO separately, which doesn't cost more than if you would've gotten the full suite from the start.
zacvrono,
The low $99 price tag stays! We wanted to make the suite affordable to everyone, and so we will not bump up the price once the upgrades officially release. As for your half freelance/half indie situation it is surely a little bit of a gray area, but from our point of view we wouldn't mind you using the freelancing license for both cases since the second gig could pass as freelancing just as well.
warxsnake,
Getting masking right has been one of the key focuses for the new DDO. This time around we've made it more dynamic than ever, meaning you can always dive in and out of the mask editing mode non-destructively. The manual editing and copying process is getting a big improvement by allowing you to now add multiple non-destructive paint layers to your masks, while also allowing the editing of mask properties, material and reflectance values simultaneously without losing the manually painted edits.
Stromberg90,
Very understandable. I am hugely disappointed with myself regarding how far I've fallen behind on my online presence during the past few months of crunch. I'm doing my best to cool down now to finally get myself more involved online again, which is honestly what I love doing the most.
zacvrono,
When getting the suite pre-order deal you also get access to the previous tools and individual licenses for those right away. This means you will also be able to use licensed versions of both the new and previous editions at the same time once the upgrade has been released.
Brygelsmack,
Sure thing! The previous dDo's detailing was built upon a type of node based procedural filtering system, that relied on a mixture of math based filters in combination with cavity maps to generate different types of wear & tear. You can come a long way with this approach, but you are essentially relying on algorithms to create believable textures. Setting these node systems up yourself to look really good can be a daunting thing and generally has a pretty steep learning curve. The main drawback is also that due to all the heavy procedural processing involved it gets slow when working with high-res assets, and results tend to look "too" computer generated if designed in a hurry.
For the new DDO the new masking needed to be far more simple and dynamic, more like how masks are generally built up by hand from a purely artistical standpoint. The foundation is extracting a ton of useful information from the shapes themselves, with lots of control to get a rich mix of volumes, edges, directions, gradients, shadows and so on to build compelling mask bases. Then, instead of relying on complex algorithmic filtering to get scratch & dirt effects, there's now the ability to plug in real-world surface scan data or custom textures to drive the weathering process.
The masking system is now also a little bit "smarter" in terms of how weathering effects apply over different types of surfaces -- basically if you are adding a layer of water on top of your asset it will take into account all the underlying materials to determine where the water should get absorbed, and where it would form puddles, droplets or drips and so on.
More in-depth info on the scan driven Smart Materials tech will get released as the beta closes in!
One thing I have found to be messing from dDo earlier is, would it be possible to change the input maps mid project/texturing and have it all generate again?
Although if feels like with awesome services like this we might loose some of the craftmanship involved with making your own textures - I mean a hand sculpted texture in Zbrush will probably fall short in comparison to real world information. I'm not arguing the quality and I know its the way forward I just feel like a part of the process I am very fond of is slipping away more and more ^^ not trying to be backwards, it was just a thought
Great stuff. With the new Quixel suite, will Ddo, Ndo etc all be in one package now instead of opening separate ones? can you edit masks on the fly too?
Great software! I'm super exited about working with it in the future, but I use OS X at home and at work, and I'm sure there's a lot of companies like mine working with macs as well.
Sorry for being the party pooper but it seems like you are not considering a large amount of users. Any plans to porting this to mac?
Well I'll be. Waiting for news has been worth it, methinks!
Question (while you're answering some others already): Will it be easier to include custom layers without disturbing the stack of layers and throwing DDO out of whack? I've inadvertently broken quite a few DDO projects this way ;-)
I really want to get DDO for home use, got ndo2 already , will I get the megascans if I buy ddo? it just says starter pack is that all anyone gets with the suite?
I imagine this uses a bunch of render passes like depth, normal, AO and a stencil to work.
So I would essentially just take all of those render passes from a camera pointed at my high poly model (which doesn't necessarily have UVs) and get to work on a 2.5 version in Photoshop/dD0.
Is that correct?
Would this somehow emulate the perspective distortion of the dDo texture on faces that are angled away from the camera, and would it handle the edge/cavity/ao masked weathering?
What i do : 1.) Download nDo2, from Site http://quixel.se/nDo2/nDo2_release.exe (MD5 - 4C575D74CF5E9B4CAAC6AE8851D9728C) 2.) Install, Run... Update-Window appear (1.1.9 > 1.2.0), Photoshop CC Support. 3.) Click Update... Then nDo2 start download same (1.1.9) installer
x\ProgramData\Quixel\nDo2\nDo2_release.exe (MD5 - 4C575D74CF5E9B4CAAC6AE8851D9728C)
This is awesome! Does anyone have any comprehensive resources for learning ndo2 or ddo? I have a Digital Tutors account but there's barely anything about them.
What i do :
1.) Download nDo2, from Site http://quixel.se/nDo2/nDo2_release.exe (MD5 - 4C575D74CF5E9B4CAAC6AE8851D9728C)
2.) Install, Run... Update-Window appear (1.1.9 > 1.2.0), Photoshop CC Support.
3.) Click Update... Then nDo2 start download same (1.1.9) installer
x\ProgramData\Quixel\nDo2\nDo2_release.exe (MD5 - 4C575D74CF5E9B4CAAC6AE8851D9728C)
Same issue on my end... I'm running Photoshop CC alone (not the whole CC collection) and Window 8 on an AMD Phenom II system. Anyone have a solution yet?
So me and my colleague are thinking about getting this because we are pretty behind on art (we still roll with diffuse textures and vertex lit shaders atm haha).
But we do have some questions, right now all of our stuff is handpainted, and we were wondering if we could drop in a hand painted diffuse texture, and then use a color map to pick materials for definition of specular/gloss etc for lighting, without the things like scratches and other maps.
You can easily disable those in the current DDO but since the new version will use the scanned maps, will you still be able to switch off those aspects of the material?
We run with a very clean and saturated art style, and with these tools we would just like to give it extra definition and better lighting without all the extra details, is this possible?
Thanks!
I'd definitely be curious to see what this could be like! from what I understand though dDO needs something to reference such as a normal map to define where it's going to put details
Yea we understood ,so when we'll make the shift we'll also move to painting that information with NDO (or Zbrush) instead of faking that in the diffuse.
It's just that DDO will automatically add all the scratches and dirtyness to a metal for example, which is great for a realistic art style.
But we just want to have the extra lighting
I imagine this uses a bunch of render passes like depth, normal, AO and a stencil to work.
So I would essentially just take all of those render passes from a camera pointed at my high poly model (which doesn't necessarily have UVs) and get to work on a 2.5 version in Photoshop/dD0.
Is that correct?
Would this somehow emulate the perspective distortion of the dDo texture on faces that are angled away from the camera, and would it handle the edge/cavity/ao masked weathering?
I would love an answer to this - If I can use this like polypaint but with more masking control, multiple map support, and with photoshop brushes, that would be wonderful.
Thanks for all the questions guys! We just wrapped up this year's GDC which turned out to be a lot more hectic than expected. It was so fun to meet so many of you at the booth and the Polycount meetup, I'll live off of that for a good while
Ged,
Correct, when you get DDO you will get a Megascans starter pack, containing about 1 Gigabyte of scans. The online Megascans library is a separate subscription service however, as opposed to the tool suite which offers eternal licenses for NDO & DDO.
maxivz,
You will actually get the Megascans starter pack for free as long as you already own dDo! So no need to get NDO just to get the starter pack
Yourname942,
The only differene between Indie and Commercial is that the Indie license is a heavily discounted edition for indies with full commercial rights -- any independently published studio, big or small, super successful or still struggling, is eligible for the indie license.
Computron & doc rob,
That is 100% correct -- no UVs are needed, just simple viewport render passes. Perspective distortion is fully handled if a displacement map is also loaded into the 2.5D pipeline -- then you would make sure to render out the viewport passes orthographically and let 3DO FOV & displacements take care of the perspective distortion. Masks, wear & tear will all behave as if you were texturing a fully UV mapped 3D model. This also allows you to save the 2.5D work out as a preset and then reuse it on the final mapped & baked asset for a 100% identical texturing starting point.
almighty_gir & gsokol,
Not at all! No reason to pre-order the suite if you already own nDo2 and dDo; the upgrades will be completely free and accessible through your license account as the new suite releases.
Dayviewer & luke,
Yes, this is fully possible!
MM,
Yes, 3DO can be used for any type of project and is not tied to NDO/DDO even though they are all fully integrated. The suite ships with a free mesh/texture linking tool that lets you hook up everything you need to 3DO either from disk or straight from within PS.
Plumbjet,
Sure! The exclusive NDO & DDO preset packs will be available the day the open beta launches, and will show up as a special download link on your user account page.
Replies
Love how the new ddo is looking! WOW! Congratz to Teddy and Quixel!
I also want to know these answers and any limits on how much a hobbyist can dl from megascans such as per day etc.
Would also do scan requests ?
REALLY?!?!? what 0.0 ill have to go check that out.
Keen.
916J,
The open beta will be available for everyone once released! Pre-ordering simply gives you a few extra goodies such as exclusive NDO & DDO preset materials as well as instant activation as the new tools release.
Visceral & Lokter,
Correct, when you own nDo2 already you are entitled to a 100% free upgrade to the new NDO as well as 3DO, which comes bundled with all tools for free. If you would want to have the full suite you can then get DDO separately, which doesn't cost more than if you would've gotten the full suite from the start.
zacvrono,
The low $99 price tag stays! We wanted to make the suite affordable to everyone, and so we will not bump up the price once the upgrades officially release. As for your half freelance/half indie situation it is surely a little bit of a gray area, but from our point of view we wouldn't mind you using the freelancing license for both cases since the second gig could pass as freelancing just as well.
warxsnake,
Getting masking right has been one of the key focuses for the new DDO. This time around we've made it more dynamic than ever, meaning you can always dive in and out of the mask editing mode non-destructively. The manual editing and copying process is getting a big improvement by allowing you to now add multiple non-destructive paint layers to your masks, while also allowing the editing of mask properties, material and reflectance values simultaneously without losing the manually painted edits.
Stromberg90,
Very understandable. I am hugely disappointed with myself regarding how far I've fallen behind on my online presence during the past few months of crunch. I'm doing my best to cool down now to finally get myself more involved online again, which is honestly what I love doing the most.
zacvrono,
When getting the suite pre-order deal you also get access to the previous tools and individual licenses for those right away. This means you will also be able to use licensed versions of both the new and previous editions at the same time once the upgrade has been released.
Brygelsmack,
Sure thing! The previous dDo's detailing was built upon a type of node based procedural filtering system, that relied on a mixture of math based filters in combination with cavity maps to generate different types of wear & tear. You can come a long way with this approach, but you are essentially relying on algorithms to create believable textures. Setting these node systems up yourself to look really good can be a daunting thing and generally has a pretty steep learning curve. The main drawback is also that due to all the heavy procedural processing involved it gets slow when working with high-res assets, and results tend to look "too" computer generated if designed in a hurry.
For the new DDO the new masking needed to be far more simple and dynamic, more like how masks are generally built up by hand from a purely artistical standpoint. The foundation is extracting a ton of useful information from the shapes themselves, with lots of control to get a rich mix of volumes, edges, directions, gradients, shadows and so on to build compelling mask bases. Then, instead of relying on complex algorithmic filtering to get scratch & dirt effects, there's now the ability to plug in real-world surface scan data or custom textures to drive the weathering process.
The masking system is now also a little bit "smarter" in terms of how weathering effects apply over different types of surfaces -- basically if you are adding a layer of water on top of your asset it will take into account all the underlying materials to determine where the water should get absorbed, and where it would form puddles, droplets or drips and so on.
More in-depth info on the scan driven Smart Materials tech will get released as the beta closes in!
One thing I have found to be messing from dDo earlier is, would it be possible to change the input maps mid project/texturing and have it all generate again?
Although if feels like with awesome services like this we might loose some of the craftmanship involved with making your own textures - I mean a hand sculpted texture in Zbrush will probably fall short in comparison to real world information. I'm not arguing the quality and I know its the way forward I just feel like a part of the process I am very fond of is slipping away more and more ^^ not trying to be backwards, it was just a thought
Sorry for being the party pooper but it seems like you are not considering a large amount of users. Any plans to porting this to mac?
(Keep doing this amazing job!)
Question (while you're answering some others already): Will it be easier to include custom layers without disturbing the stack of layers and throwing DDO out of whack? I've inadvertently broken quite a few DDO projects this way ;-)
I cant use it at work cause we are all on macs
Just wanna check if I understand what this is:
I imagine this uses a bunch of render passes like depth, normal, AO and a stencil to work.
So I would essentially just take all of those render passes from a camera pointed at my high poly model (which doesn't necessarily have UVs) and get to work on a 2.5 version in Photoshop/dD0.
Is that correct?
Would this somehow emulate the perspective distortion of the dDo texture on faces that are angled away from the camera, and would it handle the edge/cavity/ao masked weathering?
What i do :
1.) Download nDo2, from Site
http://quixel.se/nDo2/nDo2_release.exe (MD5 - 4C575D74CF5E9B4CAAC6AE8851D9728C)
2.) Install, Run... Update-Window appear (1.1.9 > 1.2.0), Photoshop CC Support.
3.) Click Update... Then nDo2 start download same (1.1.9) installer
x\ProgramData\Quixel\nDo2\nDo2_release.exe (MD5 - 4C575D74CF5E9B4CAAC6AE8851D9728C)
Sometimes the best tuts are fo FREE
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHa-h2S-NNY"]Complete nDo2 Breakdown - The AK - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BboBgjGARc"]Complete dDo 5.0 Breakdown - The AK - YouTube[/ame]
Was hyped until I heard about this hopefully it is a minor thing so that us people who cannot yet afford it do not miss out badly.
Same issue on my end... I'm running Photoshop CC alone (not the whole CC collection) and Window 8 on an AMD Phenom II system. Anyone have a solution yet?
Any word on the cost for a Megascan subscription for freelancers? I hope it will be affordable
Also what is included in a Megascans starter kit? What would I be getting?
This.
Curious what us folks who already have licenses need to do.
But we do have some questions, right now all of our stuff is handpainted, and we were wondering if we could drop in a hand painted diffuse texture, and then use a color map to pick materials for definition of specular/gloss etc for lighting, without the things like scratches and other maps.
You can easily disable those in the current DDO but since the new version will use the scanned maps, will you still be able to switch off those aspects of the material?
We run with a very clean and saturated art style, and with these tools we would just like to give it extra definition and better lighting without all the extra details, is this possible?
Thanks!
It's just that DDO will automatically add all the scratches and dirtyness to a metal for example, which is great for a realistic art style.
But we just want to have the extra lighting
I would love an answer to this - If I can use this like polypaint but with more masking control, multiple map support, and with photoshop brushes, that would be wonderful.
Ged,
Correct, when you get DDO you will get a Megascans starter pack, containing about 1 Gigabyte of scans. The online Megascans library is a separate subscription service however, as opposed to the tool suite which offers eternal licenses for NDO & DDO.
maxivz,
You will actually get the Megascans starter pack for free as long as you already own dDo! So no need to get NDO just to get the starter pack
Yourname942,
The only differene between Indie and Commercial is that the Indie license is a heavily discounted edition for indies with full commercial rights -- any independently published studio, big or small, super successful or still struggling, is eligible for the indie license.
Computron & doc rob,
That is 100% correct -- no UVs are needed, just simple viewport render passes. Perspective distortion is fully handled if a displacement map is also loaded into the 2.5D pipeline -- then you would make sure to render out the viewport passes orthographically and let 3DO FOV & displacements take care of the perspective distortion. Masks, wear & tear will all behave as if you were texturing a fully UV mapped 3D model. This also allows you to save the 2.5D work out as a preset and then reuse it on the final mapped & baked asset for a 100% identical texturing starting point.
almighty_gir & gsokol,
Not at all! No reason to pre-order the suite if you already own nDo2 and dDo; the upgrades will be completely free and accessible through your license account as the new suite releases.
Dayviewer & luke,
Yes, this is fully possible!
MM,
Yes, 3DO can be used for any type of project and is not tied to NDO/DDO even though they are all fully integrated. The suite ships with a free mesh/texture linking tool that lets you hook up everything you need to 3DO either from disk or straight from within PS.
Plumbjet,
Sure! The exclusive NDO & DDO preset packs will be available the day the open beta launches, and will show up as a special download link on your user account page.
- Teddy