Is anyone else having trouble getting their models smoothed in 3DO? Plus the sample models are smoothed fine, but all the ones I've built with blender, Cinema 4d and Zbrush are all unsmoothed.
Hey there synthorange,
I don't think 3DO actually will smooth the model you import for you. Whenever I export my Low Poly from any 3D package, I make sure the Smoothing information is retained in the .obj file. In 3DSMax for instance I have the possibility to tick a box when exporting an .obj so that it saves the Smoothing information.
Hope this helps.
hey I am having the same problem as TimPogson and Rabant suggestion didnt fix the problem anyone know what is causing it? I actually had the suite running fine earlier the error only started happening after my first project crashed.
I am analyzing the Scifi Helmet project and I am amazed. Almost everything is one smooth group and after applying normal map it looks awesome. I often hear that you should avoid big gradient in normal map hence there have to be multiple smoothgroups and splits in UV islands. Is this project made correct technical wise or/and specially made for SUITE to avoid seams?
Thanks in advance for reply.
I am analyzing the Scifi Helmet project and I am amazed. Almost everything is one smooth group and after applying normal map it looks awesome. I often hear that you should avoid big gradient in normal map hence there have to be multiple smoothgroups and splits in UV islands. Is this project made correct technical wise or/and specially made for SUITE to avoid seams?
Thanks in advance for reply.
The 'gradient' is the normal map attempting to compensate for the smoothing on the low poly - so if you have a giant smoothing error across a flat surface, the normal map will cancel this out to give the impression of a flat surface. This works as long as the tangent basis is synchronised between your generator and viewer. This isn't generally the case (although you can use handplane to do it), so it's best to avoid it by splitting the mesh and reducing smoothing errors.
In the case of the helmet, I would guess whatever application they used to generate the normal map was fairly well synced with how 3DO displays normals. Most normal maps I've generated from 3DSMax have worked well, despite having a lot of tension in the normal map.
It's still best to avoid it as best practice, as it can also screw up how dDo applies details through the curvature maps.
The samples are just samples people made ahead of time and donated to us for texturing and testing the tools limitations. You can probably contact the artist and ask him how and what he used to bake in PM, he is a Polycount user.
I'm really enjoying using Quixel Suite.
I noticed a bug that crashes QS if you try to apply a section of the color map to a duplicated material.
Thank you for making this, and way to go making it free at first. I'm hooked already!
When converting normals to hard edge height maps with nDo2 in CS6 I get the error:
The command "set" is not currently available.
And I have two feature requests.
1. Can you add the ability to create color masks from nDo2 files? Something as simple as, it takes all of your nDo2 Layers (Photoshop folders), rasterizes them and then assigns random colors. I usually do this manually. However, I think it would be really nice to have a 1 click solution that does this to save time. Especially now that nDo2 and dDo are getting a pipeline overhaul and being shipped together.
2. Can you make nDo2's Layers in the mixer update their names based on the folder names in Photoshop (or add your own rename functionality)? When working on larger projects, having more than 5 layers starts to get a bit overwhelming when you are not sure which is which.
Is anyone else having trouble getting their models smoothed in 3DO? Plus the sample models are smoothed fine, but all the ones I've built with blender, Cinema 4d and Zbrush are all unsmoothed.
For Blender: When exporting as obj check "write normal". (Down on the left hand side in the "save panel")
After checking this everything worked out fine for me. (As I had problems first, too)
Hi! I textured this using the new suite! It was great fun, a real timesaver. The render is in 3DO, i love the sunburn: it makes my glow-self ilum maps more visible. The only problem i encountered was when i was trying to load a cutom model to 3DO when i worked only with NDO at the beginning of my workflow.
Cheers
Előd
some quick tests. definitely awesome improvement. going to need and write down some questions and a couple things that I'm not sure if they are bugs or i just didn't know how to do.
I am running into something here ....
DDO is simply not loading some meshes. They work fine in 3DO, but as soon as i start up DDO it does not work anymore.
I exported them the same way as every other mesh so far...
really don´t know what could be the problem here
EDIT: Found the cause for that. Probably only useful for non english speakers:
If you have a "mutated vowel" like ü,ä,ö,ß in the name of your objects, 3DO will not load them
am i missing something or is it just me that cant log into the homepage altho i have an account. Also i bought the Quixel suite but i dont seem to have 3do and the new DDO? Any suggestions? Also im trying to contact you guys via mail but no responce so far. Please help.
am i missing something or is it just me that cant log into the homepage altho i have an account. Also i bought the Quixel suite but i dont seem to have 3do and the new DDO? Any suggestions? Also im trying to contact you guys via mail but no responce so far. Please help.
best
Chris
The Suite is currently in beta atm, so they (3do and the new ddo) are available in a separate download on the front page of their website labeled 'Get Beta'.
They were slow to respond to me as well (took about 1 1/2 weeks), I am assuming because they are probably getting flooded with emails due to the beta.
Is anyone having problems with exporting the textures? I've just been saving them like I regularly would in photoshop as PNGs with no compression. When I put them into Toolbag2 they don't seem as detailed as they do in 3DO. Is there a specific way to export the textures using DDO? Or is it just that the renderers handle things differently or something?
thank you so much for the reply. Yes i think they are getting too many emails buts it doesnt supprise for making a god mode texturing pack like this. Def didnt regret buying it.
Which email address did you send the mail to that did not get a reply so we can look into this problem?
Thanks,
Ryan Hawkins
P.S We have not forgotten you guys out there and I promise you and update is coming soon! Thanks for the feedback and support, keep the awesome work up!
Is anyone having problems with exporting the textures? I've just been saving them like I regularly would in photoshop as PNGs with no compression. When I put them into Toolbag2 they don't seem as detailed as they do in 3DO. Is there a specific way to export the textures using DDO? Or is it just that the renderers handle things differently or something?
Re: TB2 stuff: You will almost certainly have to make sure sRBG is checked for your gloss map. And make sure you're not using a different normal map swizzle in 3do to TB2.
edit: Disregard, I mistakenly thought the gloss maps should match in value from ps to tb2 preview but now that I check properly, that's definitely not the case. My bad!
Re: TB2 stuff: You will almost certainly have to make sure sRBG is checked for your gloss map. And make sure you're not using a different normal map swizzle in 3do to TB2.
that's bad...
you should never use sRGB for the gloss/roughness input.
I'm on the latest Windows 7 and had to create my own desktop icon. Also it keeps asking for the location of my Photoshop CC. It then forgets and asks again each time.The weird part is that it actually starts Photoshop Then asks for the location of Photoshop.
Just tried the suite in the new Photoshop CC 2014 release. nDo and dDo don't launch at all when clicking their icons. Everything just flashes a few times and then nothing. 3Do launches with a Library not registered error.
radianceForge - I'm pretty sure it's because if you use sRGB for black and white maps like metalness and gloss, when the gamma is applied it messes up the values of your maps. So your 50% rough material wouldn't be 50% rough anymore if you have sRGB on that map. The renderer only looks at the numerical 0-1 value, not the colour, so you don't use sRGB on your normal map, metalness, gloss. But you would use sRGB for your specular or diffuse. That's how I understand it at least.
but if your renderer supports srgb color space it should read the texture with the proper gamma? I understand the metalness map being black or white because its numerical but roughness?
I just dont really understand why thats "bad" or the wrong workflow. if you want to author in srgb why not
you should never use sRGB for the gloss/roughness input.
Why not, if the output is sRGB? Actually, if it is truly a case of absolutely never, why is it an option?
edit: However, I was totally wrong I mistakenly thought that the preview of the gloss in TB2 should match what I see in PS; but when I look at the actual result, no, that's not correct at all. So disregard what I said above, I'm an idiot.
Out of curiosity, why is this the case? Why does what I see in PS not match the preview (of the texture) in tb2, yet it does when sRGB is checked and that result is incorrect?
Why not, if the output is sRGB? Actually, if it is truly a case of absolutely never, why is it an option?
edit: However, I was totally wrong I mistakenly thought that the preview of the gloss in TB2 should match what I see in PS; but when I look at the actual result, no, that's not correct at all. So disregard what I said above, I'm an idiot.
Out of curiosity, why is this the case? Why does what I see in PS not match the preview (of the texture) in tb2, yet it does when sRGB is checked and that result is incorrect?
I also noticed this the preview appears to be correct but it doesn't react to light properly.
Really looking forward to that metalness workflow update. I've skimmed through Wiktor's breakdown of the Dues Ex scene, but I don't think he explains how he textured with DDo's specular/gloss workflow to get a result that would look similar to how it would look in Unreal. Unless you use the cross app mode or w/e and looked at your model in Toolbag.
but if your renderer supports srgb color space it should read the texture with the proper gamma? I understand the metalness map being black or white because its numerical but roughness?
I just dont really understand why thats "bad" or the wrong workflow. if you want to author in srgb why not
Without SRGB, theres more information you get out of your gloss map, as
the difference between the greyscales is larger due to the curve being longer than the straight line that is the linear function. So you get higher differences in roughnesses, bringing detail out better. (unless i mix something up here)
I tried with every asset i made in the last 5 months, and every single time did SRGB look worse and advised my team to always uncheck it but try for themselves, and so far nobody uses SRGB either.
Hi,
I have a license to the previous versions of both dDo & nDo & have recently downloaded the new beta.
Is/are Megascans included in the beta? Will it have it's own beta?a Is it included in the free upgrade &/or is a it a subscription service?
The reason I ask is the the M icon doesn't light up like the N & the D & the 3 in the little panel when I open the suite up in photoshop
Thanks
If anyone else wanted the same functionality I asked for, but couldn't wait. I wrote a script that allows you to easily create a color mask from an nDo2 document to be used in dDo. You can see it in action here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=136272
I've been slogging away at the ddo beta all day, and I gotta say I LOVE IT
I do have a couple of questions that i'd really like some help with tho. they may be simple but after 15 hours of looking at the screen i may be a bit braindead.
1. let's say, for example, I have just textured up a badass machine gun in ddo, got my materials assigned, weather effects are looking awesome etc... now what I want is some red vinyl 'go faster' stripes down the length of the gun and a '13'. Is there a way to manually edit a blank mask other than editing it directly in photoshop? this seems to be the only way yet is totally destructive. i can't layer masks to add separate elements?
2. now that my gun is looking total badass, what it really needs is a full colour sticker on the stock that says 'BADASS!' in rainbow colours, and is ripped up so needs to be masked out with an alpha.... what is the work flow for this? The only way i can think is to add things like this in photoshop later, once the maps have been exported. (but I may be braindead, remember?)
Are there any current plans to fuse Quixel Suite inside Maya LT? I think this would make a lot of indie developers quite happy. Substance Designer has tight integration inside Maya LT as of the 2015 version. Although Autodesk does not currently have a public plugin interface for Maya LT, they seem quite open to providing various third party software vendors the ability to tightly integrate their products with it.
Are there any current plans to fuse Quixel Suite inside Maya LT? I think this would make a lot of indie developers quite happy. Substance Designer has tight integration inside Maya LT as of the 2015 version. Although Autodesk does not currently have a public plugin interface for Maya LT, they seem quite open to providing various third party software vendors the ability to tightly integrate their products with it.
Replies
Hey there synthorange,
I don't think 3DO actually will smooth the model you import for you. Whenever I export my Low Poly from any 3D package, I make sure the Smoothing information is retained in the .obj file. In 3DSMax for instance I have the possibility to tick a box when exporting an .obj so that it saves the Smoothing information.
Hope this helps.
Thanks in advance for reply.
The 'gradient' is the normal map attempting to compensate for the smoothing on the low poly - so if you have a giant smoothing error across a flat surface, the normal map will cancel this out to give the impression of a flat surface. This works as long as the tangent basis is synchronised between your generator and viewer. This isn't generally the case (although you can use handplane to do it), so it's best to avoid it by splitting the mesh and reducing smoothing errors.
In the case of the helmet, I would guess whatever application they used to generate the normal map was fairly well synced with how 3DO displays normals. Most normal maps I've generated from 3DSMax have worked well, despite having a lot of tension in the normal map.
It's still best to avoid it as best practice, as it can also screw up how dDo applies details through the curvature maps.
I noticed a bug that crashes QS if you try to apply a section of the color map to a duplicated material.
Thank you for making this, and way to go making it free at first. I'm hooked already!
I have run into a bug I want to report:
When converting normals to hard edge height maps with nDo2 in CS6 I get the error:
And I have two feature requests.
1. Can you add the ability to create color masks from nDo2 files? Something as simple as, it takes all of your nDo2 Layers (Photoshop folders), rasterizes them and then assigns random colors. I usually do this manually. However, I think it would be really nice to have a 1 click solution that does this to save time. Especially now that nDo2 and dDo are getting a pipeline overhaul and being shipped together.
2. Can you make nDo2's Layers in the mixer update their names based on the folder names in Photoshop (or add your own rename functionality)? When working on larger projects, having more than 5 layers starts to get a bit overwhelming when you are not sure which is which.
For Blender: When exporting as obj check "write normal". (Down on the left hand side in the "save panel")
After checking this everything worked out fine for me. (As I had problems first, too)
Cheers
Előd
windows 7 didn't either i had to go find the folder and create one.
DDO is simply not loading some meshes. They work fine in 3DO, but as soon as i start up DDO it does not work anymore.
I exported them the same way as every other mesh so far...
really don´t know what could be the problem here
EDIT: Found the cause for that. Probably only useful for non english speakers:
If you have a "mutated vowel" like ü,ä,ö,ß in the name of your objects, 3DO will not load them
It created one for me.
am i missing something or is it just me that cant log into the homepage altho i have an account. Also i bought the Quixel suite but i dont seem to have 3do and the new DDO? Any suggestions? Also im trying to contact you guys via mail but no responce so far. Please help.
best
Chris
The Suite is currently in beta atm, so they (3do and the new ddo) are available in a separate download on the front page of their website labeled 'Get Beta'.
They were slow to respond to me as well (took about 1 1/2 weeks), I am assuming because they are probably getting flooded with emails due to the beta.
did you unable mip maps etc in the option box?
view port resolution under render?
also if its only for viewing pleasure there is also the post process sharpening slider in the camera settings.
thank you so much for the reply. Yes i think they are getting too many emails buts it doesnt supprise for making a god mode texturing pack like this. Def didnt regret buying it.
best
Chris
Which email address did you send the mail to that did not get a reply so we can look into this problem?
Thanks,
Ryan Hawkins
P.S We have not forgotten you guys out there and I promise you and update is coming soon! Thanks for the feedback and support, keep the awesome work up!
Same problem
It depends much on the Light Setup and Sharpen Setup in Toolbag.
My AK Looks in Toolbag different,too.
Render in CryEngine 3.6
Render in 3DO
edit: Disregard, I mistakenly thought the gloss maps should match in value from ps to tb2 preview but now that I check properly, that's definitely not the case. My bad!
that's bad...
you should never use sRGB for the gloss/roughness input.
why is that bad? If you are working in a sRGB workflow why does that matter isnt that why the option exists
I just dont really understand why thats "bad" or the wrong workflow. if you want to author in srgb why not
edit: However, I was totally wrong I mistakenly thought that the preview of the gloss in TB2 should match what I see in PS; but when I look at the actual result, no, that's not correct at all. So disregard what I said above, I'm an idiot.
Out of curiosity, why is this the case? Why does what I see in PS not match the preview (of the texture) in tb2, yet it does when sRGB is checked and that result is incorrect?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8mWugBHogw&feature=youtu.be
I also noticed this the preview appears to be correct but it doesn't react to light properly.
Without SRGB, theres more information you get out of your gloss map, as
the difference between the greyscales is larger due to the curve being longer than the straight line that is the linear function. So you get higher differences in roughnesses, bringing detail out better. (unless i mix something up here)
I tried with every asset i made in the last 5 months, and every single time did SRGB look worse and advised my team to always uncheck it but try for themselves, and so far nobody uses SRGB either.
I have a license to the previous versions of both dDo & nDo & have recently downloaded the new beta.
Is/are Megascans included in the beta? Will it have it's own beta?a Is it included in the free upgrade &/or is a it a subscription service?
The reason I ask is the the M icon doesn't light up like the N & the D & the 3 in the little panel when I open the suite up in photoshop
Thanks
mmmm oxidization
I've been slogging away at the ddo beta all day, and I gotta say I LOVE IT
I do have a couple of questions that i'd really like some help with tho. they may be simple but after 15 hours of looking at the screen i may be a bit braindead.
1. let's say, for example, I have just textured up a badass machine gun in ddo, got my materials assigned, weather effects are looking awesome etc... now what I want is some red vinyl 'go faster' stripes down the length of the gun and a '13'. Is there a way to manually edit a blank mask other than editing it directly in photoshop? this seems to be the only way yet is totally destructive. i can't layer masks to add separate elements?
2. now that my gun is looking total badass, what it really needs is a full colour sticker on the stock that says 'BADASS!' in rainbow colours, and is ripped up so needs to be masked out with an alpha.... what is the work flow for this? The only way i can think is to add things like this in photoshop later, once the maps have been exported. (but I may be braindead, remember?)
Any help with these would be greatly appreciated.
loving the tool so far. Awesome job.
cheers
http://puu.sh/9G2BZ/815d6a1ab5.png
and this
http://puu.sh/9G2CK/12e0f51bdf.png
whenever i load a color map, and then quixel freezes at 40%.
can anyone solve this? my png does not have an alpha channel, only red green and blue.
how would you suggest this happens