Pixelation issue

acealmighty13

I've been using Quixel Suite with no problem....until now. It's in beta, so I understand. I was hoping maybe someone else has run into this problem and figured out how to fix it. I am currently building pieces for my map I'm trying to build for my portfolio and the last piece has to cause an issue.

This is what it looks like for my color map and when it asks me to define the colors. I only have four that I need to use. The black is the background of the image, I ignore that one.



After I load the maps I need and start the project, this happens with the one area, no matter the color I change it to through 3ds Max.



I thought it was an error with a mask, changed it, not the problem. Tried adding materials in hopes it was a glitch and it'll fix itself. I'm at a loss for right now. I'm posting now and gonna reboot my PC, maybe that'll do the trick. If not, ideas?

I've re-exported the mesh, normal and AO maps, anything I can think of that might be causing the issue. Nothing so far.

9of9

At a guess I'd say it's some kind of compression issue. Are you by any chance exporting your colour IDs as a JPEG?

acealmighty13

The color ID's I would do so. I'm guessing that's causing the issue? It's the first map that has done such a thing but it didn't dawn on me until your post that compression may be an issue.

9of9

That would be absolutely it then. JPG really doesn't like sharp contours and you'll get artefacts around contrasting edges - at higher quality they'll be less noticeable and perhaps almost imperceptible, but that'll be enough.

The colour IDs layer needs to be absolutely precise because it separates the material layers out based on specific colour value of each pixel. If some pixels are out by even a little, as they would become due to artefacts, Quixel will probably no longer detect them as being the same material, which is why you're getting such strange, messy outlines. Save the colour IDs as PNGs or TGAs.

All your other maps will be okay to save with lossy compression (though it's not recommended, since the effects of compression are cumulative and the more you use JPG and such, the higher the likelihood stuff will get recompressed over and over and deteriorate over time - best practice tends to be to use TGAs or PNGs for everything and only do DXT compression for your textures in the end, when you package them into the game, keeping those separate from your source files).

acealmighty13

I've yet to have any trouble since I've started using TGA's for my Color IDs. A few of the materials don't respond to particular Color ID's right now in the Suite beta but hopefully that gets fixed soon. Is there a swatch file for the Suite, I've been using the dDo swatch fbx file for it.

Wiktor

Just like 9of9 says you should save your color ID map as PNG or TGA to avoid compression artefacts. Personally I always use PNG. Glad you're not experiencing the issue anymore!

Unfortunately, there isn't a swatch file for the SUITE yet.