Question on seams and correct workflow

Lilacwine

Hi,

I'm really liking the quixel suite beta so far, I've mainly been playing with it just to see what it's capabilities are but there's a few things I can't get my head around.

Firstly, I get some pretty horrible looking seams when I use the smart materials in DDO. These seams really look pretty bad but the materials themselves look amazing. Is there anyway to avoid these seams being generated??

Secondly, what is the ideal approach for adding in custom features such as the seams on jeans, pocket details, etc? Do I just make a texture and import it as a 'base albedo'? Do the DDO materials then apply on top of the base and create an overall texture.

Thanks for any help. I really like the results I can get in Quixel and how quick it is but I'm just struggling to get past these couple of issues.

I've attached some images of the kind of seams I'm getting. To clarify there are no seams in the untextured model.

http://imgur.com/BAsnWUF,IoajVbv,kQMWDOe

Eric Ramberg

Hi Lilacwine!

Im not sure how much you know about uv-mapping and placing uv seams, but there are a lot of tutorials on how to do it! The dev team is looking in to hiding seams in some way, no more info on that right now im afraid!

On adding custom features, if we take the jeans for example you could do a custom albedo for it! but i would rather du a custom pattern, then you'll have more control in the suite! To add a pattern just create a custom material and load your black and white mask in the albedo slot and save it!

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have more questions!

Lilacwine

Yeah, I generally don't UV unwrap with hiding seams in mind as the texture can normally wrap around fairly well, however, DDO is currently making the seams a lot more pronounced when using smart materials. I'll keep an eye out for any seam hiding updates that appear.

I'll have a try with the method you recommended for custom features. I have had some success with custom albedo bases but just wanted to know what the 'recommended' method would be. I'll see how I get on with a custom material tonight.

Eric Ramberg

I think the "Recommended method" is the one you're most comfortable with I tend to make custom masks myself since they are more reusable than custom albedo's, but they might not work in all cases!

But in your example of pants i guess seams/pockets/buttons could be reused for all sorts of pants/materials so i would probably go with a custom pattern for that one! Just remember to make it big enough since it cant tile!