IN PROGRESS: How to use Quixel with High Poly models?
Hi, everyone!
I've been using the Quixel Suite lately, and I'm pretty happy with it. When working with lowpoly models that have normal maps baked from their highpoly version it works nicely (though I've had some issues working with the preset smart materials, but with some small adjustments they do their job).
What happens is that I'm currently working in a short film in which most of the props don't have a lowpoly version, they only exist in their highpoly version.
Checking the Quixel's Wiki, it says that the main difference for working with highpoly models is that we have to provide a Curvature map to Quixel, as in the tangent normal map there's not a lot of information about the model's shape, so Quixel can't figure it out (this is what I understood).
I've tried several ways of creating Curvature maps: from Blender using the dirt vertex coloring, from XNormal (monochrome and colored versions), and finally, as you say it's the quickest way to do it, by processing the Ambient Occlusion in Photoshop.
So far, none of these methods worked.
Can you post some sample file of a highpoly model test to see how the textures look? Or post a curvature map that Quixel needs to see how it looks like?
Thank you!
I've been using the Quixel Suite lately, and I'm pretty happy with it. When working with lowpoly models that have normal maps baked from their highpoly version it works nicely (though I've had some issues working with the preset smart materials, but with some small adjustments they do their job).
What happens is that I'm currently working in a short film in which most of the props don't have a lowpoly version, they only exist in their highpoly version.
Checking the Quixel's Wiki, it says that the main difference for working with highpoly models is that we have to provide a Curvature map to Quixel, as in the tangent normal map there's not a lot of information about the model's shape, so Quixel can't figure it out (this is what I understood).
I've tried several ways of creating Curvature maps: from Blender using the dirt vertex coloring, from XNormal (monochrome and colored versions), and finally, as you say it's the quickest way to do it, by processing the Ambient Occlusion in Photoshop.
So far, none of these methods worked.
Can you post some sample file of a highpoly model test to see how the textures look? Or post a curvature map that Quixel needs to see how it looks like?
Thank you!
Replies
Here is a really simple mesh but it demonstrates the technique:
http://quixel.se/content/Baked%20Cube.rar
Let me know if you need aditional info
I've tried it, and I keep having the same issue. The curvature map looks similar to the ones I bake myself, but looks like Quixel doesn't get the edges right.
I'm attaching a test I did with your cube, just taking it and applying the Optimus Prime smart material to see if it worked.
As you can see, the masks for the edge wear aren't working right. All the presets for smart materials and masks are almost useless with this issue.
Is it a problem of mine? Can I do something to solve it?
Thank you!
That's what I was asking, what and how should I provide Quixel in order for the presets to work as expected?
Thanks again!
Do I sense some blender/quixel tut's down the road?
Would be awesome
Congrats on your short and have fun with it. Is it the one with Andrew and Colin?
Peace Bro,
~Tung
Hope to see more of your works and process (
To answer your question though, Try dramatically upping the contrast of your curvature map, before using it in DDO maybe? Also, if you are getting good curvature maps, I wonder if I can send you a shape, and you tell me how you would get a good curvature map out of it that allowed it to pick out the edges.
So i tried the cube myself and Im so very very sorry about this, but the curvature map is not correct! Here is an updated version of the curvature map för the cube
https://www.sendspace.com/file/8adqnn
With this curvature all smart materials should work just as they are with no tweeking necessary, again, so sorry for this!
Regarding the optimus prime material there seems to be a bug with that particular smart material, we´re looking in to that right now!
I'm completely stuck.
Happy to send you the object again if needed.
Im so sorry i must have missed the mesh, please send it again, sorry!
We´re looking in to more guides on this subject!
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9253982/D9%20Testing.obj
I have singularly failed to create a curvature map from this
Would appreciate a quick guide on working with highpoly meshes in the Quixel's Wiki
@blendtuts - We are looking in to a guide on this! you are very correct in that it is needed
Please for the love of god tell me how you managed to do that. I have been ripping apart the node editor like nobody's business trying to achieve the same thing. I would love to get a copy of that blend file or node configuration. You can bet if I don't get a reply from you here I will be sending an IM later.
Here you have the .blend file. It's basically a node group (WIP) that should be ready to just input the Quixel textures in.
GRENADE BLEND FILE
Hope you find it useful!
PS: Eric, thank you! Looking forward on that guide
You just made me a very happy camper and please keep us updated on any revision to that. It would be great to get some kind of official support either from blender or Quixel for doing this stuff. I almost forgot to say thank you!
HINT HINT QUIXEL there is a lot of people on free software. Your missing a whole market of gimp nuts and blender nuts.
Im really curious how you set this up as my PBR stuff only seems to work in your blend file. Did you hand code the shader, and is there any way to have this shader come up as a node option in any of my blend files? I would like to state that I am still relatively new around cycles, so I could simply be missing something.
You can import it in your own blend files as a node tree
Thanks from me as well for the shader node group
Just read on pipermail that Psy-Fi is working on a viewport project that will... I can see where this will also help add to a quixel pipeline in blender.
@ nwopolygonshapeshifter,
blender cookie has 2 tut's on node goups = Introduction to Blenders Node Groups & Introduction to Node Groups in Blender
Cheers Bro,
~Tung
Anyway, I'll wait for it to be official :P
The how it should look.
Next the what it looks like.
Now this problem with the horrible banding and non-accurate material rendering seems to revolve around the normal map being pumped into the gloss shader in your "Quixel Shader." Now I know were going to have a hard time recreating 3do or marmoset in cycles, but your grenade frankly looks great.
I thought it was perhaps due to me not having a sub-d modifier on my object, but I inspected your grenade and its rendering and textures do not appear to change when sub-d is visible or invisible. I also tried manually creating separate normal vector and pumping it into the output material's displacement socket - no dice either. I do have smoothing faces enabled.
In short, I'm befuddled and highly confused! Any ideas on how to get rid of the banding and increase the accuracy of the cycles render? I'm drooling in anticipation of baking out a combined map for Second Life!
Edit: The faceting appears to be coming from blender's directional view which sets gloss to flat instead of smooth. The closest workaround is lots of tweaking and pumping the normal map into a normal vector then into the output's displacement socket.
https://developer.blender.org/T40049
EDIT: The faceting was coming from me not having my normal information routed in as a "non colour data":poly127:
No promises but i'll take a shot.
Ok these are the settings I generally use for xnormal.
First you're going to want have really nice defined edges or smooth areas of your high poly mesh so its goes without saying that using a sub-d modifier is highly beneficial for high poly modeling.
When dealing with monochromatic curvature maps, one has to visualize the lighter areas as harsher curves and the darker areas as smoother curves.
An example of this is going to be a hard 90 degree angle. At the point leading up the angle, the map will begin to become shaded lighter and lighter to signify that there is an abrupt change in the objects curvature.
With this in mind, you can first of all tell if your map is complete garbage or not.
Onto the settings!
The rest of the settings I usually, keep at default.
I've included a file here of two cubes for you to play around with the bake settings, plus a curvature map I derived from them. On top of all of this I've included a screenshot of the settings I used for baking it. I hope it helps!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x8t9jj7fq7mwtuk/Example.rar?dl=0
Just from my experience from DDO so far, curvature seems to be very subtle and the masking presets usually, need to be tweaked pretty extensively for it to be viewable.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9253982/D9_Back_Box.zip
It singularly fails to find all of the edges.
Then had to tweak the mask a lot i dDo. Only had sharp up, and then adjusted brightness and contrast.
Here is the result rendered in Lightwave. Happier with this.
Looking good. The ray count should change how grainy the curvature map will be. The biggest different there seems to be from you downing the spread angle. It's good to know since I'm still learning too!
There is some good distributed monkey cranium smashing going on here.
Yeh, the low ray count was just low to make it render quicker. I was more talking about the angle and the search distance. Lowering those made the difference.
Just scream if you want me to take it down Blendertut's.
Hello. I'm Dan. I am kind of a noob, i learn from your channel a lot. I'd love it if you can explain how this is actually done. Thank you for all ur help along the journey.
The top part of the image is the low poly object rendered in 3DO, and the bottom is the high poly object rendered in Cycles. I've connected the various image textures to the Quixel Node Tree as shown earlier in this thread, but it still looks different, especially the reflections and gloss.
Any ideas what might be going on here?
@Tzur_H: afaik yes. It seemed to work for me but I don't understand how it's baking the tangentspace normals. Also there is a workaround described in the wiki on how to create a fake-ish tangentspace normal map from a blurred objectspace normal map with xnormal. I'd try the tangentspace bake in xnormal first. If you bake a curvature map be sure to highpass-filter it.
Now i need to try to get similar result using DDO/dynamask. In worst case i could always use this as a custom mask but it would be really cool to be able to make the mask only with dynamask.
...now i checked the different curvature mask that you can find looking at the photoshop layers when Dynamask is open. On the left i copied the different curvature mask that dynamask did with the AK 47 sample from quixel, which made the curvature mask from hi-poly normals baked on a low-poly mesh. On the right, I pasted the mask that dynamask did with the curvature map of my Hi-poly mesh (no normals).
If you look at the Sharp masks, both looks somehow similar with full range of tone. Now with the fine and soft mask, it gets quite a bit lighter on right side but it's still usable. But medium, big, large and huge masks (on the right) are pretty useless IMO nomore tone. If i could, i would edit those useless mask but unfortunatly dynamask only allow to edit custom mask.
But DDO should create the curvature mask in a similar fashion weither you have hi-poly/low-poly normals or only a hi-poly curvature, keeping a full range of tone for all mask (like on the left) and gradually blur the original map all the way to the huge map.
As i mentionned dynamask is workable as it is for hi-poly, but it could be made less frustrating for new users that expect things to work a certain way.
Thanks for the suggestions. I do need to match the lighting setups, and I had forgotten to make the normal map non-color data. However, it looks like the real problem was with the glossy texture itself - once I inverted it, it looked great. Maybe Quixel and Blender handle glossy settings differently?
IMO it would open up the market of casual modeler like me who dont want to bother to bake hi-poly normals on low-poly. At $100 for the suite, its just a little more than what you pay for a console game so i think you could sell a lot of copies to the non professional enthousiast.. I find it's such an amazing product that is almost fool proof if you feed it with baked normals but far from it if you dont.
Dude, that shader is amazing, could you show the node layout or what plugin you are using?