Having trouble with Dota specular in Toolbag 2.06?

EarthQuake

There was a bug with the new area lights feature when used in combination with the Dota shader and Blinn-Phong where the specular exponent (gloss) value for dynamic lights was locked to max glossiness. This will be fixed in the 2.07 update, but we decided to release the updated shader file if anyone wants to patch the problem manually in the mean time.

Download the shader file here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/499159/dotashaderfixtb206.zip

Installation instructions:

• Extract dota.frag from the zip file
• Replace dota.frag in <install directory>\data\shader\mat\reflectivity with the new dota.frag from the zip file
• Restart Toolbag, or press shift+ctrl+r to reload shaders

For Windows, your install directory will typically be C:\Program Files\Marmoset Toolbag 2\. If unsure, right click on the shortcut to Toolbag in the start menu, select properties, and then click open file location.

For OS X, your install directory will typically be Macintosh HD\Applications\Marmoset Toolbag\

Any issues, feel free to post in this thread or contact support@marmoset.co

down_limit

*__* scaling objects in update! finnaly! thx

Sylei

Awesome, thank you for the quick fix !

Shock

what would be also rly awesome if u could make the *tint by spec* channel working for the mask2 slot.
so far marmoset cant display that and by that it delays a bit the pipeline since u have to check with the ingame importer again.

greez

EarthQuake

Shock wrote: »

what would be also rly awesome if u could make the *tint by spec* channel working for the mask2 slot.
so far marmoset cant display that and by that it delays a bit the pipeline since u have to check with the ingame importer again.

greez

Hey, first off thanks for the feedback. I passed this on to our engineers but they didn't understand the request. Could you or someone else provide a more detailed description of the problem?

pior

About that last point : Shock is referring to the blue channel of the _masks2 texture. The value intensity of this greyscale channel controls the amount of tinting that the specular highlights receives as sourced from the _color map. It seems like this effect might be broken in some cases. I actually believe it's been working fine on my end, but I might need to double check that. It might also just be a matter of using strong black and whites for this channel for it to actually take effect ...

More details on page 3 and 6 : http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2ShaderMaskGuide.pdf

Shock

its very much what pior said. i made 2 test screenshots for u. i used cm model and imported the texture with complete mask1 and mask2 in the dota shader. then i made a screenshot of the result, first with a full black mask2 blue channel (ingame and in marmoset) and then the same with a white channel. u can see rly nice that if the channel is black (not active) everything works totaly fine. the result is rly good and close to ingame. but as soon as add white in that channel marmoset is displaying something that is very far away from the ingame result.




ofc i tryed that also with other heros, using the custom .vmt settings file as well as the base dota2 hero material template. over the time i faced that problem very often. so i thought maybe it would be nice to mention it.

EarthQuake

Thanks guys, I've passed on all of this information and we'll look into it for a future update.

EarthQuake

Hey Shock, is there any way you could package up your Toolbag scene and materials for us to test? We think we have it fixed but want to check with the same art content to make sure.

Unfortunately this fix requires an entirely new build so we won't be able to give it out until 2.07.

Shock

thanks, ive sent u a pm

EarthQuake

Looks like I spoke too soon. After testing with Shock's content it appears that everything is working as expected on the technical side.

However, we did notice that there were some significant differences in lighting that are being caused by the image based lighting. It seems that dota assets do not always use cube map reflections, and when they do, they are do not use HDR IBL like we do, which means the highlights in our lighting system can be much brighter.

One thing you can try to match the look of your scene close to in-game is to either turn off or reduce the intensity of the sky light and light the asset with dynamic lights.

Another possibility would be to try and use one of the stock cubemaps for IBL. I wrote a tutorial about this here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=135013

Thanks again for all the help.

Reza

Sort of related to this topic (I guess)
there is an issue while using tangent space normal map for mirrored objects:
Is it a bug or it's from my side?


BTW thanks for all the amazing stuff

EarthQuake

Its difficult to tell which area of the model you're having trouble with here, can you post a screenshot with a basic material with only the normal map active?

Normal map issues can be caused by any number of issues really, so its important to know what app you've baked the normal map in, what file format and what app you exported it out of, an image of the normal map itself, and any other relevant info.

A few suggestions though:
1. Make sure your tangent space is set to the same as the app you baked with, this can be found in the object properties
2. If using max, make sure to turn on mesh normals in the OBJ settings, or try fbx instead
3. Make sure to bake the entire mesh at once, don't bake with half the mesh and then mirror after you've baked, this will cause seams
4. Try offsetting the mirrored uvs 1 unit

Also you should not use the object space checkbox unless you have an object space map, turning on object space with a tangent space map will give you really weird results/broken lighting.

Reza

hey
here I have highlighted what I had in mind:


Also I have both object space and tangent space maps, and object space didn't show those artifacts.
Also about your number 1, where is that setting?
P.S. I'll pm you the files for this thing

Thanks

EarthQuake

Hey, I got the files but I'm not seeing the same problem as you are.



Can you verify that you see the same issue with the obj you sent me?

Also, you can change the tangent space in the object properties in left hand menu.

Reza

OK I changed it to xNormal, now it's fine

Maybe it would be better if that option is also close to normal map as well (Surface Tab).

Anyways Thanks a lot

EarthQuake

If you always bake in XN you can change the default tangent space to XN so you won't have to bother changing it. Go to edit->preferences and swap it there, and then every new mesh you import will be set to XN tangent space.