IN PROGRESS: Is this normal behaviour

Gordon Robb

I have a mesh I'm testing things out on. Although I have some material ids, there are some bits I want to add to.

If you look at the knee pads on this mesh, I originally had it as part of the trouser, but think it looks better as a different material.

I added a smart material, and masked it manually using a painted mask. Works great however, you can see it's picking up the cloth material from the normal of the trouser material. You can see what it looks like when I switch off the trouser material. Is there any way to avoid this?

pirate myke

try moving the layer group of the pad above the paints, or and also in the normal view tab, adjust the opacity of the pad there to remove the normal of that texture.

Gordon Robb

It already is avoe the cloth material. The problem is that DDO wants to overlay the normal (rightly as it picks up the base Normal for the model). I can't figure a way to mask the normal for the cloth material unfortunately. I have tried clickin on the right of the material anc using copy/past maske, but that doesn't seem to copy the mask. Hmm. Not sure what to do abuot it.

Is there a way to use my hand painted mask, and use it to make this selection a new colourID?

pirate myke

Save your project.
Save project as some other name also just for backup.
Close the project.
Open the id texture and change that spot to a different color. save the texture.
Open the original normal map and either flatten the normal there or add the texture your want. Can do this in Ndo also.
Open the occlusion texture and even off that spot or place the appropriate conversion from your normal map.
Not sure what other map you are using but, you get what I am saying.

After saving all these maps. Open one of the projects, and use the re importer and see if that does the trick for you.

Hope that helps out.

Gordon Robb

I was looking for a solution that didn't require me to do all those work around, given that I'd taken the time to paint a custom mask for the material on the knee pads.

I tried to use 'copy mask' from the material and 'paste mask' on the main material, thinking all i'd need to do was invert it. But it did't paste anything.

I am fairly sure I saw something that would let me turn a mask into a Material ID, but can't find it.

I did it manually by copying the hand painted mask layer (in Photoshop), inverting it and adding it to the mask for the main trousers layer. Worked, but I'm sure there is functionality to do this that is not working. What is copy mask for otherwise?

Gordon Robb

Sorry, I was wondering if this question could be answered.

How do I copy a hand painted mask (for the material group) and apply it to another material group.

Or, can I take a handpainted mask, and quickly (ie at the press of a button) make it a material ID?

Gordon Robb

Bump: anyone tell me how I get these questions answered? Do I raise a ticket or something?

Gordon Robb

Bump: still no answer?

Wiktor

What you could do, which is kind of a hack, is to simply mask out the normals for the pants' fabric.

Gordon Robb

I've sorted the normal issue. It was normal behaviour as the layers add their normal to the one below. I did that manually as a hack. What I'm trying to get an answer on is how to better use hand painted masks. These two questions specifically....

How do I copy a hand painted mask (for the material group) and apply it to another material group.

Or, can I take a handpainted mask, and quickly (ie at the press of a button) make it a material ID?

Martin7

It seems you could simply copy your manual mask and paste it in your new material group mask > in custom mask folder.

Gordon Robb

ARe you talking about finding the layer in PS, and doing that, or through the DDO interface. I'm looking to do this with DDO as the layers in PS confuse the hell out of me. Also, there is a copy/paste mask function right there in DDO, but it doesn't seem to work.

Martin7

i dont think copy/paste mask work with custom mask. You have to copy/paste them manually.
when you have dynamask open, you can clic on the brush icon (buttom of ui window). It will take you to the custom mask folder in the photoshop window. It has a green marker next to it. that's where your custom mask should be if you did one.You can copy your mask from there and paste it in another material custom mask folder.

if you created a mask using dynamask ui and added a custom mask, you can still use ddo copy paste feature, but you will still have to manually copy/paste your custom mask.

Gordon Robb

So is that an official OTOY answer. I'm just concerned with you sayiing 'you don't think...' does that mean you can't?

Any idea about the question of creating a material ID from the custom mask?

Martin7

I know i can't

As for material ID, again you can just copy your custom mask, open your input color id map, paste your mask and paint an id color with it, though make sure your custom mask is high contrast. Dont think it would work with blurry stuff. Then just reimport your id color map.

Don't think there's a way to do that within DDO ui.

Gordon Robb

Again, thanks for the answers. I've done both of these. Do you know how I get an answer form Quixel on these questions?

Martin7

Torture :poly121:

Eric Ramberg

Torture won´t be necessary today!
There are a few way of copying a custom mask. Simply copying and pasting a mask won´t include the custom paintings though, but you can always duplicate the layer and switch out the material. You can also copy the mask (click the mask in the layer stack ctrl+a, ctrl+v) create a new document and save the mask, then you go to dynamask editor, click the the "import grunge mask" at the bottom, now your mask is pasted as a smart object, just resize it and hit done, and you´re done!

I realize that neither of these ways is optimal, how would you guys prefer it to work, ideally?

Gordon Robb

Eric. The problem is my mask is for a material group rather than a layer. Can I copy a material group? Seem to remember that couldn't be done.

Regarding how I'd like it, what DDO does for me is allow incredibly complex PHotoshop layering without me having to understand layers. I'd much prefer a solution that is implemented in the DDO interface, rather than me having to work in the PS layers.

Eric Ramberg

Actually you cant copy a group (yet atleast) so that makes it trickier, then I would have to resort to my other solution. I agree with you that it would be nice to handle all of this in the UI instead of PS!