IN PROGRESS: Why do I get such strange dynomasks?
Hello, everyone! I've been playing with the Suite for 3 days and really like it. I've watched official tutorials and read the manual. I've downloaded demo projects(the helmet, the aks and the orc) and played with them and the results were amaizing(just like in the tutorials). But then I decided to try the Suite on my models and the results were not so great. All "clean" materials look pretty good, but when it goes to edge weathering effects and dunomasking I get some strange results: http://imgur.com/0L3ycTe. I used tangent normal map, object space normal map, AO and color ID map. Then I tried a simplier model, basically a cube. I baked a curvature map(the way it shown here at the bottom http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=151249&highlight=issue). This is the map I got: http://imgur.com/Xnol5QT
And this how the map looks when assigned with a material to the cube model I used for the baking: http://imgur.com/Dq8fN0a
As I understand the white areas should be used as a mask for edge weathering effects. But what I get is this: [URL] http://imgur.com/Bdqeiac[/URL]
And that is certanly not how the curvature map looks like. What possibly can be wrong with my models or uvs(I assume the problem is with my models, because with the Quxel demo projects all work well)?
And question 2: what capabilites the trial version doesn't have? Judging by "you must register to unlock the full capabilities of the DDO" there are some.
And this how the map looks when assigned with a material to the cube model I used for the baking: http://imgur.com/Dq8fN0a
As I understand the white areas should be used as a mask for edge weathering effects. But what I get is this: [URL] http://imgur.com/Bdqeiac[/URL]
And that is certanly not how the curvature map looks like. What possibly can be wrong with my models or uvs(I assume the problem is with my models, because with the Quxel demo projects all work well)?
And question 2: what capabilites the trial version doesn't have? Judging by "you must register to unlock the full capabilities of the DDO" there are some.
Replies
I tend to make my own smart materials since I create all my models and input maps pretty much the same way and therefore can expect consistent results. Most of the stock materials are made using maps baked from a high resolution model to a lower resolution model and thus have more extreme contrasts while I tend to only make a high resolution model and then bake it on itself.
1)Normal map:
2)This is how the normal looks when assigned to the low poly cube:
3) This is how the normal looks in the 3DO with no materials assigned:
4) And this what I get when I assign Black Gun Metal 01 smart material:
What may be the reason I get these results? No curvature map, only a mesh, color id and tangent normal maps(with which as it was said in the topic you gave a link to above smart materials should work well). Where did I make a mistake? I'm really puzzled.
I had found where problem was. When I select UE4, UE4(Optimized) or UDK profiles then Flip normal Y is auto checking on. And since the options are usually hidden when I start new project I didn't notice that. This looks like your normal map is not right. Check the flip normal Y in options.
For instance:
The normal map is not prefect, but nevertheless, -Y and -X are ignored.
The link to the files:http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=71279504331773890727
There are the cube with a curvature map(from the first post of this thread), which just gives some unexpected results and two simple cubes(they are also on the screens above) with normal maps as input, which both ignore -Y and -X, at least when I work with them.-) It'd be intresting to see if your install generates the same results. My install is 30 days trial version. Can it be the reason of such results? But, still, the Quixel example projects all work well.
This might just be some error with your install, although when trying a few mask presets I saw a tendency to bring more whiteness to the top right corners. This is probably due to a contrast difference or slight banding in the map, however not at all to the extent you are experiencing.
If you haven't tried a clean re-install yet, i suggest you do so. Otherwise I have to look further into it.
I wanted to chip off/weather effect like in the screen.
I reinstalled the Suite, but it didn't help(don't know for sure what you meant by "clean reinstall", I just used the uninstall in the Suite folder). By the way, I noticed one more peculiar thing: DDO sees -Y and -X when I use dynomasks meant to mask something in cavities or corners. Like dirt, soot, sand, etc. But with these masks DDO ignores +Y and +X.
I tried it out with those masking presets. I do not get the same results as you do, which is a bit odd. I believe I do have an explanation for why the masking favors some axis and ignores others, this is probably because you have hard edges on the low poly cube and have baked it down from a higher resolution version, this way the normal differs a little from what would happen if it had more geometry and were only soft edges. It works on the normal map, but I think it might make a difference when converting it to a cavity (something DDO does automatically if there is no specified cavity map). If you haven't, you can try using a baked cavity map.
I cant explain why our results differ with the same settings however. The only thing I can think of currently is the DPI of the project (something people mess up very often), I don't know if it would affect this in particular but did you change any of the standard settings when generating the project?
I would post images but they really aren't all that different from what he's getting.
EDIT: Actually Vipera seemed to be right, using UDK preset (I haven't tried the other ones he said he had problems with) seems to cause the "edges" dynamask not picking up all of the edges correctly. I am using Quixel suite 1.8.
EDIT 2: No go, regardless of preset, Dynamask still only grabs 2 sides of a 4 sided face. This is the exact project that was working just shortly before.
We have managed to reproduce this bug on one of our machines. One machine can run the project as normal, the other machine get this bug. Edeting some of the curvature paramaters in the materials might be a temporary fix until we get this sorted, does that work for you?
Would it be possible for us to take a look at your project? to compare it to the project that we have to see if we can find what is causing this.