SOLVED: Blender and Quixel suite problem

Bonny

Hello, I recently started 3D-modeling again (familiar with the concepts but other than that I'm pretty much a total beginner) and started using Blender for the modeling part. I bought the Quixel suite a while ago in the hopes it would speed up some texturing work but now that I'm trying to figure out how to use it I'm running into some issues.

To simplify the issues I tried using the simplest of cubes and a high poly version of said cube.

As you can see Quixel does not seem to "know" that all edges are supposed to be sharp even though I used "mark sharp" and at export applied the "edge split" modifier with only "sharp edges" ticked in blender. (the applied smart material in DDO was someting alike "rusted galvanized metal")

Dropbox shortened link to blender file (if it can be of use): http://tinyurl.com/nt6ujns
(I am aware that the UV islands are not optimized)

Could someone explain what I am doing wrong that makes DDO behave this way or write/refer to the proper workflow of working with blender for texturing in DDO?
Any help would be much appreciated!

Regards,
Bonny

Beco

Hi, it’s all because of your normal map. To bake high poly to low poly, both objects have to be in the same spot, not side by side. Then you first select your high poly and shift + select your low poly and make sure “Selected to Active” is checked in baking window. It’s also a good idea to triangulate your low poly before baking.

Another option is to just use xNormal, witch, in my opinion, is much more easier to work with.

Hope that helps a bit.

Bonny

Beco wrote: »

Hi, it’s all because of your normal map. To bake high poly to low poly, both objects have to be in the same spot, not side by side. Then you first select your high poly and shift + select your low poly and make sure “Selected to Active” is checked in baking window. It’s also a good idea to triangulate your low poly before baking.

Another option is to just use xNormal, witch, in my opinion, is much more easier to work with.

Hope that helps a bit.

Hi, I apologize for it not being clear but at the time of bake the objects were at the same position, I've used xNormal before just not for DDO, might give that a shot.

PlateCaptain

Some tips I've found helpful:

You don't need to triangulate or unwrap your high poly object, but you should set it to Smooth Shading.

The low poly should be triangulated on export, and also set to Smooth Shading. Also, in the Vertex Groups tab, check the Auto Smooth button, and you can usually leave it at 180 degrees.

I export each object as an FBX file for XNormal, then the low poly again as an OBJ for Quixel. These settings have worked pretty well for me:





A cage is also helpful for more complicated models. I take the low poly object, go into Edit Mode, select all vertices, and Alt + S to scale them up very slightly. Then export as FBX, and undo your scaling operation.

Let me know if you have any questions on any of that. It can take a lot of trial and error sometimes, so don't give up!

Avis Para.doc's

As far as I see you were using one smoothing group for your LP, that will produce high value gradients and those artifacts in curvature DDO mask. It would be helpful if you can show your normal map or curvature map.

Bonny

My understanding is that by choosing all edges and choosing "mark sharp" together with the edge split modifier would result in 6 different smoothing groups, am I wrong?
Here is the normal map I used (baked from blender).

Bonny

Okay so I redid the baking part in xNormal using a HP, LP and a cage. I also skipped triangulating my OBJ-exported mesh for DDO and also discarded my "smoothing-group attempts", this all resulted in a better looking texture but I am still concerned about how DDO is applying the texture, shouldn't all edges be treated the same way?

Bonny

Hmm so I tried baking out a curvature map with xNormal as well and it seems to give the proper results? I'm not quite sure though since there doesn't seem to be any rust on the cube itself but maybe that's totally dependant on the masking type.



EDIT: I dont think I actually managed to fix my problem, another user by the name "hostis" seem to be experiencing similar problems: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=153509

Beco

I think it’s because you have alpha in your normal map. When you create new image in blender for your normal map bake, uncheck “Alpha”.

Bonny

Beco wrote: »

I think it’s because you have alpha in your normal map. When you create new image in blender for your normal map bake, uncheck “Alpha”.

I was totally about to say that "well I baked the last normals in xNormal so it cant possibly be that problem" but then I opened up xNormal and what do you know, the filetype was set to png which supports alpha, so I changed it to jpeg and now it seems to work fine!

Thank you so much Beco, I probably would never have though about the alpha since I thought xNormal would "know" not to include it :P

Eric Ramberg

Big big thanks to everyone who helped!! Can´t tell you how thankful I am to people who help and contribute to this forum!

cptSwing

(Don't bake as jpg though)

Beco

Glad to help, I would also suggest using .tga for everything. Everyone is using it

JedTheKrampus

I use tif because it supports 16 bits per channel, and you should too. If the alpha channel bothers you, you can get rid of it in Photoshop or whatever, but tif supports an alpha channel that's not transparency so you don't really need to do that.