Answered: Quixel Suite 2.0 reinport maps

Aeon Soul

First of all thanks and congrats for the 2.0 release, I'm truly happy to finally get my hands on it (been using DDO/Suite for a bit more than a year  now and it changed my working life completely)!

I'm having trouble finding something that I'm sure it's hiding in plain sight and I'm just blindly not seeing: the reimport maps option.
Any pointer would be HUGELY appreciated!

Synaesthesia

The reimporter is currently disabled. It should be returning soon in a patch! Sorry about the confusion!  

alekseypindrus

Aeon Soul, in current release there is no such option. They will implement it later.

Its coming back better than ever very soon! smile emoticon

Correct, it will be making its way back soon, bigger and better

The reimporter is normally located on the row of buttons beneath the texture channel tabs. I believe it may have been disabled for now. We'll get it back and running soon!

Aeon Soul

Thanks for the replies, I thought I was *not* seeing things.
I had looked for some info on the matter, but couldn't find any, thanks for the reference, I hope it will be implemented soon, I do have the habit to change maps over and over!

alekseypindrus said:

Aeon Soul, in current release there is no such option. They will implement it later.

Its coming back better than ever very soon! smile emoticon

Correct, it will be making its way back soon, bigger and better

The reimporter is normally located on the row of buttons beneath the texture channel tabs. I believe it may have been disabled for now. We'll get it back and running soon!

ericdigital

Ah this is a bummer. The way our pipeline is set up at work, the re-importer is a necessity. Will stick to 1.8 for production in the meantime. Looking forward to playing with 2.0 at home though.  

Synaesthesia

The re-importer is coming soon, so we'll get Suite 2 back in your hands again.  

ericdigital

Great to hear! Having the side by side installation is awesome, and makes it super easy to hop back to 1.8 when needed!

fabio brasilien

Same thing here! Gonna use the 1.8...

Veezen

fabio brasilien said:

Same thing here! Gonna use the 1.8...

I had the same problem. I tell you how you can replace curvature map. Just create New project with the same obj mesh and new maps, save it under different name. After that copy Mask PSD file from new project and replace with the old one from your last project you worked on. New curvature should works fine. I work on my project with that and i havent any bug or any problem. I didint test replacing other maps. "It just works"

Synaesthesia

I would highly recommend against using 1.8 if you plan to use Suite 2's reimporter - it's not exactly compatible with Suite 2, and the work you put into it may be unable to transfer into the new backend systems that Suite 2 uses to operate.

artsy_j

Still no reimport  maps in 2.1 ?? Oe I just don't see it?

Synaesthesia

It's definitely there!

artsy_j

 I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see!!! Thanks a lot!
UPD: looks like nothing happens after rerender... I see my new normal map for short time and then it all blank. What I'm doing wrong?

Brygelsmack

I don't get how the reimporter works. Is it broken? Whenever I reimport my color ID map with a new color it won't add it in. I load the ID map, it shows up in PS and then click Rerender, but once it's finished the original color ID is the one dDo is using. Am I doing something wrong? 

Synaesthesia

Are you loading a *.PNG or a different format?

Brygelsmack

It was a .tga. 

Synaesthesia

Check the folder that the *.TGA exists in, and see if there's a *.PNG - try loading that when you reimport and let me know if that fixes this.  

artsy_j

DId it with PNG for ID map - no changes. rerender doesn't work at all
With TGA, PSD for normal - no changes after rerender. See it shortly in 3DO while calculating - then blank normals, no changes for ID...

Synaesthesia

Thanks for reporting this - we'll fix it ASAP.  

In the meantime, you can create a black and white mask of your color on the ID map and paste that into "Paint Mask in Photoshop" inside of DynaMask. This will function as a workaround for this particular issue until we get it patched.

Brygelsmack

Synaesthesia said:

Thanks for reporting this - we'll fix it ASAP.  

Thanks. Appreciate it!

Admiral

So, was this issue solved anyhow? I've got exactly the same problem, maps just don't get reimported.

Synaesthesia

What version of Quixel SUITE are you using?

Admiral

Thanks for your reply!
Was using 2.2.0, got the alpha 2.2.1 patch which didn't fix much. I am thinking, however, that it might be just me doing something wrong.
I was basically ordered to edit other person's project. Knowing the way suite works with reuploading meshes, might it be just the fact that I don't know the original file names of input maps? I was calling the substitutions similar to the project generated maps and was giving them random names, but those probably do not match the original input names.

Synaesthesia

You'll need to edit the Project.XML to assign the proper paths on your system. If the textures for reimporting exist at C:\Users\Admiral\Desktop, you'll need to change the old paths to reflect the place where they currently reside. Once you do this you'll be able to reimport easily.

Admiral

Okay, that was done, and now the reimporter even automatically finds and assigns the maps, yet reimport doesn't happen.
https://abload.de/img/2016-07-1120.54.45chkpx.png
 When I press rerender for the first time, DDO window just gets topmost. After attempting to press a button for the second time I get this error:
https://abload.de/img/2016-07-1120.55.455djhs.png
I was having some issues with editing that xml file, since afer doing that with excel the file was apparently getting corrupt. However doing it with WordPad seemed to work. The original files were png for color and TGA for ao and normal, I recreated formats and file names accordingly.

Synaesthesia

I would use Notepad or Notepad++ for editing documents like that - not WordPad or Excel. There's a chance that they will embed useless data in the *.XML that can really mess with how DDO and NDO read the files.

What version of Photoshop are you using? If you're on 2015.5, I suggest grabbing the pinned update in the Quixel Live Support group. I believe you've posted there as well, so it should be simple to find it.

Admiral

Yeah, I posted there indeed. Sorry for all the fuss, just trying to get the issue sorted as rerendering seems one of the key features to me.

I'm using CC 14, and I did install 2.2.1 if you mean that. Also, tried editing with notepad - not working still. BTW I did try creating my own fresh project and then reimporting inputs, and that worked pretty well. However, that project was completely clean and untouched, with no layers ect.

Synaesthesia

If the project you were working from originally was a SUITE 1.X project, you may also need to use the converter (located in the DDO menu) to turn it into a SUITE 2.X project before it can be reimported.

Admiral

it definitely is 1.x project! However, it doesnt' seem like pressing that button has any effect.

Synaesthesia

It definitely has an effect.

It will convert the XML code over to the SUITE 2.X standard, which will also enable material thumbnails in the DDO window and allow for reimporting, etc.

Admiral

What I was trying to say is that it didn't seem to work. Like pressing button itself didn't seem to launch any processes or loadings, as well as pressing the button, then saving, editing project file and then running reimport ended up with a falure.

Is there a way to find out if the project was succesfully converted?

Admiral

Upd. For a test I rolled back to 1.8 version and got pretty much the same result. I can freely reimport the projects I create myself, yet any remiporting of the project needed fails.

Synaesthesia

It sounds like something became corrupt in your Project.XML. Your best case for resolving this would be to create a new project and port over the masks.

You can do this by pressing ALT+LMB on each mask in Photoshop, CTRL+A and CTRL+C, then pasting it into a new master PSD. Rename each pasted layer to correspond to the original layer names from your DDO project for ease of use.

In your new project, create the materials you'll need. Enter DynaMask for each layer or group that corresponds to the original masks. Click Paint Mask in Photoshop, the icon directly above Accept Mask which looks like a paintbrush. Switch documents in Photoshop to the master mask PSD. Duplicate the corresponding mask layer into the *_Mask.PSD for your new project. It should be sitting directly above the "Paint anything above this" layer. Click Accept Mask, rinse and repeat.

Admiral

Thank you very much! That seems like the only way to go. And yes, I think that either one of the layers of the project is corrupt, or the artist that worked with it previously manually corrected masks in Photoshop since it was probably the early version of Suite.

Either way, thank you once again for advice and time spent. I can state absolutely honestly that Quixel technical support is far better then any other technical support I ever faced

Synaesthesia

Cheers Admiral! We appreciate the kind words. Please let us know if we can do anything for you.