Do you need to have a high poly to low poly workflow to paint with PBR

poopstick

I'm having a hard time understanding how to work in PBR. Do I need to sculpt all of my geometry in high poly and then create low poly mesh's to bake to? It just seems like so much work for simple assets.

Ideally I want to be able to create my models in 3dsmax at the desired poly count and then paint all the information I need in substance painter, whether that's my diffuse, roughness or height information. 

This is what I'm aiming for, albiet much less realism and high quality.

Is there any tutorials anyone can recommend with hand painted PBR in mind that doesn't require me to sculpt high poly's of everything?

Thanks!

Bek

To answer the title: no.

Normal maps add a certain quality to your models, but PBR isn't a standard of quality, it's a set of rules about materials/shaders, the idea being to not "fake" things anymore, but rather adhere to some physical rules from the real world. To a certain degree anyway.

Substance painter may use the normal map (along with other maps ideally generated from a highpoly source like AO, curvature) for calculations like its generators, so that's another reason you might want to have a high to lowpoly workflow, but it is not a requirement at all.

musashidan

You can bake curvature maps based on the geo (per vertex) as well as from a normal map (per pixel) so high poly only workflow is perfectly fine. You just use the same high poly mesh as the bake target. Just finished texturing a 20-odd part 18 million highpoly asset in Substance Painter.

poopstick

This is all makes sense, but I'm still confused about the workflow for game assets. I mean to populate a scene it would take an incredibly long time to go through this process for all of them. 

What's the industry standard? Is the idea that you would take some of the bigger more complex models through HP to LP workflow? Or every single asset?

I mean how do you generate good PBR for things as simple as a little misc asset like some binders on a desk. It seems too much work to go through such a long process and create it's own material with all its maps from one little object.

musashidan

It depends on the workflow. You can still create maps in Photoshop. The advantage of Substance is that you're essentially creating full materials. Or you can just plug maps into the material in engine.

And normal maps are certainly not always used for assets. They can also be pure geo. Or you can just bring the in game model into Painter and still bake a vertex curvature map and paint your normal details without the need for a high poly bake.

xChris

The maps in substance are pulling the information from what you baked from the high poly models. You can do without the high poly models, i.e. hand painting it out yourself, but the results are much more faster when you give substance the information to be able to quickly iterate the results that the materials will output for you in a more natural way.

EJtheArtist

You could also use a library of custom alphas for whatever you are making to add details, like demonstrated in this video:

PhantomFox

Exactly what I was looking for  @EJtheArtist