Does SPainter support export to PBR Blinn-Phong? If not do you have any tips *converting* them?
polycounter lvl 9
(First of all correct me if I'm wrong but the non PBR Blinn-Phong shader is not what I'm looking for. I do want PBR, just not GGX aligned)
So I know GGX looks better, but not all games support GGX. At the moment I'm doing a lot of models with Fallout 4 in mind, and it would be nice to be able to export PBR textures calibrated for Blinn-Phong (IE what the Tbag2 materials are set to by default).
I know as that Fallout4 texture inputs are not really PBR anyway but I'm sure Blinn-Phong BRDFs would come a long way getting more consistent result in that game and many others.
If this is not possible does anyone have experience tweaking textures manually for this purpose, or can you recommend a color correction that can "correct" Blinn textures to looks more like they would in GGX? I know it will never look the same, but some improvements can be done. Quixel does allow you to export both GGX and Blinn if I recall correctly, so it probably has some color or curve correction added to the textures so they look their best in whatever export setting is used.
Personally I've noticed Blinn looks much more glossy on low gloss values compared to GGX, but also slightly darker and a bit more reflective, but with glossy materials the inconsistencies between the two are different, so maybe a correctly tuned curve correction would do the trick.
Here's a very rough plastic example:
- Left sphere is original result in GGX.
- Right sphere has the same input values, just switched to BlinnPhong, all definition is lost and you get a glossier ugly look.
- Middle sphere is BlinnPhong tweaked to look closer to GGX (not perfect but much better).
Right sphere is what i'm trying to avoid in a way that it doesn't require me to manually tweak each material in each texture I export.
So I know GGX looks better, but not all games support GGX. At the moment I'm doing a lot of models with Fallout 4 in mind, and it would be nice to be able to export PBR textures calibrated for Blinn-Phong (IE what the Tbag2 materials are set to by default).
I know as that Fallout4 texture inputs are not really PBR anyway but I'm sure Blinn-Phong BRDFs would come a long way getting more consistent result in that game and many others.
If this is not possible does anyone have experience tweaking textures manually for this purpose, or can you recommend a color correction that can "correct" Blinn textures to looks more like they would in GGX? I know it will never look the same, but some improvements can be done. Quixel does allow you to export both GGX and Blinn if I recall correctly, so it probably has some color or curve correction added to the textures so they look their best in whatever export setting is used.
Personally I've noticed Blinn looks much more glossy on low gloss values compared to GGX, but also slightly darker and a bit more reflective, but with glossy materials the inconsistencies between the two are different, so maybe a correctly tuned curve correction would do the trick.
Here's a very rough plastic example:
- Left sphere is original result in GGX.
- Right sphere has the same input values, just switched to BlinnPhong, all definition is lost and you get a glossier ugly look.
- Middle sphere is BlinnPhong tweaked to look closer to GGX (not perfect but much better).
Right sphere is what i'm trying to avoid in a way that it doesn't require me to manually tweak each material in each texture I export.
Replies
TL;DR; Is there a way to export Blinn-Phong (as opposed to GGX) PBR textures with SPainter (that look accurate in Sketchfab for example)?
Quixel has a Blinn Phong export simply because their viewer (Unity5) has both a GGX and Blinn Phong base shaders built-in. It will ensure you compatibility with Unity, but there is no guarantee that it will work as good with any other Blinn Phong based renderer.
Sketchfab actually uses GGX too and we worked closely with them to make sure that the output of Painter looks as close as possible in Sketchfab.