Answered: Material questions

Thane-

Two questions:

Is this normal: I load a new material and choose the default damage material (white scratches over gray background basically). I accept the choice. The scratches show in albedo channel properly, but no other channels seem to be affected. For example, none of the scratch details seem to show up at all in the metalness, roughness or bump channels. Is that normal?

2. In the material browser, what does "use material reflectance" mean? Choosing a material with either option doesn't seem to make a difference in the result, whether i choose a grayscale material or shiny lacquered wood.

Synaesthesia

The first question depends on the material. I'll get Billy to take a look at this for you.

Use material reflectance refers to the albedo coloration of your material. If you switch base materials and leave that option checked, you will lose any custom albedo value that you entered prior.

Billy Lundevall

Hello! The "default damage" material is a mask, and not meant as a material. Everything under the "masking patterns" category have only an albedo input and are meant to use with Dynamask .

Thane-

Billy Lundevall said:

Hello! The "default damage" material is a mask, and not meant as a material. Everything under the "masking patterns" category have only an albedo input and are meant to use with Dynamask .

Thanks for the reply.

Hmm, Is that a little confusing? I can see some confusion happening there, especially after watch Blair Armitage's video, at least for me, although eventually i figured it out. Its just that Blair kept selecting the masks and frequently adjusting the "reflectance" value in gloss and spec and due to her masks, it sometimes only affected scratch themselves, again, due to the mask, but some might assume its the result of a blending mode? I did...  It says "use material for relectance" with no other qualifiers in the material browser window, i don't see much reason to assume that it would only apply to the albedo channel when each channel has a "reflectance" value. It also seemed reasonable with all those blending modes that applying the mask to all the channels would be helpful. However, without an invert function per channel, you'd be pretty limited, i think, yet there isn't much reason to dismiss the possibility that we're expected to go into the layer in photoshop if we choose and do a simple ctrl-i ourselves? I can only speak for myself, however it might be helpful to help others learn more quixely  if you put "use material for albedo reflectance" or, "note: masks only apply to the material channel as a texture", or something.

Billy Lundevall

I haven't seen her tutorial, but I suspect she used them in the Dynamask editor, this what they are meant for. They can be inverted, blended and anything else in there . Using them as a regular material also works, but they will only have a texture applied in the albedo document.

Reflectances are simply the base values of a material and has nothing to do with the texture overlay. 

I have made an official tutorial specifically on materials called "Material Primer" on our YouTube channel. I would suggest you get your information on how the material system works from that one as it goes much more in-depth then what most feature tutorials do.