Quixel and Mila Shader workflow help

ariel951

Hi Im using a mila shader in maya to render a mesh using textured created in quixel. The diffuse and the bump look alright; however, the specular is black instead of being glossy as light hits. Can anyone advise what tweek to do to recover the gloss? Thank you

Synaesthesia

Hey Ariel!

I've moved this to Technical Talk for you so that you'll get a wider audience for your question.

throttlekitty

I think a picture of the attribute editor for your mila material would be helpful, if there's anything special you hooked up please let us know.

ariel951

Ok thank you sorry about that I posted this while away from the computer. Anyways here is the data. The first two is how it appears in quixel and a specular only version. The other two is the node editor and below is the mental ray render. According to this article http://quixel.se/tutorial/suite-2-with-mila-in-mental-ray/ the image of my node editor and his do not match, but i followed all the directions except for a few things because the Quixel preset of Arnold sRGB does not come with a "reluctance of normal" map so instead i followed the first tutorial where he is inputting maps for the cloth material. Again in quixel all this looks normal of course. If there's any other info required let me know. Thanks again.

throttlekitty

As far as I can tell you have it set up correctly except the weight is set at 1, but in my experience that overloads the reflectivity, I'd try lowering that. I haven't gotten too far into using the mila shader as a disclaimer. There's an extra Diffuse Reflection layer that needs deleting, but it's probably harmless. It's not so good at cleaning up after itself, and probably by design. I'd double check that the Alpha is Luminance is checked on roughness, like that guide suggests. And are you sure you should be getting a good spec reflection at this angle?

That guide is using the Hypershade, which does have a different look but same functionality. Newer versions have a material ball via mental ray that you can get timely updates on what your material is doing.

ariel951

Okay so I tried several things, the roughness for the glossy reflection has "alpha is luminance" checked, I delete the extra reflection with deleted all layers, I decreased the weight of glossy reflection and it didn't fix the problem. In the pictures the black areas are the supposed to be glossy areas as they were in quixel and I tried HDRI, different light setups, physcial sun and sky, and different angles but I cannot get any gloss.

throttlekitty

If you'd like to share your files, I can take a look at it this evening.

ariel951

Well after a month tangled I finally figured it out. The problem was I was exporting in 16 bit as targa in quixel it automatically made them psd files and only the diffuse, specular, roughness, and normal would generate, instead I exported in 8bit as targa which it generated 5 maps this time including a Reflectance at Normal Map which the article mentioned. That reflectance of normal was crucial. So if anyone wants a solution to use Mental ray in Maya is export as Arnold Linear >8bit>targa 5 maps should get generated > go back to maya create a Mila Material > create two new layers weighted diffuse reflection and a custom glossy reflection layer and input the reflectance of normal onto Normal Reflectivity under Glossy Reflection> the map specular onto Color under Glossy Reflection> the Roughness map onto Roughness under Glossy reflection layer> the diffuse in color under diffuse reflection and add two bumps one for each layer. The article mentioned flip the red and blue channels in photoshop but make sure its the red and green not red and blue. Again all this was mentioned in the article http://quixel.se/tutorial/suite-2-with-mila-in-mental-ray/ but I added a few clarification. Thanks again for taking the time to help me out.