Answered: Beginning Quixel... No idea where to start

Ariannwyn

Hello!

I have Quixel 2.2 and I am having trouble figuring out how to use it.  I use Blender 3D with it, and I can't find a good tutorial to learn Quixel.  The tutorials I have found either 1. Don't explain what they are doing to get their results... It's basically "Yay I imported a bunch of things and now the model is finished" or 2. Work with Maya and Max so I don't understand how to convert that to Blender, or 3. They are using a different version of Quixel and a lot of the buttons are different!

If anyone has suggestions or tutorials that would help me, I would appreciate that. The main problem I am having right now is how to assign materials to parts of an ID map. Quixel seems very confusing and not user friendly to me. There are very few tutorials out there as well.  
If I can't figure Quixel out I'll probably have to move to Substance Painter, but I would rather figure Quixel out.

Thanks!

Maximum-Dev

Check out these tutorial videos here:
http://quixel.se/tutorials/
All your questions will be answered.
Suite 2 is a great software. Have fun! 

Synaesthesia

Hey Ariannwyn!

Maximum-Dev's suggestion is a great idea - our tutorials should help cover the basics up to more advanced usages of NDO and DDO. You're always welcome to request help here, so please keep that in mind! It does help us to differentiate between Quixel the company and Quixel SUITE the software, which is comprised of NDO, DDO, and 3DO - issues specific to each tool are often unique and require referring to them rather than Quixel the company.

Assigning materials in DDO can be done in a variety of ways:

1. With 3DO open, right click on a specific area of your mesh that you know is masked to a specific ID color. If you have a selection in DDO, select the first option, which should be something like "apply to current selection". If you want a new material, select the option to create one directly underneath the first option.

2. With 3DO open, hold down C and click to assign a selection in DDO to your color ID. SHIFT+C+LMB will allow you to assign a Smart Material to the chosen color ID.

3. Create a Material, clean layer, or Smart Material. Enter DynaMask for the selection you desire to work with. Under the Material IDs rollout (expanded via the triangle button on the right side of DynaMask), click Links and manually assign your color IDs. Multiple colors can be assigned by holding CONTROL and clicking.

Ariannwyn

Thank you both for the feedback! It's very helpful. I appreciate you responding so quickly as well! 

nic

I have even more basic questions that aren't covered in the supplied tuts. 

I have unwrapped my model in max nicely but I dont know how to generate normals, ID, AO/cavity from them? Can I do this in NDO or do I need another tool in max to do that before I go into the suite. Is there any super basic tut / workflow video or file I can follow?

Apologies for the basic question, totally new to this workflow and software

Synaesthesia

NDO cannot currently bake tangent space normal maps. It can, however, create tangent normals from selections, paths, or raster data within Photoshop. NDO does not create ID maps, but you can convert normal maps to cavity maps using it. You can also create normal-scale AO by converting tangent normals to AO with NDO.

All of our tutorials are located at Quixel.se/learn - I think you'll find them quite useful on your journey toward mastering our tools!