Specular or metal workflow for characters?

Sunray

I was wondering what everyone prefers for characters I'm using specular for my characters. Because I like to have some more control over the reflectivity of the skin. But lately I've been thinking to use the metal workflow for clothes, weapons and other stuff for the character. (My characters are just for marmoset renders) Would it be a bad idea to combine these two together. Or any reason why anyone prefers the specular workflow for clothes, weapons and anything else that the character will be holding. 

I know about these from the marmoset article: https://www.marmoset.co/posts/pbr-texture-conversion/ 

Pros of the specular workflow Diffusion and reflectance are set directly with two explicit inputs, which may be preferable to artists who have experience working with traditional shaders. More control over reflectivity for insulators is provided with a full color input. Cons of the specular workflow Easy to use illogical reflectance values which gives inaccurate results. Uses more texture memory than the metalness workflow. Pros of the metalness workflow The albedo map defines the color of the object no matter the type of material, which may be easier for artists to understand conceptually. Simplifies materials into two categories, insulators and metals, which may make it more difficult to author content with unrealistic texture values Uses less texture memory than full color specular workflow Cons of the metalness workflow Material transition points cause white line artifacts Less control over reflectivity for insulators* If artists do not understand workflow, it’s easy to use illogical values in metalness map and break the system I was hoping you can tell me what you prefer to use and why?

gnoop

I would personally prefer just to have  a standard 3d max material  where energy conservation , highlight  color, shape and intensity ,  highlight anisotropy , environment reflection and Fresnel curve  etc. are all up to you.       But for some weird reason everybody think  both PBR approaches  an easy thing for an artist  and a kind of  convenience.      

            

Sunray

gnoop said:

I would personally prefer just to have  a standard 3d max material  where energy conservation , highlight  color, shape and intensity ,  highlight anisotropy , environment reflection and Fresnel curve  etc. are all up to you.       But for some weird reason everybody think  both PBR approaches  an easy thing for an artist  and a kind of  convenience.      

            

Never used it but is sounds like a lot of work haha. 

AtticusMars

Depending on your engine you may not have a choice...

gnoop

Sunray said:

gnoop said:

I would personally prefer just to have  a standard 3d max material  where energy conservation , highlight  color, shape and intensity ,  highlight anisotropy , environment reflection and Fresnel curve  etc. are all up to you.       But for some weird reason everybody think  both PBR approaches  an easy thing for an artist  and a kind of  convenience.      

            

Never used it but is sounds like a lot of work haha. 

It's probably because you have never worked with environment materials where at a middle of a day you see almost no highlight on the ground  at all , while in real like it obviously exists,  and then suddenly you see nuke highlight  with evening low sun.  Then it turns out that  something is missed , specifically  sun energy should be decreased coming longer distance through the atmosphere and surface irregularity representation is not precise enough without all the true geometry no so micro sized bumps still not big enough to have good representation in the normal map.   It's an exact point where you start to understand   how easy it was before with full control available to an artist  over every  scene and material aspects  and  only god knows what else your super physically correct shader may  be missing.

Joopson

Yeah, as atticus said, the engine often makes the choice for you, unfortunately.
But many engines that use metalness also have a separate input that lets you control non-metal specular values within a realistic limit, which I'm sure comes in handy for characters.

As for what gnoop is saying, eh, I think he's just bitter about the change. It's not as limiting and troublesome as he makes it sound. Especially if the engine you're using has it implemented well. And for your average object, it really does simplify things quite a lot, workflow wise.

Obscura

Joopson said:

engine often makes the choice for you, unfortunately.

I wouldn't say "unfortunately"... I don't want to question anyone but if you come up with this kind of questions, this is only better for you cause it simplifies you everything so much... Though you probably wouldn't use standard metallic/rough shader for this anyways...

But then again we are back to the questions

Depending on the renderer, check out the related shader/material doc...