(Solved) Maya LT environment map

bitinn

After searching for quite a while, I feel it's impossible to set an environment map in Maya LT (in particular, for the viewport).

Is it true? Is it also true I can't match the Maya LT viewport to Substance Painter viewport?

(Just curious.)

sprunghunt

which shader are you using?

bitinn

sprunghunt said:

which shader are you using?

Stingray PBS

radiancef0rge

You can change the cubemaps here under the material properties. 

 

And you can change the tonemapper in the viewport here 



You can get close but not an exact match - there are too many variables. 

bitinn

radiancef0rge said:

You can change the cubemaps here under the material properties. 

 

And you can change the tonemapper in the viewport here 



You can get close but not an exact match - there are too many variables. 

While I do see these options, I am not sure how it works:

- I have an EXR file, which is what you could use for Substance and Unity.

- Do I need to extract Diffuse and Specular DDS through Substance B2M? (honestly I never used it before)

- Of course I tried applying EXR file in Maya and it does nothing, material still uses default "skybox" (I am not surprised, just wishful thinking).

- Even if I can setup the material correctly, I can't get my environment map to "show up as the background of the scene" right?

- There is no documentation on this at all, at best I see some discussion on Stingray forum. The Maya document just mention "Textures Global" by name and nothing else.

bitinn

Someone asks me about the workflow for Maya Stingray PBS (PBR) material setup today, so I figure it a quick summary might help someone facing the same problem in future:

- First of all, what Stingray PBS material want for their Textures Global are diffuse irradiance and specular maps.

- What they are is Image-Based Lighting (IBL), and they are an essential part of PBR workflow, where PBR system magically figure out the lighting from image.

- While other tool (like Substance or Unity) have that built-in, Maya wants us to do our homework.

- Here comes cmftStudio, an open source tool for Win/Mac/Linux where you can extract these information from a HDR image (aka Radiance).

- So what you do is:

(1) copy your EXR (OpenEXR) environment, say "glazed_patio" in Substance,

(2) save it as HDR (Radiance) through Photoshop,

(3) open it in cmftStudio and create your diffuse (irradiance) / specular (radiance) map in DDS format,

(4) things to note here: your DDS output needs to be in cubemap format, and your Stingray PBS material need to use IBL encoding Linear (sRGB) to match Substance/Unity.

(5) I am omitting many details like how to use cmftStudio, how to change that IBL encoding in Maya ShaderFX or how to make your Unity shader. But hey you need to learn your way around these software.

- Tada!

eCstatic

@bitinn I managed to get this to work quite nicely but I cant seem to figure out how to flip the cubemap because the top portion of the map (usually the sky) always goes on the side of my model. It looks like youre getting the same thing also, any way to correct this?

bitinn

eCstatic said:

@bitinn I managed to get this to work quite nicely but I cant seem to figure out how to flip the cubemap because the top portion of the map (usually the sky) always goes on the side of my model. It looks like youre getting the same thing also, any way to correct this?

I haven't found a solution yet.

Mostly because Maya is being Maya for using a cubemap like this (this is the default cubemap that comes with Maya LT, I only edited its color for clarity):



Which means you need a HDR image like this:



Not sure if there are any tools to convert panorama photo into this type images...

GlowingPotato

When i plugued the exported cube maps into maya, assets become super bright, as the gamma is being read wrong... any tips ?

EDIT: found a solution, Need to chage the IBL encoding to sRGB.

EDIT 2: I also found a solution to flip the cube map so maya can read it right. I Used the software LYS to do so. It has an option to flip the cubemap. If anyonw wants to know, I can explain better.