Moss in a Metal/Rough workflow

Wilmon

Hey all, 

I was recently doing a daily and decided to try out doing a metal/rough texture of an axe in Substance Painter. On a whim near the end of the texturing, I decided I wanted to add a little moss on the axe and use a smart mask to disperse it.


However, I noticed that the transition to Metal to moss was very drastic. I tried using several textures for the smart mask to try and see if the generators I was using were the issue, but I had no luck. Even with the texture and triplanar contrast very low on the smart mask, the moss layer doesn't transition well but also adds details in areas where it shouldn't. 



Here is a render with very little moss, and just a little dirt. 



And here is a render with the moss put up to about 50%. As you can see, the metal that comes through in the layer beneath looks like it had acid thrown on top of it. Any suggestions or insights as to why this is happening? I'm fairly new to texturing workflows so it could be something I'm overlooking. 

throttlekitty

It's also in high contrast against the shiny metal. If the axe was laying around long enough to have moss growing on it, it's likely that the metal would be almost totally taken by rust. Something a bit like this:

Sunray

Using the metal workflow you will have artifacts between metal and non metal surfaces.
You can give specular/gloss a try for a better transition.

https://www.marmoset.co/posts/pbr-texture-conversion/

LorasTyrell

If the contrast is too much, add some rust and/or drop in roughness around the moss. But as has been said, adding some height to the moss will make it look way more believable straight away.

aclund3

If the metal is super rusty/dirty, you'll also want to make sure it isn't showing up as metal in the metallic map. Maybe a dumb thing, but worth a check.