I don't think realistic mode alone is equivalent to PBR. You need a special material also. Even the new materials as physical material or Arnold standard material won't show it in the display. You need to dig in materials with special shaders: DirectXShader From point of view of display and exporting this is yet a problem in Max as FBX does not support PBR and the typically materials that you use won't display it in the viewports.
I don't think realistic mode alone is equivalent to PBR. You need a special material also. Even the new materials as physical material or Arnold standard material won't show it in the display. You need to dig in materials with special shaders: DirectXShader From point of view of display and exporting this is yet a problem in Max as FBX does not support PBR and the typically materials that you use won't display it in the viewports.
When I first replied the post was titled 'how to display normal maps in Max 2017'. A very different question altogether.
@OP, Simple answer is that you can't. Nitrous is behind the times. In serious need of modernisation. ShaderFX dhaders are a waste of time. They display terribly and with a lot of artifacting.
I don't think realistic mode alone is equivalent to PBR. You need a special material also. Even the new materials as physical material or Arnold standard material won't show it in the display. You need to dig in materials with special shaders: DirectXShader From point of view of display and exporting this is yet a problem in Max as FBX does not support PBR and the typically materials that you use won't display it in the viewports.
When I first replied the post was titled 'how to display normal maps in Max 2017'. A very different question altogether.
@OP, Simple answer is that you can't. Nitrous is behind the times. In serious need of modernisation. ShaderFX dhaders are a waste of time. They display terribly and with a lot of artifacting.
Works fine for me, you can even add things like parallax mapping easily as I've done here. Interactive/PBS Stingray shader in 2019
@millenia very interesting, and certainly good to know. I always had issues with the albedo map displaying with terrible artifacting. Other maps seems to display alright, but base colour is f##ked.
Have you got a comparison image from toolbag/substance/UE4/DDO?
ShaderFX suffered when dx in the max nitrous viewport was borked but 2016/18 seem to be fine. It works better in maya to be fair.
As far as your options go, The stingray Shader is pretty good even though it has tonemapping built in and can be a bit misleading. Using a custom brdf lut image (available on ShaderFX.com) will get you pretty close to substance/ue4
The ShaderFX game Shader isn't accurate, lots of nice features but I don't believe there's a proper pbr core.
If it's genuinely busted put a post up, they guys who make it are active on here
@millenia very interesting, and certainly good to know. I always had issues with the albedo map displaying with terrible artifacting. Other maps seems to display alright, but base colour is f##ked.
Have you got a comparison image from toolbag/substance/UE4/DDO?
Yeah you gotta work a bit to make it look decent, http://polycount.com/discussion/196150/solved-shaderfx-stingray-viewport-pbs-not-rendering-correctly & custom cube maps (which are an absolute pain in the ass to make for the specific format it takes), once you set it up and know how to work it it's immensely powerful. Our workflow relies heavily on having custom shader access as we use up to 8 vertex colour tints per material so I need to be able to see them accurately in the viewport, haha.
The think that annoys me is that once you set that type of shaders you can not use Arnold or Art, or any renderer apart of scaline that probably will look bad. Also you can not export that PBR material except to Stingray or his successor.
@altea that's because it's specifically a directx viewport shader(there is a default child node for rendering, but why would you want to?) ART uses the metal/rough setup so you can just use the physical material for offline renders.
@Millenia@poopipe good info there, but honestly I don't bother much with using Nitrous for anything look-dev related. I feel that it is in serious need of an upgrade regarding a modern(native) PBR viewport environment. Or even a much more artist-friendly option like we used to have with Xiolul and 3pointshader before Nitrous.
I'll definitely put a bit more time into this, out of curiosity if nothing else.
metal/rough setup is similar to PBR (Unreal etc), I mean uses very similar maps and many of the settings are similar. Even understanding it is not the same material the visualization in the display of the Art material would be a lot better if they add some kind of internal approximation to a PBR display. In any case that is what they are doing now, they translate the normal map, texture etc to the display, why not more settings to at least approach PBR quality?
@altea what exactly do you think ART is? All offline renderers are physically based. They have been for more than 20 years. The Disney GGX shading model is where the difference lies. That's why the roughness map is king in the 'PBR' set up. You can get identical results once the f0 reflectance is correct. This is pretty much done for you if you output an offline preset from Substance.
musashidan , I know that. My point is that they should be able to display it as PBR shader in the viewport. I don't know if this is possible or if there is another program that can do that. Programs as Substance Painter can have a viewport display with the PBR materials and then use the same material for Iray. It would be interesting if Max is able to show more the properties of a PBR material with Art or even with Arnold material without being forced to use a shader than hardly anyone uses unless you are exporting as Stingray. The Max display is completely unused to the level of his real capabilities and PBR is not the only one. You can change the resolution of the default real time shadows with a line in the listener and speed up considerably the AO creation with another line. And that is only an example. Why they don't add this to the standard interface?
@Millenia I messed around a bit more and it's the metallic map that's giving me problems. It's as if it's just globally multiplying the shader to be much darker. What you see as light grey is revealed metal from a default Sub Painter generator. I switched out the brdf lut to the one from the other thread, but yeah, I don't think it's worth all the hassle with the cubmaps for what I would need it for. I think I'll stick to Toolbag for the time being.
Substance can do mixed renderer support because it's an extremely limited system and they've adopted a relatively new material framework called MDL that's designed for doing exactly that. They use a glsl Shader for realtime work and an equivalent iray Shader for the offline bit.
This is exactly the same as using a pbr directx Shader (Eg the stingray one) for realtime work and an ART Shader for the offline stuff in max. The only practical difference is that you have to plug textures into both materials yourself. If it becomes a pain in the arse, you can take advantage of the extremely flexible system you have at your disposal and write a script that handles it for you. The same goes for quality settings etc.
Tldr. It already does exactly what you're asking for, you just have to press some buttons first. It's the price you pay for having a system that does more than one thing.
Scripting is not part of my experience and that doesn't seem a easy task. I can deal with the creation of macros and simple stuff but no beyond that. There is a script renderer of high quality that uses Nitrous that shows how is a lot more capable than the it can now: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/powerpreview-high-quality-nitrous-previews But it focuses in producing renders rather than making better the normal modeling workflow display that is what I would like.
@Millenia I messed around a bit more and it's the metallic map that's giving me problems. It's as if it's just globally multiplying the shader to be much darker. What you see as light grey is revealed metal from a default Sub Painter generator. I switched out the brdf lut to the one from the other thread, but yeah, I don't think it's worth all the hassle with the cubmaps for what I would need it for. I think I'll stick to Toolbag for the time being.
Yeah I wouldn't use it for final images anyways but it's definitely useful while working on stuff. I think you can get those edges to pop as expected with a better cubemap & making the edges less glossy in the roughness map. I'm planning on putting together a tutorial series on how to efficiently leverage ShaderFX/Interactive shaders soonish, would be nice to make a precomputed cubemap pack for people as well as I've figured out the process now. I've also been chatting to @metalliandy about potentially adding support to RGBM formats for this very purpose to Lys which would make it a ton easier to work with though no hard promises on that!
Either way it's a nice piece of kit to have and I do really hope Autodesk further improves on it in the future, I intend on writing up a bunch of my thoughts for feedback for them as well especially as we have @shaderfx here
Cheers @millenia there's no doubt that it's definitely useful to have. The fact that every other program now seems to have a pretty slick PBR .hdr viewport implemented is a bit depressing. Even looking at Blender's new EEVEE environment is enough to make one weep.
Yeah, that example above was just a default S Painter smart material that I slapped on and exported to test.
A tutorial/overview from you would be most welcome. Would be great to see what you've learned on this(painfully I'm guessing) Although I wouldn't put too much faith in Adesk updating Stingray shaderFX any time soon seeing as they killed off the Stingray engine a few months back.
Replies
tnx
You need to dig in materials with special shaders: DirectXShader
From point of view of display and exporting this is yet a problem in Max as FBX does not support PBR and the typically materials that you use won't display it in the viewports.
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-forum/pbr-viewport-visualisation/td-p/7027274?_ga=2.241674113.244650328.1525220388-1506176744.1516974236
@OP, Simple answer is that you can't. Nitrous is behind the times. In serious need of modernisation. ShaderFX dhaders are a waste of time. They display terribly and with a lot of artifacting.
Works fine for me, you can even add things like parallax mapping easily as I've done here. Interactive/PBS Stingray shader in 2019
Have you got a comparison image from toolbag/substance/UE4/DDO?
ShaderFX suffered when dx in the max nitrous viewport was borked but 2016/18 seem to be fine. It works better in maya to be fair.
As far as your options go,
The stingray Shader is pretty good even though it has tonemapping built in and can be a bit misleading. Using a custom brdf lut image (available on ShaderFX.com) will get you pretty close to substance/ue4
The ShaderFX game Shader isn't accurate, lots of nice features but I don't believe there's a proper pbr core.
If it's genuinely busted put a post up, they guys who make it are active on here
Also you can not export that PBR material except to Stingray or his successor.
@Millenia @poopipe good info there, but honestly I don't bother much with using Nitrous for anything look-dev related. I feel that it is in serious need of an upgrade regarding a modern(native) PBR viewport environment. Or even a much more artist-friendly option like we used to have with Xiolul and 3pointshader before Nitrous.
I'll definitely put a bit more time into this, out of curiosity if nothing else.
In any case that is what they are doing now, they translate the normal map, texture etc to the display, why not more settings to at least approach PBR quality?
The Max display is completely unused to the level of his real capabilities and PBR is not the only one. You can change the resolution of the default real time shadows with a line in the listener and speed up considerably the AO creation with another line. And that is only an example. Why they don't add this to the standard interface?
They use a glsl Shader for realtime work and an equivalent iray Shader for the offline bit.
This is exactly the same as using a pbr directx Shader (Eg the stingray one) for realtime work and an ART Shader for the offline stuff in max. The only practical difference is that you have to plug textures into both materials yourself.
If it becomes a pain in the arse, you can take advantage of the extremely flexible system you have at your disposal and write a script that handles it for you.
The same goes for quality settings etc.
Tldr. It already does exactly what you're asking for, you just have to press some buttons first. It's the price you pay for having a system that does more than one thing.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/powerpreview-high-quality-nitrous-previews
But it focuses in producing renders rather than making better the normal modeling workflow display that is what I would like.
Either way it's a nice piece of kit to have and I do really hope Autodesk further improves on it in the future, I intend on writing up a bunch of my thoughts for feedback for them as well especially as we have @shaderfx here
Yeah, that example above was just a default S Painter smart material that I slapped on and exported to test.
A tutorial/overview from you would be most welcome. Would be great to see what you've learned on this(painfully I'm guessing)