Marmoset 32bit baking problem

JohnnyRaptor

So ive come across a problem baking 32bit maps in marmoset.

Im not 100% sure whats going on but it seems the colour profile of the psds are wrong. The files load in and appear much brighter than normal.

Baking 8bit and 16bit is fine.

32bit exr bakes from xnormal for example work fine.

examples below,

Im hoping its something simple iv missed in either marmoset or photoshop, but any info would be grateful.

EarthQuake

Are the screenshots here from the same app? Photoshop I assume? This could be a case of PS handling color spaces differently for different file formats.

What you're seeing on the right is linear space representation of the map, which should be correct. Generally people view 8-16bit normal map images in sRGB space, which isn't how they're loaded into the renderer. So it can be a little odd to see them in linear space. It's interesting to see the difference though, it could be that xNormal has flagged the EXR as an sRGB image, or that Photoshop handles EXRs differently.

One thing you can do to test that the texture file is correct, is to create 2 materials identical materials in toolbag, and load each normal map into one, and compare how they look. If they both render correctly, and they both preview the same the files are likely both correct and it's a down to the color space Photoshop is rendering them. If you click the magnifying glass button in Toolbag it will pop up the image preview - they should both look like the right image here. Let me know if you're seeing the same sort of discrepancy in Toolbag

JohnnyRaptor

Cheers for the tip EQ, those are screens from photoshop - and It definitely appears to be a photoshop side problem.

The normalmaps render fine in native 32bit format from marmoset in other renderers - but the problem appears when trying to convert the marmoset 32 bit psds to 16- or 8-bit as they are displayed wrong in photoshop and when converted those colours are baked in.

Interestingly, the texture preview in marmoset is same for all bitrates, and appears like the right hand image in my op.

Im curious what other peoples workflows and workarounds are like to do this. As i mentioned earlier i didnt have this problem with for example xnormal 32 bit exr files so im curious how people are incorporating marmoset baked 32 bit maps in their 32bit->16/8bit workflow and what the workaround for this is.

I have tried a bunch of different colour profiles on load etc. but am a bit stuck now.

EarthQuake

Okay thanks, we'll take a look here and try to find a solution. It may be a flag we need to set in the PSD file or something like that.

For now it may be easiest to bake in 16 bit.