Substance Painter problem - Good results inside, bad results outside

arkaneXXI

Hi people.

I have a very noob problem, but (after many days) I gave up trying to find a solution.
I have this low poly steering wheel textured in Substance Painter with AO, Normal maps and some fast materials:








The result looks fine in Substance Painter but horrible in other softwares like 3ds Max and Marmoset Toolbag.

I have exported the following textures to 3ds Max 2018 with the rendering engine Arnold:
- Diffuse Color
- AO
- Normal Map
- Metallic
- Roughness

But this is the result:


Besides, when I save the render, the result looks worst:


It's the first time I work with PBR textures and materials (I always used AO, color, normal and specular). I want to get the same result than Substance Painter in 3ds Max using just one material.

I'm not sure if the problem is in the textures exported from Substance Painter, in the materials used inside 3ds Max, the rendering or everything. I have watched lot of videos but I cannot solve this problem.

I need tips and advices.

Thanks in advance.

rollin

You seem to have multiple issues.. maybe even gamma in max. To see if you get a correct output from sp you should simply check the textures. Do they match with the 2d-view in painter? Just check with your eyes. They should be more or less the same. You might want to use an image viewer too. 
I doubt painter is saving something wrong.

So probably your material setup in max and your render setup + gamma might be the issue 

arkaneXXI

The gamma is fine.


But the textures I did in Substance Painter are very simple, just to test the PBR textures.

This is how the Metallic and Roughness textures look:




The result also looked bad in Marmoset Toolbag (but I didn't take screenshots), and I followed two videos about "exporting from Substance Painter to Marmoset Toolbag".

rollin

"Besides, when I save the render, the result looks worst:" and "The gamma is fine." 
So you would say about yourself you have tested and used the gamma setup multiple times over multiple years in a professional or semi professional environment and you know what you're doing? Have you tried what happens if you change the gamma setup?
Have you tried to disable "Enable Gamma" , render and save the file again. Do they still differ now?

And just in case: your non-color maps should be treated as not gamma corrected

Regarding Toolbag. You use in painter and <put software in here> the same shader/material setup with the exact same values? 
Because "looks bad" is not a proper description of what you're experiencing and not a description anyone can use to help you.

arkaneXXI

Yes, sorry. As I said, it's the first time I work with PBR materials/textures so my problems can be very noob because I feel lost. Last week I have seen lot of videos and documentations about how those textures work, but I just saw  2 videos about how to apply PBR textures in 3ds Max and the results are those ones shown above. Also, I always used the rendering engine Mental Ray, but last versions of 3ds Max replaced it by Arnold and I'm not very experienced with it yet.

Anyway, you were right. It seems the render-saving problem was caused by the gamma correction. It's the first time I have problems with the gamma correction. Besides, the videos I have watched about rendering PBR materials in Arnold, always keep the Gamma correction activated in 1,0.

This is the result with the Gamma Correction deactivated:


It's the same result than I got before in the render screen but now it doesn't get distorted when I save it.

Anyway, I still have the problem with the materials. I'll study deeply the documentation of Arnold and PBR materials in Max later, because the step-by-step tutorials don't help me at all.

Also, I tried to give a second chance to Marmoset Toolbag. This time the result looks much better (maybe I was doing something wrong before). I was having problems because I couldn't find the Roughness slot that should be located in the Microsurface tab. But I have read the Roughness texture can be applied into the Gloss one.


It's strange because in this video it says "Roughness" instead of "Gloss":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfbM7WDbD7I

Anyway, this is the result:



It looks much better now. I just need to do improve the textures in Substance Painter.

Eric Chadwick

Gamma in Max should be 2.2, and the two Affect options should be checked.
http://scripts.breidt.net/gamma_correct_v12.pdf

arkaneXXI

Eric Chadwick said:

Gamma in Max should be 2.2, and the two Affect options should be checked.
http://scripts.breidt.net/gamma_correct_v12.pdf

Thanks, I'll read that document now and all the documentation of Arnold:
https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AF3DSUG/Arnold

My knowledge is from 7 years ago, so I'm out of date...

Brandon.LaFrance

I can't really help you with your Max woes, but generally in PBR renderers gloss and roughness maps are interchangeable, one is just the inverse of the other. So in your case, you can just drop your roughness map into the gloss channel of your Toolbag shader, and then tick the "Invert" checkbox.

arkaneXXI

Thanks everybody for the info.