Marmoset Viewer creates square artifacts in my model?!

alegaroficial

Hi Polycount!

I'm here because I wanted to upload my last 3D model into my Artstation profile, but I have this issue that I really can't find the solution by myself.

1. No issues in the viewport

Inside the viewport, everything works fine. All the reflections and textures work as I want. 



2. Marmoset Viewer Export

Here I check if there are any alerts or any issues and it seems fine to me.



3. Square artifacts?!

In the viewer, it appears some strange artifacts with the lens and only with low roughness values. (I don't know If this means something)



4. And the same thing happens in Artstation!



I couldn't find any solution so I hope someone can help me with this problem.

Thanks for your attention and I'll be waiting for your answers!

EarthQuake

Viewer uses image compression for the textures to reduce the scene file size. This can cause some artifacts in certain situations. You can try enabling Lossless Normals, this should improve it, at the expense of large file size.

alegaroficial

Hi, @EarthQuake. Thanks for your help!

I fixed the normal map with a lower value and it fixed almost everything but now there's something else.




As you can see, there aren't any squares but now there's like artifacts in a quarter of the circle in the lens and also, in the side crystal, there are new artifacts too. On both surfaces, there aren't any height variation in the normal map.

I already tried to see the model without any map applied, and this happens:


It fixed, but when I add the normal map:



I don't know how to interpret this.

I hope you know the answer.

EarthQuake

Hi, I'm not sure I understand this: "I fixed the normal map with a lower value" can you clarify? Did you try the lossless normal map option?

alegaroficial

Hi @EarthQuake

Sorry because I didn't explain myself and also I didn't understand your previous advice.

For those images, in Substance Painter, I thought that you were saying that reducing the height variation in the normal map intensity, could fix the problem a little. That is what I understood, but now I realized that you were talking about an option in the Marmoset viewer exporter called LossLess Normals.

I mixed concepts, sorry.

I will start again to make things easier to understand for you and myself.

I have my textures ready for implementation (with all the normal and height variations that I want). I set up the mesh, the textures, lighting, and post-process. Then, I click on the Marmoset Viewer exporter and I mark all these options:


And this happens in the Marmoset viewer :





The Lossless Normals option is activated.

Maybe it's a lighting problem? All lights are Directional and the Width value is on 0.

In the scene the textures look fine:



What should I do?

Thanks.

EarthQuake

Thanks for the update. Can you tell me what bit depth the normal map is being exported from Painter? It's possible that if it's 16 bit it's not getting down sampled well at export time (but it would look good in Toolbag). If so, you could try manually converting the normal map from 16 to 8 bit per channel in Photoshop by going to image-> mode 8 bits/per channel. Or by exporting at 8 bit from Painter.

alegaroficial

Hi @EarthQuake

Sorry for my delay.

I did the manually converting thing in Photoshop and also I exported the map in an 8bit format from Painter, but nothing is changing. I'm exporting my textures in PNG 16bits and the Normal map in PNG 8bits. Maybe the file format isn't the right one?

In what image format should I export my textures?

Thanks

Vertrucio

I had this issue.  As Earthquake said, it's an artifact from going to an 8bit normal from a 16 bit normal file.
When you Export Textures from Substance Painter, either choose 16-bit or check the Dithering box in the top right.
I'm sure there's better ways to do it too, probably manually.

alegaroficial

Hi @Vertrucio

Thanks for your comment!

Yes, I exported my normal map from Substance in 16(with and without Dithering option) and 8 bits but nothing changed and I really don't know if the file format that I used(PNG) is the right one for Marmoset Viewer to show the textures properly.

As @EarthQuake said in his last comment, I did it manually from Photoshop but nothing changed.

I'm a bit concern about this issue because I really don't understand what is going on. I also tried to delete the original maps and export them again because maybe Painter wasn't overwriting correctly.

Any help is welcomed.

Thanks.

EarthQuake

It's hard to say what the issue could be at this point. If you can send a copy of your scene to support@marmoset.co we will look into it further. Please include a link to this thread when you email and a brief description of the problem. The best way to do this is to go to File -> Export -> Scene Bundle, and zip up the .tbscene and /assets/ folder.

alegaroficial

Hi @EarthQuake

I've just sent them an email with all the files. I hope they can come up with a solution.

Thanks for your help!

WillDettrey

Hello @alegaroficial, I reviewed your files and got back with you through email with some feedback. Some bullet points here would be:
1. Subdivide the high-res lens geometry and bake again.
2. Exaggerate the high-res lens geometry more and bake again.

These points apply to any of the geometry causing this baking issue. I just use the lens as n example since it is the biggest offender here.