Textures in UE look bad but good in Substance painter : why ?

cmdrDsig

Hey ! I'll make it short, I'm happy with my work in Painter so I exported everything for Unreal Engine. I don't know where the problem occurs, maybe it's my mesh export, or some settings I'm missing on import. If you have any ideas please help me :')  Thanks

Here are a few screenshots :
*UE*
 
*Painter*

*UE*

*Painter*

*UE*

*Painter*


That's happening all around my mesh, looks alright from mid distance but can't get any close-ups.

poopipe

Mesh normals don't match 

Triangulate the mesh before export to fbx, use the same mesh for painter and unreal
Tell unreal not to screw your normals over on import

cmdrDsig

Will try that, thanks !

cmdrDsig

poopipe said:

Mesh normals don't match 

Triangulate the mesh before export to fbx, use the same mesh for painter and unreal
Tell unreal not to screw your normals over on import

That didn't work unfortunately :')

poopipe

The artefacts are consistent with what happens when you bake to a mesh that has different normals from the one you're displaying it on so that is surprising

If you've done the following steps and it hasn't worked I'd suggest posting the fbx (or part of it) up here so someone can take a look

make sure painter is using mikktspace for it's tangent basis (iirc its the default)
replace the painter mesh in your project with the triangulated one - making sure your fbx export settings preserve normal etc, rebake all your mesh maps then export your textures again
import the same fbx file to unreal, ensuring that it doesn't rebuild mesh normals (there's a load of settings in the importer) - sometimes it's a good idea to delete the previous version, save and reload the project to make sure it's fresh.

cmdrDsig

Alright, I'll probably take a few hours to make sure my painter is setup right. I didn't know about the tangent basis parameter so that might be part of the issue, I'll check that asap as well. If I can't get anywhere based on your advice I'll post the fbx in here, but for now thanks alot

cmdrDsig

poopipe said:

The artefacts are consistent with what happens when you bake to a mesh that has different normals from the one you're displaying it on so that is surprising

If you've done the following steps and it hasn't worked I'd suggest posting the fbx (or part of it) up here so someone can take a look

make sure painter is using mikktspace for it's tangent basis (iirc its the default)
replace the painter mesh in your project with the triangulated one - making sure your fbx export settings preserve normal etc, rebake all your mesh maps then export your textures again
import the same fbx file to unreal, ensuring that it doesn't rebuild mesh normals (there's a load of settings in the importer) - sometimes it's a good idea to delete the previous version, save and reload the project to make sure it's fresh.

Alright, I managed to get rid of the main artefacts such as the one you see in the 5th screenshot, the asset looks much better already thanks to your advices (I redid the painting process using a new export from max, that solved it). But I still have some imperfections, it almost looks like my maps are not displayed at their full resolution (4k).

Are there settings to tweak in unreal (i'm fairly new to the engine) ? Like the virtual textures settings, should I change some of these ? 

rollin

Does it looks the same when you don't use virtual textures (the settings you posted above should not affect your single asset that much - this is more about load balancing .. kind of, also this does not tell if you are using VT for your texture slots)

cmdrDsig

rollin said:

Does it looks the same when you don't use virtual textures (the settings you posted above should not affect your single asset that much - this is more about load balancing .. kind of, also this does not tell if you are using VT for your texture slots)

Just tried it without virtual textures, doesn't change a thing.

Nevermind, it's not the resolution, some parts look as they should. It's something else, but can't say what.

*Unreal*

*Painter*

poopipe

maybe compression?

the default types are pretty nasty - i like BC7 for multi-channel maps 

cmdrDsig

poopipe said:

maybe compression?

the default types are pretty nasty - i like BC7 for multi-channel maps 

Ah yup maybe, I'll have to try that. It's definetly something inside of UE, just tested everything in Marmoset Toolbag and it looked great.
Will have a good night sleep and play around with the settings tomorrow

Obscura

Its the compression of the uvs of the mesh. Enable "use full precision uvs" on the mesh.