Texture colour fades when added to material, and AO input not working

IngridEngelschion

I’m having two issues with my textures in a material. The base color fades a lot when adding it to the material, and the Ambient Occlusion input seems to do nothing, so I had to multiply it with the base colour instead. Here’s my setup:



This is how the colour is supposed to look:

As you can see it is way more saturated than the thumbnail for the base colour. It changes when I drag it into the material slate editor.
Sampler type is set to Color and I have sRGB enabled in the texture settings. For some reason, the texture becomes more faded in the texture settings viewport when I enable sRGB, but it has no effect in the actual material. What is causing this?

Here are the texture settings:

And for the ambient occlusion input, it doesn’t seem to do anything when I plug in the AO map, which is in the Red channel of my texture. It’s set to Linear Colour, and I have sRGB disabled in the texture settings, but I don’t know if that’s the right choice.

With AO plugged into a multiply node with the base colour:

AO plugged into the AO input:

The AO texture settings:

Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong? Any help is appreciated!

Fabi_G

Hi! How does it look in the unlit view mode (https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/viewport-modes-in-unreal-engine)? I wouldn't make adjustments based on thumbnails.

As far I know, the ao map would only affect indirectly lit areas. Next to some general info, the wiki entry also contains a link to a discussion thread: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Ambient_Occlusion_Map.

Of course you could use the ao mask to add varition to your surfaces, same as with other masks.

Alex_J

The color difference I think is due to unreals default tonemapper. To test if this is true you can disable the tonemapper:

https://georgy.dev/posts/disable-tonemapper/

If those commands are outdated in ue5 try:

ShowFlag.Tonemapper and ShowFlag.Tonecurve

you can enter these in the command line thing (press tilde)

Usually when creating color textures for unreal I just have the unreal project open on second monitor and export my texture project changes as I am working, basically using unreal as the viewport.

IngridEngelschion

Alex_J said:

If those commands are outdated in ue5 try:

ShowFlag.Tonemapper and ShowFlag.Tonecurve

you can enter these in the command line thing (press tilde)

I used the commands in the Console Command input, I think that's right? Still nothing happened...

IngridEngelschion

Fabi_G said:

Hi! How does it look in the unlit view mode (https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.3/en-US/viewport-modes-in-unreal-engine)? I wouldn't make adjustments based on thumbnails.

This is what it looks like in unlit mode:

So yeah, it's still faded...

Also, I noticed how the texture changes when I turn off sRGB in the texture settings. The colour looks right when it's turned off, but fades when I turn it on. Shouldn't it be the opposite? Still doesn't work when adding it to the actual matierial though.

With sRGB turned off:


With sRGB turned on:

Alex_J

I've tested the console commands in 5.1 and it is working for me.

You might have not know how to enter them correctly though, like this:

0 = off

1 = on

some commands might have a range, like 0-5, but anything called a "flag" will usually be on/off.

If you are a wanting to find info about some console commands the best reference is here:

ShowFlag.Tonemapper 0 = tonemapper off

ShowFlag.Tonemapper 1 = tonemapper on

IngridEngelschion

Alex_J said:

I've tested the console commands in 5.1 and it is working for me.

You might have not know how to enter them correctly though, like this:

I tried again, using both commands with both 0 and 1, but there is no difference no matter what I put. I appreciate it though, and I'll definitley have a look at the different commands!

Fabi_G

Hi, can you share that texture? Is it 16bit?

Edit: I can re-produce your experience using a 16bit texture instead of a 8bit:

Edit 2: a thread describing a similar issue, 16bit texture exported from designer: https://polycount.com/discussion/223329/textures-from-substance-designer-not-displaying-correctly-in-ue4

IngridEngelschion

Edit 2: a thread describing a similar issue, 16bit texture exported from designer: https://polycount.com/discussion/223329/textures-from-substance-designer-not-displaying-correctly-in-ue4

Thanks, this was the issue! Substance Designer exports as 16bit, but I assumed it was 8bit becuase of my settings. I solved it by adding a Level node before the output and then exporting again as PNG with sRGB, and now it looks right. Thanks! 

MEKA_

Hi Ingrid,

For the AO issue, you can use AO maps only if you uncheck "Allow Static Lighting" in the project settings. Otherwise the AO slot in the material editor will do nothing. If you do uncheck "Allow Static Lighting" you are required to restart the editor. And as mentioned by Alex, the AO map will only affect indirectly lit areas.

I hope that helps.