Getting better quality masks?

jordank95

I find that when I'm making larger assets that require masks for things like edge wear etc., if the asset is big the masks tend to be low res depending on the size. Is there a way to get better resolution masks? What is the workflow for texturing big meshes that require tiling textures, some edge wear or other masks like dirt?

Alex_J

Lots of things you can do and it depends on the situation, so images of your exact problem are best

general things to try: 
find a larger image to use for mask
use a noise brush to paint the mask manually
use an upscaler (free on internet) to increase resolution of an image
use geometry to screen view of large areas
layer several mask on top of each other

where are you getting your images to use as mask from? Most of the big texturing apps come with hundreds of generic grunges and such and usually are at least 1024, usually more. 

jordank95

@Alex_J thanks for the reply. Im mainly talking about masks generated in Painter specifically for big meshes. So if I have a very large rock for instance, the rock needs a normal map bake and also masks generated for it so I can use tiling textures and get other things like edge wear and dirt. If these rocks are huge rocks, the masks generated in painter will sometimes be low res because the asset is so large. But I need to have the mesh UVd to 0-1 space for normal bakes and masks, so how do I get better quality masks for such large objects?

Alex_J

For macro scale variation on things like rocks it is pretty common to use world space projected textures. that's done in the shader in the engine. 

Images would help a lot. Words like "large" and "better quality" aren't very precise. 

jordank95

Alex_J said:

For macro scale variation on things like rocks it is pretty common to use world space projected textures. that's done in the shader in the engine. 

Images would help a lot. Words like "large" and "better quality" aren't very precise. 

Im using tiling textures on large rocks (think cliff faces) and there is a common workflow where when you still need to have edge wear on large rocks, you use masks in conjunction with your tiling textures so they can blend better. Then on a separate texture map you have masks for edge wear, AO, dirt or whatever else. This is all setup in the master material. My issue is sometimes depending on how large the asset is, the bigger the asset, the worse quality the masks get since the masks need to be in 0-1 UV space. So when you have a large rock mapped to 0-1 UV space (for normal bakes and masks), a 2K texture doesnt cut it and can be pixelated. I gather there is no way around this really though, just have to soften them a bit if its too pixelated.

Heres a good example.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yDbKBQ

Alex_J

you can detect angles in shader in your engine to select for edges. Its probably possible to multiply a noise on top of that to break it up and look more natural. 
Not sure what rendering engine you are using, but for most of the big game engines you can find tutorials which will show you have to do basic edge/slope detection in the shader. And multiplying that with a texture or procedural noise is simple thing to add on.

How granular that gets depends on the geometry. 

If you take that rock model example and scale it up large enough it will look blurry - that is inevitable. If you are getting your resolution from the UV bound texture the only way to increase resolution is to use a larger texture. 

often times for large rock formations it is composed of many models jammed together. Because noisey natural things like rocks easily blend together. SO you might have a rock formation model that is like 50 meters tall and you put a bunch of those together to form a cliff. 

A macro scale projected overlay texture helps to further make it all seem like one cohesive thing, and can also work to make it feel more detailed.

poopipe

Fundamentally this is the same problem you have when texturing a landscape - you have a relatively low mask density and you need a very high perceived density of information.  The same bag of tricks you can find in the billion youtube videos on the subject (ie. noise + height blending between tileables) are applicable and don't require that you do anything particularly clever in your shaders.