Best ways for creating Albedo Maps?

ConSeannery · Aug 2014

Hi everyone,

I would love to see a list with explanations about the best ways to create albedo maps (i.e. diffuse maps without any lighting informationen in them) from photographic textures. Here are the methods I'm aware of:

- use the new program Lightbrush
- use Crazybump's option to remove lighting
- use Bitmap2Material's option to remove lighting
- do it manually in Photoshop with the "Select Color Range" tool and then clone or paint away the lighting information. That however usually changes the underlying color, which, as I heard, is not the ideal way, right?

So how do you go about extracting a useful albedo map? If you do it manually, say in Photoshop, it would be great if you could elaborate a bit on how exactely you are doing it.

Looking forward to your guys' input! :-)

ConSeannery

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

ConSeannery · Aug 2014

sargentcrunch wrote: »

A cool way to remove some of the lighting information is to duplicate the texture, blur >average then desaturate the other copy, filter>other>high pass at around 100, then set the color to linear light at like 60% over top of it (or maybe you put the color under the high passed texture and set the texture to linear light 60&, cant remember right now)

Obviously this isn't the only way, nor the best way, but for some things it works.

Yeah, I remember that one. Good tip. Thanks, man.

ConSeannery · Aug 2014

Or let's say we have this photographic texture here:

http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=8431&PHPSESSID=a5dij4aulchfnrt7tpi6vc72l5

Is there any conceivable way to equalize the lighting, by e.g. getting rid of the deep dark shadows in between the bricks?
Or should this texture go into the trash bin?

Quack! · Aug 2014

ConSeannery wrote: »

Or let's say we have this photographic texture here:

http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=8431&PHPSESSID=a5dij4aulchfnrt7tpi6vc72l5

Is there any conceivable way to equalize the lighting, by e.g. getting rid of the deep dark shadows in between the bricks?
Or should this texture go into the trash bin?

Those crevices are so huge, that they would look like garbage unless you modeled those details in. So, that isn't a good candidate to make tileable.

You COULD extract the bricks from the grout. Make your own tiling grout texture, then combine the two together smartly to get a decent result.

Break the texture into it's elements, extract the details, and re-combine.

EarthQuake · Aug 2014

Generally, I will start from a source that doesn't need a lot of work.

If it has a lot of shape and depth information like above, generally I would model it out or something instead of photosourcing.

radiancef0rge · Aug 2014

EarthQuake wrote: »

Generally, I will start from a source that doesn't need a lot of work.

If it has a lot of shape and depth information like above, generally I would model it out or something instead of photosourcing.

This, the current generation of texturing and shading in games really require a texture artist to be proficient in "modeling" their textures from scratch whether thats sculpting or 3d.

Either that or use a scanner that neutralizes the light info and polarizes the source

sargentcrunch · Aug 2014

ConSeannery · Aug 2014

Ok, the bricks probably derailed the thread a little and gave it a wrong direction. I admit they were a bad example.
Would still be super helpful for a lot of people here if you guys could elaborate a little more on how exactely you get rid of lighting in textures. Do you prefer to do it manually in Photoshop? If so, how? Cloning and stamping?

CreativeSheep · Aug 2021

sargentcrunch said:

A cool way to remove some of the lighting information is to duplicate the texture, blur >average then desaturate the other copy, filter>other>high pass at around 100, then set the color to linear light at like 60% over top of it (or maybe you put the color under the high passed texture and set the texture to linear light 60&, cant remember right now)

Obviously this isn't the only way, nor the best way, but for some things it works.

I tried this method, doesn't work as you mention ?

gnoop · Aug 2021

Using just photos is a dead end usually .

You can try Alchemist/ Sampler AI tool to extract depth and de-light but in my experience it rarely work nice. Only for a few specific subjects. Anyway it seems doing nothing you couldn't do in Photoshop with hipass and content aware fill in regards of delighting.

Lightbrush seems dead and anyway works for rather macro shading .

Better chance when you can capture color and depth info at the same time with photogrammetry and soft like Reality Capture.

When you have real depth info you can use AO render to subtract it from color one and use day light system in 3d package to match CG shadows with ones in object textures to get a mask for killing shadows too. A compass giving you true North angle data could help a lot when you takes pictures.

I saw youtube videos where people use mirror ball produced HDRI while capture photogrammetry to get a perfectly matching sun position and ambient lighting to subtract shadows but I never tried it myself. Too much of a hassle imo.

Agisoft delighter could help too although I still prefer manual way with compas . Gives you better control while taking much more time and sometimes luck.

Hope someday Photoshop could grab something like this https://fstoppers.com/post-production/artificial-intelligence-getting-insanely-good-removing-shadows-photographs-faces-509108

But the chances are it would work only for faces . Same as their selecting AI that provides almost zero help when you need to select something in a texture.

More chances it will work in Artomatix https://artomatix.com/removing_light_from_a_photograph_or_scan/

A company I work for had been subscribed to Artomatix for a year ( before this new feature) and it was never such a great easy thing their advertisement usually tells. At least I tended to use Photoshop content aware move tool instead for almost anything Artomatix offered. They had super easy "make it tile" although. Still a good thing to keep an eye on .

CreativeSheep · Aug 2021

gnoop said:

Using just photos is a dead end usually .

You can try Alchemist/ Sampler AI tool to extract depth and de-light but    in my experience it rarely work nice. Only for a few specific subjects.    Anyway it seems doing nothing you couldn't do in Photoshop with hipass and content aware fill in regards of delighting.

Lightbrush seems dead and anyway works for rather macro shading .

Better chance when you can capture color and depth info at the same time with photogrammetry and soft like Reality Capture.
When you have real depth info you can use AO render to subtract it from color one and use day light system in 3d package to match CG shadows with ones in object textures to get a mask for killing shadows too.     A compass giving you true North angle data could help a lot when you takes pictures.

I saw youtube videos where people use mirror ball produced HDRI while capture photogrammetry to get a perfectly matching sun position and ambient lighting to subtract shadows but I never tried it myself. Too much of a hassle imo.

Agisoft delighter could help too although I still prefer manual way with compas . Gives you better control   while taking much more time and sometimes luck.

Hope someday Photoshop could grab something like this https://fstoppers.com/post-production/artificial-intelligence-getting-insanely-good-removing-shadows-photographs-faces-509108
But the chances are it would work only for faces . Same as their selecting AI that provides almost zero help when you need to select something in a texture.

More chances it will work in Artomatix https://artomatix.com/removing_light_from_a_photograph_or_scan/
A company I work for had been subscribed to Artomatix for a year ( before this new feature) and it was never such a great easy thing their advertisement usually tells.    At least I tended to use Photoshop content aware move tool instead for almost anything Artomatix offered.    They had super easy "make it tile" although.    Still a good thing to keep an eye on .

Artoxmatix, does an excellent Job on removing shadows; I'd like to know, since you mention you were able to mimic that which what Artomatix does to remove shadows using Content aware fill, what your process was ?

Although, what about highlights; this is the only other caveat ?

gnoop · Aug 2021

I happen to use Artomatix before they did this shadow removing node. I couldn't say how good it is. but from what i see in this page it looks rather like selecting shadows and then play content aware fill within selection . You could perfectly recreate same process in Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Artomatix looks like doing much better in this auto shadow selection although then Photoshop AI . Still it could be just color range selection without any AI.

I suspect it wouldn't work for big shadows covering a half of an image or a whole side of your model. But again I haven't used this node so not sure.

As of highlights I know people use polarizing lens filters when shoot for textures that kills most of highlights but I personally never tried it . Usually highlights are never such a big issue in subjects I am shooting. And in case they are, usually it's easy to hipass them off .

I attached a psd file I'v just done in Photoshop out of curiosity using a low res screenshot of same Artomatix image. No manual hand brushing involved at all.

To get shadow selection I converted original screen capture to CMYK at first and it made almost perfect shadow mask in K channel . On actual hi res pictures the result usually looks better.

CreativeSheep · Aug 2021

gnoop said:

I happen to use Artomatix before they did this shadow removing node.   I couldn't say how good it is.   but from what i see in this page it looks rather like selecting shadows and then play content aware fill within selection .      You could perfectly recreate same process in Photoshop or Affinity Photo.    Artomatix looks like doing much better in this auto shadow selection although then Photoshop AI .   Still it could be just color range selection without any AI.

I suspect it wouldn't work for big shadows covering a half of an image or a whole side of your model.   But again I haven't used this node so not sure.

As of highlights I know people use polarizing lens filters when shoot for textures that kills most of highlights but I personally never tried it . Usually highlights are never such a big issue in subjects I am shooting.    And in case they are, usually it's easy to hipass them off .

I attached a psd file I'v just done in Photoshop out of curiosity using a low res screenshot of same Artomatix image. No manual hand brushing involved at all.
To get shadow selection I converted original screen capture to CMYK at first and it made almost perfect shadow mask in K channel .    On actual hi res pictures the result usually looks better.

I understand the removal of shadows, using color range and to some extent content aware fill. What if your image is not from something you shot, rather you downloaded and you must remove the highlights ?

I've attached my removal of not only shadows but highlights for this texture.

gnoop · Aug 2021

My antivirus says something malicious in your download page.

For highlights try to use levels with luminosity blending mode + a bit of "blend if" sliders to make the levels not working for darker under layer pixels,

for super strong highlights you could also use same content aware fill technique,

if you have accurate depth .normal map you could make a mask based on certain normal vector direction the highlights usually are associated with . i.e certain normal color where highlights are stronger . Works better with directional light ie.sun and long focus lenses usually

CreativeSheep · Aug 2021

Can you try to download the link again; the link is valid, and virus free. You just need to tell your anti-virus program to bypass any blocking which is being done for the site.

CreativeSheep · Aug 2021

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/lz/ibaq4yid4ka9.gif

This is my attempt, you can take a look at the PSD file which is a safe link how I removed the shadows and highlights. Although what do you think of this attempt ?

Best ways for creating Albedo Maps?

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