stone wall problem need some advise please

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Hi guy's,

I am currently trying to get my zbrush polypaint from a 3d stone wall as a diffuse texture so i can use it on a modular game asset.

My problem is that the only way to get the polypaint from the painted stone wall required uv and it is a 4 millions subtool, i know i could goz and reduce the face count and back in zbrush but this is only to be used on a flat plane so that workflow is not appropriated in my own opinion.

In substance designer i can import the stone wall from zbrush and get the diffuse from the mesh but i have a plane as low poly and the high poly stone wall and the diffuse only show in black.

So maybe i am too tired or i am not seeing the big picture but how would i proceed to get a diffuse map from the stone wall?

I want to use zbrush polypaint since it is the way i like to paint my 3d model and i don't want to go to a endless list of software to get the job done.

Thank for any help

Regards Peter

Bartalon · May 2015

xNormal can get the job done. It can bake out vertex colors to any low poly object.

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Bartalon wrote: »

xNormal can get the job done. It can bake out vertex colors to any low poly object.

Hi Bartalon,

Thank for the tip i will try this today with xnormal and report back if i had any success.

regards peter

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Hi guy's,

I finally managed to get the diffuse from vertex color in Substance designer, my mistake was the frontal distance setting so i just bump it off a bit and i finally got the polypaint showing.

But another question arise after baking my normal map in SD i found that the rock are not popping very much so is there something i am missing here to make that NM pop off more?

Here some pictures :

Regards Peter

LMP · May 2015

Other than A. Adding Geometry to build out the form, B. using a height map with tessellation to add more geometry at run-time, or C. Parallax Mapping... you're still going to be limited to the fact that you only have a plane there, and there's only so much a normal map can do.

One thing that may do a little more, you could in substance designer "combine" the normal map with it's self a few times to boost the intensity of the effect, but this may not work all too well as I stated earlier.

Eric Chadwick · May 2015

Yeah you probably want something more like this:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/TilingRockWallBeyer

pixelquaternion · May 2015

LMP wrote: »

Other than A. Adding Geometry to build out the form, B. using a height map with tessellation to add more geometry at run-time, or C. Parallax Mapping... you're still going to be limited to the fact that you only have a plane there, and there's only so much a normal map can do.

One thing that may do a little more, you could in substance designer "combine" the normal map with it's self a few times to boost the intensity of the effect, but this may not work all too well as I stated earlier.

Hi LMP,

Yes that what i though but adding tesselation or more geometry is out of question since this is going to be an online game.

I will give a try with the NM but maybe just adjusting the rgb level in photoshop can give it a slight boost and also painting a more wide AO around each stones.

Regards Peter

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Yeah you probably want something more like this:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/TilingRockWallBeyer

Hi Eric,

I saw that tutorial but we can only use a plane on our game so more complex geometry is unfortunately not an option.

I am just trying to do the best that we can have on a flat plane.

Regards Peter

Dan Powell · May 2015

EDIT: Nevermind suggested above - missed it :P

Could bake a displacement map to help push the geometry a bit. You have got a pretty nice result for a flat plane though

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Dan Powell wrote: »

EDIT: Nevermind suggested above - missed it :P

Could bake a displacement map to help push the geometry a bit. You have got a pretty nice result for a flat plane though

Hi Dan,

A plane will always be a plane after all but i will post an update of my result probably tomorrow with the latest tweaks.

Regards Peter

cptSwing · May 2015

Not the "correct" way, but.. http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tutorial&name=normalmap

Eric Chadwick · May 2015

Creating assets for an online game means you have limits, but someone is going tooextreme by saying you only get four vertices for a stone wall.

It's all relative. If you're using two 1024x1024 textures, that's disproportionally large compared to limiting walls to 4 vertices.

Textures and vertices take up memory, and they both cost a certain amount of download time, and level loading time.

If 4 verts is your target resolution, you'll have to reduce the texture down to a single 256x256, or lower.

Dan Powell · May 2015

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Creating assets for an online game means you have limits, but someone is going tooextreme by saying you only get four vertices for a stone wall.

It's all relative. If you're using two 1024x1024 textures, that's disproportionally large compared to limiting walls to 4 vertices.

Textures and vertices take up memory, and they both cost a certain amount of download time, and level loading time.

If 4 verts is your target resolution, you'll have to reduce the texture down to a single 256x256, or lower.

Pretty good point. It also means that parallax/height maps are kind of out of the question as they use considerably more resources than adding more vertices?

Eric Chadwick · May 2015

Well, it's another bitmap so that would increase memory, and download/load time.

You could however store three grayscale maps in one bitmap... one of those could be the color map, another a height map, and the third a specular map. Then the shader would pull those out to use them. Just makes the shader pull all the weight. So that depends on what hardware you're targeting.

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_atlas

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Hi guy's,

Finally after some tweaks i got the kind of result i want for this stone wall on a flat plane and i think it cannot get any better than this.

Here some pic and explanations of what i did to get the most out of this wall :

Here the AO

What i did here was to blend 2 different ao bake and i adjust them in photoshop with level.

Here the nm and again i just bake in SD the nm and adjust each rgb chanels level to equalise the graph then i just normalize the nm to cut off the saturation.

Here the curvature map and again i tweak it in photoshop with level and then i use it in the roughness.

I have boost the specular a bit to show the detail.

Pretty happy with the result and critics are welcome.

Regards Peter

Eric Chadwick · May 2015

I think the AO in your color map is way too strong.

The normal map is also too strong. Normal maps depend heavily on lighting to get a good result. If your lighting is poor, then you have to increase the strength too much and you get poor results. So you should spend a little time making good lighting in your game, and view the maps in that.

One that would help is to see what photo reference you using, as a guide to making the wall texture. Good reference is key to making a good looking result.

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

I think the AO in your color map is way too strong.

The normal map is also too strong. Normal maps depend heavily on lighting to get a good result. If your lighting is poor, then you have to increase the strength too much and you get poor results. So you should spend a little time making good lighting in your game, and view the maps in that.

One that would help is to see what photo reference you using, as a guide to making the wall texture. Good reference is key to making a good looking result.

Hi Eric,

Yes i agree the ao is very strong but i did it intentionally since that was popping out the individual stone and since it is a substance i will be able to adjust it easily in unity.

The result in SD viewport is often very different from the unity engine and i didn't test it yet in the engine because i was just trying to get my overall texture the way i want it to look.

For the normal map again with the non-enhance nm i was getting very poor result and with this one i just had to adjust the strength slider in SD to get decent result.

I didn't use any reference just going by artistic feeling.

Thank for commenting and for the tips.

Regards Peter

ChaosWWW · May 2015

I kind of take issue with people suggesting you need geometry to make a stone wall with depth. This texture could be improved to have added depth while still on a flat plane.

One thing I'd consider is changing the approach you are taking in Zbrush. I'd try to place the stones as separate objects and put them at different angles so you get the maximal depth out of your texture. Also once again since you are using a highpoly I'd try to bake as much information out of that as possible for your diffuse. Just varying the angles of your stones will add a lot, so they aren't all facing the same direction.

Here's some great inspiration for this technique used really well, might illustrate what I mean: https://lazaruz.carbonmade.com/projects/4499136

EDIT: Don't trust substance designer's viewport. It tends to make normal maps look very flat. View it in your target game engine for an accurate result.

pixelquaternion · May 2015

ChaosWWW wrote: »

I kind of take issue with people suggesting you need geometry to make a stone wall with depth. This texture could be improved to have added depth while still on a flat plane.

One thing I'd consider is changing the approach you are taking in Zbrush. I'd try to place the stones as separate objects and put them at different angles so you get the maximal depth out of your texture. Also once again since you are using a highpoly I'd try to bake as much information out of that as possible for your diffuse. Just varying the angles of your stones will add a lot, so they aren't all facing the same direction.

Here's some great inspiration for this technique used really well, might illustrate what I mean: https://lazaruz.carbonmade.com/projects/4499136

EDIT: Don't trust substance designer's viewport. It tends to make normal maps look very flat. View it in your target game engine for an accurate result.

Hi chaos,

Adding more geometry was not an option and i agree that a flat plane can still give good result when one is willing to do the extra tweaks required.

I like the idea of having more variation on stone orientation and i will give it a try for sure.

Thank for the link i will also have a look at it later on today.

Regards Peter

pixelquaternion · May 2015

Hi guy's,

Some new test and a big surprise in the process, when i remove the SD normal node the one with the intensity slider and just plug the nm everything pop up and even better than my exaggerated AO.

Even the specular got ten time better just with removing the normal node.

Is this a bug or what since the difference with and without is very obvious, here 2 pics one with the normal node and one without :

Edit: This is not a bug it is my mistake since i think this node is only to make a normal map from an image, that what happen when you follow someone video tutorial on the tube, you just copy the same mistake.

This one is with the normal node

This one is without and it is looking way better

Regards Peter

NicolasW · May 2015

If you use SD 5, try this filter to properly "boost" the normal map.

normal_intensity.sbs

pixelquaternion · May 2015

NicolasW wrote: »

If you use SD 5, try this filter to properly "boost" the normal map.

normal_intensity.sbs

Hi Nicholas,

Thank for the tip but for the moment i am still on SD 4 but i will soon upgrade to 5.

Regards Peter

stone wall problem need some advise please

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