PBR texture scanning vs. Bitmap 2 Material approach
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Hey everyone,
(Preface)
I know you guys get stupid questions a lot so please bear with me but I didn't find anything through searching on your forums regarding this. This is my first post on the forum and I'm not a 3D artist by trade (at all) so for me this is a stretch in ability/knowledge base- which is why I came here!
To give some background I'm making an augmented reality app to help customers better visualize different hardwoods/carpets in their homes. Here is an example of the type of app we're creating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eswoftTFx0g
We know we wanted the highest realism possible so we decided on PBR formatted textures. Currently our process is taking a swatch (like this http://www.timbercreekhardwoodflooring.com/images/swatches/lg/MapleNatural.jpg) from a manufacturer's website, sending it through Substance B2M, swapping out different parameters depending on the type (wood/tile/etc...) and finish (glossy/rough/etc...) and then rendering that tileable material on a mesh in Unity.
I recently discovered PBR material scanning via photogrammetry. It got me thinking that I should really be asking experts what they think of our current process, and how we could make it as realistic as possible.
My questions are:
Is PBR material scanning better than our current process? If so, how, and by how much (qualitatively)?
Is there a better way to do our current process?
What would you do in my position?
Thanks for all your input, I really REALLY appreciate it. Any comments/concerns/questions are ULTRA welcome!
Cheers,
Yamta
(Preface)
I know you guys get stupid questions a lot so please bear with me but I didn't find anything through searching on your forums regarding this. This is my first post on the forum and I'm not a 3D artist by trade (at all) so for me this is a stretch in ability/knowledge base- which is why I came here!
To give some background I'm making an augmented reality app to help customers better visualize different hardwoods/carpets in their homes. Here is an example of the type of app we're creating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eswoftTFx0g We know we wanted the highest realism possible so we decided on PBR formatted textures. Currently our process is taking a swatch (like this http://www.timbercreekhardwoodflooring.com/images/swatches/lg/MapleNatural.jpg) from a manufacturer's website, sending it through Substance B2M, swapping out different parameters depending on the type (wood/tile/etc...) and finish (glossy/rough/etc...) and then rendering that tileable material on a mesh in Unity.
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I recently discovered PBR material scanning via photogrammetry. It got me thinking that I should really be asking experts what they think of our current process, and how we could make it as realistic as possible.
My questions are:
Is PBR material scanning better than our current process? If so, how, and by how much (qualitatively)?
Is there a better way to do our current process?
What would you do in my position?
Thanks for all your input, I really REALLY appreciate it. Any comments/concerns/questions are ULTRA welcome!
Cheers,
Yamta
Replies
You just need to understand a few things. A very base of any texture currently is a surface heights , an actual shape in a word.
B2M ,crazy bump and such are simple fake tricks considering darker pixels be deeper and brighter be higher ones which of course is not true pretty often. It's rarely used in gamedev already. Only for tiny height amplitudes maybe. Still sometimes it works just ok.
The method of getting normal maps from multi-angled lighting is also a crippled one since it doesn't give you actual surface shape, troublesome to perform and just doesn't work for many subjects.
Current scanning idea mostly means photogrammetry , but also not an easy quick process. Still I bet that RTI "reflectance transformation" method is just an outdated one. They probably developed it before 50 mpx and even 100 mpix cameras plus soft like Reality Capture appeared on the market . The photogrammetry is capable to produce a pretty accurate surface of billions polys up to tiny small details now.
If it worth to make a simple ceramic tiles surface is totally another question. Most people would use Substance Designer for that in which the heights/depth image is also a base to start from.
As of scanning those glossiness/roughness values nobody do it actually. It's just doesn't worth the time spent. You could just make your guess or find it in a sample table somewhere in Internet.
Only that really matter is accurate heights.
But I think just regular B2M/SD should be enough and gloss as adjustable variable that client can achieve wet floor effect + some indoor HDRI presets.
Thanks for your guys' input! I found a service that can do these types of scans https://www.muravision.com/ They seem to offer what we're looking for instead of having to figure out how to do all of that ourselves (plus the post process pipeline). It sounds like we'll stick to B2M style stuff until we require the fidelity that HQ PBR scans can provide or can afford it. For carpet/tile though we might be able to do it right off the bat since the samples are so small it would be a lot cheaper than large wood planks.
As we're continuing to move forward on this some more questions have popped up in regards to tiling floors looking properly. I'll probably have to start a new thread for that though.
Seriously thanks again for your input!