It starts May 12, and ends Sept 12. Let's see what you got!
https://polycount.com/discussion/237047/the-brawl²-tournament
!!TEXTEL DENSITY PROBLEM!! PLEASE HELP ME SOLVING AND UNDERSTANDING THIS PROBLEM
I hope you can be patient in looking at the screenshots and understanding the nature of the problem. I added titles to each screenshot to help you better understand the problem and what each screenshot refers to.
Hi everyone, first of all, I apologize for the length of this post, but I really need help as I don’t know where else to look. I’ve checked dozens of courses. I’ve been working for about a month on a huge project: a 3D model of a KSG, modeled down to every single part, with roughly 100 hours of work. I’ll also post some screenshots so u can immagine how much work i have to do.
My workflow is this: blender (hp-lp-mp) marmoset for baking, substance for texturing, marmoset and blender for rendering, ph for postprocessing.
I’ve reached the texturing stage and decided to start with the EOTech holo sight. I’ve tried hundreds of things over the past few days, and despite having a perfect UV map, using Packmaster 3 for packing into a 4k texture, applying the TD Checker, adjusting scales, checking normals, hard edges, seams, materials, and naming of every single piece perfectly, I still face an issue. On substance painter the td checker says the td is low, my model is orange.
In UVPM3, I used several combinations of options, and these should be the best ones or at least the same options I’ve used for other models in the past. I also tried exporting the model with Blender scale set to 10.0, 0.01, or 0.1, but got the same result. I double-checked multiple times with the Texel Density plugin, and it has always been 130 px/cm, so it should be more than fine. But in Substance, it seems the opposite.
When I go into Marmoset to bake everything, the baking works fine. But when I start texturing on Painter, apply the textures, and use the TD Checker generator, the model appears orange/red (low TD). I’ve tried everything: changing the model scale, Blender scale, different units, all export options in every possible combination. Nothing works. The model still seems to have a low TD.
It feels absurd that a model roughly 9 cm in size would need UDIMs. I actually tried with 3 UDIMs, and the color became “green,” which isn’t optimal TD, just medium.
I’d like to ask three things to finally understand how to handle a workflow like this:
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For a model like this, intended for hero shots at a relatively close distance (not sure if they count as macro, but I want individual metal scratches to be visible), do I need UDIMs?
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What are the best export options to go from Blender to Marmoset and then to Substance Painter?
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Is the TD color acceptable for what I need to do?
I’ve really ensured the model is at the ideal size, using ChatGPT and various forums to understand the scale Substance recognizes, but nothing works. The Blender scene scale is 1.000000 and set to CM. In Substance, I use the default settings and the FBX model size.
I’ll post screenshots of everything I mentioned so you can check if the workflow is correct. I apologize again for the long post, but I really need help, especially considering I still have a lot of work ahead. Thanks in advance, and I’m also new to the forum.
Replies
But besides that, what is this model actually intended for ? It seems to be in somewhat of a weird spot specs-wise. This level of detail doesn't seem fitting for game-style baking from high to low, as the whole thing looks more like something intended for an animated infographic or some training/simulation environment (hence with regular dense geometry as opposed to high-to-low baking).
Texel density itself is static and directly related to object dimensions and texture dimensions. It does not change unless you modify UVs or scale the object
In this case. The UVs are probably the root cause of any problems like pior said - it's certainly nothing to do with the available texture space
Thank you for the correction everyday day here really is a school day!
Thanks for the replies. I realized it’s probably a UV issue. I didn’t properly unwrap some areas of the low poly, like the screws, either out of boredom or because I wasn’t planning to show them in the render.
My goal for now is to create some high-resolution hero shots, while also practicing making a game-ready model for my portfolio. The object, including the weapon, is already low poly with UVs done.
What I don’t understand is whether I created good UVs in terms of texel density. I’ve researched a lot and I’m already doing everything necessary to achieve high texel density.
Would you recommend using UDIMs for the hero shot?
In painter they can be named and export presets can be built to output whatever file names you like (on the most recent versions at least).
We're actually using the UDIM workflow in painter quite extensively on a current project where we need seamless texture painting (lots of high frequency handpainted detail) across material boundaries.
Switching to UDIMs made life a lot easier for the character team in this case and with the newer painter there's basically no tooling costs (UV un-offset is done manually prior to rigging)
But - we're not using the UDIM naming convention to do anything because there's literally no point
anyway...
OP:
measuring texel density requires parameters
setting it requires a third
- desired texel density in pixels per unit
if you get any of these wrong (eg. entering values in cm when the scene units are metres) the tool will give you results you don't want.To make sure you're using the correct settings
- make a 100unit x 100unit plane
- tell your texel density tool to set a density of 10.24 pixels per centimetre
- the result should be a single UV shell that fits the entire UV space
if that doesn't work, you've made an incorrect assumption about scene units or object scale10.24 px/cm on a 1024x1024 texture results in identically scaled UVs to 40.96px/cm on a 4096x4096 texture
if you decide you want 10.24px/cm that means that a 2048x2048 texture is 2 metres square
This won't fix the bad UVs but it should help you understand what's going on with your tools