I mean you could use something in between if you wanted to and if it looked right but for most things it's metal or not. Something in the middle might represent a more complex material with both metal and non-metal present in it, maybe a metal with dew on it or something like that. The best thing to do is to get a good…
Right, such a rule is absolutely incorrect. Roughness maps to not need to be "processed" like a normal map or anything close to that. They can be packed into any channel you please (provided your shader can read from that channel, reading from normal.a may be hard coded into your shader but that is a different issue…
I think you may have misunderstood what your programmers told you. Gloss/roughness maps do define the microsurface of the material, this is correct, they even theoretically do a similar job to the normal map in that they define qualities of the surface. However, they do not need to be "processed" or even packed with the…
Yeah, values other than 0 or 1 could theoretically be used for partial metals (which are pretty rare in the first place), but even then I think I would get in touch with a technical artist or engineer on the team, because the math there is a bit messy when it comes to non binary values for metallics. Then you have rust, or…
Effectively as I understand, it allows you to spend less time to get the same or better results. The metalness workflow is essentially a mask that will either give you a predetermined specular value for anything that isn't metal. For things that are metal, the albdeo is predetermined and the specular is drawn from the…
Only counting the time it takes to make the metalness map isn't a realistic look at content creation time. With the metalness workflow, you still need to make a specular map, however, only for metals, the albedo acts as both the diffuse and specular map. Authoring a specular map that gives you the same amount of detail and…
I understand entirely where you are coming from m8..I had my doubt`s initially but persevered & began to understand that a black and white metalness map is I understand entirely where you are coming from m8..I had my doubt`s initially but persevered & began to understand that a black and white metalness map is far less…
@ count vader - Just did a test myself I found out why the artifacting is happening. So since the metalness has greyscale in it. The metal in those areas isn't getting darkened as much. So the bright color for the metal in the albedo is showing through more. Since your plastic is now darker than that albedo color it…
Generally engines will use a full color spec map, or a metalness map. The biggest difference is really how the content is packed. Its true that the metalness workflow gives you less control, but its more efficient memory wise as you can pack more info into less textures. The theory with the metalness thing is that it is…
Yes, metalness maps should generally be 0 or 1. Metalness defines whether the surface is a raw metal or not (this is important, painted metal isn't metal for instance, its paint). For metalic surfaces, the specular intensity is pulled from the albedo map, while the diffuse is darkened to 0 (raw metals reflect nearly 100%…