Hello, I have been playing around with the new PBR (Physical Based Rendering) materials that you find in programs such as Quixel DDO and the new Substance Painter. I noticed that these play around with Metallic Maps, Height Maps and Roughness maps.

These programs take texturing to the next level and make it much simpler to add texture to your model. The question I have is, do you intend to allow GameGuru to use the maps used in these applications so that we can make our models even more realistic.

I would love to see support for roughness and metallic maps - makes a huge difference to the visuals.

roughness and metal would be bring GG to the next level, i know its possible to get this functionality in dx9 but ppl should understand that
PBR materials support would mean an extra performance hit and not just that, the models would need to have the extra maps.

It could be done by using one extra texture and adding the roughness to the red channel/ ambient occlusion to the green channel/ metal to the blue channel (If am not mistaken ue4 is using 1 texture for metal/roughness). This would mean one texture fits em all.
Anyways would be interesting to see this in GG.

Here's what you can do in the mean time to take advantage of this now. Out put all your maps for Generic PBR, and then combine your Gloss and specular maps together to get the best of the metallic brightness, with the specular over the top.

Not perfect but very convincing. I have been doing this with Quixel Suits, and am getting some nice results.

If you don't have these programs, then design your texture with this in mind.

PBR is based on the gloss or smoothness of an object, How the light is scattered off the surface based on how smooth the material is. Metal are more white, and Dielectrics more grey to black. That is why I can take the gloss map output of a texture as a base and blend the specular over the top, and get a decent result.

Try it out, you may impress your self.

No familiar with, but I notice it is photoshop dependent, that mean you should have both installed (Quixel Suits+ps).
I had installed free version for try, but quixel is prompt me for ps.exe at start, since I had not PS installed, then quixel does not work.
Perhaps I am missing something.
Anyway I am excited with the hight quality you can get with ddo, ndo and so on.

3com

From the little Quixel suite Icon, Press the Dropdown box in the upper right and then choose Set automatic Photoshop connection. That will try and link the two together. There is a manual option there also, for you to specifically choose its location.

Also running PS and Quixel suite as Admin might solve that also.

Down load the trial version of photoshop and give it a try. It is pretty amazing for what it does. They have a big update planned also. I got it for the Christmas special for the Indie version for $49.00 USA

It is heavy photoshop scripting so yes it is photo shop dependent.

But even if you don't have this program. you can make your gloss map, by making sure your metal textures are more white then black, all other materials, shades of mid grey and below. Then do another specular with the edges highlighted, and any grunge highlights you want, and then blend the specular on top of the gloss, using transparency and you have a specular texture for GG that is the best of both worlds.

It just puts materials together by, base material first - The objects actual property reflectance, Being whether it steel of concrete.
Layers on top of that, any scratches and chips, before paint goes on,
Then the Paint layer if your material is painted.
then does scratches in paint. Then adds dust and grunge on top of that.

Just keep layering your effects this way, and you can do this in GIMP, but your will have to keep it simple. Quixels uses 100's of layers and masks for smart material, and keeps track of it for you and ordered,.

Where as in GIMP you need to create your own layers and masks to achieve this. But Still can be done. Bond1 has been doing this for a while and I remember his lessons from classic FPSC.

Now I thing Substance Painter is its own interface, and independent of Photoshop. They use the substance material in there texture painter. It is a cool program also for this. Check it out also.

Nice info Mike!, I'll try ps trial.
I thought photoshop only used to retouch the divinities.

3com

Piate Myke - what blend mode would you use to combine the gloss and specular maps?

Pirate Myke thats not a bad idea and to be honest
when i compare how metal/roughness looks inside substance painter and how it looks at the end in ue4 (its far away from what it should look but that depends on lightning as well)

@ GTOX: Use transparency on the spec one, to just enough to see it. or you could try Darken only or multiply if it looks better.
A little playing a testing to get that final look you want.

@J0linar: Yep the theory is to build up your material as it would be in the real world. So just adapting to that alone and maybe only having a dozen layers to do it, is still a fantastic texture when completed.