Im going to be doing a bunch of testing in 4.4 with PBR this weekend and I will post results/eye candy here.  Is there anything anyone wants to know from a dev or consumer standpoint about PBR?  Like how to make textures or how its applied?  I have been working in PBR in many game engines and I really think its the biggest visual step forward for flight sims since normal mapping.  Please let me know what your curious about!  

 

I definitely interested as a painter. I do like how War Thunder and iL2 Sturmovik uses self-reflection in their models.

Not sure if P3Dv4.4 does this hoping v5 will add self-reflections or in future versions. So really looking forward to your tutorials!

   

Do you think that small low budget developers with old non-PBR textures will be able to quickly and cheaply convert over to PBR or is it technical hurdle for them?

I would love for any insight on the typical workflow from modeling to UV Mapping to creating the textures and applying them onto the model, if possible!

50 minutes ago, TuFun said:

I definitely interested as a painter. I do like how War Thunder and iL2 Sturmovik uses self-reflection in their models.

Not sure if P3Dv4.4 does this hoping v5 will add self-reflections or in future versions. So really looking forward to your tutorials!

   

Sadly, PBR does not do self-reflections.  That technique is called reflection probe and is rather advanced.  I also know War Thunder uses it, but only in some places.  From what I know, its not in P3D yet.  

 

51 minutes ago, glider1 said:

Do you think that small low budget developers with old non-PBR textures will be able to quickly and cheaply convert over to PBR or is it technical hurdle for them?

I use a tool called Quixel, and its very fast and rather simple to learn.  Its also cheap right now!  https://quixel.se/suite2/  I have Substance but I have yet to learn it.  As for just doing them in Photoshop, I think you can get the basics done to convert things in Photoshop once you understand the principals behind PBR shaders.  I may put out a basic tutorial on converting Spec based textures into PBR, but it wont look nearly as good without using a tool like Quixel Suite or Substance.

 

47 minutes ago, Benjamin J said:

I would love for any insight on the typical workflow from modeling to UV Mapping to creating the textures and applying them onto the model, if possible!

Sure.  I will try to make a video of my basic workflow using Quixel suite I linked above.  You can use the same general workflow in Substance.  

Thanks, I figured as much also use PS6 with Quixel. Still, PBR in P3D will look a whole lot better.

Success!  It may not look like much, but its a huge first step.  This is just a test model and texture that I was able to import into P3D to test out PBR textures.  Now that I have a complete understanding of the base implantation of PBR in P3D I can go a lot further.  

Sorry its tilted.  I put it on a tail dragger 😉  Lol.

 

Are you using Max or Blender for modeling? Just curious.

DO

3 hours ago, Gibbage said:

Success!  It may not look like much, but its a huge first step.  This is just a test model and texture that I was able to import into P3D to test out PBR textures.  Now that I have a complete understanding of the base implantation of PBR in P3D I can go a lot further.  

 Sorry its tilted.  I put it on a tail dragger 😉  Lol.

Looks really good, do you know if you have to swap the channels around for the normal maps like you had to with FSX?

It doesn't really say in the SDK so I'm guessing not.

42 minutes ago, NZ255 said:

DO

Looks really good, do you know if you have to swap the channels around for the normal maps like you had to with FSX?

It doesn't really say in the SDK so I'm guessing not.

Yes, the normal format is still the same in P3D, so you can either export them in standard DirectX format and have them converted to the swapped channel format with Imagetool, or do a custom export profile in Substance or Quixel, to export the texture to be already in the format required by the sim.

11 hours ago, Gibbage said:

Im going to be doing a bunch of testing in 4.4 with PBR this weekend and I will post results/eye candy here.  Is there anything anyone wants to know from a dev or consumer standpoint about PBR?  Like how to make textures or how its applied?  I have been working in PBR in many game engines and I really think its the biggest visual step forward for flight sims since normal mapping.  Please let me know what your curious about!  

 

Well this time around going to make some serious work of PBR, it sparks my lost creative fuel again (3ds max and PS).

Have a large library of my own materials lol, now time to create some PBR stuff...

Would love to see the process with quixel ...

Cheers,

 

Edited December 2, 20187 yr by awf

9 hours ago, Gibbage said:

Sure.  I will try to make a video of my basic workflow using Quixel suite I linked above.  You can use the same general workflow in Substance.  

Thanks, looking forward to that! Your initial test looks like en exciting first step :)

I've been looking at Quixel, it is indeed cheap right now. Most comparative reviews Iv'e read seem to recommend Substance over Quixel though, citing instability and slowness of Quixel. Have you encountered any issues like that?

2 hours ago, virtuali said:

Yes, the normal format is still the same in P3D, so you can either export them in standard DirectX format and have them converted to the swapped channel format with Imagetool, or do a custom export profile in Substance or Quixel, to export the texture to be already in the format required by the sim.

What does that mean...? A 'swapped channel' normal format?

7 hours ago, virtuali said:

Yes, the normal format is still the same in P3D, so you can either export them in standard DirectX format and have them converted to the swapped channel format with Imagetool, or do a custom export profile in Substance or Quixel, to export the texture to be already in the format required by the sim.

Ah thanks.

I’ll have to look at the imagetool flags again, I was doing it manually this whole time haha. 

Virtuali, do you have any insight as to why Aces implemented this format? Is it standard?

Edited December 2, 20187 yr by NZ255

11 hours ago, TuFun said:

Are you using Max or Blender for modeling? Just curious.

Max.  

 

7 hours ago, NZ255 said:

DO

Looks really good, do you know if you have to swap the channels around for the normal maps like you had to with FSX?

It doesn't really say in the SDK so I'm guessing not.

Yes.  You need to move the channels around on the normal map.  I dont know WHY they do this and I wish I found the guy who did it when I worked at ACES and choked him a little.  

 

4 hours ago, Benjamin J said:

Thanks, looking forward to that! Your initial test looks like en exciting first step 🙂

I've been looking at Quixel, it is indeed cheap right now. Most comparative reviews Iv'e read seem to recommend Substance over Quixel though, citing instability and slowness of Quixel. Have you encountered any issues like that?

Quixel is cheap, relitivly simple, and can get good results fast.  Substance is more expensive, MUCH more complex, and can get better results in a longer time.  Also Substance has more industry support.  If you have the time to learn Substance, you can get better results, but it will take longer.

 

Well just finished the next test.  This was done to mainly show you the key feature of the Metalness in PBR (for those who dont know).  Its one of the marquee features in PBR that sim artist's should take advantage of, and thats the Metalness channel.  While playing around with this feature, I found something interesting out.  The Prepar3DPBR shader in Max actually gives you a decent preview of PBR in Max!  This is really HUGE as much of our time is burned loading up P3D to check out the changes.  With this, we can get a general idea of what it looks like in Max before loading the Sim engine!  This is massive!  THANK YOU LM!!

On the left, a materials test in-sim.  On the right, the same test in Max.  To the naked eye, they look VASTLY different, but they key change is the reflection.  The old "specular" shader ALWAYS had a crisp/sharp reflection.  You could change the level of reflection, but not how soft/sharp it was, making metals that are not chrome almost impossible.  Many of us would bake in reflections to get around this limitation.  Now in PBR, we can control the reflections a lot better.

For example, the middle sphere in the lowest row looks like an anodized aluminum.  This effect was IMPOSSIBLE in the past.  

I will do a video later with a better explanation using the above model and break down the various components of the new metalness channel and how to properly use it.  I hope this information is useful!