Playing around with PBR in 4.4

[Lenny777 299]

15 hours ago, Gibbage said:

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.  

 

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.

 

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.  

An amateur license for 3DCoat is $99.00 for PBR work. I bought 3DCoat from Steam. I see Substance is about $180.00. I used 3DCoat for a lot of texturing of objects I use to make for Trainz.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

15 hours ago, Gibbage said:

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.

I also have Quixel which is an add-on for Photoshop. There was (and maybe still is) a hobbyist's version which is very reasonably priced. I would welcome a tutorial that is aircraft based, as I find Quixel to be easy to use if one starts from scratch with a model in Blender or GMax. But adapting old textures is another story. It almost seems like its not worth the effort. My interest in this BTW is purely intellectual, as I was experimenting with textures for various freeware AI aircraft.

[Gibbage 199]

11 minutes ago, Lenny777 said:

An amateur license for 3DCoat is $99.00 for PBR work. I bought 3DCoat from Steam. I see Substance is about $180.00. I used 3DCoat for a lot of texturing of objects I use to make for Trainz.

I have not tried 3DCoat yet.  It looks interesting.  

[TuFun 434]

Haven't tried this one but looks promising and for $49.99. 

Affinity Photo

 

[signmanbob 592]

1 hour ago, TuFun said:

Haven't tried this one but looks promising and for $49.99. 

Affinity Photo

 

I have Affinity Photo and Designer and I believe they are as powerful as Photoshop and Illustrator, although I still use Photoshop and Illustrator at this time. I intend to get comfortable with the Affinity versions soon.

[Gibbage 199]

Another quick update.  Looks like Quixel materials work well.  It seems like the PBR implantation is a bit basic, and I would LOVE more control over a few more things in the shader (like normal map power), but its "serviceable".  Flight Sim World's PBR shader was much better overall, but this is still leaps and bounds above what FSX had.

Some samples of base materials from Quixel like Chrome, aluminum, rubber, leather, and a few others.

The red material is a great example of why I love Quixel.  Its a custom material that gets dirty were it had AO shadows.  So basically, its instant procedural dirt!  I also developed a material in Quixel that puts bug splats on the leading edge of my aircraft 😃  

Im going to spend some time converting my Zenith 701 back into PBR.  It was PBR when I was working on it for Flight Sim World, but I started converting it into Spec for P3D.  Now I can go back into PBR.  Just a reminder of what it looked like in PBR in FSW.

That screenshot is from FSW, but I think I can get close to that in P3D.  This also shows off the bug splats on the leading edges.  Remember, I didnt paint those.  Quixel did based on information I gave it.  Love that tool 😉  Makes me look good!

I will work on a tutorial for converting Spec into PBR (manually) and a Quixel workflow for P3D.  

[TuFun 434]

Sure does make a difference. Never liked how the spinner/prop doesn't look right at the root. Like the props are detached.

[simbol 5,819]

3 hours ago, Gibbage said:

I will work on a tutorial for converting Spec into PBR (manually) and a Quixel workflow for P3D.

Looking forward for this :)

S.

[scottb613 1,188]

On ‎12‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 2:23 AM, Gibbage said:

Success!  It may not look like much, but its a huge first step.

Hi Folks,

While it may not look like much - it SPEAKS VOLUMES...

Wow - I'm blown away - that looks superb...

Regards,
Scott

[KBUR 178]

On 12/2/2018 at 8:23 AM, 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.

 

Thanks Kevin for this wonderful sample showing up how PBR is supposed to look like in P3D4.4 😃.

As a chinese proberv goes: 1000 words in one picture !

 

All the very best, Konrad from Germany

[KBUR 178]

On 12/3/2018 at 7:36 AM, Gibbage said:

That screenshot is from FSW, but I think I can get close to that in P3D.  This also shows off the bug splats on the leading edges.  Remember, I didnt paint those.  Quixel did based on information I gave it.  Love that tool 😉  Makes me look good!

I will work on a tutorial for converting Spec into PBR (manually) and a Quixel workflow for P3D.  

...how fare Developers and IT Engineers have come along in all these decades; really admirable.

I mean: all this stuff is just based on "0" and "1" - "Yes" and "No" ; for me this is magical.  Thanks for the insight....

Edited December 4, 2018 by KBUR
English is NOT my mother tongue.

[TuFun 434]

Kevin how much more is involved in applying PBR materials to P3Dv4.4 models?

Referring to this comments...

PBR materials

[Gibbage 199]

On 12/3/2018 at 11:21 PM, TuFun said:

Kevin how much more is involved in applying PBR materials to P3Dv4.4 models?

Referring to this comments...

PBR materials

In 3D Studio's its as simple as just selecting the PBR shader and filling in the texture slots.  The hard part is generating those texture slots.

[grandfred29 180]

https://fselite.net/news/fselite-exclusive-latinvfr-first-pbr-previews-of-santiago-scelv2/

[000rick0000 1]

Messing with PBR as well...