Week 17 - PBR Metalness (Learning Quixel Mixer)

 

Week 17 - PBR Metalness (Learning Quixel Mixer)

What have I Learned This Week?

This week, we've begun to start fully texturing our meshes with PBR software. I chose to start familiarising myself with Quixel Mixer. For this, I used my Crimson Model as I had all the maps prepared. Most PBR software with produce a PBR Metalness. PBR Metalness is a map that contains the metalness information of a mesh and will also contain the albedo. An alternative is PBR specular workflow, the high-end 3D industry standard that contains the information of metalness as well as reflectivity 

I started by preparing the Base Layer of the weapon. Albedo refers to the overall brightness of a model, the whiter the Albedo the more light reflects and produces more brightness. Metalness refers to the metal texture of a mesh or layer. If a mesh has a metal texture, the Metalness will be coloured white. Roughness refers to the glossiness of the texture. If the Roughness is black when the texture will appear shiny whereas white will produce a more matt texture. 


Base Layer of Crimson Model, has all the maps produced for the weapon over the few weeks plugged in.


I started practising using surface layers. Surface layers have a default texture ready to apply, for example, I used a scratched painted metal surface layer. However, the texture was not correctly corresponding to the material ID.




An Issue caused due to Imported Model having a different UV map compared to the Material ID shown. In order to fix this, I will need to import a mesh with the matching UV map to the Material ID. Also, I could rebake both the Material ID and Ambient Occlusions to the new UV map made.

I am confused as to why this issue has caused because I made the new UV map and baked with this new UV map selected, but all images for Material IDs and Ambient Occlusions come out to the old UV. 

 
Changing the Mesh Model to the original, this mesh has a matching UV to the Normal and Ambient maps solving the problems I had. 

After changing the mesh to one that has to match UVs to the other maps, I began to properly start applying textures without issues. The use of Material ID allowed me to apply specific textures to certain areas of the mesh rather than applying to the whole thing. However, I didn't want to completely rely on surface layers, I began practising using solid layers. Solid layers can be used to create your own surface textures. To start I began adjusting the albedos, Roughness and Metalness accordingly. When using solid layers you can apply masking layers. These masking layers can produce textures such as noise or scratch which can also displace and deform parts of the mesh. I also lightly experimented with paint layers. I first struggled at figuring out how to adjust settings after applying paint so I had to make sure the adjustments I wanted before I started painting over. I used these paint layers for areas such as the blood on the front of the gun as well as the handle of the knife which were areas I should have given Material ID.




Fully Textured Crimson Model from Destiny 2.
(Added additional solid layer over to hide the scratch markings as they were too dominant in my opinion.)


PBR Metalness Map of Crimson



Layers for Crimson Model

Albedo Map


Metalness Map


Normal Map



Normal Applied to Model





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