PBR Textures - Free - [external]

[luchian]

PBR ready materials.

Marco:
This is a Library full of Free PBR Textures that will grow everyday. They are Seamless and contain all the Maps like Albedo, Reflectivity, Roughness, Normal and other maps.

A single place, for all the texture you need, for Free and for any purpose. The number of Textures grows also thanks to Andrey Salamandic.

Here : http://3dwolf.weebly.com/textures.html

 

[Pixelchaser]

Afternoon modders. I made a point of using these yesterday on a little test project and I must say, the whole notion of PBR in respects to Assetto explicitly is irrelevant. a well made normal map is a well made normal map. same goes for every other texture asset. an artist is nearly always better than an algorithm regards this.

but as a texture asset , there's a bit of fiddling around with it, but you might as well just make them your own way. PBR is a new fangled terminology for a process we have been considering all along when applying our art to our subject. PBR is mainly for the late cry engine and unreal ed. as in in house way of doing everything we did before externally, like using a separate program to generate a normal map for your diffuse or in my case making a separate height map texture to be converted to a normal map manually. which imo allows much more control over the outcome. never the less as a texture asset, its a good texture. it doesn't compare though to my post processed HDR photographic assets or kunos`s and programming that would take much longer for the Ac engine itself. but when you don't have anything to use, there is no arguing its very nice and PBR is a thing. but its just a new way of considering techniques like projection mapping high poly to low poly surfaces. I prefer to chase the pixels, wrangle them into submission like a shepherd with his sheep and sheep dog. I don't move the bars up and down in the program

 

[luchian]

I prefer to chase the pixels, wrangle them into submission like a shepherd with his sheep and sheep dog. I don't move the bars up and down in the program

this should be your signature

LE: otherwise, there are tools for everybody. Some might speak to you or me, some might not. Idea is to share, to inspire, to put creative artists in good position to.. create !

 

[Pixelchaser]

well its a bit silly really. I just wonder what my sheep dog is called.

 

[luchian]

"Tool"

 

[Pixelchaser]

well we give names to tools too. I know some girls that like to name their "tools" so it can be the same

 

[Mr Whippy]

All pbr is is physically based rendering.

That means conserving energy and using realistic values for things.

AC should use pbr as much as it can imo.

There is no disadvantage to using it for this kind of product, and a raft of advantages.

Purely from my perspective my goal is making tracks and cars look 'real' and I can do that much more easily using real values in a pbr renderer.

As soon as you deviate from pbr you're just fighting look dev in circles if you want to achieve a balanced realistic look that will respond nicely to things like tod.



Is AC using pbr approaches? It must be doing it mostly?
Ie, can I do a full car interior on one texture/shader with albedo, ao, norm, gloss and ior/metalness?

I kinda understand maybe why they didn't, but it's pretty poor if they haven't in an update?!

 

[Mr Whippy]

To add.

I agree with pixel chaser that you can make your textures however you like.
I hack mine together in all manner of tools.

Bits baked, others painted, decal bits on top in ps, done in quixel, some in substance etc etc.

But once you're done they're ideally rendered in a PBR engine and your maps are using real values, and stuff looks real


I really need to read up on ACs shaders again.
Such a shame they don't let users compile their own.

 

[luchian]

AFAIK, AC doesn't use/know to use PBR tex.
The idea here was more that you could use PBR to 'generate' them, instead of traditional 2d painting.
And the use them as normal .

..sent from my phone.

 

[Mr Whippy]

It seems a shame to not have a classic pbr shader for the interiors, those places are full of unique materials and matte/chrome/glossy blends etc.

Hey ho.

 

[Pixelchaser]

its just a terminology for doing things algorithmically. the end production of pbr still produces the same assets for the written shader effect.
so stick some pbr shaders in with any mutlimap shader from ac, and you got PBR in AC no problems.

a facet distinct to PBR is the ability to animate that algorithm (not literally) for example. if your chrome piece of your aircraft is rusted and oxidised etc. that aspect, as a facet of the written shader could be animated and thus you could see visually the entropy of metals in oxygen etc because it was applied through the pbr shader as it would accommodate that. and that is where PBR could be considered rather distinct... ofcourse a shader is a shader but a pbr shader is distinct thing for the house game engines unreal ed amazon cryengine etc

 

[Mr Whippy]

I get the algorithmic bit wrt generating a series of maps to ease production of them for the layman (possibly from an input normal or diffuse map), and those early game engines using pbr (cry, udk etc) probably made heavy use of such tools.


But personally I just draw or bake everything still.

Given the time I like Substance Designer workflow, so you can really give objects a life via their textures and shading.

Sadly though like you note, so many just turn these artistic tasks into algorithm heaven and we get the 'scratches on every edge 'worn look'' used on every material we see, rather than considered artwork.


Needless to say PBR is awesome for game dev.
I used to spend hours and days 'tweaking' textures and non-real values trying to make things look right in various conditions.

Suddenly you get PBR rendering, drop in the right values (mostly easy to guess if you're an observational artist) and et voila, a building that looks great at sunrise, fog, rain, snow, midday sun etc etc

That's why I hate going back to non PBR engines, time spent tweaking for a look that suddenly looks wrong as soon as you change the lighting.

That said, for NPR stuff there is no beating doing it all by hand in a nice creative style, perhaps using Mari and just getting stuck in

Dave

 

[Pixelchaser]

substance designer is effectively a PBR texture generator. id love the 120 bucks to buy version 6 steam released yesterday.

my issue is that I need control, I'm not handing it over to a robot . and especially Ac needs no algorithmic design. (except trees) infact most of why AC looks bad in mods is because its exactly that style of texture that is used., generated and rarely defined from photograph with enough of the correct post processing that is essential for it to not be a photograph in a game and work with static lighting. there are more concepts and ideas that make a road look fantastic in ac than most people realise including pixel art which no robotic algorithm can deliver. that's why there are not exactly that many people making good looking stuff suitable for Ac in the first place. its extremely tailored for the artist that requires to work in it (not the modders) and also the person in kunos who eyeball and mind defined it is probably the best most talented eye I have seen through in the custom shader applicable game industry. there are better and more inclusive shader arrangemen's out there imo. but its incredible whats actually going on there regards the accounting for sunlight and their interpretation of it (which leads to the shader design) and much of it wouldn't be possible with a full night day cycle either. its true that on one hand we don't have night, but people don't actually realise how good daytime is because of it on the other hand and that for me is some good design work within that limitation which is what it is all about. pbr is a limiting one button does it all lazy factor and always will be compared to an artists rendition. I think I just formed an anti PBR movement in my mind. I follow starcitizen, which is all pbr this and that, they started that fucking hype train. and ive tried to prove that an artist is always better than your knowledge of which buttons to press in order. but its like a religion with PBR not even visual proof can change their beliefs. its god of texture assets apparently.

which is actually considerably similar to how Race Track Builder gets treated, so I get that and why pbr may be so influential to some for texturing without the inclination to do it themselves. I do use RTb to save time and bypass a lack of practically applicable familiar tools usage which amounts to the same thing I guess. in my head I know how it all goes down with verts, poly`s pixels, voxels blah blah.

anti PBR thoughts /off...

 

[Mr Whippy]

Well I get where you're coming from, but you can't really be anti pbr.

Pbr is just the maths that does the rendering.
Maths that still existed with single textures engines, multi-textured, gourad, flat shading, etc etc, and they all needed tectures too.


What it sounds like you're against is the 'hype train' pbr, where many artists ignore what it is and just press buttons to exemplify what pbr now offers.
My pet hate is the 'scratched' edges everything now gets.

But Substance and Quixel, or even PS can all do great artwork still.

I've created loads of pbr textures and written custom shaders using pbr basics to get the 'right' look.


Fundamentally pbr is just fresnel and energy conservation on reflections.
Those two things were staples to quality rendering in mental ray in the 90s so nothing new.
Just it took powerful gpus and lots of work getting it into realtime rendering.


In practice you could do all your pbr textures by hand in PS, and get great results.
It's only really normal maps that pose the problem which is where ndo plugin from quixel helped really, still totally art based but you could get accurate normals in a non-linear fashion.


In the end just because some people misuse pbr doesn't mean it shouldn't be seen for what it is, which is an opportunity to do even more awesome graphics the way you enjoy making them

 

[luchian]

I think games became very good looking nowadays. And if you want to do everything #oldschool style, it will take ages to get something done up-to-expected standards. Especially since in modding, very often you might work on your own. Sure, you can learn modelling, texturing and what not. But how long would that take ?

I am all for any tool that can help speed the process. As long as you are in control over the end result. Can a tool make it look the way I imagine ? If yes, then Yes, please.

So I approve these techniques of generating believable textures faster and more consistent than a noob/medium 2d artist like me can. Does the end result look bad and fake ? Then OK, throw stones at me for butchering game art .

 

[Mr Whippy]

/throws stones

I agree it's all just tools. If some people misuse them we can't just judge the tool on the misuse.

Photoshop had it's fair share of 'emboss' everything filters, or 'hdr' effect, and recently we had a 'forced perspective' flurry of content.

They're all useful things at the appropriate time.
Just because some people transiently overuse them doesn't make them bad.


Look at poor old comic sans. It does have its place haha!

 

[Pixelchaser]

comic sans. its not in your font list so its got no place here.

I once made a track for rfactor from the editor for a strategy game called world in conflict.

 

[luchian]

/throws stones

I agree it's all just tools. If some people misuse them we can't just judge the tool on the misuse.

Photoshop had it's fair share of 'emboss' everything filters, or 'hdr' effect, and recently we had a 'forced perspective' flurry of content.

They're all useful things at the appropriate time.
Just because some people transiently overuse them doesn't make them bad.


Look at poor old comic sans. It does have its place haha!

stellar examples. In my young (very young) days I used to use emboss and comic sans