QUESTION PBR textures

[Nonkel]

Hello,

I'm intrested to release a track for AC, i've been working on for RBR.
However the texture setup is not entirely clear to me.

I make my textures in substance painter and substance designer, and they are outputted as, base color normal roughness and metal maps. Wich are the required textures for AC?

 

[luchian]

Hi,

It's a great technique to use PBR, however AC doesn't know advanced stuff.
You will need to bake them into dds (png is also accepted, but dds is strongly recommended).

Very curious to see some screens, PBR it's something I've been contemplating .

..sent from my phone.

 

[Nonkel]

Hey thanks for your reply, but dds is an outputformat.
My question was rather, do i need a spec/gloss workflow? or wich maps are accepted by AC?

Hereby a picture of a material test in substance painter, all materials are procedurally made in substance designer.

Also since it got a little forgotten, i made a tool several years ago to fast create tracks from heightmaps (heightlines) due to legal reasons i cannot release this tool here, but if there is interst i can look into what i can do to make it available.; Traxellerator

https://www.youtube.com/user/HTWRT

This tool was specifically designed to create rallystages in 3dsmax, but can also used i guess for "closed" tracks

 

[luchian]

Hmm, maybe I don't understand exactly what you mean, I give it a second try. It's probably due to my lack of experience with PBR, so bear with me

So, in the final track, AC uses materials which will react to light according to the shader settings.
Depending on the shader used, you can have 1 diffuse texture ( and basic settings), you can have diffuse+normal, or you can have diffuse plus multiple mask/detail/maps.

Here are some examples of shaders:
http://assettocorsamods.net/forums/tracks.9/?prefix_id=21

Here are some of the shaders and information about them:
http://assettocorsamods.net/threads/assetto-corsa-shaders-texture-maps-list.794/

And here is an example from a very experimented user ( @LilSKi ) regarding the proper way to make a road look realistic. Notice that specular level for example, is in the alpha channel of the diffuse.
http://assettocorsamods.net/threads/photo-quality-road-surface.834/

Hope this gets you at least a bit closer to the answer .

Regarding your tool, had just a quick look (I'm at work) it seems very interesting. I would definitely like to check it out and give it a try, should you be able to share it !

 

[Pixelchaser]

your scripts there are amazing. really amazing, I mean im ultimately working in max and have been trying for 2 years to efficiently learn and create what I want with a set procedure its taken me so long and your scripts do it instantly .

Ive been looking at substance products lately because it would be perfect and i love the workflow arrangement behind the shaders. but yet again just more learning, but from your scripts to substance there is nothing u cant accomplish there man. the zone manager video and the road connector, perfect. Id have bought your scripts if I hadn't bought Race Track Builder..

Luchain RBR. not PBR. rally game Richard burns rally. Nonkel tools originally for rally track building.

 

[luchian]

No, it is actually PBR. It's a very interesting technique of rendering/texturing.
I was watching recently some videos in Blender, like this one:

Otherwise, yes, RBR a very good rally game

 

[Nonkel]

Hey thanks for your replies.

1. The script is not for sale so thats why there are some legal issues to make it generally available.

2. My textures are effectivly PBR (physically based rendering) so thats why my question is wich workflow is supported by AC. I think its rather a semantic problem in the naming conventions. But i don't own AC so i can't acces their forums, so i still dont know wich workflow i need to use. (this is important to tell substance the kind of textures it needs to output. For now i test all my stuff in UE4.

3 I've seen RTB (in my opion its overprices sh*tprogram, it doesn't give control. My plugin was coded by a decent coder Kostadin Kostev (http://miauumaxscript.blogspot.be/), but its up to each to choose what he wants to use in the end. it was created because i got frustrated by doing repetetive tasks in 3ds max while building a track for richard burns rally. So this was made (difference between man and ape is tools right?)

 

[luchian]

I'll ask Lilski and see if he minds bringing some info on this forum.
But in any case, for road shader you'd have :
- diffuse texture
- mask
- detail R, G, B, A
- detail NM

All ^these^ are dds textures.

 

[luchian]

Also, not sure, but the SDK Editor might be free tool (on Steam).
Maybe give it a go ? Link: https://steamdb.info/app/302530/

 

[Pixelchaser]

its a tailored Yebis based shader system. we select from multiple shader types Nonkel independently. notably the perpixelmultimap shader is what you are probably most used to working with in substance.

http://www.siliconstudio.co.jp/middleware/yebis/en/features/

quickly threw this together. this is a typical road shader setup featuring diffuse(&alpha), MASK(RGBA) Normal map(&ALPHA) all DXT5 DDS.

this is multilayer_fresnel_NM. a multilayer diffuse, with fresnel lighting and a normal map. specular contained within alphas of all texture. the reason for this shader is as the view (camera) gets closer to the object more detail appears. so it blends between the information on the diffuse and the detail. the downside of using this is zero reflection property. so it is mainly used for non reflective objects.

mask system. mask system places a new texture as camera gets closer. nice blend into diffuse etc. each channel RGB or A is painted independatly and each channels pixels place these close textures. in the above image the road only uses 1 detail texture. but there can be 4. in the editor sdk you select all these textures and any other detail textures etc etc.

normal map is traditional normal map that traditionally follows the same size and automatic (LINEAR) UV arrangement the mask places them with. all scaling configurable, in this example normal map is for DETAIL not diffuse etc. but it can also be configured or scaled. all linear UV things work within the UV that the diffuse is using. so on a uv mapped road it will flow. on a massive tile of scenery it need not fit the detail UV system. very configurable depending on the modelling layout chosen. so detail textures are tillable within the uv map of the diffuse. so a detail texture may span 1m square or whatever you want but within the uv mapped model. as we get closer the tarmac grain and detail appears as we get away from it in game it blends to the main diffuse.

there are variants of this typical road shader. and many shaders are used similarly for scenery now too.

there is another shader called PerPixelMultiMap shader which you will be interested. it has standard diffuse, gloss, relfection, specular. (specular always black and white, no colour ever in AC). ill detail this shader next time I get a chance.

 

[luchian]

How did you get these info @Pixelchaser ?
Very interesting stuff, had no idea they are actually using a 3rd party engine. Thanks for sharing.

@Nonkel : does the above answer your questions ? It would be useful to know so I can mark (or not) the thread as solved. Thank you.

 

[Pixelchaser]

few other games ive done stuff for use similar system to yebis, I think its classed as a standardised library of sorts. its a no nonsense general standard directX system though,

The example is taken directly from one of kunos tracks. and its an exact example of kunos texture methods as seen in game presently, but more importantly.

Software that support YEBIS include:

• Substance Designer 4.3