Fallout 4 Texture System

[ajhakra]

This has probably already been answered so if someone could link me to the answer that would be perfect.

 

If not I would like someone to possibly explain how the texture system works in F4. Just now my current knowledge of the texture system is that it uses a PBR-Spec/Gloss system. This means that the diffuse map uses a base colour map, the normal is just a normal normal map, and the specular is a combination of specular and glossiness with the spec being in the red channel and the glossiness being in the green channel. I've also read somewhere that the blue channel is used for AO. Is this true or false?

 

 

Now onto the problem I am having.

 

I use Substance Painter to create textures and settings its viewing shaders to PBR-Spec/Gloss makes everything look like trash. I'm assuming that this is how it is going to look in-game.

 

I've also read somewhere that it is the .bgsm that gives the texture a proper look. Is this true or false?

 

Is there any way to incorporate the metallic and roughness texture sets into any of these maps? In Substance Painter the textures look really good with metallic and roughness included.

 

I have read through many forum posts about this but none of them have provided me with a definitive answer.

 

 

Here are my export settings in Substance Painter:

http://i.imgur.com/F1ADBul.jpg

[TheRizzler1]

From what I've seen/read, FO4 doesn't use the conventional metal/rough, nor spec/gloss workflow. It actually uses a sort of hybrid that's closer to spec/metal, but really I should be saying no-one really knows. Thankfully you can still get good results if you texture with the metal/rough shader and export using these settings;

 

 

One thing to note - You might also need to flip the red channel in the normal map (it's X- Y+ Z+). Roughness is just an inverted Glossiness map, so most of that information stays. It's the BaseColor and Specular which end up being converted the most (looking the most different) from Diffuse/Metal. From experience the BaseColor will be lighter than what you see in Painter, so make it darker than you want.

You can also save texture space by picking RGB for the _d and _n maps and R + G + B for the _s map. (The blue channel is blank for a lot of textures in the game, think it's used for emissive or something, haven't looked into it yet)

This thread is where I started finding out information to start with.

 

On BGSMs - they do have an effect on how the asset renders, so I usually just copy a BGSM from a similar kind of asset and modify it for my needs.

Edited July 26, 2016 by TheRizzler1

[StuykGaming]

Sift through this:

http://niftools.sourceforge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=6316

[Kaspar482]

@TheRizzler1

This is what works best for me.

 

http://i.imgur.com/hPdyGUR.png

[TheRizzler1]

Ah yeah I might have got it wrong, classic me thing to do. Might be DirectX Normals (y-) instead, but I still have to flip the red. If you're working in spec gloss in SP then you don't have to use the converted maps, but won't your Diffuse be really dark compared to BaseColor?

[Kaspar482]

How do you bake your normals? If you use blender, use cycles bake with swizzle: +x -y +z. No need to flip red here.

I use diffuse because base color loses too much detail with this spec/gloss combo. The brightness/spec/gloss and metalness is influenced by the cubemap (set in the bgsm material file). If something is too dark, you could make your own cubemap. All the default cubemaps work for me though.

[TheRizzler1]

I use Substance Painter's inbuilt Bakers, it's definitely OpenGL Normal and then flip the red for me. Didn't think about making my own cubemap, but the problem is that the asset displays lighter ingame compared to Substance. If I rendered out a converted Diffuse, then it would act as though there was a Metallic map to go with it and colour all of the metal elements black. But things are probably different between Blender and Painter.

[Kaspar482]

Hmm not sure If I understand you right. But the diffuse is supposed to be black if it is metal. The 'cubemap' will make the black diffuse appear metallic. Use a different bgsm for each metal, wood, plastic part. I.e use the copper cubemap for copper metal, the metal cubemap for iron, steel, the plastic cubemap for plastic and so on.

[TheRizzler1]

You're right, I didn't dig into the files enough. The assault rifle for example has an _m map which would suggest metallic (it's grayscale) but I haven't seen any mention of it in the BGSMs, and weirdly the _d.dds for the receiver is quite bright. There are dielectric BGSMs but the only difference I've seen is the env map changing from DefaultOutside1.dds to DefaultOutside1_Dielectric.dds (obviously for non-metals). Where are the _m textures used?

I've UV mapped my entire gun including wooden stock onto one 0-1 UV square, and all of the mods into another UV square. I suppose I could render out two different sets of textures for the conductor and dielectric parts and set different materials in nifskope, but what would the actual difference be when it comes to the steps taken to create the BGSMs and the setup inside the CK?

(sorry if this is hijacking your thread a bit ajhakra, but I figure this might help you too)

[ghostfc3s]

So here is what I learned from my mod creation adventure.

 

In the material editor, you have an environmental map check box. Flagged on your item will look metal, with no direct light source so hidding in the shadows and such, using the DefaultOutside1.dds shared map.

 

_D map gives color, _N gives gloss, _S gives reflection, damaged roughness and scratches that extra POP when in direct light. As for playing with the red and green channels I had limited success with the _N map to effect gloss, I found altering brightness and contrast effected it more.

 

Here was the big one for me, file format, the _D map can dx1 to dx5 but the _N and _S file should be converted to a normal map, and saved as a bc5 and have Alpha channel.