[LE] PBR textures (Quixel) for Skyrim? Possible workflow?

[Algabar]

Hi,

 

I recently started using Quixel to texture a weapon I created in Blender. TBH, it's the first time I worked with PBR texturing. It's really a blast. :cool:

 

Now, if I could only get those cool looks into Skyrim... I know, that PBR won't work with the Skyrim Engine, that it's a totally different system and so on... BUT I've read posts from people claiming that they somehow managed to "convert" PBR textures to the diffuse/specular/environmental map system Skyrim uses. Unfortunately, no one explained how...

 

If you got any ideas, hints or suggestions for a viable workflow, I'd be more than happy.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Algabar

[Di0nysys]

I don't work in Quixel, but i use 3dCoat's PBR texturing. Admittedly it's tricky to get it right. Looking around online almost nobody converts PBR to Blinn/Phong so i had to do a bit of tampering.

 

I found the diffuse usually needs to be significantly less bright, especially when dealing with metallic objects, for spec, you just invert the metalness map, up contrast, decrease brightness, and apply an appropriate cubemap to your mesh with good reflections. You'll fare better if u make ur own as most vanilla cubemaps are incredibly low res. Objects take a bit of tampering in Nifskope to get them right. I've found luck playing with the environment map values in Nifskope, sometimes up to 4x on the environment map scale can yield cool results. It is however not a perfect 1:1 thou.

 

3dchttp://i.imgur.com/20PgMfZ.jpg

 

Nifskope

http://i.imgur.com/k7M67qP.jpg

[Algabar]

Thank you very much for this detailed and helpful explanation! Much appreciated!

 

BTW, this armor looks really great!

[Di0nysys]

Cheers man have fun

[Matth85]

Let's do a quick rundown of the differences:

Traditional texturing uses a Difuse, Specular level, specular color, environment, gloss and normal map. Skyrim doesn't use gloss or specular color maps.

PBR texturing uses an Albedo, Mettalic, AO, Roughness and normal map.

 

You can convert from one to the other, although it requires some manual work.

 

Albedo -> Difuse. The Albedo is simply a difuse map WITHOUT any shading. The simple way to overlay the Ambient Occlusion over the diffuse, and possibly throw in a curature/cavity map overlay if you need even more shading. Or the other way around: Remove all highlights and shadows from the diffuse to get the albedo.

 

Specular -> Here you got 2 choices. You can take the difuse map, grayscale it, and play with levels. Or you can take the Roughness map and invert it. This works wonders for most materials, but it falls a bit short on certain metals.

 

Normal map -> is the same.

 

Gloss map -> Not used in Skyrim, but you could generally get this from the roughness as well.

 

Environment map -> Our metallic map of traditional texturiong. You can rely on a combination of the roughness and the metallic map for this. The metallic map in itself is mostly pure black or white, where white means "This is metal!" and black means "This is not metal!". A environment map works in a similar way, but it's also vastly different. You can get away with using the metal map as a mask, then using the roughness or diffuse + grayscaling it, and simply playing with levels.

 

 

As a note to the above poster: Be careful when playing with certain nifskope values. Increasing the value of certain things, such as the amount of shine or reflction, is insanely taxing on the system. You are pretty much telling the engine to render out your image x amounts extra per draw call, taking exponentially more resources. If you want more reflection, create that in your textures! Check Bethesdas .nif for settings. Don't go much above that. Even with the extra memory of special edition, things can go pretty bad pretty quick! As an example: I had a 2k texture map set for https://imageshack.com/i/f00NM9rNp . To make it more shiny, I increased some settings in nifskope. It got more shiny -- but the game would have noticeable frame drop when doing any sudden moves.

 

Furthermore, the reason skyrim uses very low res cube maps is partly the age of game, but also because the artstyle in Skyrim is not-so-shiny. Most things have a dull shine, or a shine that lacks reflection. For that you only need to reflect -something-. It's also to avoid the whole issue with reflecting something that is not there, since the engine doesn't calculate reflection real-time and rely on Cube Maps.

 

If you want something real shiny, don't tinker too much with nifskope. Instead create your own custom cube map with your own decently sized environment map. The effect is a lot better, it's a lot less taxing, and you get a better base to tinker on within Nifskope!

[Algabar]

Matth85, thanks a lot for the explanations! It's very helpful information - not only for me, but for everyone interested in texturing.

 

I've played around a bit in Photoshop yesterday. Still not happy with the results, but I'm getting closer. Main problem is still the diffuse map. I tested different methods of blending the AO into the Albedo, I also tested with overlaying parts of the (inverted) roughness map. I also played around with the levels a bit. Still my diffuse is somewhat "dull", not "crispy" enough. But at least I made the step form "plain ugly" to "somewhat ugly". :laugh: I guess it's just practice and trial and error now....

 

Thnaks a bunch!

[Matth85]

Play with some levels on your AO map if you need to crisp it up. Alternatively you could take your normal map and create a cavity map from it, and try to utilize that. It all depends on the maps, to be honest. If you got a very detailed normal map, but your AO map is a simply high to low bake, you might want to create an AO from the normal map (I believe XNormal got a converter), then blend your 2 AO together and finally overlay that, with some levels adjustments, on top of the albedo map.

 

If you throw up an example of what you are attempting to do, I can guide you further!

[Algabar]

Thanks again for your help! It's much appreciated!

 

I got some pics now, but somehow I'm too stupid to link them like above. So these are only links for the moment. Sorry!

 

Rendering in Quixel:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/659128

 

Diffuse map:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/659130

 

The blade ingame:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/659131

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/images/659132

 

As you can see, I still got much to learn... TBH, specular, normal and environment map are "quick and dirty" and will need adjusting. But I'm confident that I will get there eventually. Currently I'm struggling with the diffuse, so I focus on that...

 

Thanks for taking the time to look at this!

Edited May 1, 2017 by Algabar

[Matth85]

Allright, let's take a look.

 

At first glance it doesn't look wrong. It looks much what I expect it to look like. The lack of crispiness isn't so much because of your difuse, but rather the specular level. Ignoring reflection for now, which is dealt with via the environment map, you need to crisp up the specular levels to give it the metal sharpness. This also goes for most materials: The specular levels, just like the roughness, defines the material. This destinction is important because PBR uses the albedo as a reflection value, whereas in traditional the diffuse has no effect on the shine or reflection. So you need to really set up the specularity. That is the single most important map, along the normal map, for a good texture.

 

So from your current point I'd focus on the specular for a bit. Then go back and tweak the diffuse afterwards. I'd also consider lowering the contrast of the dirt on the blade, and darkening the goldish looking part to look more like the darkest variation. You could probably darken the whole texture a little, but then your dark metallic color might lose some details!

 

 

A few more pointers, if you are okay with that. This isn't strictly PBR2traditionalTexture related, but:

 

1) Utilize your 0-1 UV space! Cram things close together, and utilize symmetry. Unless both sides of something is seen often, you might as well just texture one half with twice the resolution! You could also take the blades, turn one of them upside down so you get them closer to each other, then set it to a 45° to utilize as much as you can off the space. The goal ios for everything to have equal texture density, which simply means that when you use a checker pattern texture, the patterns should be perfectly square for everything in the same size. When in doubt, though, prioritize big objects or parts that are filled with details.

 

2) I would personally not remove the UVW from the middle of the hilt. You'd get a smoother normal and it would be easier to naturally texture withing it. You could utilize color maps to simply mask it off for full control. This is more subjective, though, but it's based on the idea of not having too many small UVW shells all over. That can get frustrating to deal with when you need to manually fix something!

[Algabar]

Thank you very much again! Your comments are indeed very helpful! It's really good to get hints from an expert on which direction to take. And I won't underestimate specular maps again. You definitely got a point there - I must admit that I had that "some grayscale of my diffuse will do" attitude until now. :ermm:

 

OFC you're also right with your thoughts on UV mapping. This was always a difficult task for me since I started working with Blender 2 months or so ago. Besides that, sometimes I'm just lazy... I will definitely rearrange my UV map before the next attempt at improving my textures. I need to find different textures for the metal parts of the grip anyway...

 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "not remove the UVW from the middle of the hilt". Do you mean the leather part or these small golden "inlays"?

 

Thank you for your patience!