Download here: http://gg.gg/wbbfq
Recommended that TGA be used with edge padding. The xNormal plugin for Photoshop can create edge padding using the Dilation Tool. Exporting Before exporting, freeze all the transforms on the mesh. The origin or pivot point of a mesh can be anywhere in space as long as the mesh’s translate, rotate, and scale is frozen.
DDO is Quixel’s flagship PBR (Physically-based Rendering) texturing software. With DDO, you can quickly create textured models and tileable materials. It’s a tool that was designed to work extensively with Photoshop to leverage the strength of Photoshop’s image editing features with Quixel’s scan-based texturing techniques. The end-result of this marriage between DDO and Photoshop is lightning-fast texturing that’s as procedural or scan-based as you prefer to work. Great results can be created in a fraction of the time that other workflows would require. The huge library of Materials and Smart Materials offers a nearly unlimited amount of ways to combine textures and masks to produce a diverse range of high-quality artwork.
*Don’t use big Dilation (padding), it should be 2-4; If the Substance Painter crashes during exporting this might help. See Allegorithmic.com: GPU drivers crash with long computations. Baking in the xNormal. XNormal is a free software that we used before the Substance Painter; It is recommended to use Substance painter for all the baking possible.
*NVidia photoshop plugin VS. XNormal — polycount. Polycount.com DA: 13 PA: 50 MOZ Rank: 64. In the xnormal plugin you just have to lower the ’smooth’ value instead of raising an intensity value like in the nvidia tool; The workflow then stays the same; Dont forget to convert your images to 16 bit before, to avoid banding artifacts.
In this write-up, I’ll cover my workflow with DDO, the theory behind the tool, and the ways I leverage DDO to produce textures quickly and accurately. This is a follow-up to the NDO tutorial I released for New Year’s 2017. I’ll be demonstrating how to take NDO-detailed models directly into DDO, the process for setting up DDO’s expected input maps, DDO Painter, and a variety of tips and quality-of-life improvements to make working with DDO feel natural and easy to do. Let’s take a look at the end results of my NDO tutorial first.
My TrinityRail tank car after being detailed in NDO. Rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 3.
The foundations of working with NDO carry forward to this tutorial as well. If you haven’t read it yet, the link is in the art description. Be sure to have your references up and visible. You’ll need a tool like PureRef. to view an image canvas of your references so you can accurately texture your model. The image below is a small sample of the PureRef scene for this project. I would also recommend that you consider following my suggestions in the aforementioned NDO tutorial for your window and display layouts. It will make texturing significantly easier and allow you to work much faster.
PureRef is an amazing tool and comes highly recommended from the Quixel Staff
Let’s go over the DDO Base Creator interface.
The Mesh input tab allows you to select your exported model. DDO works with several formats, the most common being OBJ and FBX. The Optimize Mesh checkbox should be left intact for all models loaded into DDO unless your workflow requires a non-standard mesh optimization procedure. If you need to uncheck this option, you’ll know – so leave it checked unless your work requires it.
Any meshes within the exported model file will appear in the Mesh Group dropdown. Combine meshes by UV set before exporting to DDO. Everything that’s on the same set of UVs should be one object. DDO treats each object as a separate object with its own input maps and exports. You’ll reduce the impact to your system by ensuring that your meshes are combined by UV set before exporting, and you’ll eliminate the time needed to combine textures from different PSDs together into a single document per texture type.
Material ID: Loads up a color ID map for masking layers in DDO.
Normal: Loads a tangent-space normal map.
Flip Y: check this if the green channel is inverted in the bake.
AO: Loads your model’s AO map. For best results, combine NDO-painted normals converted to AO with the low-poly baked AO to get the low-poly’s occlusion pass mixed with the NDO-painted normals for masking.
Object Space Normal: This defaults to Bake In 3DO when a mesh is loaded. You can load your own OSNM if you prefer but it’s a lot easier to let 3DO bake it for you. OSNMs allow for directional masking similar to how Position Gradient maps do, except with much finer microsurface detail control.
Curvature: If you’ve loaded a tangent-space normal map, this will auto-fill to indicate that your curvature map will be derived from the normal map. If you’ve created your normals entirely in NDO (or a similar program), this will produce masking only around the painted normals. If you’re working with normals you’ve painted and haven’t done a high-to-low bake, ensure that Bake In 3DO is checked before proceeding so the normal map’s curvature is combined with the low-poly curvature.
Position Gradient: This defaults to Bake In 3DO when a mesh is loaded. This is essentially a directional mask that allows you to mask details by front, back, up, down, left, right, or any combination.
Height: This loads a displacement map into DDO. If your mesh isn’t dense enough, you won’t see a displacement effect in 3DO.
Prebaked Textures: This option is for utilizing existing maps. I’ll be using this to load up the truck (wheel) assemblies for this vehicle as I’ve already painted them before. 00030003
Resolution defines the map-res of the materials you’ll be creating. Generally it’s best to leave it at the same resolution that your input maps were created in.
Texel Density defines the repetition of textures in practical terms. It’s best to leave this at 2048 unless you need a specific density to match the scale of your object.
ID Preset: You can create ID Presets from DDO projects to assign materials and Smart Materials automatically based on color IDs. Using the same color IDs that the ID Preset uses will allow you to get the same look and feel across a variety of different models, saving vast amounts of development time.
Export Target: Pick the correct one for the engine or renderer you’re working with. The field below this shows the textures most commonly associated with that particular target.
16 Bits per Channel: Keep this unchecked unless you’re working with 16 bit input maps.Is There A Photoshop Plugin Like Xnormal Dilation 2
Save In: Specifies a location on your drive to create your DDO project. Note: You can create blank DDO projects for assigning basic Materials by simply entering a path here if you don’t need to create a texture for a specific model.
Now that we’ve covered the Base Creator, let’s move on to some specifics in my workflow. You might have your own workflow that you prefer – or you may be a new user and have no idea where to start. In either case, it’s never a bad idea to see how other people do things, so I’ll share my process for creating the texture-space AO using NDO. I’ll need a low-poly AO bake, too. xNormal is great for this if you’re working with a GPU that supports Optix rendering.
I have not found a tool yet that can bake 16k AO maps faster than this.
I’m working at 8k, so I’ve baked my AO map at 16k to downscale to 8k. Optix doesn’t support Anti-Aliasing, making this is the only way to filter the AO using xNormal. Set the output bake to PNG so the transparency is baked into the texture. Once you bake the AO, open the PNG in Photoshop, then select the opacity of the layer by CTRL+LMB on the layer thumbnail in the layer stack. Contract the selection by roughly three pixels, invert it, then press BACKSPACE to clear out the unselected portions of the texture. Resize the texture to half-res and select Filter → xNormal → Dilation. Pad the texture by 8 to 16 pixels, depending on the map resolution. I’m using 12 pixels at 8k because the majority of the texture is a similar material using similar paint.
Once the AO map is resized and padded, save it as a PSD – calling it AO_Master.PSD is a good name, since it’s going to contain the texture-space AO that will be generated from NDO. If you didn’t use NDO or another similar tool to develop your detail normals, you can skip ahead here – otherwise follow along and I’ll share my technique for bringing texture-space AO together with the low-poly AO!
The workflow is simple. Once the AO is baked, trimmed, and padded, take your NDO PSD and open NDO. From the NDO menu → Map Converter. The Map Converter defaults to convert normals to AO.
Combining texture-space AO with low-poly AO allows for additional control over masking in your DDO project.
Before you convert, turn off the visibility for the baked normals layer – it’s almost always at the bottom of your layer stack in Photoshop. Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a similar result to the center image above. Open the master AO PSD. Switch to the NDO occlusion PSD, right-click and duplicate the OCCLUSION folder into the master AO. Set the OCCLUSION folder to Multiply blending. You’ll get the result seen in the rightmost image above. Save the PSD, then save a copy of this PSD as a TGA (or other format) to load into DDO.
I’ve loaded my model into DDO, which is called Tanker.FBX, with the Mesh Group inside called Tanker. DDO sees this in the Mesh Group dropdown. If I had multiple groups, I would load input maps for each group.
You’ll notice immediately that I’m not using a Material ID for this project. This is because the vast majority of the vehicle is a similar material and won’t need detailed IDs. I also tend to prefer working without IDs, so I leave this blank most of the time. Any masks I need will be generated using Polyunwrapper 4 in 3DS Max.
The Curvature input is pulling curvature from the tangent normals. Bake in 3DO is left off here. As mentioned earlier, if you’re working with a model that wasn’t baked high-to-low, keep Bake in 3DO checked for Curvature to combine the low-poly curvature with the curvature of the tangent normals.00030003At this point, I hit Create and 3DO launches. It will generate Position Gradient and Object Space Normals while DDO will use Photoshop to derive the curvature from my baked tangent normals.
Once the project is loaded, I switch back to Max. I’ve kicked out the wheels together with the main body and I’ll load the textures I made for them previously. Once I’ve exported the wheels and main body together, I open 3DO and immediately switch to the Import tab, then select the three dots next to the mesh group name and select the model I’ve exported. I can now switch mesh groups to the wheels and add the exported textures from earlier. I could have loaded the Pre-Baked slots in DDO’s Base Creator if I intended to modify the textures.
You can add mesh groups for previewing after a project is created.
Now that the vehicle is loaded and ready to start, let’s break down the interface so you can follow along easily.
I like to work with materials like they’re real surfaces. Building materials like this makes it easy to understand how to work in PBR with DDO, since I’m emulating reality instead of trying to work around it. I start with the base layer for a given material, then work up from there. I’ll also add paint, then add in damage like rust, dents, grunge, and other assorted details. I’ll also add decals in Photoshop using Smart Objects across texture maps.
This is the beginning of a lot of work yet to come
I’m starting off by creating the base for the vast majority of this vehicle. Tank cars are made of high-strength steel, so I’ll make the base layer from a basic Material. I like using Steel – Dirty for this. By default, I feel that this material is too strong for the look I want, so I’ve adjusted it in several ways. Here’s the values used above:
Albedo Texture Intensity: 10%
Roughness Texture Blend: Overlay, Intensity, 100%
Normal: Texture Intensity: 10%
Texture Scale: -1
This reduces the material’s microsurface detail and brings it in-line with the appearance of my references.
Once this step is complete, I then open DynaMask and set the steel material to be blank. The other material layers I’ll create will be set to Overlay and will pass through their normals to the underlying baked normals. I don’t want the steel material to appear across the entire vehicle just yet – only in places where there’s surface imperfections like scratches or dents. These vehicles have imperfections on them through daily use that this material helps capture – I’ll specify where to apply those details later on. The tiling will become a non-issue because of the selective way I’ll apply the steel textures to this model. My next step is to add a layer of paint – so I’ve opened up the Basic Material browser → Paint → Paint – Thick Machine Paint. This defaults to a yellowish-orange paint color with heavy normals. This needs to be adjusted to match my references:
Albedo: Color Hex #111111. Texture Intensity: 25, Texture Blend: Linear Light Roughness: Value: Hex #3e3e3e, Texture Intensity: 50, Texture Blend: Vivid Light Normal: Texture Intensity: 10, Texture Blend: Linear Light
Texture Scale: -1
Matching references can be tricky. Use your eyes and study closely!
Now that I’ve got a base material, I’ll group these two layers to make it easier to read my project as its complexity increases. This group will be called Base Paint. On the next page, you’ll see an image of the actual tank car in my PureRef scene that I’m sourcing for roughness values and overall look and feel. It’s a bit cleaner than what my end-result will look like.
Good reference is critical to getting a material to look correct.
My eyeballed values for roughness aren’t perfect, but they’re close enough! When I place this in Unreal 4, the Screen-Space Reflections and camera setup I use will make it look almost identical to the references. At this point, I want to start getting some grunge into this vehicle to make it start to pop out and look less factory-fresh. It’s clear from the reference image that these tankers are kept relatively clean, but dirt will always find a way to sneak in on a vehicle in the outdoors. It’s an unavoidable fact of life.
00030003For a grunge base, I’ll use an existing Smart Material by opening the Smart Material browser → 09 Legacy → Heavy Directional Dirt. This needs significant modification to produce a result that will work well with this vehicle – welcome to the DynaMask portion of this tutorial!
Each texture layer combines to form a pre-defined look based on the parameters in the DynaMask for each layer. I’ll need to use each layer’s DynaMask tweak the look. To do this, I’m turning off each layer and then adjusting from the bottom up, turning layers back on as I continue up the layer stack. Holding ALT while doing this will bypass updating 3DO, making the process quick.
One of the first things I do with a new DDO installation is set DynaMask to use Advanced masking options.
By default, DynaMask is limited to a small set of adjustments to make mask editing easy for beginners and advanced users alike. A lot more options for customizing masks will be possible after opening the Advanced settings. If you’re comfortable with having more options available to work with, you’ll need to enable this option – so be sure you do that immediately after opening DynaMask.
There’s a nearly limitless way to combine textures using DynaMask’s advanced editing features. This portion of the tutorial will show how I take Smart Material layers and adjust them to suit the specific look and feel I need for this project. On the following page, I’ll point out the DynaMask menu features for quick reference.
On the left is the standard DynaMask editor. On the right, the Advanced editor. The Advanced editor allows for a wide range of different masking options based on your input maps and model details.
I’ll be adjusting the General Dirt layer by discarding the DynaMask values entirely, demonstrating how I build custom DynaMasks using fully procedural editing. To clear out the mask, I’ve picked Black in the preset browser. This preset completely clears out everything, and no texture details will show through. I’d like to add dirt accumulating from the underside of the vehicle, so I’ll begin by opening up Object Space Direction by clicking the arrow next to the blend mode.
Holding ALT while adjusting most details (including moving sliders) will bypass updating 3DO, just like holding ALT in the main DDO window bypasses 3DO while adjustments are being made.
With the additional controls for OSD opened, I now have access to every aspect of the Object Space mask. Inverting Top/Bottom causes the mask to appear on the bottom of the vehicle, and setting Filter to 75 causes it to spread out closer to the top of the tank car. A little bit of blur keeps the dirt mask from looking completely procedural, and some added contrast gives more depth to the mask for the additional textures and effects I’ll be layering onto it.
Note that I have reimported my model to see the underside more clearly.
The OSN will be used with the Gradient, AO, and Texture inputs to create a convincing dirt mask. The next step is to enable the Ambient Occlusion. By default, it will be set to blend as Multiply. Inverting the AO mask will mask out the majority of the OSN, focusing the details almost entirely on the underside of the vehicle where dirt naturally accumulates. However, since the OSN is still masking this DynaMask, areas that wouldn’t receive heavy dirt (such as the underside of the valve covers on the very top) are now dirty.
AO-based masking is a quick way to produce realistic procedural masks.
I’ll fix this by masking the OSN by the Gradient map, forcing the dirt to accumulate primarily toward the bottom of the vehicle.
Inverting the Top to Bottom slider (to force the mask down) and setting its blend mode to Screen allows it to mix with the OSN mask. Adjusting the Offset to the left forces the mask to focus completely toward the bottom half of the vehicle, and the Balance shifted left helps tighten it up.
00030003I’ve gone back to the OSN mask and changed its blend to Overlay, and set the Top/Bottom mask to blend Overlay as well. This allows it to blend over the Gradient in a way that has the dirt accumulating almost entirely on the lower two-thirds of the vehicle.
Building quality DynaMasks is a step-by-step process, just like all good art.
I’ve now defined where the dirt will appear. The next step is to apply a dirt texture to it. Loading a texture is as simple as clicking the thumbnail. For this I’m using Masking Patterns → Dirt → Dirt 10.
The Texture blend is Overlay. The Albedo mask channel is blending at default opacity. Scale at -1 helps put the texel density into the correct proportion to the size of this vehicle. Brightness at -15 and
https://diarynote.indered.space
Recommended that TGA be used with edge padding. The xNormal plugin for Photoshop can create edge padding using the Dilation Tool. Exporting Before exporting, freeze all the transforms on the mesh. The origin or pivot point of a mesh can be anywhere in space as long as the mesh’s translate, rotate, and scale is frozen.
DDO is Quixel’s flagship PBR (Physically-based Rendering) texturing software. With DDO, you can quickly create textured models and tileable materials. It’s a tool that was designed to work extensively with Photoshop to leverage the strength of Photoshop’s image editing features with Quixel’s scan-based texturing techniques. The end-result of this marriage between DDO and Photoshop is lightning-fast texturing that’s as procedural or scan-based as you prefer to work. Great results can be created in a fraction of the time that other workflows would require. The huge library of Materials and Smart Materials offers a nearly unlimited amount of ways to combine textures and masks to produce a diverse range of high-quality artwork.
*Don’t use big Dilation (padding), it should be 2-4; If the Substance Painter crashes during exporting this might help. See Allegorithmic.com: GPU drivers crash with long computations. Baking in the xNormal. XNormal is a free software that we used before the Substance Painter; It is recommended to use Substance painter for all the baking possible.
*NVidia photoshop plugin VS. XNormal — polycount. Polycount.com DA: 13 PA: 50 MOZ Rank: 64. In the xnormal plugin you just have to lower the ’smooth’ value instead of raising an intensity value like in the nvidia tool; The workflow then stays the same; Dont forget to convert your images to 16 bit before, to avoid banding artifacts.
In this write-up, I’ll cover my workflow with DDO, the theory behind the tool, and the ways I leverage DDO to produce textures quickly and accurately. This is a follow-up to the NDO tutorial I released for New Year’s 2017. I’ll be demonstrating how to take NDO-detailed models directly into DDO, the process for setting up DDO’s expected input maps, DDO Painter, and a variety of tips and quality-of-life improvements to make working with DDO feel natural and easy to do. Let’s take a look at the end results of my NDO tutorial first.
My TrinityRail tank car after being detailed in NDO. Rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 3.
The foundations of working with NDO carry forward to this tutorial as well. If you haven’t read it yet, the link is in the art description. Be sure to have your references up and visible. You’ll need a tool like PureRef. to view an image canvas of your references so you can accurately texture your model. The image below is a small sample of the PureRef scene for this project. I would also recommend that you consider following my suggestions in the aforementioned NDO tutorial for your window and display layouts. It will make texturing significantly easier and allow you to work much faster.
PureRef is an amazing tool and comes highly recommended from the Quixel Staff
Let’s go over the DDO Base Creator interface.
The Mesh input tab allows you to select your exported model. DDO works with several formats, the most common being OBJ and FBX. The Optimize Mesh checkbox should be left intact for all models loaded into DDO unless your workflow requires a non-standard mesh optimization procedure. If you need to uncheck this option, you’ll know – so leave it checked unless your work requires it.
Any meshes within the exported model file will appear in the Mesh Group dropdown. Combine meshes by UV set before exporting to DDO. Everything that’s on the same set of UVs should be one object. DDO treats each object as a separate object with its own input maps and exports. You’ll reduce the impact to your system by ensuring that your meshes are combined by UV set before exporting, and you’ll eliminate the time needed to combine textures from different PSDs together into a single document per texture type.
Material ID: Loads up a color ID map for masking layers in DDO.
Normal: Loads a tangent-space normal map.
Flip Y: check this if the green channel is inverted in the bake.
AO: Loads your model’s AO map. For best results, combine NDO-painted normals converted to AO with the low-poly baked AO to get the low-poly’s occlusion pass mixed with the NDO-painted normals for masking.
Object Space Normal: This defaults to Bake In 3DO when a mesh is loaded. You can load your own OSNM if you prefer but it’s a lot easier to let 3DO bake it for you. OSNMs allow for directional masking similar to how Position Gradient maps do, except with much finer microsurface detail control.
Curvature: If you’ve loaded a tangent-space normal map, this will auto-fill to indicate that your curvature map will be derived from the normal map. If you’ve created your normals entirely in NDO (or a similar program), this will produce masking only around the painted normals. If you’re working with normals you’ve painted and haven’t done a high-to-low bake, ensure that Bake In 3DO is checked before proceeding so the normal map’s curvature is combined with the low-poly curvature.
Position Gradient: This defaults to Bake In 3DO when a mesh is loaded. This is essentially a directional mask that allows you to mask details by front, back, up, down, left, right, or any combination.
Height: This loads a displacement map into DDO. If your mesh isn’t dense enough, you won’t see a displacement effect in 3DO.
Prebaked Textures: This option is for utilizing existing maps. I’ll be using this to load up the truck (wheel) assemblies for this vehicle as I’ve already painted them before. 00030003
Resolution defines the map-res of the materials you’ll be creating. Generally it’s best to leave it at the same resolution that your input maps were created in.
Texel Density defines the repetition of textures in practical terms. It’s best to leave this at 2048 unless you need a specific density to match the scale of your object.
ID Preset: You can create ID Presets from DDO projects to assign materials and Smart Materials automatically based on color IDs. Using the same color IDs that the ID Preset uses will allow you to get the same look and feel across a variety of different models, saving vast amounts of development time.
Export Target: Pick the correct one for the engine or renderer you’re working with. The field below this shows the textures most commonly associated with that particular target.
16 Bits per Channel: Keep this unchecked unless you’re working with 16 bit input maps.Is There A Photoshop Plugin Like Xnormal Dilation 2
Save In: Specifies a location on your drive to create your DDO project. Note: You can create blank DDO projects for assigning basic Materials by simply entering a path here if you don’t need to create a texture for a specific model.
Now that we’ve covered the Base Creator, let’s move on to some specifics in my workflow. You might have your own workflow that you prefer – or you may be a new user and have no idea where to start. In either case, it’s never a bad idea to see how other people do things, so I’ll share my process for creating the texture-space AO using NDO. I’ll need a low-poly AO bake, too. xNormal is great for this if you’re working with a GPU that supports Optix rendering.
I have not found a tool yet that can bake 16k AO maps faster than this.
I’m working at 8k, so I’ve baked my AO map at 16k to downscale to 8k. Optix doesn’t support Anti-Aliasing, making this is the only way to filter the AO using xNormal. Set the output bake to PNG so the transparency is baked into the texture. Once you bake the AO, open the PNG in Photoshop, then select the opacity of the layer by CTRL+LMB on the layer thumbnail in the layer stack. Contract the selection by roughly three pixels, invert it, then press BACKSPACE to clear out the unselected portions of the texture. Resize the texture to half-res and select Filter → xNormal → Dilation. Pad the texture by 8 to 16 pixels, depending on the map resolution. I’m using 12 pixels at 8k because the majority of the texture is a similar material using similar paint.
Once the AO map is resized and padded, save it as a PSD – calling it AO_Master.PSD is a good name, since it’s going to contain the texture-space AO that will be generated from NDO. If you didn’t use NDO or another similar tool to develop your detail normals, you can skip ahead here – otherwise follow along and I’ll share my technique for bringing texture-space AO together with the low-poly AO!
The workflow is simple. Once the AO is baked, trimmed, and padded, take your NDO PSD and open NDO. From the NDO menu → Map Converter. The Map Converter defaults to convert normals to AO.
Combining texture-space AO with low-poly AO allows for additional control over masking in your DDO project.
Before you convert, turn off the visibility for the baked normals layer – it’s almost always at the bottom of your layer stack in Photoshop. Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a similar result to the center image above. Open the master AO PSD. Switch to the NDO occlusion PSD, right-click and duplicate the OCCLUSION folder into the master AO. Set the OCCLUSION folder to Multiply blending. You’ll get the result seen in the rightmost image above. Save the PSD, then save a copy of this PSD as a TGA (or other format) to load into DDO.
I’ve loaded my model into DDO, which is called Tanker.FBX, with the Mesh Group inside called Tanker. DDO sees this in the Mesh Group dropdown. If I had multiple groups, I would load input maps for each group.
You’ll notice immediately that I’m not using a Material ID for this project. This is because the vast majority of the vehicle is a similar material and won’t need detailed IDs. I also tend to prefer working without IDs, so I leave this blank most of the time. Any masks I need will be generated using Polyunwrapper 4 in 3DS Max.
The Curvature input is pulling curvature from the tangent normals. Bake in 3DO is left off here. As mentioned earlier, if you’re working with a model that wasn’t baked high-to-low, keep Bake in 3DO checked for Curvature to combine the low-poly curvature with the curvature of the tangent normals.00030003At this point, I hit Create and 3DO launches. It will generate Position Gradient and Object Space Normals while DDO will use Photoshop to derive the curvature from my baked tangent normals.
Once the project is loaded, I switch back to Max. I’ve kicked out the wheels together with the main body and I’ll load the textures I made for them previously. Once I’ve exported the wheels and main body together, I open 3DO and immediately switch to the Import tab, then select the three dots next to the mesh group name and select the model I’ve exported. I can now switch mesh groups to the wheels and add the exported textures from earlier. I could have loaded the Pre-Baked slots in DDO’s Base Creator if I intended to modify the textures.
You can add mesh groups for previewing after a project is created.
Now that the vehicle is loaded and ready to start, let’s break down the interface so you can follow along easily.
I like to work with materials like they’re real surfaces. Building materials like this makes it easy to understand how to work in PBR with DDO, since I’m emulating reality instead of trying to work around it. I start with the base layer for a given material, then work up from there. I’ll also add paint, then add in damage like rust, dents, grunge, and other assorted details. I’ll also add decals in Photoshop using Smart Objects across texture maps.
This is the beginning of a lot of work yet to come
I’m starting off by creating the base for the vast majority of this vehicle. Tank cars are made of high-strength steel, so I’ll make the base layer from a basic Material. I like using Steel – Dirty for this. By default, I feel that this material is too strong for the look I want, so I’ve adjusted it in several ways. Here’s the values used above:
Albedo Texture Intensity: 10%
Roughness Texture Blend: Overlay, Intensity, 100%
Normal: Texture Intensity: 10%
Texture Scale: -1
This reduces the material’s microsurface detail and brings it in-line with the appearance of my references.
Once this step is complete, I then open DynaMask and set the steel material to be blank. The other material layers I’ll create will be set to Overlay and will pass through their normals to the underlying baked normals. I don’t want the steel material to appear across the entire vehicle just yet – only in places where there’s surface imperfections like scratches or dents. These vehicles have imperfections on them through daily use that this material helps capture – I’ll specify where to apply those details later on. The tiling will become a non-issue because of the selective way I’ll apply the steel textures to this model. My next step is to add a layer of paint – so I’ve opened up the Basic Material browser → Paint → Paint – Thick Machine Paint. This defaults to a yellowish-orange paint color with heavy normals. This needs to be adjusted to match my references:
Albedo: Color Hex #111111. Texture Intensity: 25, Texture Blend: Linear Light Roughness: Value: Hex #3e3e3e, Texture Intensity: 50, Texture Blend: Vivid Light Normal: Texture Intensity: 10, Texture Blend: Linear Light
Texture Scale: -1
Matching references can be tricky. Use your eyes and study closely!
Now that I’ve got a base material, I’ll group these two layers to make it easier to read my project as its complexity increases. This group will be called Base Paint. On the next page, you’ll see an image of the actual tank car in my PureRef scene that I’m sourcing for roughness values and overall look and feel. It’s a bit cleaner than what my end-result will look like.
Good reference is critical to getting a material to look correct.
My eyeballed values for roughness aren’t perfect, but they’re close enough! When I place this in Unreal 4, the Screen-Space Reflections and camera setup I use will make it look almost identical to the references. At this point, I want to start getting some grunge into this vehicle to make it start to pop out and look less factory-fresh. It’s clear from the reference image that these tankers are kept relatively clean, but dirt will always find a way to sneak in on a vehicle in the outdoors. It’s an unavoidable fact of life.
00030003For a grunge base, I’ll use an existing Smart Material by opening the Smart Material browser → 09 Legacy → Heavy Directional Dirt. This needs significant modification to produce a result that will work well with this vehicle – welcome to the DynaMask portion of this tutorial!
Each texture layer combines to form a pre-defined look based on the parameters in the DynaMask for each layer. I’ll need to use each layer’s DynaMask tweak the look. To do this, I’m turning off each layer and then adjusting from the bottom up, turning layers back on as I continue up the layer stack. Holding ALT while doing this will bypass updating 3DO, making the process quick.
One of the first things I do with a new DDO installation is set DynaMask to use Advanced masking options.
By default, DynaMask is limited to a small set of adjustments to make mask editing easy for beginners and advanced users alike. A lot more options for customizing masks will be possible after opening the Advanced settings. If you’re comfortable with having more options available to work with, you’ll need to enable this option – so be sure you do that immediately after opening DynaMask.
There’s a nearly limitless way to combine textures using DynaMask’s advanced editing features. This portion of the tutorial will show how I take Smart Material layers and adjust them to suit the specific look and feel I need for this project. On the following page, I’ll point out the DynaMask menu features for quick reference.
On the left is the standard DynaMask editor. On the right, the Advanced editor. The Advanced editor allows for a wide range of different masking options based on your input maps and model details.
I’ll be adjusting the General Dirt layer by discarding the DynaMask values entirely, demonstrating how I build custom DynaMasks using fully procedural editing. To clear out the mask, I’ve picked Black in the preset browser. This preset completely clears out everything, and no texture details will show through. I’d like to add dirt accumulating from the underside of the vehicle, so I’ll begin by opening up Object Space Direction by clicking the arrow next to the blend mode.
Holding ALT while adjusting most details (including moving sliders) will bypass updating 3DO, just like holding ALT in the main DDO window bypasses 3DO while adjustments are being made.
With the additional controls for OSD opened, I now have access to every aspect of the Object Space mask. Inverting Top/Bottom causes the mask to appear on the bottom of the vehicle, and setting Filter to 75 causes it to spread out closer to the top of the tank car. A little bit of blur keeps the dirt mask from looking completely procedural, and some added contrast gives more depth to the mask for the additional textures and effects I’ll be layering onto it.
Note that I have reimported my model to see the underside more clearly.
The OSN will be used with the Gradient, AO, and Texture inputs to create a convincing dirt mask. The next step is to enable the Ambient Occlusion. By default, it will be set to blend as Multiply. Inverting the AO mask will mask out the majority of the OSN, focusing the details almost entirely on the underside of the vehicle where dirt naturally accumulates. However, since the OSN is still masking this DynaMask, areas that wouldn’t receive heavy dirt (such as the underside of the valve covers on the very top) are now dirty.
AO-based masking is a quick way to produce realistic procedural masks.
I’ll fix this by masking the OSN by the Gradient map, forcing the dirt to accumulate primarily toward the bottom of the vehicle.
Inverting the Top to Bottom slider (to force the mask down) and setting its blend mode to Screen allows it to mix with the OSN mask. Adjusting the Offset to the left forces the mask to focus completely toward the bottom half of the vehicle, and the Balance shifted left helps tighten it up.
00030003I’ve gone back to the OSN mask and changed its blend to Overlay, and set the Top/Bottom mask to blend Overlay as well. This allows it to blend over the Gradient in a way that has the dirt accumulating almost entirely on the lower two-thirds of the vehicle.
Building quality DynaMasks is a step-by-step process, just like all good art.
I’ve now defined where the dirt will appear. The next step is to apply a dirt texture to it. Loading a texture is as simple as clicking the thumbnail. For this I’m using Masking Patterns → Dirt → Dirt 10.
The Texture blend is Overlay. The Albedo mask channel is blending at default opacity. Scale at -1 helps put the texel density into the correct proportion to the size of this vehicle. Brightness at -15 and
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