Substance compare

[SpiderMack]

Hi,

My game project is not relying on realistic materials or scene, but i wanted to see how physically based rendering models looks in Skyline.

I exported a model from susbtance to see how it looks in Skyline,some parts of the model does not look metallic enought compared to Substance.
(how to resize images in forum, click to zoom ?)




I had to push metallic slider to the max and i got better results , more similar to substance.



Is that normal ? Or should Skyline have bigger slider max value ?

But there is different material look for reflective parts, that looks too white in Skyline


I can upload later the 3D model and textures if needed.


That's it about Physicall based rendering, i don't need it to be accurate, but i wanted to show some compare with Substance that is a standard using GGX.

[SolarPortal]

yes, the metallic property pushed to the top of the slider is metallic, in between is just balancing and at the bottom of the slider it is not metallic but a dielectric material.

Skyline has 2 modes for PBR, a specular workflow and a metallic workflow. To better match other rendering outputs, metallic workflow is used since that is the default of most software.

I believe your confusion came from selecting metallic from the drop down and metallic slider as a property. The drop down is a workflow where metallic workflow uses the albedo texture to take the metallic colours from and the metallic channel then supports a single monochrome texture to dictate what is metallic(white) and what is not metallic(black).

Specular workflow can look the same but does not have the metallic slider, instead it uses the fresnel slider to do the same thing and uses an RGB texture to dictate what colour is reflected from the surface.

But still it looks very good once the metallic slider is pushed to the top

As for the white look, it could simply be down to lighting angles, specular reflectance colours or brightness or even the cubemap that is applied to render the reflection with.

It would be good to have a copy of that model please, so we can test with it and get it as close as possible to the original look of the mesh.

[StarFire]

Yes I think SP hit the nail on the head as the reflection texture can make a huge difference to the surface in terms of colour and reflectance. You can see this in the shoulder pad , there are clouds and a blue sky where as our default ibl image in more gray hence the whiter image.
What you can do in SGE is override the scene ibl image by providing the material with its own cubemap in the reflection option. So if you have access to the substance environment reflection image and try this in Skyline.
Looks very close though, nice

[SpiderMack]

Yes I think SP hit the nail on the head as the reflection texture can make a huge difference to the surface in terms of colour and reflectance. You can see this in the shoulder pad , there are clouds and a blue sky where as our default ibl image in more gray hence the whiter image.
What you can do in SGE is override the scene ibl image by providing the material with its own cubemap in the reflection option. So if you have access to the substance environment reflection image and try this in Skyline.
Looks very close though, nice

You are right, i changed the background in Substance Painter and the model gets white colors.


These background are a specific Substance format, not an image format.
I will try changing the IBL skyline image with a darker background and see how it looks.

Yes Skyline physic based rendering loogs good


Something to consider for future releases would be some option to use Light Probes system capturing the game environment aside along with the actual IBL where you choose some image.

[SpiderMack]

Whatever i change Skyline background, some parts stay very white, while changing background in Substance reflects better the background color instead of full white.

(I think there is some shader to tweak when surface parts are very reflective to avoid the white coloring not taking account about the IBL coloring).



If you want to try the model, you can download the file in substance share , you only need to register :
https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q%5Bname_or_tags_name_or_description_cont%5D=cymourai&button=

And you can download Substance Painter 30 days trial version to help getting good results.
https://www.allegorithmic.com/buy/download

[SolarPortal]

Thanks for that info and mesh.

You can change the IBL image by dragging a cubemap to this icon on the render panel as changing skybox is not enough:

Clipboard Image.jpg (14.46 KiB) Viewed 21173 times

This will then take effect through all materials that use the default.

Edit: As for the light probes, we have the use of VPL's or Irradiance volumes for dynamic radiosity, but these are still in work.
However we do have the starting basis for reflection probes (aka paralax corrected cubemaps) which are available in the latest versions of gen2. However, they are still WIP and cant have any more than 4 at once. So yeah, these features are planned It will probably be after release though

[SpiderMack]

I tahught changing the skybox would automatically change the IBL image

After some tests, changing the IBL image, indeed there is a different result, it looks good (but some shader polish to make it some more accurate would be welcome).



Actually Skyline is doing great about physically based rendering, i don't think devs must spend more time in it (perhaps later).

[SpiderMack]

Something important is to not forget to change directionnal light color and intensity to match the Skybox and IBL image.

This makes a huge change in reflections.

[SolarPortal]

yes, good finds..

Changing the directional light colour to match the scene atmosphere is a must to get correct rendering.
Also dont forget to edit your fog colours and scene lighting. There is a very quick panel in Gen2 now:

Clipboard Image.jpg (43.43 KiB) Viewed 21160 times

Also, if you are in a nighttime scene but still using a directional light, then you may also need to adjust the Sunlight power property of the render panel which is in lux.

Clipboard Image (1).jpg (25.82 KiB) Viewed 21160 times

97 is roughly extremely bright day. 45 is like evening etc...

After some tests, changing the IBL image, indeed there is a different result, it looks good (but some shader polish to make it some more accurate would be welcome).

Those reflections look a bit strange. was this a cubemap image?

Actually Skyline is doing great about physically based rendering, i don't think devs must spend more time in it (perhaps later).

That, i am really pleased to hear about

[SpiderMack]

yes, good finds..

Changing the directional light colour to match the scene atmosphere is a must to get correct rendering.
Also dont forget to edit your fog colours and scene lighting. There is a very quick panel in Gen2 now:

Clipboard Image.jpg

Also, if you are in a nighttime scene but still using a directional light, then you may also need to adjust the Sunlight power property of the render panel which is in lux.

Clipboard Image (1).jpg

97 is roughly extremely bright day. 45 is like evening etc...

After some tests, changing the IBL image, indeed there is a different result, it looks good (but some shader polish to make it some more accurate would be welcome).

Those reflections look a bit strange. was this a cubemap image?

Actually Skyline is doing great about physically based rendering, i don't think devs must spend more time in it (perhaps later).

That, i am really pleased to hear about

I used a simple image for one skybox side for IBL image i picked up from ressources window, how to choose a full skybox ?

what is scene lighting ? A directionnal light or some lighting general parameter ?
Is there not too much lighting parameters ?
I mean :
1) IBL image and sliders
2) scene lighting
3) directionnal level light
4) sunlight power
It's becoming complicated and spread in many places

Why not simplify that , and put all these lighting options in a same "Lighting" panel ?
Or simplify that ? I don't know why scene lighting is needed or sunlight power if users want to use a directionnal light only ?

I discovered real time lighting and clouds, it's an amazing system
(Only wind for vegetation is missing or rain effect for future releases)

[SolarPortal]

lol

The render panel lighting is for those that want the full PBR control and correct lighting controls in lux, very confusing for most users but handy to control all lights in the scene at once.

For example changing the light power level when there are 100 point lights all with different brightness properties in their main entities will adjust them as a whole, whereas adjusting the slider in the light property of the entity will adjust only the 1 light. Imagine it like a master mixing slider for audio. the render panel is like the master lighting controls over the brightness etc...

IBL image is a 6 sided image as a DDS. For examples, take a look in "Asset Library/Textures/Cubemaps", then drag one of these onto the ibl image docket.

The lighting panel, was just another workflow in case a user wanted to adjust a scenes lighting from dark to daylight as adjusting ambience, lighting and fog controls can take a bit of work whereas 1 slider does the lot

Hope this helps and makes sense

[lordalmighty1]

I was sure there is snow and rain effects in gen1 somewhere. though I haven't used it in quite sometime now sadly. sorry I cant be more help. 1 of the others might be better informed lol.. its somewhere in the particles menu right mouse button and select particles and somewhere in there listing is rain and snow I think.

[SolarPortal]

you were right la1, but we changed the RMB menu to be simpler:
you can now get these from :

Clipboard Image.jpg (53.19 KiB) Viewed 21150 times

Bottom row has rain, snow... and move... they just dont move with the player yet.. so that will need scripted.