Quixel SUITE 2.0 Profile and Guide

[Juraj]

Awesome !!

I remember I couldn't get rid of the rotation or (even properly scale stuff) when I did this with Grant Warwick's shaderball, seems to be hardcoded in 3dsMax.

[dubcat]

It looked kinda weird at first. I used the "Measure" in "Utilities" and scaled the ball to 100cm and rotated it 45 degree in front camera. This is my new material ball :D thanks for the tip ;)

[maru]

Cool stuff Dubcat! You are doing a lot of good by sharing your tests/ideas with the community. I hope you will get the karma you deserve. ;)

Just a small tip: when you are showing comparisons, I think it is better to upload just separate images instead of stitching them together. It is great to be able to open them in different tabs in browser and switch between them to see the differences instantly.

[dubcat]

upload just separate images instead of stitching them together.

Don't know why I keep doing that :p I have updated some of the posts with split images.

[Juraj]

New update came, with Octane(sRGB) calibration. I wonder how much octane mat system differs from Corona and if they got it right.

Also new smart materials. Need to install this before Christmass and do some conversion eventually, so many cool scratch and dirt textures.

Their update tempo is brutal.

[dubcat]

Looks like the only difference between "Octane (sRGB)" and "V-Ray (sRGB)" is that "Octane (sRGB)" export Bump/Normal as normal map.
The default Blender and Arnold profiles export a map named Refl_At_Nrm. The exporter is taking data from the "Specular" map, grayscale it, add 2.2 gamma and add an alpha. I have no idea what this map is, anyone got info on this map?

The update speed and customer support on their QuixelLiveSupport group is crazy!

EDIT: This is how the Refl_At_Nrm map looks like. Both RGB and Alpha are identical.



We can import maps straight into dDo and it will highpass them. Giving us the ability to change the Reflection Color without doing any work our self. We can then save these maps as a dDO material. I've been importing old maps from my material library, some of them have like 2+ IOR, some are using Reflection Color to reduce the reflection. The funny thing is that I can replicate these crazy unrealistic materials with the PBR shader, the only thing I have to do is change the IOR to 1.5, add a "Color Correction" map to the Diffuse and tweak the "Gain" and "Gamma / Contrast" sliders. And by removing the "Reflection Color" map.

I need to play around with the grazing angle falloff later and see if that will give me better results.

Old material: IOR 2, Reflection Color Map
New: Removed Reflection Color Map, 1.5 IOR and Color Correction with Gain 74.6 Gamma 1.25 in Diffuse.

I pushed the grazing angle falloff to the max like this



We get almost identical result only by using glossiness.





I need to test this on some more materials, if it seems to be consistent I will add it to the guide.

[maxpyane_2k5]

Hello dubcat are you going to update any new workflow for quixel and corona?

[dubcat]

Hey man, my workflow hasn't really changed that much.
I export each material mask separately, sometimes the exported "blendmask" map ain't enough.



I've updated the exporter

Changelog:
- Added SetAOExport(false)
- Project will start with "AlbedoM" and "Roughness"
- "AlbedoM" and "Roughness" will export as "MetalColor_backup" and "Glossiness_backup"

Sometimes the ddo materials are really inconsistent:
- Glossiness is black, but Roughness is proper.
- Specular is black, but AlbedoM is proper.
The project will now load with "AlbedoM" and "Roughness", they will be converter properly at export and named "_backup".

[maxpyane_2k5]

Thank you so much dubcat, really appreciate you work towards this community. what about multi layer material instead of blend mask?

[dubcat]

I prefer the multi layer approach over the "everything in one bitmap + blend mask" approach.
Here's a quick little overview of my workflow.

I'll be using "Dirty Scratched Painted Steel" in this example.
I didn't adjust anything, so the texture scaling looks like shit.



When you are done creating your material in dDO, save your project. Because you can't CTRL + Z these operations.
Export each material mask.



Clear all the material masks.



Export each material separately, work your way down by disabling the material above.



I keep the materials organized in separate folders and number them with the blend order.



Then it's Corona time.

01 Steel Base




02 Paint




03 Muddy Dirt - This one could use some SSS




04 Dirt




When all the materials are ready, I blend them using the masks we exported earlier.



Ta da!

[maxpyane_2k5]

wow thank you so much, this is very helpful for more complex material. :)

[Aniki]

hi,

anyone can share his material library like this post (it's for vray)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/QuixelToolsGroup/search/?query=vray+material+thanu+lee

but for corona ?     with metal, plastic, etc....
.
thanks

[moadr]

So, first and foremost: thank you Dubcat for the great explanation and tutorial.

I started to play around with Quixel in general and wanted to check out their smart materials, how they work, how you can tweak them and how you can import them to 3ds max.
I am using the corona exporter preset, that you have created. One quick question - what is the suggested output to get the best result with it? 8bit JPGs should work fine for all the different maps? (also keeping in mind, that I would like to use these materials in complex scenes, so I guess 32bit TIF is not the way to go :) )

[dubcat]

Hey man

I usually use
8/16 bit RGB       for Color Maps and Normals
8 bit Grayscale   for Gossiness
32 bit Grayscale for Displacement

(When your displacement is 32bit, the number you put into your Displacement modifier acts as a multiplier. If the value in the displacement is 10 and you use 1cm, you get 10cm height. If the value is -26 and you use 1cm, you will get -26cm height. 1:1 representation, for those who didn't know)

[moadr]

Hey man

I usually use
8/16 bit RGB       for Color Maps and Normals
8 bit Grayscale   for Gossiness
32 bit Grayscale for Displacement

(When your displacement is 32bit, the number you put into your Displacement modifier acts as a multiplier. If the value in the displacement is 10 and you use 1cm, you get 10cm height. If the value is -26 and you use 1cm, you will get -26cm height. 1:1 representation, for those who didn't know)

Perfect, thank you very much for the heads up!
I am working on the expansion of our Siger library at the office. Getting prepared for the final release of Corona 1.5 ;)