Diffuse/Roughness/Metalic Values and you.

[fredaven]

Figured I'll get a disscussion going (hopefully, unless people are to precious about their stuff) about color values for materials and what you've found working.

 

I dont know how many of you that are using substance painter but since its DE's prefered tool of choice I'll use that as measure system.

Exposed metal: 

M: 0.9-1
R: 0.2-0.3
D:0.7-0.9

Painted metal (the industiral sort):


M: 0
R: 0.3-0.4
D:0.3-0.4


Rubber:

M:0
R: 0.6
D: 0.4

The tennogen tool shoul not be used as a represenation of how it looks in-game as I understand it, the substance painter shader is a lot more appropiate. I am unlcear wheter how accurate that one is though.

The big question I'm still struggling with is the diffuse values. If you look at DE's diffuse maps they are ususally in the 0.4-0.6 value range, however it seems to me that the colors popp a lot more if you set your diffuse to 0-0.3



 

[Syncrasis]

I haven't been using Substance Painter yet for my maps but I've found that an un-edited AO map and a curvature map with the blacks lightened a bit on top of that AO set to multiply give the appropriate starter values for my diffuse. That value comes to around a 50% grey. If you go too much lighter, you end up with wash-out when the lighting is applied, and the shading looks flatter overall. Lighter values also reduce the contrast for the edge highlights. 

Just my personal observations. Seems like you could get away with some gradient fades to lighter colors on edges of things though. 

[alexmach1]

With Warframe's stylishness and graphics(and me only having Tennogen and Photoshop as tools), I moved away from the strict PBR workflow and went with what I observe from the example textures, such as Chroma(for metal reference) and Frost(for non-metals). Another thing to keep in mind is that PBR demands specific diffuse values for specific materials, while Warframe allows players to choose their own values. Rather than aiming for physical accuracy, I feel that one should aim for the best compatibility.

Interestingly, neither Frost nor Chroma use the "spec map is metal map", instead having a black diffuse/white specular value for metallic materials, with values from about 0.85 to 1 being the intensity of the metal. This also gives me some breathing room on the diffuse; since metals use dark diffuse values, I can use a cavity/edge map in the diffuse to make edges pop out a lot more than when using the metal map method, where the diffuse values have to be near-white. Since the Evolution Engine's ambient occlusion is low-res and often disabled for players with lower-end computers, I lightly multiply my AO bake into the diffuse and specular.

[fredaven]

@Syncrasis  That's a good tip, unfortunatley different software bakes AO slightly different i've noticed. You got a good point with the wash-out though. Might need to lower my values for the diffuse to prevent that.

@alexmach1
Kudos to you for doing it old school in photoshop. I think the spec workflow boat have saild for me now, my entire workflow is setup around metal/roughness so I'll just make it work .

that being said I dont think the metallness workflow is hindering doing the same with the cavity/edge map overlayed, that's how I got my files set up infact, a curvature/AO/concavity map overlayed all the textures, set to various opacities and blend modes.


I think that DE should just supply base materials to the tennogen, it would guarantee a certain material look (atleast the base of it, so base rubber, base metal etc.). Atleast untill there's a tool that gives us a 100% view of how it actually does look.