I’ve played a lot with the new standard shader these last few days and thought it would be nice to gather all the feedbacks in order to improve it.
Secondary map UV set can’t be used: first issue I’d like to address, the secondary map UV set is limited to first and second UV channel but, if your mesh is static, the lightmap is already using channel 2 meaning you can’t use it to match your needs on static meshes.
I don’t understand why this feature is limited to two channels and hope unity team can allow us to use more.
Also, it would be very useful if this “channel+tilling+offset” was available for every individual map instead of two groups. it may not look like it but it was very useful on the old shaders.
Still, I like the idea of a master tilling+offset factor so keep it.
Occlusion map is weak: I made an occlusion map with decent strong (black) shadows on it but is it barely visible when I use it on my material: it’s just a light grey as you can see on the left part of this picture. I needed to ad it manually to my diffuse and specular map in order to obtain the result I was aiming for while this was the result expected with a simple occlusion.
Saturated light source in reflections: I tried to make a glass material but if I make it less “mirrory” using an alpha value to set up more transparency, I lose the sun reflection while such a powerful light source should stay white instead of transparent grey like you can see on this picture.
1.) I kinda agree, but I don’t think it’s strictly necessary though.
2.) It’s sort of by design. Basically, the idea is that ambient occlusion, conceptually, occludes ambient light - NOT DIRECT LIGHT. That said, there’s some situations it can’t express - like really deep crevices which should almost always be in shadows. So I suppose shallow small-scale AO should go in this AO map, but deep crevices and such could go in diffuse+specular in order to look better.
3.) Your glass looks… off. What’s the metalness set to? It looks way too metallic.
Regarding the occlusion map - in PBR the occlusion map is more of a cavity map. It should be subtle. It cancels ambient light, specular, and reflections in the occluded areas. Try increasing the intensity of the normal map, adding more geometry, or try using a height map to enable parallax mapping?
In a pbr workflow you should not multiply AO into your specularity. Especially not the specularity map, that doesn’t make any sense. Specular has a completely different purpose in PBR. You should use a PBR scan reference (quixel / DDO) or a specular value chart (marmoset, dontnod, UE4 docs). Specularity in PBR should never be eyeballed, should always start from a reference.
left is barrel without AO, right has very subtle AO
Thanks for the metallic references, that’s always useful.
Well, that’s my point, I expected it to do that but it doesn’t which is why I have to add it manualy on my diffuse and spec map.
Paralax mapping doesn’t make shadows and adding geometry would be a nonsense since the whole point of the textures is to keep it simple.
I made some experiment.
First picture is my reference: diffuse+spec+occlusion+normal. Diffuse and spec have both been completed with occlusion using photoshop. Second is what I obtain if I do not modify the textures. Third is the result of the custom occlusion map you can see on the right side. The last one is the same material with occlusion map only. (similar spec and smoothness values have been used).
What we can see is that the occlusion map has only an influence on the environment reflections but doesn’t affect specular or even diffuse meaning deep crevices need to be darkened on the concerned textures.
You may want to read up on PBR. In particular that link on the marmoset page I posted earlier. I think you’re confused about how Specularity and Gloss work with the standard shader…
Specularity defines what the material represents. Wood is wood. You shouldn’t have much specular variation (if any) in this texture. Dielectric (non metal) materials mostly fall within a very small range of specularity, very low values. It doesn’t make any sense to mix AO into the specularity. You could in fact use a solid specular color value for this entire texture.
Dielectric / non metal = dark specular, color albedo
Metals = bright specular (bright gray / white), dark albedo
You put gloss into the alpha channel of your specularity texture, that is where the noise goes. Gloss is one of the most important textures for the standard shader to look good. I would add some of your AO into the gloss map instead of the specularity.
In my opinion whats missing here is the gloss map in the alpha channel of your specularity, it would make it look much more realistic. Personally though the wood in the 1st and 3rd images looks burned or something; it looks really dark. I think the second image looks the best and would look great with a gloss map.
I guess if you are going for a stylized or particular look then you can do it however you want. But, the main benefit of PBR is that your materials should look realistic in all lighting conditions. You may think the wood looks better in this lighting with the AO multiplied in, but test it out in a bunch of different lighting conditions and it might not maintain the look you achieved here.
I agree with you but I may have forgot some precisions.
I have to use a specular variation because this is a pretty old floor with plank not matching perfectly. I use the shadow map as a cheat because it shouldn’t shine in the cracks between the planks while it does on the wood. Note that I made this texture before I could work on PBR.
There is a gloss texture on my material: without it it would be extremely glossy. It isn’t obvious because of the camera angle: from up top the occlusion would have been invisible.
I used this example in order to show the effects of the occlusion map. Now, to get back to the issue I have on my bas relief, since they aren’t shiny, the occlusion map has no notable effect while some areas need to be darker.
also, being able to blur the see through part like polished glass would be great.
