TWahl Posted August 3, 2017 Author Share Posted August 3, 2017 I decided to load in a test material into my old scene just now, however I am noticing a lot of weird image artifacts in my textures that are not present outside the leadwerks editor, is this a known issue? I turned off all mipmaps, made textures dxt5, etc. They are also in uncompressed png format and not dds currently. It looks like there is a bunch of odd squares and like the texture is half the resolution it should be I circled the areas where the artifacts seem to be the most prominent. any input? I have noticed this on other leadwerks textures as well. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macklebee Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 Are your textures a power of 2? meaning something like 1024x1024? if not, then setting them as dxt5 in the LE Texture Editor will force them to a power of 2 which will distort and cause artifacts. To avoid that, save as uncompressed with no mipmaps. What does your normal map look like? did you compress your normal map too? I would strongly suggest against doing that with anything that has a lot of detail. Also, what does your material look like? Post the contents of the material file here for us to see. 1 Quote Win7 64bit / Intel i7-2600 CPU @ 3.9 GHz / 16 GB DDR3 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 LE / 3DWS / BMX / Hexagon macklebee's channel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted August 4, 2017 Author Share Posted August 4, 2017 Yes they are all powers of two. I have not compressed anything, just saved them as pngs and imported them into leadwerks. I will see what happens if I export as a dds instead... I will also post the material as well, when I am back to my computer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einlander Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 1 hour ago, TWahl said: Yes they are all powers of two. I have not compressed anything, just saved them as pngs and imported them into leadwerks. I will see what happens if I export as a dds instead... I will also post the material as well, when I am back to my computer i think he means instead of dxt5, use uncompressed for the texture type. Leadwerks will introduce bad artifacts into your normal map with any type of compression. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macklebee Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 8 hours ago, TWahl said: Yes they are all powers of two. I have not compressed anything, just saved them as pngs and imported them into leadwerks. I will see what happens if I export as a dds instead... I will also post the material as well, when I am back to my computer 6 hours ago, Einlander said: i think he means instead of dxt5, use uncompressed for the texture type. Leadwerks will introduce bad artifacts into your normal map with any type of compression. Yes, that is exactly what I mean. The texture settings in the LE texture Editor is what needs to be adjusted if you expect to see different results in LE. If you set the LE texture (*.tex) to dxt5 or you use mipmaps then it will force them to a power of two if they are not. And you do not have to export them as dds, because that is essentially what a *.tex is in reality. And like I posted before and Einlander repeated, set the compression type in the LE Texture Editor to uncompressed for normal maps. 1 Quote Win7 64bit / Intel i7-2600 CPU @ 3.9 GHz / 16 GB DDR3 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 LE / 3DWS / BMX / Hexagon macklebee's channel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted August 4, 2017 Author Share Posted August 4, 2017 Hmm... I will have to play around with this when I get home from work later this evening. Thanks guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted August 5, 2017 Author Share Posted August 5, 2017 fixed the compression issues; was just a simple matter of changing the settings like you all said, haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted August 9, 2017 Share Posted August 9, 2017 Normal maps should use DXT5n format. This is explained in this lesson:https://www.leadwerks.com/learn?page=Tutorials_Editor_Textures Quote The DXT5n option is a special texture format that uses DXT5 compression, but swaps the blue and alpha channels to provide higher resolutions colors. This method will be automatically used for normal maps, as it avoids artifacts that would be visible with DXT5 compressed normals Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Einlander Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 Still doesn't change the fact that you get artifacts with dxt5n. Random specs here and there and round normals become pixelated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted August 10, 2017 Share Posted August 10, 2017 2 hours ago, Einlander said: Still doesn't change the fact that you get artifacts with dxt5n. Random specs here and there and round normals become pixelated. A bit, but you drop the file size by a huge amount. It's a judgement call. Maybe with modern GPUs this is not such a concern. Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted August 10, 2017 Author Share Posted August 10, 2017 Haven't abandoned this guys just busy with a lot of stuff outside this project. School (college) is also going to start back up in a couple weeks for me so I am going to be making that my first priority. However I will definitely still be able to find time to work on this outside of my school, work, and social obligations albeit with a maybe a bit slower progress. But progress is progress nonetheless. I will be done moving into my new house on campus this weekend so after that I will play a bit of catch up. Thanks again for the loyal followers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted September 12, 2017 Author Share Posted September 12, 2017 Still around guys, just pretty busy still. I actually think it is a good thing that I am taking some time away from this project as it will leave me feeling a lot more refreshed getting back on the grind. After how much work I have sunk into this already it would be stupid to let my project die out, haha. Thanks and have a good day, TWahl Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted September 13, 2017 Share Posted September 13, 2017 It sounds like you have enough content to release a part 1 already. 1 Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted November 25, 2017 Author Share Posted November 25, 2017 Hi guys, Been doing a lot of research on modeling programs lately and I think I will be switching over to Autodesk Fusion 360 when I pick this project back up. I do a lot of CAD/CAM work for my engineering courses in college as well as internships so this will make creating high poly models a lot simpler and give me a lot more freedom with a solid-body, non-destructive modeling process as opposed to subdivision modeling. This will also mean that creating high poly models will take much less time and give me less of a headache creating features and details that can be done swiftly in one or two operations instead of taking tons of time lining up edges and such in order to make them look correct after adding turbosmooth for instance. Fusion 360 has been gaining a lot of popularity in the last few years and I am surprised that I missed it! I read an article about how the doom 4 weapons were created and the artist mentioned that he used the program for the high poly modeling process https://80.lv/articles/building-guns-for-doom/ Another interesting article that might give some idea to the workflow I will use: http://zbrushtuts.com/2016/11/21/hard-surface-zbrush-fusion360/ I have not done any work on this in the last few months but winter break is coming after finals so I intend to get back into this beast. I have not currently purchased fusion 360 yet but in the meantime I am going to spend a little bit of time creating concepts and drawings for environment props and such in my free time which I will use as a guide for modeling. Thanks and have a good one. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdgunn Posted November 25, 2017 Share Posted November 25, 2017 There are some free or good assets and tutorials on Fusion 360 GumRoad E.g. this guy https://gumroad.com/mrdavids1# Think he and others are also on CubeBrush. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdgunn Posted November 25, 2017 Share Posted November 25, 2017 Oh..forgot to say...glad to see the update and hear you're still moving forward 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted November 25, 2017 Author Share Posted November 25, 2017 Thanks! Yeah school has been the main priority for me since the semester started back in late august. I actually have a gumroad account @mdgunn so I will check those tutorials out. I will probably be downloading the free trial for F360 onto my laptop to get a feel for the software and how it works. MOI3d I have also heard of but I like sticking with autodesk products as they seem to have the most solid support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted December 18, 2017 Author Share Posted December 18, 2017 Did a little experiment today and successfully baked a solidworks model onto a plane (took me little to no time to make this funky triangular widget). I likely will not be using solidworks for any of this at all, however I just did this to see what would actually happen. Surprisingly the bakes came out great (the images are a little fuzzy because of the watermarking software I used). I baked these at 512x1024 in Xnormal without a lot of anti aliasing but I was more concerned mainly with looking for any glaring baking artifacts after importing/exporting solidworks .prt files. Screencaps from the solidworks window: The final bakes after re-exporting the .prt file (at the highest possible resolution) to a triangulated .obj. The model file was around a million triangles or so:. I am thinking about remodeling most of these textures and rebaking them all to be a higher resolution, to then be put into substance painter in the future (nice 4k maps with PBR as well as legacy normal/gloss compatibility). 4K to me gives a lot more room for detail than 1k and I will use my previous maps I made as guides for remodeling (should not take too long once things get going). This process can be used on game objects as well as textures (high to low poly retopology). On another note, finals just ended for the semester so I am on winter break now at uni! So glad to have that over with... Can't wait to get my hands on Fusion 360 in the future as the process is similar to solidworks although it is a lot more flexible and less clunky (in the case of creating hard surface models, not engineering parts or drawings). have a good one! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted December 18, 2017 Author Share Posted December 18, 2017 In this case I checked the box under the baking options in Xnormal to render out a displacement map from the high and low poly models I sent into the program. Same for the normal maps and stuff. It then renders it for me while I wait. Xnormal has options to bake other maps too like bent normal maps, curvature maps, convexity maps, even derivative maps as well but 90% of the time they are of no use for most applications. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted December 18, 2017 Author Share Posted December 18, 2017 Also xnormal is freeware. You can download it online - it is widely used by many talented cg artists Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 Would it be better if I started a community blog for this project? Or should I keep it here? Been Thinkin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted December 19, 2017 Author Share Posted December 19, 2017 Fooled around a bit more and actually made something Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted May 9, 2018 Author Share Posted May 9, 2018 Quite a bit going on in my life atm, so I have not been at this project in a long time. I currently still do not have enough saved up to buy a new computer to start pushing better graphical work (might not be that way for a while). My current setup at this time is a Dell laptop with an integrated chipset (intel graphics 4400 - not exactly a good gpu). Leadwerks does not really like to run on it... Hopefully I can get a new rig so I can get back to what I love doing! I will also be starting summer classes soon (will be finishing up university with a mechanical engineering degree in May 2019). Finished my final exams for the spring semester a week ago after tons of studying and a few gut wrenching all nighters - I went to the bars in my college town for a few straight days after to unwind a bit though . School comes first before anything else. In the meantime I have been doing a lot of research on PBR materials, texture creation techniques, color theory, and more. I have also been watching the LE5 updates closely, mainly I am waiting to see what the graphical capabilities will be in the new version of the engine (I am aiming to create some very realistic game environments). I really like where the engine is going and I hope it is going to be a game-changer for LE Hope all is going well with everyone! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted May 9, 2018 Share Posted May 9, 2018 I think Leadwerks 5 will actually run a lot better on lower spec machines, just because it is so ridiculously fast. 1 Quote My job is to make tools you love, with the features you want, and performance you can't live without. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TWahl Posted May 12, 2018 Author Share Posted May 12, 2018 That will definitely be a plus, yes. But the main reason why I will need a better PC is the be able to run programs like substance, zbrush with many subdivisions, etc. That will allow me to produce much better and finer content in quite literally half the time (and with half the hassle!) The new LE5 renderer is looking good so far though Josh! Right now seems like a good time to wait to buy PC parts as well, since hardware seems to be fluctuating in price quite a bit at this time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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