I realize that Megascans has a lot of textures, as I have been looking at and downloading them. 
This is a beginner’s question about textures. I’m going to make up a hypothetical. Let’s say you have the base color, normal, and roughness samples for a texture, but you need something else to fit into a landscape material such as displacement. Ok my guess is that Megascans would have all the variety of samples you’d ever need.
But is there a program designed to create textures for use in Unreal from scratch? Or would you end up doing this in something like Photoshop, just create the maps you need and then if they are channel packed construct them in the photo manipulation program your are using?
When I first read about Quixel Mixer, I started working through its manual and it quickly becomes evident the primary purpose is to create completely new textures by mixing other textures together. Does Mixer have the ability to create maps (Base Color, Normal, etc)?
Thanks!
If you watch a tutorial vid, this is called ‘baking’.
1 Like
Hello !
Of course it is possible!
In the end every color texture, roughness, ambient occlusion, etc. It is that, a texture.
Using the color image to know the base of your material (if it is wood, metal, plastic, etc.) and understanding a little what each layer does and more or less what effects it will have on the material, you can do from any program you like a texture.
(Of course, some textures are more complicated to make than others, like the normals, which are a value between 0 and 1 in each color, R G B. That’s why the normals are done automatically with specific programs)
For example I usually create easy roughness maps (It’s not ideal but it works) from just converting the color layer to black and white and using contrast.
Any ways if you’re a begginer with texturing it could be a little complicated to undertand what is happening in a 2D program (like photoshop) for a texture in a 3D model, that’s why the best solution for most people is “Substance Designer”, Substance is a texture program dedicated to 3D models.
You could start there, looking at how it works and understanding a little the logic of working with texture layers.
I hope it helps you!
1 Like
I’ve been looking at a lot of texture samples and for somethings like height map, It looks as simple as making a black and white image and adjusting contrast a little. I did start a Mixer tutorial and the first thing done was mix two different textures together.
For anyone familiar with Mixer, do you get to a point where within the program you select the option to make a Height Map, or a roughness map?
Thanks for Substance Designer, would that now be Adobe Substance 3D Designer? Thanks!
So in Mixer if I start out with an image of some tree bark, and want to create a texture in UE, is there is part of Mixer designed to make a height Map, Roughness Map, AO Map, etc? Thanks