Did anyone else realize that Quixel's Bump Textures Don't Work With ParallaxOcclusionMapping and BumpOffset?

Development Rendering
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Edit: SOLVED - For some reason, after I updated the Bridge app the issue has been resolved.

I recently realized that the bump textures I download from the Quixel app (desktop version) generate very weird results instead of producing proper bumps.

I checked almost everything that came to mind to eliminate the issue, but at this point, I ran out of solutions.

  • Engine Scalability Settings and Material Quality settings are already set to high. Putting them to ‘Epic’ doesn’t change the results.
  • Adjusting the Quixel bump map in Photoshop to make dark areas darker and bright areas brighter so we would get a ‘pop’ effect. The results do not change. We are still getting weird artifacts and a lot of distortion.
  • Tried using different maps to see if it would change anything: fed AO, Gravity, and Displacement maps into the height input of ParallaxOcclusionMapping and BumpOffset nodes.
  • Changed the downloaded format: Tried JPEG and EXR (Bridge only supports these two options as exporting options for the time being). To be safe, I also saved textures in PNG format in Photoshop.
  • Tried different color channels: Red, green, blue, alpha
  • Started a clean project with no content.
  • Checked-unchecked sRGB, tried different sampling methods, color, linear-color, grayscale, etc. None of them fixes the problem.

At this point, I am quite certain that there may be an issue with Quixel’s textures, as simply swapping their textures out with textures from another source resolves the problem. I was wondering, have any of you faced such an issue before?

Engine Version: 5.3.1
OS: Windows 10

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well… that particular height map looks rather empty. it’s completely grey. means flat. unless it’s using a floating point that isn’t displayed in the texture preview.

and if it is indeed flat it will not yield any displacement. that’s about it what i can see there.

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Hey @glitchered, the map is not empty. It just appears grayish in the preview. I can share the texture IDs with you if you’d like to test it out yourself. In the Bridge app, under the ‘Brick’ category:

  • vl0hdboew (BRICK WALL)
  • xenmabs (CONCRETE FRAMED BRICK WALL)

I tested it out with various brick textures. The result is always incorrectly distorted and twisted bumps. As I stated in my main comment, like you suggested, I also thought that perhaps the bump maps are too gray, which could cause very subpar displacements of the bump. To eliminate that possibility, I adjusted the levels in Photoshop as harshly as possible, but unfortunately, that didn’t solve the problems that I am experiencing with Quixel’s textures either.