Hi,
This is perhaps a thick question but I’m having trouble understanding how to use Quixel texture sets in UE4. There’s no metallic map?
I knew that it was wrong but I’ve tried just plugging gloss and specular in to the metallic slot but that gives ugly results. Should I just be ignoring metallic if using Quixel scans or am I missing something?
Thanks.
You can’t use those textures as-is, the UE4 material uses roughness/metallic whereas that’s for specular/glossiness type material. More info here: PBR Texture Conversion | Marmoset
Thanks. 
Just thought of a second question. Don’t know if Epic have mentioned it at all. But now they own, or have merged, with Quixel do they plan for future scans to include RM workflow maps?
Hadn’t noticed that yet, but I’ve been sticking to mostly natural textures/props from Quixel.
Converting specular to metalness isn’t too much work, Marmoset has a good guide PBR Texture Conversion | Marmoset
Metal in unreal is usually a 0 or 1 (on or off) option… wouldn’t it be better off (performance wise too) to simply map the different areas to different materials?
I believe there is something wrong with quixel/bridge/megascans I can’t get any kind of useful metal or specular map out of it no matter my settings and Megascans does officially support metalness workflow. The metal textures/channel I can export is always completely white and the specular RGB is always some kind of dark grey that looks pretty much the same for metals and other materials which can’t be correct either.
That sounds probably intentional and correct, give us the name of one of these textures with incorrect metal/specular textures?
If that specular is correct for a rusted metal texture then I don’t understand how that works at all and notice how different the preview to the left looks to the PBR 3D on the top right, something has to be wrong here. This behavior is the same for every metal texture I’ve tried. I’ve reported that issue through the bridge app now as well.
I don’t think there’s a way to scan actually metallic materials (think about chrome or shinier metals) - they will always have visible reflections. So all the scanned metals on the megascans have a metallic of 0, hence the dark grey specular (same as for any other materials). If you want that black plate to be metallic, I think you have to go in Mixer or Substance and make some masks, fill in those areas with metallic value of 1.
Painted metal is not metallic. Rusted metal is not metallic. Quixel is correct, that material is not and should not be metallic.
The only difference between the preview images is the lighting.
But that material is only rusted in parts there is still metal showing through.
Another example, this chisel tool is part wood and part metal:
In this case, they shouldn’t claim that specular/metallic workflows are supported and especially I shouldn’t be able to select the metal map as an export option when it’s always filled with garbage. But I’m still convinced that it looks like there is correct metal/specular in those preview images, so I’m assuming that there is a bug somewhere on Quixels back end.
Well technically they are supported, just that all of those scanned assets are not metallic, the chisel is oxidized, plated metal is rusted, etc. Always black metallic map or dark grey specular.
Take a look at “Elevator Double Door” - there’s some white in the metallic map there, so it works.
The “Elevator Double Door” is one where you can download a metal texture (the only other one I’ve found so far is “Locker Door”) and I’ve hold old used chisels just like that one in my own hands, those parts should absolutely be metallic.
Depends on how old the chisel is, there’s plenty of old tools that I’ve seen that are oxidized to the point there’s no raw metal except where there’s fresh wear/scrapes.
Just to make another example “Japanese Chest Drawers” texture:
Yet your image shows clearly metal reflections at the front part.
Again, the metal on that drawer is oxidized to the point the material is no longer metallic. Only the tip on that chisel I posted is metallic because it was recently used and had the outer most oxidized layer scraped off.
So it’s oxidized but has these roughness values?
Edit: Actually you could be correct there, I mixed gloss and roughness up in this case. But still, I think something is wrong with a lot of these textures.
Does someone know what Quixel texture you should use to prepare something like a Quixel ORM texture? I ask because I use a master material, based on ORM, and maybe there is a simple trick to get a ORM Quixel equivalent? Also using Shadermap for texture edits.
You can set any kind of channel packing you want in Bridge, just set channel packing in your export settings and set the appropriate maps to your textures RGB channels.
I’ve now also figured out that Quixel correctly exports a metal value of zero if I pack it into the red, green or blue channel but for the alpha channel it kind of bugs out and exports nothing which effectively results in a value of one instead of zero for the alpha channel, but that’s a bug I can report now.
