How are people creating good maps for the roughness channel?
So far I’ve just been inverting specular generated in crazy bump. I imagine that’s a dumb way to do it. I’ve looked at substance painter/designer a little but the viability of the plugin(s) has confused me a little. On their forum in the stickied “How to use the plugin…” thread it reads like the plugin breaks whenever Epic update UE. Is that really the case or have I misunderstood? I don’t want to drop money on something unless I know it’s a solid solution.
Just want to clarify as I think maybe that got a little lost in translation. I wasn’t saying that their tools are useless. I know they’re widely used and highly regarded. I’m confused about the UE plugin and whether or not it breaks with engine updates and hotfixes. I was hoping someone who uses designer could clear that up for me.
The plugin used to require a recompile of the engine but it’s not the case anymore, it’s a simple folder you add to your plugin folder so it should be much more manageable and risk free.
I am actually curious about something. Whats the specular input for? I mean roughness is a grey scale and usually, i would assume, handles blurryness and strength of the reflection. So what is the specular input actually for? I only ask because quixel suite created a roughness map for me but it is colored. So I have no idea why I would need color info in a roughness map.
“It is value between 0 and 1 and is used to scale the current amount of specularity on non-metallic surfaces. It has no effect on metals.”
.unrealengine/latest/INT/Resources/ContentExamples/MaterialNodes/1_3/index.html
Roughness is not inverted specular, it just the old way to make your pre-PBR work at least somehow.
Roughness is exactly what it says: level of roughness/smoothness of the surface. Rough surface tend to scatter light rays in ~random directions what gives blurry(diffuse) reflection to observer. ~Perfectly smooth surface(like mirror) gives you “specular” sharp reflection.
When you create your roughness map you should think about type of material surface you’re currently working with. Yellow plastic could be polished(low roughness), then scratched(medium roughness), covered with dirty fingerprints(high roughness) and so on. Think physically about your material, it’s not just set of flat textures anymore(Well, conceptually :p).
