Cobblestone

connect the normal input to displacement output. it looks more realistic

render engines makes normal maps look flat and the lightning is barely convincing

>>542529
http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/texturerepetition/texturerepetition.htm

>>542530

So what's my best bet in this case? Everybody else is using Mental Ray in Maya, to give you an idea of competing quality. I wanted to work in Unreal, both because I'm doing it in PBR and Mental Ray can't do PBR, and because I figure UE4 could look as good, if not better.

>>542530
Also worth mentioning that I just picked up Marmoset Toolbag during Black Friday, if it'd be better just to throw everything in there.

>>542531
So are you implying that the flat plane would look fine as long as the tiling is fuzzed? I feel like it looks pretty shit/fake regardless, although that might be more of an issue with the textures themself. I might try fucking around with B2M and make something better.

>>542532
>Mental Ray can't do PBR
mate, raytracing which is what mental ray does is as physically based as it gets

>>542532
almost any render engine can do PBR.
the problem is that the nodes you are used to does not display PBR perfectly out of the box, you need to do some tinkering.

and yes it won't look the same as unreal because unreal have reflection maps and default skydomes to provide the lightning as well as easy composition. all of that can be done in iray or whatever you use

>>542534
I tried and it didn't work, I thought the only way Maya could do PBR was with Stingray PBS, which requires you to use the Hardware Renderer, which can't do mental ray? I tried doing it a while back and it didn't work.

I know absolutely fuck all about rendering, though. This is the first situation where I've had to try delivering high quality renders on something, so I'm pretty uneducated.

>>542534

I'm probably using the incorrect term, I'm referring to using PBR textures (like from Substance/Quixel/etc.)

>>542538
you're referring to realtime hacks. Mental ray and vray are what you call "the most real" and require the longest time. They're what goes into hollywood movies for example with the latest features while unreal tries to hit 120fps for vr

>>542539
So what should I do to deliver the best renders in this case? As long as I can fix the textures being whitewashed, I'm fine. I can provide examples of the assignment and what I've got so far if that'd give a good baseline for where I'm at.

>>542541
>provide examples of the assignment and what I've got so far if that'd give a good baseline for where I'm at.

>>542542

Implying?

It's student work for a class.

>>542543
no implications, just a quote m8

>>542544

For no reason? Sure :^)

Anyway, yeah. Just trying to figure the best way to render everything. I'm not married to Unreal, I'm just doing what I'm doing based on what I've learned/found so far.

>>542545
so are you going to post the assignment and what you have done or not lad

>>542547

I'm in a workshop now, the project/reference material is on my home PC. I can upload everything else in ~3 hours.

Here's some old screenshots that (I think) give a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about with everything being whitewashed: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0FkV7-UVYw9QWRGZ0RweUtDT1k/view

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0FkV7-UVYw9V19Ud3d6bWpOZTA

>>542548
your work is pretty lame and shows a lack of understanding. I would focus on a single building for now instead of like 10 buildings. You need to randomize the textures like in >>542531

>>542549

>your work is pretty lame and shows a lack of understanding

No arguments here, I'm new to enviro design. I've done predominantly character work before this.

>I would focus on a single building for now

The project is to model a city, not a building. We had 3 weeks to model, 2 weeks to unwrap everything, and 3 weeks to texture.

I've learned a shitload doing this, and there's a lot of mistakes along the way, but I have to make do with what I made as I was learning how to do everything.

>>542549
>https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0FkV7-UVYw9V19Ud3d6bWpOZTA

For what it's worth, I accidentally shared the wrong screenshot for one of the alleys. I've since re-unwrapped and re-textured it already.

New SS: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0FkV7-UVYw9UW9SRHl1bTg1NE0

Still not amazing, but a step up from the abortion that I had before.

More: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0FkV7-UVYw9LWE5TWVPdDZnTGM

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0FkV7-UVYw9ZUdubklUNUdsbWc - really old but it gives an idea of the scale

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0FkV7-UVYw9UWYzc1NBeGVaeUk

>>542548
i just looked at the picture and the problem is obvious.

you need displacement. and normal maps can be fine but it appears you are using very lowres normal maps.
you need to use "sets" which is a small parts of that road, then connect them like train trailer

>>542551
well in terms of what renderer to use i guess you could use unreal engine but if you wanted to get ahead you should switch to MODO for modelling and rendering and uving

>>542552

I'll try swapping to displace as soon as I get back.

In terms of resolution, I have a slight theory.

There's something weird happening in terms of model size.

The professor had us specifically set Maya to feet, and as a result, everything is apparently really fucking small unless unreal imports and converts it. As a result, stuff like the ambient occlusion maps come out really skewed, so I haven't imported them.

Maybe something weird's happening with the normals as a result of that, too? The textures are all 2048, so unless something strange is happening in Unreal (I know it says it's doing some sort of conversion with the normals when I pull the maps in), I'm not sure what else the problem could be.

The cobblestone you see right now is all going to be replaced.

>>542553

Is Marmoset viable, too?

File: Original-alley-1.jpg (476KB, 736x981px) Image search: [Google]

476KB, 736x981px

Pic is the concept art we were given for the assignment, I think it's from Assassin's Creed?

Comparison shot: https://gyazo.com/146028f9ece27323953251f9cc77d1cf

I took some screenshots to illustrate my problem.

In Substance:
https://gyazo.com/e2d8b43b90591374ea8f9f08b875f672

In UE4:
https://gyazo.com/57c24264c4f800c2260e48619f96d866

Something about the lighting is completely nuking the contrast/saturation.

>>542573

What does your material setup look like?

>>542573
Try disabling sRGB for your substance materials within UE4?

>>542601

It actually gets lighter when I do that.

The issue appears to be that 16 bit textures get washed out in UE4. Switching to 8-bit and it appears better now. Still not as vibrant as it could be, but not nearly as whitewashed.

Going to convert more textures just to double check, but it seems to be better so far.

>>542599

In reference to what?

I've mostly been dragging in materials from Substance Source and masking them off based on UV sectioning, doing some custom moving when it feels necessary.

I've started adding some basic dirt/moss maps with generators/smart masks over them, as the teacher specifically requested a scene be dirty/not clean looking.

Confirmed.

Before: https://gyazo.com/98fb55f0682d76961fce37190343b787

After: https://gyazo.com/c4b0335b01499a432a4bfb2214eb8d39

Pretty dramatic change IMO

>>542555
if you ask me, i think its either your unwraps are shit or you are using lowres textures.

or your texture mapping might be crap. gotta check all angels.

>2048
2048 don't look like that, some pavements look 512 but probably because of what i mentioned above

>>542631

The unwraps are quite literally just flat planes. There are UV'ing mistakes in the scene, but I guarantee you this isn't it.

I think it's just the sheer size of the mesh and how aggressively the texture is tiled.

Normal texture resolution: https://gyazo.com/c377c69aee0655498d986ae6154a5a42

What it was set to: https://gyazo.com/c1c71b8f9dbeafba7cffab29e0e7fe74

http://imgur.com/a/xV07D

Render of current project status. Some floating shit, some UV mistakes, and some of the texture maps (normals especially) need to be replaced. Gonna learn B2M to replace/polish everything in the leadup to the final.

Is there a way to hook up normal maps as displacement maps in unreal? For a lot of this stuff, that seems like it'd be the way to go.

The scene doesn't have to be game-ready, I just need to render a flythrough, and I have good hardware, so if displacement somehow nukes performance, it's not the end of the world.