MSFS PBR Textures Workflow Explained Video
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Thread: MSFS PBR Textures Workflow Explained Video

  1. #1

    MSFS PBR Textures Workflow Explained Video

    I've poured through so many forums looking for a good explanation of PBR, but I'm no further ahead than day one of MSFS. New words, new concepts, colour/light science I know little about. It is somewhat helpful telling me about it or reading the words, but my brain needs to see it being demonstrated, and it's a popular predicament out there apparently. I found three videos hiding in the ocean that is Youtube, (with all it's unholy advertising), I hope you find them helpful too, if you're like me. Confused, but looking for answers.

    Video 1: Staying Organized in Photoshop

    Video 2: Editing Composite Materials

    Video 3: Metal Effects In Photoshop


    (You can move me Tom, I thought it would be best to come here first? Cheers) - Doug


  2. #2
    I run the help desk and we get asked painting and how to paint for the new sim enough for me to have this on standby . This is purely a MSFS run down. There are different implementations of PBR across the internet which is why the OP was possibly having trouble finding info. So as much as I know DCS/xplane does it a different way, not helpful for a rundown on MSFS.

    Might come in handy for someone who has watched the videos and then thought I'd love to see it in action in MSFS. And ASOBO have done everyone a solid and actually let you do that. Most of it is in the SDK but it might come in handy in a different form.

    It's a bit long and I dont normally receive acknowledgement from the recipient that they even got it let alone understood it but it is there to save me time when the same question comes up. YMMV

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    Purely from a MSFS only point of view ( as unfortunately there are 3 major different types of PBR ) MSFS is using the metal rough workflow. To see this in action in the game

    - Turn on developer mode in the options.
    - Load up your favourite plane at the airport of your choice. If you are focussing on the plane a small airport.
    - In the dev toolbar at the top under options, 3rd from the bottom is pbr channel.
    - Turn them on one at a time to see what effect it has and what it is controlling to give you the end result.
    - To go back click disabled which will render all channels together and give you your PBR compiled back.

    In this submenu the ones we are mainly worried about as aircraft addon devs ( scenery may differ ) are .

    1. Albedo (srgb ) this is sometimes referred to as base colour ( without the u for americans :P ) or diffuse channel.
    This channel only holds colour info so no shading no metal roughness or anything. It is like basically saying this is red so paint it red. or asking a young 3 year old to paint a red car. They arent going to be worried about shading scratches and gloss etc.

    2. Metal this is sometimes referred to as metalness . NOTE it is not the same as the other PBR type glossiness which can be made to work but shenanigans are required to convert. In this case the whiter the channel the more metal it is. Check out some glass some devs use a tickle of metal some dont.

    3. Roughness NOTE it is not the same as the other PBR type called specular. Yes you can convert but shenanigans are required to convert. generally the lighter the channel the more rough it is and the darker the channel the more glossy it is. again check out some glass and or chrome to check it out.

    4. NDOTL . I have no idea what it means, but it is the normal channel. The purpleish looking map. This is not a bump/height/displacement channel. often referred to as one. The easiest way to check is the colour of the map. If it is black/white it is a bump/height/displacement map and not ( yet ) used in MSFS if it is a blue/purple map it is a normal map and is used. Basically it is giving the detail like perforations on leather or carbon fibre, scratches in paint to the metal underneath etc. Not normally used for big detail.

    5. AO (SRGB ) this is ambient occlusion or occlusion. It basically is the shadowing. It darkens things in holes and lightens things that are lit... To see it in real life look around the room you are in right now during the day with no lights on. Note the corners of the room and where the wall meets the floor. That darkened area or the small shadows under a picture on the wall is ambient occlusion. Devs use this to "sit you in the plane " the sim uses it to bolster it's own shadows. FSX didnt have this which is why it was often faked in the texture. P3d V4.5 introduced it and MSFS has a very good implementation of it.

    From a painters point of view all of these channels would need to be done if starting from scratch if the paintkit has these channels already done for you and you can slide your decals /changes in then you really only need to worry about the albedo channel. We put the suffix _alb on ours. We are lazy . eg. left_wing_alb.dds. If there is an alpha channel that is the same as it was in FSX and used for opacity. You need the dev to have output the model with that functionality in mind so if you are trying the trick of making something invisible to hide it in sim the dev would have to output the model with that in mind.

    If you dont agree with the devs roughness/metal choices - used to dirty up ,scratch or generally thump a plane then you will need to edit the roughness and metal channels in the packed file. That is the oddly coloured file. We put the suffix _comp on ours. eg. left_wing_comp.dds. You will need an editor that can show channels. Then you will be able to edit the Red channel , green channel ,blue channel .

    Red = Ambient occlusion ( number 5 above ).
    Green = Roughness ( number 3 above )
    Blue = Metalness or metal ( number 2 above ).

    Ambient occlusion ( red channel ) for a painter or repainter is hard to do as generally a dev is going to render that from the DCC package that they are using. So if the shadowing is off you can have a go at it but it might be time to contact the dev on why you think it is wrong, a possible fix, which texture it is and/or a request for a fix... nicely though, devs are people too and possibly have a folder in their email programmes where less than nice people get sent to.

    And lastly if you think that rivet 169,734 is in the wrong place then you need to edit the normal map. We use the suffix _norm for that. This can be done with nvidia photoshop plugins ( or standalone normal map converters ) .Quick tip in Photoshop is to use the highpass filter on the grey scale a touch it can sharpen the normals a little. But be careful as it can introduce artifacts that look like small little pluses which will then get put into the normal and you will see it as a depression or raised little plus on your livery. Dont ask how I know!

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    Last edited by pilto von pilto; May 5th, 2021 at 22:15. Reason: Editted the rough explanation as it was a little ambiguous

  3. #3
    Fantastique Gentlemen ! Thank you!!

  4. #4
    MSFS texturing is identical to DCS. they just use different file names and call them differently. But if you're looking for tutorials Search ROUGHTMET for DCS. the same things can be done across the board for MSFS. The only real difference is that MSFS applies more of a reflection (better rendering IMO) than DCS does.
    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  5. #5
    When it comes to the part when you are ready to try out your work in the sim, all the videos available sign off and end before exporting. How does one actually compile the new layers? Flatten all? Export as .DDS replacing current version? Place in texture folder? What is the procedure for updating the layout and jason files?
    And, there are hardly any GIMP demonstrations out there, all of it is primarily Photoshop. What happens if one is a Paint Shop Pro user instead? The Nvidia tools are not available to them/us, then what does one do? Should we consider alternative editors like Shader Map, or Materialize, AwesomeBump? Also, I watched the DCS video as was suggested, but the guy gave up talking about it half way through his presentation and started saying " and do whatever you feel, and you can do this, or that, or not, whatever"...


  6. #6
    This guy uses GIMP.

    RoughMet tutorial.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIc6W_gxRw0&t=5s
    MACH 3 DESIGN STUDIO
    Heatblur Rivet Counting Squad™

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by 000rick000 View Post
    This guy uses GIMP.

    RoughMet tutorial.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIc6W_gxRw0&t=5s
    Thanks, this is something like I was looking for. Very helpful. Appreciate the link.

    Doug


  8. #8
    I made chrome tonight!


  9. #9
    I made chrome tonight! and aluminum...


  10. #10
    I am glad to say I have figured this out. I've been working away at it for a few days now, things really started coming together today and I spent a lot of time on the Flying Iron Spitfire using Gimp with a couple of plugins installed. If anyone is also trying to figure this out, I think I can help. If you need clarification on anything, I'll try my best.


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