Rhia474 posted at 10:26AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418284

Disclaimer: I try to use Superfly these days as much as possible. A lot of rework is needed with materials but the new Mat Room makes it easier. One can always pop back to P11 to use EZSkin 3 for a good shader base, save, the back to P12. ( but wait, that's wooork)...

Now, here are my peeves.

Very little content made for Poser comes with Normal maps. Almost no figure maps. Most users ( me inuded) really don't know how to make one. Good tutorials specifically for Poser Superfly are few and far between. For instance, if someone could show how / if Normal maps can replace microdisplacement. Actually show, with examples. I would pay for that.

I think the issue that many models doesn't come with normal maps, depends on how old they are and what software people use. I myself use substance painter. And if you are familiar with PS, it shouldn't be to difficult to learn as it uses a lot of the same concepts, like layers etc.

Here is the basic idea of how to do it and how it works. im still learning myself as it always is when doing 3D :D

But normal maps are generated automatically, and as far as I know there are two common ways of doing it, which you can also combine into generating the normal map.

First way, is to have two models a low poly one and a high poly one, where you model all the changes into the high poly model and then you generate a normal map from that and use it on the low poly. Obviously this take a lot of time, but also gives you a lot of control, but for this you would use a program like Zbrush, mudbox etc. That allows you to work with very high density models.

The other one, is through the texturing itself, which is what substance painter does, so basically you paint your 3D object as you normally would, but you can paint on all channels at the same time.

So here is a table for a scene im working one, which can suit as example.

1. After you have Unwrapped your model and have loaded it into substance painter, you want to bake the textures first.

2. In this menu you choose the resolution and is also where you can load a high res mesh to use for baking. You don't have to if you don't want.

3. Then you just hit baking selected textures and it will automatically bake a lot of different maps that will eventually be used for the various functions. But when that is done, you are basically ready to texture.

4. Basic layer structure as in PS.

5. So you can choose a brush which is either a normal based on (basically you can just paint into the height map as that gets actually combined into the normal map when you export your textures. But as you can see, I created a shape on the table which paint the normal map automatically. Which is very good if you want to make screws or whatever.

6. Where it really shines is when you start using smart materials and want to add scratches and stuff. because you can simply turn off color for instance and only paint the scratches or remove the paint etc. As you can see I have just added a smart material which come with all the required settings you need and because its like photoshop you can just stack these on top of each other, using masks etc. And when you are done, you just export the textures and you get the 4 maps you need (diffuse, roughness, metal and normal map and other maps if you need them.) And those you just hook into Superfly as shown above or Daz Iray. Substance paint uses Iray so you are pretty certain what it looks like there is also how it will look in both Poser and Daz, if you use an HDRI map.

Now the only issue with Substance painter, is if you want to export 8k maps, I think it is, you need at least 4 GB memory on the graphic card if I recall correctly.