From an Iray texture to a 3DLight compatible

The technique is mine and perheaps it is not written in the reference books but it works well. I assume that this method is not applicable for clothes or other stuff which are not metallic.

The Iray texture generated is forseen to be used with a "PBR Metallicity/Roughness" base mixing.

For such a texture, Substance painter generates several maps and I point these four out :

  • Base color
  • Metallic
  • Roughness
  • Normal

 

The 3Dlight texture model is often a "Plastic" or a "Glossy Metallic". This one has the following interresting fields :

  • Diffuse Color
  • Glossiness
  • Specular
  • Normal map
  • Reflexion color

 

With a simple image editor (I use Photoshop but it can be another simplier program), I create a new Glossy map by inverting the roughness from Substance painter. This is ok as the roughness is the opposite of the glossy.

I create also from the Metallic map a diffuse strength map by inverting the Substance painter map and decreasing the middle tones to 15% (Black is 0%, white is 100%). As far as the metals shader should be near black to get this miror effect we like.

 

I want to make a minimal 3DLight texture to get a nice and quicker rendering.

I Choose the "Metallic" Lighting model in most case because th reflections are more realistic with this model.

Then, I load :

 

  • Diffuse Color : the base color map, 100%.
  • Diffuse strength : the new created map - 100%.
  • Glossiness : the new glossy map I created, 100%.
  • Specular color : white. It may help using the Metallic map of the Iray texture but I'm not plenty conviced about that.
  • Specular strength : 100%
  • Ambient color black and/or at 0%
  • Opacity : if needed, I take the original opacity of the Iray texture
  • Normal Map : the same from the Iray texture.
  • Reflection color : I use a map of my own. It is what should be reflected on the surface, like if it is the opposite of the object.
  • Reflection Strength : normally, I never go over 30% nut it depend of the kind of object you have and the effect you want.

 

And that is to be done for each surface of the object. When it is completed, I don't forget to save the new material preset and test it.

 

 

To make my test, I just take a DS Default Light Preset (dzDistantLight). I tune the rotation of the light and don't forget to activate the shadow-raytrace.

 

It is now also the time to play a little. In this one I add 2 point-lights (30%) for the main lights of the little car.

 

Tuning the parameters is according our feelings but this must be a good start to get an object renderable in 3DLight if we have only an Iray texture available for it.