Quixel Mixer for PBR texturing?

[dundun92]

Hello.
Since I don't want to pay for substance, I found this free 3d texturing software called Quixel Mixer. Does anyone have experience with this software and would be able to give me a tutorial on how to texture Trainz meshes using this?
Thanks,

JBVector

[S301]

Hi Dundun92
I have used Mixer for a few assets, and a number of ground textures (it is fantastic for ground texture generation, and for doing 'terrain textures' on 3D models!).

You can only currently do 1 texture at a time in it (ie the mesh cannot have more than 1 texture), so you will need to either UV map the asset to use just 1 texture, or do each texture as a separate export to quixel.

For the maps, you would configure them something like this:

mixer-maps-1.JPG

mixer-maps-2.JPG

For ground textures, you would configure the normals map like so:
mixer-maps-3.JPG

The results are pretty good, but you really want to build up a collection of 'grunge' type textures that you can overlay onto your paints/etc to get the most from it. Unfortunately unless you can create a good selection of these yourself, you are probably going to need a subscription for Megascans. Mind you, there's some absolutely fantastic textures on there! (let alone the scanned 3D assets)

Regards
Zec

[dundun92]

Thanks. I'll give it a try!

[wreeder]

There are tons of tutorials for Mixer on Youtube.

William

[paulhobbs]

You certainly can use Mixer to create the PBR textures and it's pretty easy to use as well - once you have the textures just use GIMP to prepare the albedo and parameter files. You can use the YouTube tutorials to learn how to use it, plenty of info on creating PBR materials is available in the Trainz Wiki.

As noted you can only texture one mesh at a time (at the moment), but you can work with this limitation. Note, however, you will need a computer with considerable grunt to use Mixer effectively, an i3 laptop with Intel graphics is not going to cut it. Even my 6 year old desktop with an i7 and a GTX970 is just about useable...

Some examples:





Paul

[dundun92]

You certainly can use Mixer to create the PBR textures and it's pretty easy to use as well - once you have the textures just use GIMP to prepare the albedo and parameter files. You can use the YouTube tutorials to learn how to use it, plenty of info on creating PBR materials is available in the Trainz Wiki.

As noted you can only texture one mesh at a time (at the moment), but you can work with this limitation. Note, however, you will need a computer with considerable grunt to use Mixer effectively, an i3 laptop with Intel graphics is not going to cut it. Even my 6 year old desktop with an i7 and a GTX970 is just about useable...

Some examples:




Paul

Thanks. I have a i5 4690, 1tb SSD, 16GB DDR3, and a GTX 1060, and it works pretty smooth with 4096k textures, but not 8k.

[johnwhelan]

You certainly can use Mixer to create the PBR textures and it's pretty easy to use as well - once you have the textures just use GIMP to prepare the albedo and parameter files. You can use the YouTube tutorials to learn how to use it, plenty of info on creating PBR materials is available in the Trainz Wiki.

As noted you can only texture one mesh at a time (at the moment), but you can work with this limitation. Note, however, you will need a computer with considerable grunt to use Mixer effectively, an i3 laptop with Intel graphics is not going to cut it. Even my 6 year old desktop with an i7 and a GTX970 is just about useable...

Some examples:




Paul

I rather like this one. Is it available?

Thanks John

[philskene]

Yes. It looks so cute. And would it be available without buffers and with knuckle couplings? We, "The North American Short Line Switching Fraternity", need something like that to work our little yards.

Phil

[ZecMurphy]

Very nice Paul!

I'd definitely recommend playing with the export settings, so you don't need to edit your textures in Gimp. Saves a lot of time to use the presets to export to Trainz ready formats.

The exception is the displacement map. It exports 'centered', which is fine for ground textures, but for meshes it makes it push in more than you'll want... For those, you'll need to adjust the displacement map so that the 'highest' point in it is at 255,255,255.

Regards

[paulhobbs]

I rather like this one. Is it available?

It's one of the locos included with PLL with PBR materials added.

Yes. It looks so cute. And would it be available without buffers and with knuckle couplings? We, "The North American Short Line Switching Fraternity", need something like that to work our little yards.

I can do a version without buffer and with knuckle couplers but it would be a bit on the small side for North America.

Paul

[paulhobbs]

I'd definitely recommend playing with the export settings, so you don't need to edit your textures in Gimp. Saves a lot of time to use the presets to export to Trainz ready formats.

Thanks for that Zec, it is indeed possible to get Quixel Mixer to create the parameter file directly and to have it saved in the asset directory which saves a lot of time. Once again pretending I know what I'm doing has resulted in a useful tip on how to do things better...

Paul

[dundun92]

This is all great! Can't wait to start texturing later today. Thanks guys!

[JohnnyC1]

Hello.
Since I don't want to pay for substance, I found this free 3d texturing software called Quixel Mixer. Does anyone have experience with this software and would be able to give me a tutorial on how to texture Trainz meshes using this?
Thanks,

JBVector

If you are a student or if anyone in your household is a student, the Substance suite is free and renewable yearly.

John

[johnwhelan]

If you are a student or if anyone in your household is a student, the Substance suite is free and renewable yearly.

John

True but there is a fairly large investment in time to learn the product and what happens when the course is finished?

Cheerio John

[JohnnyC1]

True but there is a fairly large investment in time to learn the product and what happens when the course is finished?

Cheerio John

Typical collage is two & four years??

John