Surforge 1.4.5 - 3D rendered PBR texturing in Unity

Camera keeps move to the left when I right click, any way to avoid that?

 

In Unity Editor right mouse click + drag orbits the Camera in the Scene View.
Surforge uses right click for several rarely used commands. Usually this does not interfere.
Thank you very much for noticing it, probably i should change it.
If you need to change it urgent, you can find it in "SurforgeInterface.cs" by searching "Right Click".
Please let me know if you need detailed information.

 

Hello! I recently purchased Surforge, because I noticed UModeler and Surforge were compatible with each other and I wanted to make my as model creation and texturing experience to be very fluid and simple. I'm no artist so Surforge seemed like a good tool to have for making some nice textures for my models without having to go and learn a whole new skill.

I was wondering if there was any way to select UVs via the preview window? I find it difficult to search through the individual UV islands to see which one corresponds to the part of the object I want to select. Is there any way to do this via the preview window in Surforge?

Thanks in advanced.

 

Hello, thank you very much for your purchase.

Yes, it's easy. Hover model preview with a mouse and hold Ctrl key. The corresponding UV island outlines white.

 

Thank you very much, that's helpful.

I have a vision impairment and the white outline is rather difficult for me to see (takes me a good minute or two to find which object is lighting up.) Would it be possible to add the ability to actually select the corresponding UV through the model viewer in a future version? This would really help me as I'm having a difficult time finding which object is flashing.

 

Yes, it is not hard to implement.
Thank you for the feedback.

 

Thank you very much, would love to be informed when this feature is added, if possible.
Thanks again!

 

Hi. Can I use this asset in runtime after I build my game?

 

Hello,
Surforge is Unity Editor tool. There is absolutely no need to include Surforge into build to use it exported results, which are regular sets of Standard material + textures.

Surforge Composer Shader, which allows to tweak every material aspect in real time, while as optimized as possible to use for preview in Unity Editor, is too heavy for runtime builds. For runtime build it is better to use shader with couple needed tweakable properties.

 

Hi,

I've recently purchased Surforge and while I like it a lot, I also got some problems and confusion.

Ideally, I want to use Surforge in a working scene, but when I run Surforge here, it messes up some of my settings, replaces skybox(which also changes lighting) and messes up some meshes, which were created with Realtime CSG asset. I have atmospheric lighting, surroundings and costume graphic settings, so it would be great if I could do texturing right in my level scene.
The question is, how am I supposed to work with Surforge in my case? For now, I just create copy of the scene and do Surforge texturing here, is it correct way of doing things?
Is it possible to turn off Surforge's auto settings adjustments?

Oh,and I can't use greebles, my laptop barely handle just opening that section, so when I click anything here,Unity just freezes. I don't seem to need greebles feature right now, but I still just wanted you to know about the issue.

I'm using Unity 2019.2.10f1, Windows 8.1

 

Hello,

Thank you very much for your purchase and feedback.

Please create a new scene to start working on a new texture with Surforge. All your texture work progress, Surforge created details and materials could be saved with the scene.
After texture work done, export the results which are regular Standard material + textures and use it in your main scene. Surforge itself is a tool, it is not needed to be present in your main scene or even your project to use your exported results.
It is also proven approach to install Surforge into separate new project, which will be your "texturing factory". You main working project would take up less disk space and things keep more consistent. Surforge need to change project ambient and shadow cascade settings for its render able to work.

Greebles tool needs worm up time to load its assets and build octree. As Greebles tool quite specific and rare use, it loads when you press the Greebles tab for the first time, rather then starting Surforge, to speed up Surforge loading time. Please treat with understanding, Greebles tool is voxel based and could be cpu intensive. You need it only for specialized cases, like super detailed sci-fi texture patterns.
Your main everyday tools are Poly Lasso and Add Detail tool, which are fast and optimized to be productive and easy to use.

 

Yeah, that's what I was thinking to do, though it kind of kills one of the benefits of using Surforge, which is avoiding jumping from program to program.
Still, thank you for the full answer in a short time!

 

surforge works on new unity 209.3.0 ?

 

Yes, Surforge works fine on 2019.3.0f6

 

Hi Sergeyv_3d - Is you planning SR version of Surforge? (HDRP/URP)

 

Hello,

Please treat with understanding, Surforge shaders and render was written before HDRP released. There are limited amount of texture samplers in the shaders, and Surforge already uses all that spare samplers of Standard shader. The problem is that HDRP shaders has less spare samplers left. Therefore, the only option to add support for HDRP at this moment, it to reject some of Surforge material texture channels, all of which are useful and have been added by users requests.
I am always searching for new opportunities. Perhaps something may change, and a solution may appear.

But Surforge exported results can be entirely used in HDRP project. Surforge itself is not needed when using its exported results.
It is proven approach to install Surforge into separate new project, which will be your "texturing factory". Also you main working project would take up less disk space.

HDRP has a different layout of the channels of the textures, although texture information itself is the same.
You could use Unity built-in converter to update Surforge exported Standard materials and maps for HDRP.
To do it please copy your exported Surforge result material and maps to your HDRP project and in Unity Editor press: "Edit - Render Pipeline - HDRP - Upgrade Selected Materials to HDRP Materials"

 

Yes, i am has workflow as you exactly wrote!

So, strongly wait for new version of Surforge! And good luck in dev!

 

Hi. Does this apply to URP as well?

 

Yes, the same for URP.

 

Hi!

Is it possible to combine "Poly Lasso" objects? if so, how? If not, is there any plans to improve the feature?
In screenshot below, I'm showing a case scenario, where I'm making a window frame by creating four shapes with Poly Lasso. However it's impossible to make them seamless together, no matter how I try to move them around.

 

Hello,

Currently you can't have the shape with hole or boolean between shapes. This function would lead to complex difficulties with detailed profile shapes.

But you could achieve the similar effect with multiple layers of Poly Lasso objects and "floater" profiles.

 

Oh i see, I I should try it!
However, I already tried simply using one of the surforge materials and it seems to hide lines, as it's shown in screenshot. Do you think such method is good too?
I've also noticed I can use only two emission colors. Is it because of Unity limitations or is there a way to use more then two? Otherwise, having only two emission colors feel very limited (like for making home windows, where normally you would see many shades and colors of room lights).

 

In this case it is not necessary to cover entire area with Poly Lasso, background also works - just select it and assign the material ID. Any 3d model also renders if you assign material ID to it. Looks great anyway

You are not limited with only 2 emission colors. Two separate emission IDs is just for convenience.
You could make any material emissive - scroll down Surforge material properties and you could find emission settings.

 

Great news! Surforge is now on Sale
If you do not own your copy of Surforge yet, do not miss this great opportunity.
Get Surforge with 50% OFF

Please use default "Hemisphere" AO mode (which also gives better results).
There is something wrong with alternative "ssao" mode in new Unity versions.
It is deprecated and going to be removed in upcoming update.

 

How long is the sale going to last? It's always hard to tell with unity sales.

 

This asset is simply amazing! One of my favorite asset in the store. I highly recommended it. At 50% off or even at the regular price. This is a steal bargain price for such a great asset!

Developper support is the best.

 

Thank you very much for the kind words!
Surforge sale lasts until 23:59 June 12

 

Howdy, I'm really digging the program and find it to be very powerful and useful, so thank you very much for making it!

I'm curious however; I've used a good dozen or so texturing programs over the years (maya, blender, substance, builtin CAD tools, various freewares, ect) and while most don't talk about the tech behind it much, you bring up that surforge is GPU based alot. I'm not experienced enough to know the meaningful, realworld differences between a texturing tool that's GPU based vs one that's CPU, would you be able to explain why you picked GPU and why it makes surforge a special tool?

You've mentioned that it being on the GPU lets you adjust alot of these settings and materials and mat sets on the fly, which is REALLY cool in practice. Is that just something that's usually very hard to do if it wasn't on the gpu? Are most of the other popular 3d/texturing tools not taking advantage of that for some reason? Does it have to do with Unity already taking up alot of memory and cpu usage, and so putting surforge on the GPU would help spread out the heavy system load, so it's not all heaped on the cpu?

Any thoughts would be cool, as again given that the GPU thing is brought up a lot makes it sound important, and it's something i'd love to have some more info on for when i use surforge in a big production. Thank you!

 

Adding or multiplying two images with cpu has noticeable performance impact, while doing it in the shader is instant.

To make it able to adjust all these material properties on the fly, there are a lot of add/multiply operations in Surforge shader. Such an amount of image combine operations on cpu would require to wait after any single meterial setting change. And in Surforge it is instant, which opens great possibilities on texture settings control.
Rendering with GPU also faster.

 

Hi, just a beginner try to get used to Surforge. How do you type in the text for text titles? Also in 2017 you mentioned "Painting directly on the model is planned in future versions." is that a feature now and is there any instructions?

 

Hello, thank you very much for using Surforge and welcome

The text labels in Surforge are based on Unity native text asset. After set label in place, select the child text object of the label in Unity Hierarchy, and edit text field and color in Unity Inspector tab. You could then move label (and every other texture detail at any time) with Unity native transform tools if needed. There is also label text randomizer on right mouse button, while using Add Detail tool.

Painting on models with brush still in plans yet. Development went to the direction of material system improvements, more demanded by the community.

 

Just wanted to say, Surforge is amazing. This and Amplify Shader Editor are the best assets I've ever bought.

 

Howdy, Is there a way to edit what resolutions surforge bakes a texture out to beyond the 1024/2048/4096 options? I'm looking to make alot of 256x256 or so rez textures for a ps2-styled game, and while surforge is a great tool it outputs higher rez than i'm looking for right now. I know surforge isn't great for pixel looks or very lofi details due to it trying to smooth/antialias things, but i would still like to be able to try it out and see what it looks like.

I'm comfortable with digging into the code and changing things, so if that's the answer that's cool.

the backup is to make 'em in surforge and then downrez the textures myself in photoshop, which is fine, but being able to output lowrez directly would be cool.

 

Hello,
Since rendering low-res 3d images is not a good idea for many reasons, you need not to render, but to downscale the high resolution image. So you can't just change couple of values in Surforge code to achieve this.
Image scaling algorithms are quite complex, and if you try to do it with gpu, like re-capture with new render texture with lower resolution, there would be significant quality loss, not much different from just low-res render.

If you are using Photoshop, handy solution would be creating photoshop droplet for this.
By the way, there is one trick here. You could achieve better results, if you downscale one power of two at a time: 1024 to 512, then to 256, not 1024 to 256 at once, because of the way the algorithm works.

 

Note: for anyone with a Macintosh - hold down both Command-Control keys, then Right-Click for split. By default a Mac interprets Control Right-Click as a Left Click (for a Mac with a one button mouse). Be sure to have the Poly Lasso object selected before following the steps above.

 

Is there a way to auto-fill all islands? Sometimes having to double click each one is a pain.

 

Auto-filling all islands could be confusing on some kind of UV layouts with stacked or partially overlapped islands. This option not present, to keep things simple and in order.
In the case you need to quick apply the same material to all islands before you specify the certain ones, you could apply material to the background plane.

 

Hi,

I absolutely love the asset, you have done some amazing work! I know that the SRP's are not currently available and that you can import textures created with Surforge into SRP projects. Are you planning on adding support for URP or HDRP? If so what does that road map look like? One big value add by adding the SRPs support we could now expand our material library to include the Measured Material Library from Unity. This would give us another 300 materials to use on our projects.

Thank you,
Travis Pettry

 

Hello,
Thank you very much for positive feedback. Nice to hear that you like Surforge

Rendering pipelines support is often requested, and would be very useful to have.
The problem is that HDRP/SRP shaders has less spare samplers left then Standard shader on which Surforge is based.
The only way to add support for URP/HDRP at the moment, it to remove several Surforge material texture channels, to free up the needed samplers. Removing part of Surforge material functionality is not an option you whant to. But things are evolving and I really hope i found a solution one day.

For now you could set up Surforge in separate 3d project, and import Surforge exported results easily to URP/HDRP project using Unity built-in material converter.

You could also recreate almost any material from your collection to use with Surforge. It isn't that hard, as texture information for URP/HDRP materials is the same as Standard material, just channels combined different way. You could extract the needed channels in your image editor, copy maps and put it into appropriate texture fields in Surforge material, tweak the needed settings and save it for future use.

 

I do not have the shader material properties panel in the surforge panels in Unity 2019.4.8f1. I also can not drag and drop the materials from the icon panel into a working shader model panel.

 

I double checked and Surforge 1.3.2 works as intended with Unity 2019.4.8f1

I could see on your screenshot Surforge shader itself is working.
Could you please check:
- Import Surforge into a clean new project for the first time, to avoid possible issues with third-party assets.
- Press “Go Ahead” button to update scripts for your Unity version.
- Please don't move or rename Surforge folder when you installing it for the first time.
- Check there are no any red errors in console after installation.

 

Yes. I have a conflicting asset somewhere. I will find it. I did an export and that shader works perfectly in play mode!

 

No errors after installation but in my previous project I get:
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
UnityEditor.MaterialEditor.PropertiesGUI () (at <d7545a46516941d4b2f2dec578cd41ee>:0)
SurforgeInterface.OnGUI () (at Assets/Surforge/Editor/Interface/SurforgeInterface.cs:2996)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Reflection.BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at <fb001e01371b4adca20013e0ac763896>:0)
Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Reflection.BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at <fb001e01371b4adca20013e0ac763896>:0)
System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) (at <fb001e01371b4adca20013e0ac763896>:0)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName, System.Object obj) (at <d7545a46516941d4b2f2dec578cd41ee>:0)
UnityEditor.HostView.Invoke (System.String methodName) (at <d7545a46516941d4b2f2dec578cd41ee>:0)
UnityEditor.HostView.InvokeOnGUI (UnityEngine.Rect onGUIPosition, UnityEngine.Rect viewRect) (at <d7545a46516941d4b2f2dec578cd41ee>:0)
UnityEditor.DockArea.DrawView (UnityEngine.Rect viewRect, UnityEngine.Rect dockAreaRect) (at <d7545a46516941d4b2f2dec578cd41ee>:0)
UnityEditor.DockArea.OldOnGUI () (at <d7545a46516941d4b2f2dec578cd41ee>:0)
UnityEngine.UIElements.IMGUIContainer.DoOnGUI (UnityEngine.Event evt, UnityEngine.Matrix4x4 parentTransform, UnityEngine.Rect clippingRect, System.Boolean isComputingLayout, UnityEngine.Rect layoutSize, System.Action onGUIHandler, System.Boolean canAffectFocus) (at <a9183b39766a483caf86aaa926f3554c>:0)
UnityEngine.GUIUtilityrocessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

In the new project I dont get this also with Amplify shader and Archimatix installed.

 

Manual Page 2: Installation: It is better to import Surforge into a clean new project.
This not a suggestion but a warning.
In other words: Install Surforge first since it goes deeper into the Unity graphics API than other assets.
Go to previous project and export scene with dependencies, open new project, install Surforge, import previous project scene. Looks like this works.
The main problem: What if you have a work in progress and the project title and design is already in place? Backup project, export whole project with dependencies, delete WIP project, open new project with previous production name, import total previous project.
This is what I found and this might not work in your circumstances. But it fixed mine and I cant solve all installation problems. This is Unity and 'It is what it is'.

 

And there are a lot of warnings about obsoletion. This being one of them:
Assets\Surforge\SMAA\Scripts\SMAA.cs(149,9): warning CS0618: 'SystemInfo.supportsImageEffects' is obsolete: 'supportsImageEffects always returns true, no need to call it'

Assets\Surforge\Editor\Interface\SurforgeInterfaceCluster.cs(67,113): warning CS0618: 'Handles.ConeCap(int, Vector3, Quaternion, float)' is obsolete: 'Use ConeHandleCap instead'

67 warnings total.

 

Thank you very much for the feedback.

Since Surforge works for you in the fresh new project, and the mentioned string 2996 "materialEditor.PropertiesGUI()" is a call of regular Unity Editor method, it is very likely the cause of the issue is not with Surforge, but somewhere with the project.

Conflicts with assets are not uncommon, and it is not at all necessary that the problem is in the asset where the error appears, because of how the Unity Editor works.
It would help alot if you share your project to mail@surforge.com. I will try do my best to investigate the issue.

Please note, you could effectively use Surforge, installing it into separate project, being your "texture factory".
There is no need to import Surforge into your main working project directly. Since Surforge itself is not needed for it's exported results to work, it’s in fact even better, to keep things more consistent.

Theese alerts are generated by Unity Automatic API Updater.
Surforge is aimed for a wide range of Unity versions support. Fortunately we have "Go Ahead" button to fix the difference in api between versions.
In result all this alerts are printed, they are considered as normal thing.

 

I notice in the texture editor that the light source is on the right side of the area. Do I need to make a new skybox to change this?
Thanks.

 

The model in the preview window of texture editor is present on your scene, and lit by the scene light sources and skybox. It is offset from the center of the scene for convenience.
You could just move your scene lights as needed, choose one of several skyboxes or use your own skybox.
You could also shift + mouse drag in Surforge texture preview to rotate skybox.

 

Thank you. That worked.
I have some other items I need clarification on.
When SurForge loads up from a previous work session it displays a cube with my original material/UV map tiled by 2x2 on the x and y axis. On the cube faces I see 4 tiles. I load my fbx into the render panel. Nothing changes. I have to click on a Unity screen outside of the Surforge panels to get the model to change but now the map is still tiled instead of the correct mapping. In one session I had this working. Now I cant seem to get the model untiled.
Also the Uv map only displays in the scene window when the mouse is in it. When the mouse leaves the map it disappears. This is frustrating as the workflow gets interrupted.
Thank you.

 

Thank you very much for the feedback. I am checking the issues.

To make sure you start from scratch, please close Surforge window, create new scene and restart Surforge when you start new texture work.
Surforge stores all settings of the texture you currently working within the current scene. It was made such way for ability to texture similar models in a bulk, making color scheme variants and so on.