Surforge 1.4.5 - 3D rendered PBR texturing in Unity

Great news

 

Just want to clarify things, so that there is no confusion.
Linear workflow support will be added as soon as possible. According to the feedback, it is #1 task now.
I am working on it. Please just wait a little. I am very sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Glad to hear this. Thank you. I have plenty of other things to do so will have no problem waiting. Just happy that a great tool will be usable in more projects.

 

I would like to show first results on linear support.
I solved the known issue of "bypass sRGB sampling" for renderTexture in editor GUI by using GL class.
That was one of the reasons of that annoying darkish colors in Texture Preview in linear mode (as it displays a renderTexture from camera).

Now i am working on updating Surforge shaders blending math for linear mode, AO capture settings, and textures export code.
Also i like how skyboxes behave in linear mode. Reflection colors are nice and more pronounced.

 

Wow! Looks beautiful!

 

I guess this makes Surforge a solution for rapidly retexturing old assets that have the gamma-style coloring.

 

So true !


I read some of us talking about the need for details and elements from categories other than Sci-Fi or Fantasy. I must admit that, as a coder, if I had to include these myself I would feel a bit lost about the possibilities and maybe also how to correctly produce them easily while not losing too much time on this.

I must also state that I don't feel quite OK with the feeling of requesting everything and let someone else filling the blank for me (especially when the price is fair).

So maybe that's where the community could help you a bit ? Well, if you want it of course (it's your tool after all ;-)

Hope I don't sound like an ass while suggesting that.

As a starting point, maybe it would be a good idea to address this kind of suggestion somewhere else (like a collaborative tool/page, don't know) so we wouldn't pollute this topic.

I'm pretty sure that 3D artists have good ideas on what kinds of details, forms and eventually tools that could be helpful in specific area.

It reminds me a lot about the shapes collection of Photoshop (...and all these forms nobody will ever use in professional setup like, let's say the umbrella or the fish forms...).
So maybe a "Category" feature would be welcome to store all those personal and upcoming pieces ?

The only area where I'm having a little trouble for now is being seamless when lying details on objects featuring unwrapped / cutted UVs. I guess it's just a question of practice (or not ? Voxeling features / smearing / melting tools ? ;-).

Anyway, Surforge is a great tool and I'm having fun using it as it is right now.
It could become a user-friendly version of ZBrush for coders.

 

I don't know if this is something you'd want or need, but I thought I'd point out that it exists ...

Mesh Tools for Surforge

 

Just a suggestion, but you might know of roryo, the developer behind Archimatix. He runs a nice trello site for his asset - maybe you could do something similar? Nice way to show what are known bugs, upcoming functionality and so on. And on the topic of Archimatix - would be cool if you guys can collaborate and come up with a nice workflow for those of us using both tools

 

Thank you for your suggestions. Archimatrix looks very promising. There was no time to try it yet. I will try to test it with Surforge and contact the developer.

I am happy to let you know, that Surforge 1.0.3 update is available.

- Viewport performance, model loading speed and UV islands border shapes detection got huge improvements.

- Added 30 new Add Detail tool mesh assets.

- fixed: imported base normal map with antialiasing caused improper tiling.
- fixed: Poly Lasso profile "panelB" caused freeze.
- fixed: empty Screenshots folder removed by Asset Store Tools.
ChangeLog

 

Hi,

It is possible to use these textures :
https://gumroad.com/l/EpjJ#
https://gumroad.com/l/paTzK#
https://gumroad.com/environmentdesign#
with your tool? I think so, but who knows ...





Edit :
After reading some posts in this thread it seems that I did not understand how your tool works. I thought he used the textures as a brush, but that's not the case.

 

Sure, You could use it with Surforge.

If you check Surforge Add Detail tool prefabs, you could see, that Surforge mesh stamps could have optional Normal and AO maps.
Assets that you mentioned are alpha maps libraries, so you have to create normal and ao maps from it, like shown in their tutorial. Then, you could create Surforge Add Detail tool asset, and it would blend your normal and ao information to Surforge texture.

However, Surforge is mesh based, and in this respect it's pipeline much more advanced than just using alphas. It is really better to use meshes with it. Meshes are low weight, resolution independent, don't require additional work with maps conversion and could be intersected and combined much better.
Using meshes with Surforge also allows to get true baked ambient occlusion and material ID masks, all automatically and easy.

There are a lot of mesh stamps available for free on Bad King site.

 

Ok.
So meshes like these are fine ? :
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/kitbashes---361-pieces-3d-max/1091990
https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/obj-kitbashes---412-pieces/1090317

 

Yes, it should be fine, depending on asset quality. If it suits for using as Zbrush IMM mesh brush, it should be fine with Surforge.
Some kitbash mesh assets available around could have some possible issues with mesh quality or smooth groups. You want clean good quality meshes for Surforge.

The easiest way to add it now - to copy an existing prefab in Surforge\AddDetailTool\PlaceMeshes\, check for its properties, edit what you want (change mesh), and than add it to the appropriate list of Assets\Surforge\AddDetailTool\placeMeshes.prefab for Add Detail, save project and restart Unity.
More comfort tools for adding such assets are planned.

You could also let Surforge to render any mesh as texture detail without creating the prefab. Just add it to the scene, use Unity Editor native transform tools to place in on your texture space and assign Surforge ID material (1-8 hotkeys).

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

Looks great !! Have Faith, many here love the work you are doing and I saw the 3 star review .. NOT COOL ..
It don't take much to see that you are very knowledgeable about what you are doing. This has so much
potential its incredible. Don't be detracted by a " dumb review " for what you are doing, it is worth more then
what you are charging, but on the other hand too .. selling more units is better..

I am sure this will end up being one of the best assets on the store !!!

 

Thank you for kind words.

Linear color space support almost finished.

As you could see, "Linear" mode is On in Unity Editor, exported maps are linear.
Surforge shaders blending math work in linear color space too.

 

First of all , great tool.

Now with few issues. I have already read about the linear work flow, so I am going to wait for it.

When I create a new texture, the scene view doesn't seem to set up properly. I have all my camera and light gizmo turned on and they are sitting on top of the root object.

Also the left right , up down arrow keys does not work as expected and it moves the scene camera around. So I can't move up ,down / shrink / expand using the hot keys. (even in detail mode)

The scene camera isn't positioned correctly neither so I had to manually look at the root object from the top with orthographic setting.

Also, when I click to select the lasso object from the scene it's difficult to tell which object I have selected unless I try to move them or scale them. I think the tool should only allow to select the very top most object when you left click on the lasso objects from the scene.

I also don't understand the little slide bar above the seamless button that goes up to 2. What is it for? It is a undocumented feature.

Also, it would be awesome to have the texture preview window dockable so we can detach it and make it larger.

 

I use Surforge 1.0.3 and Unity 5.6.0f3. when i build for windows and try to run mygame.exe file i get error; "
There should be 'Billiard_Data' folder next to the executable". when i build it for webgl i get following error. can you check it?

ArgumentException: The Assembly UnityEditor is referenced by SurforgeCore ('Assets/Surforge/Plugins/SurforgeCore.dll'). But the dll is not allowed to be included or could not be found.
UnityEditor.AssemblyHelper.AddReferencedAssembliesRecurse (System.String assemblyPath, System.Collections.Generic.List`1 alreadyFoundAssemblies, System.String[] allAssemblyPaths, System.String[] foldersToSearch, System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2 cache, BuildTarget target) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/AssemblyHelper.cs:142)
UnityEditor.AssemblyHelper.AddReferencedAssembliesRecurse (System.String assemblyPath, System.Collections.Generic.List`1 alreadyFoundAssemblies, System.String[] allAssemblyPaths, System.String[] foldersToSearch, System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2 cache, BuildTarget target) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/AssemblyHelper.cs:148)
UnityEditor.AssemblyHelper.FindAssembliesReferencedBy (System.String[] paths, System.String[] foldersToSearch, BuildTarget target) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/AssemblyHelper.cs:179)
UnityEditor.HostView:OnGUI()

 

Thank you very much for using Surforge and for your feedback.

You could easily rotate your scene view camera with a Unity Editor compass handle on the top right corner of the scene view.
Scene view camera was automatically set to Top on creating new texture in early development versions, and it was very annoying.You really wont like, when your scene view camera controlled with the scripts.

The video with arrows hotkeys was recorded in the early version on Surforge.

Shrink/expand hotkeys changed from left/right arrows to shift + [, ] to not override Unity Editor standard hotkeys.
Move object up/down hotkeys from up/down arrows to +, -

You could check for the complete hotkeys list in \Surforge\SurforgeHotkeys.pdf
There are also tooltips in Surforge window.
Hotkey editor is in todo list, but it was moved a bit by urgent features, based on users requests.

The way of Gameobject selection in the scene view is controlled by Unity Editor. Yes it could be changed (for example force parent or most top one selected) but it is considered not good to interfere such things. Someone would expect that the selection works as it should in Unity in general, and the custom hacks could be confusing in that case.

It is for PolyLasso profile scale - the size of your Poly Lasso detail.
I am very sorry that documentation is not updated timely, but it is only because i really want to implement all requested urgent features as soon as possible. For now, you could check ChangeLog for such things.
The documentation will be improved and updated, but i really lack time for everything.

 

Thanks for the reply.

Understood everything and I will dig the tool a bit more. Possibly add option for 512 map baking. ( I know I can force it to downscale in unity, but just to save the file size and all.

Also for the dll and other platform issue where dll is not supported and some script should not compile for the unsupported platform such as XboxOne etc. I can make the dll to not be included, but then the scripts rely on the dll doesn't compile.

 

512 resolution is not enough for some Surforge shader features to work, such as worn edges mask blurring and baked emission glow effect. Some parts of Surforge shader code heavily based on image convolution, and it uses fixed size kernels, not suitable for lower resolutions.
It could be downsampled during the export, but still needs to be rendered in minimum of 1024, to use the same shader code as for other resolutions. This could make interface unnecessarily confused, and is needed not so often.
On the other hand you could have additional supersampling while downscaling your image, if it has extra resolution, which is good in general.

It is recommended to use Surforge in separate project.

Surforge was designed for work as separate tool. This is required for that there is no collision between the settings of your project and the settings necessary for Surforge. This is also ensures that there will be no collisions between scripts, delegates, hotkeys and so on.

 

Surforge was designed for work as separate tool, in separate project.
Just create additional new clean project with Surforge - it will be your "texture factory" for your main project.

This is required for that there is no collision between the settings of your project and the settings necessary for Surforge.
For example, when your main project is configured to run in webgl mode.

Surforge could not work while project set in "webgl" mode, because Unity Editor uses different graphics Api in that case. Please make sure your project is set to "PC, Mac & Linux Standalone" to use Surforge.

 

Wouldn't you like to use this in your code? you can set your dll just for the editor platform.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PlatformDependentCompilation.html

it would be nice to edit assets in real project.

Edit: i set SurforgeCore.dll's platform as Editor. i moved folder Surforge/SSAObscurance to Surforge/Editor. it works fine now. you do not need a clean project.

 

Why would you want the code for something that's specifically a design-time tool present within your final compiled project? All this will do is bloat up your final .exe and data cache sizes and possibly waste what could be precious processing time.

 

Editor folders in project is just for this. Unity will not add Editor codes to final build. If this is just for editor, it's code should be in the editor folders.

http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/Special_Folder_Names_in_your_Assets_Folder

Scripts inside an Editor folder will not be included in your game's build. They are only used in the Unity Editor.

 

I understand that but as surforge requires some specific settings in the project with regards to shadow cascade values - which are undoubtedly a lot different to what you'd want in your actual finished game - why go to the bother of having it in your final build.

Plus, not all files reside with an editor folder. Some component files for any asset will reside in the main folder.

 

BTW, the detail kit for Surforge was released:

100+ Detail Prefabs for Surforge Vol 1

 

Great work!

 

There is a really interesting potential for voxel stuff in Surforge, and i wish i have time for this maybe at some point: Wave function collapse

 

Nice. Will probably end up getting this at some point

 

Reason why i would like the surforge to be in the same project as the game is that when you export maps it also exports the materials but it cant do that to the folders of the other projects. So i need to then manually copy over the files. All about pipeline here.. but running surforge as separate project also works for me if maps and material can be exported to folders of the other projects. So surforge may export the material file into its own temp file first and then use the copy command to move it to the final folder destination for max compatibility.

Also is there way to downsample maps to 512 on export? I didnt see that..

 

After some more usage i found that surforge is cool for working in an additive ways. Meaning building it by placing stuffs on top of each other. Understanding how the tool works and it is great as it is but i found that it has fundamentally one major flow. It is not so easy to carve in the details. So if i want the bolt detail to be carved in not extruded up then i need to build up the area surrounding the bolt to make the carved in detail. So for things like that you either have to have detail prefabs that already contains such setup or it will be difficult to create such effect. Since surforge is mesh based and it isnt sculpting program i guess this cant be fundermentally solved.

I might try a mesh with inverted normal to see what happenes but i dont know.. how do you guys get around on this limitation?

 

Maybe I'm not understanding, but once you've finished with the texture at 1024 or whatever, can't you just go to the inspector and change the max resolution to 512?

 

I would like to know this too.

How can we make carved detail in Surforge like this:

 

I would guess that we'd need detail meshes that are actually designed to look like they're causing depressions

 

This technique, known as "floaters" among 3d artists, is fully supported in Surforge since the early versions. You could see such Add Detail tool prefabs in Surforge.

How is it implemented. You have your floater (inverted mesh) over your other meshes, to imitate carving. While rendering Normal map, floaters just work. While rendering AO maps, Surforge renders in with extra pass, for floaters geometry, becouse you want only internal ambinet occusion, but not AO casted by floater, actually rising above the surface, to other objects.

Surforge automatically solves it. While adding your own mesh prefabs, please consider assign "Surforge0_floater" instead of "Surforge0" ID shader. Once floater shader assigned (as for all floaters that comes with Surforge) the ID masks you change with 1-8 hotkeys will assign corresponding floaters shader instead.

 

Excellent. I am going to try this. Having said that, is there way to invert the existing lasso object to be a floater? So when I make a normal lasso object using the draw tool, I want to invert it to make it a floater so I can draw carving details.

 

There are some floater Poly Lasso profiles as well.

You could also change your existing Poly Lasso object profile at any time, while picking profile icons while your existing object selected, and Poly Lasso tool turned Off.

Combine it with copy-paste of your Poly Lasso objects (Ctrl +c, Ctrl + v in the scene view), rise it + and - button or native transform tools, offset it ctrl + "[" and "]" and change the profile. This all gives you interesting multilayered offsetted texture detail effects. Assign new ID mask to it with 1-8 hotkeys if needed.

Several poly lasso profiles has this all built-it.

 

Ofcourse i could. But my point is that when i only know for sure that i only need 512 maps i would like the file to be natively 512 so the project file size is kept as small as possible. I can also do this in photoshop. But again .. it is all about pipleline efficiency.

 

Just did my first texture with surforge last night, I'm in love <3 such a great simple to use program!

 

Your commitment to get linear colourspace working and your enthusiasm for Archimatix integration means I am about to buy a copy in a minute - nice asset

 

Thank you very much.

Archimatix users may already know, i'm working on the support of Surforge + Archimatix pipeline.
I'm very grateful to Rory, Archimatix developer, kindly helped me with it.

This requires to tweak Surforge code a bit, to make Surforge Composer shader (in its interactive form, before maps export) to be able to preview on Archimatix objects.

I want to include this ability in upcoming version too, along with linear color space support, as well as another greatly requested feature (a hint: it starts on "T" and related to glass and openings).

All these shader features quite closely connected. I hope to send 1.0.4 for approvement this week or mabe begining of next week.

 

I only had a quick play with it so far but it is already amazing to use and even better than I had hoped - great work!

 

Eager for the update on linear work flow.

BTW, I wanted to use snap for placing decals. But for some reason it won't let me. Is this normal?

I also wish I could draw the lasso a bit more curvy way instead of just points and line form. Current usage is useful on drawing rigid shapes but for anything else more organic, I have to place many points or use premade decals. I also wish there is way to modify the lasso points after I have placed them and made them an object.

I could see some "floater" decals for carve in effect, but we really need more of these for the actual lasso objects as well.

 

This is normal, snapping is only for Poly Lasso tool for now. You could hold Ctrl for constraint transform in Add Detail mode.
Splines and point editing already in todo list.

I want to show you the progress on transparency.

This will be the part of upcoming update as well. 1.0.4 almost done.

 

Ah was just going to ask if Surforge supports transparency, namely albedo alpha. My use case is hard surface decal atlases for deferred mesh decals. It looks like I'd be able to create pretty much any shape I want with surforge, but I'd need an alpha map for it to work.

Does surforge support the Metallic/Rougness workflow in terms of exported maps? I'm using Alloy PBR shaders.

 

Great asset. I don't think there is a need of UV editor, Blender is fine. Regarding ptex, 3dcoat does Ptex painting and allows the model to be exported with textures.

 

Surforge currently based on specular workflow, exported maps are suited for Unity Standard(specular setup) shader. You could also use it with custom specular based shaders. Metallic workflow support is planned in the future.

Sure. Surforge 1.0.4 transparency exported on the albedo alpha, like in Unity Standard shader.
Saying about transparency, i added some handy options here.
You could control transparency globally, which is also affects your specular, to make things fully transparent. It is also possible to tweak transparency and specular separately.
It takes labels and paint masks into account, which opens up some interesting effects, like this semitransparent door.

 

Ok, I think it really needs some way to preview using the submeshes as well.

If I have object that is made up using the many sub-meshes, then I can only deal with one at the time and can't bake the maps at once resulting in non workable way. The only work around is to combine all the meshes into one but then it means I can't toggle the sub-meshes on off to visualize the areas part or all hidden by the other meshes. I have to always swap the meshes around. This means that I can't visualize everything at once too.

We should be able to utilize the hirechary window to set it on off.. right now, it is just a single mesh.

This along with linear work flow, is a must. You rarely have the case where every polygons in the model are completely visible in practice. Most of the time you have some part of the model hidden by the others, intersecting etc.