Surforge 1.4.5 - 3D rendered PBR texturing in Unity

Hello,

I am sorry you encounter this.
The "Legacy Image Effects package conflict" was counted as fixed in 1.0.7
Couldn't you please check, that you don't forget to delete previous version from your project in the case you upgrading.

I will definitely check again carefully, and do my best to fix it.

The best temporary solution is to install Surforge into new clean project, without legacy image effects package.
You could also use new Unity official "Post Processing Stack" free package in replace of legacy image effects.

 

I'm sorry, it's just that I need the legacy pack for a different asset which is key to my project, I can't do without it. Thank you for your answer and I really hope something can be done about it....

 

I am double re-checking this issue now.
But after first glance, i really believe something went wrong during Surforge installation in your case.

Could i explain please.

Spoiler

There was an issue in earlier Surforge versions:

That was because one of Surforge scripts was based on "SSAOSettings" from Standard Image Effects package (now known as "legacy image effects"), and there was a name conflict with "SSAOSettings".

That was fixed, by renaming Surforge related things to "SurforgeSSAOSettings", to avoid any future conflicts with it.

But, according to your screenshot, i could see:
"Assets/Effects/ImageEffects/Scripts/ScreenSpaceAmbientObscurance.cs(189,3): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `SurforgeSSAOSettings' could not be found."
Something went wrong here. Image Effects package never should need Surforge "SurforgeSSAOSettings" name.

Couldn't you please try:
Carefully backup your project first.
Copy your project's "Assets" to new project, delete "Surforge" folder from "Assets", reimport project, and try to reinstall Surforge. Please tell me if it helps.

You could also for now, while i am solving this issue, use Surforge from separate project. It is really could be (even more) effectively used outside your main working project. It was initially designed as a "standalone texturing factory". You just copy models, needed for texturing to it, and copy your exported results back. There is nothing more that exported image files and exported Standard material needed to be included into your main project, to use results of your Surforge texturing work.

 

Okay, I tried it without any other assets on my project, getting all sorts of alerts, any fix for that?

 

these are the alrerts

 

Just bought this asset yesterday, and I have to say first time was hell lol. I messed up a lot of things and had to redone it 3 times, nevertheless, while this asset still has some bugs in all honesty, it has helped me reduce a lot of time and headache of finding a good texturing tool and having to go back and fourth, and so far, surforge is quite holding its reputation, and the more I learn how it works the more I have fun with it, and the more easier texturing becomes. I just have a couple of question but I will be satisfied with you answering 1 for now, can the textures surforge exports work on any other platform other than unity ? For example if I want to texture models with surforge then sell them, would surforge exported texture work just like any other textures ? or is it specific to unity platform. And if it is just specific to unity, would you please consider making it so that the exported textures are generic and not unity restricted ? Other than that though, im having quite a fun playing with surforge. P.S. first model I textured with surforge.

 

I'm pretty sure it creates standard texture files that can be used anywhere

 

Wow that was fast haha. But the Albedo file has .tqa format. And im not familiar to it, excuse my ignorance, and it contains quite a bit of texturing data, so I was wondering if that file on several other platforms. But thank you for replying so fast lol

Edit: I just tried it and it worked, sorry if I caused any trouble lol. Yes the textures can be used anywhere. Good to know. Have a good day.

 

Theese alerts are generated by Unity Automatic API Updater.
Surforge is aimed for a wide range of Unity versions support, starting from Unity 5.1.0f3. 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 don't think it is possible to get rid of it, while keeping the old Unity versions support.

Thank you very much for positive feedback.
Nice model. I like it!

Yes the textures could be used outside Unity. It could require some color/levels correction in image editor, but will work.
The Specular based PBR shaders of different engines quite similar. I tested it with Marmoset Toolbag, with Blender raytracer Renderer.
Material texture slot names may alter, but the essence is the same: Albedo, Normal, Reflection intensity/color (Specular in Unity), Reflection blurrness (Glossiness in Unity, stored on Specular Alpha channel), Ambient Occlusion, Emission. All you have to do is to link them to right place.
You could even use it with Metallic workflow, but require more tricky processing, there are some guides for it on Polycount forum and Marmoset site.

I am sorry for the size of TGA files. It is my implementation, it currently not supports compression (will be improved). It could be compressed in image editor, or changed for any other format that supports Alpha. TGA is nothing special, just simple format with alpha channel.
The reason i used TGA - the only specification i manage to find and understand, and PNG format, which the you could export with Unity, actually not supports "true" alpha channel, only transparency (transparent pixels color discarded). So i used PNG for RGB files, and TGA for RGBA files.

 

I made a few more tutorial videos that Surforge users might enjoy. Let me know what you think.

 

Great tutorial, very detailed and useful. Thank you very much!

A little tip: when scaling duplicates of Surforge objects in the scene, you could switch between "pivot/center" at the top Unity panel to have your handles at the center of object, to make it easy to align.

 

Here are 6 materials extra if anyone wants to use
Download link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhWJpHthcQColeUn4iB-GN028yFcjg

Preview:

 

Wow. This is just absolutely awesome! Thank you!
Very professionally made.

I will add the support for imported custom Albedo texture alpha channel transparency as soon as possible.
Hope it will be ready with the next update.

 

Hi, totally new to all aspects of texturing. When I load some test models - in this case from Kenney's assetforge.io, the scale is completely off and the model is not rendered properly. Are there any requirements for models?

 

Hello, its me again lol. I didn't do your asset proud last time, and my pride won't let me be, so here's another pic of that model, its way better in my opinion, of course its my 3rd day in, so I look forward to the day where I will be as skilled as I can be, hahah, anyway, good day and thank you again for this asset, its my main texturing tool nowadays. First rendered in blender, second is just a screen shoot.

 

Hello,
This model was initially designed to be colored by simple materials, not textures. It is when several materials assigned to different parts of model, and have different color.
Some parts of the model not visible in Surforge, because Surforge works with single material (you could apply different materials in Surforge through masks, or "material IDs"), but this model has several materials assigned.
You could assign single material to all it polygons in Blender, that's easy. Just go to Blender material tab, delete everything and apply one single material and export.

In order for the model to be textured with images, not just single colors (not only with Surforge, but with any texturing tool) your model need UVs.
UV mapping is the process of projecting your model polygons to the 2d space. It is like a paper model or cardboard box looking unassembled.
You could do UV layout in Blender, like shown in Evan's tutorial video above. There are more Blender UV tutorials around on YouTube.

Thank you for kind words. I like your progress and texturing work on this model. I also like the UVs layout of this model, very accurate.

Useful hint: when creating UVs, you could save your texture space and future work time, if arrange similar symmetrical parts stacked one over another. I like this trick, and you could check how it works on Surforge example models. When you add details to such organized area of texture, your details will appear on all similar parts simultaneously.

 

Hi @Sergeyv_3d, just bought you asset and digging it. Great job in making this available, however one question: is there any written documentation available? Can't seem to find any and I would like to read about it at ease.

Edit: nevermind found the manual on your website

 

Hello,
Thank you very much for your purchase and positive feedback.
There is a .pdf file with documentation in the Surforge folder and also single page hotkeys file.
Don't forget to check the videos on Surforge youtube channel and Evan's channel.

 

I saw you talking about that somewhere here, and I almost tried it, but unfortunately, it's ok if you do it when you're texturing for yourself, but if you want to sell your assets in the future it will cause trouble with some customers because some of them like to have access to the whole UVs unfolded. Thank you though I will definitely do that when im texturing for myself, as it saves a lot of time and headache like you stated. Thank you for being very active and responding very fast. Hope I see this gem grow for a very long time.

Edit: One thing I wanted to ask you about, and it's been limiting my work flow is, sometimes when I zoom in to get a close look at the texture, the whole texturing plane will disappear, and then im stuck working the model from a very far look, sometimes it doesn't disappear when I zoom in, sometimes it does, I was wondering if you know anything about that ? I'm talking about scene editing not Surforge window. D:

 

Focusing on Surforge background plane or detail objects should help. Unity Editor hotkey "F".

 

Sorry to ask a newbie question but I couldn't find any match when searching across the forums:

Are surforge and vertex tools pro competing assets or do they complement each other? Can surforge use shaders generated from the Amplify shader?

 

Having both tools, Vertex Pro and Surforge are very different, and using them in combination can just make wonders.

VTP being a tool for adding details with on vertecies, while Surfoge is strictly a texturing tool, where VTP isn't. VTP "draws" channels on the objects, and does not give nor extract textures from the object itself.

Hope that helps

 

Simple bucket:


Also Sergey, do you recall the greenish textures with the model and when its compression is on "Normal Quality"?
Is there a way to fix it? As making all high quality compression takes a lot of time for each texture to import, and the green effect is there. Thanks!

 

Nice bucket model and textures.

The textures compression is made by Unity Editor. Surforge can't control the way Unity compress textures.
But i think we could try to find, what tends to produce greenish colors.

Please check the following:
Are specular and albedo maps, exported with Surforge are greenish? You could check it with "uncompressed" settings or by viewing in your image browser or image editor.
If the map files not greenish itself, this color could be produced by skybox, lighting or compression settings. There is not much could be done with Surforge here, as this is outside of Surforge influence. You could check, if it is because of skybox/lighting settings, by copying your model and maps to the new project, and test it with default lighting setup. You could check if it is because of compression, by changing your maps to "uncompressed" and compare.

If map files store unwanted colors itself, you could try to find the material settings, that generates unwanted color.
Plese check, this settings of your materials:
- Dirt (disable it or change to desaturated gray color).
- Specular texture and specular tint.
- Albedo texture and albedo tint.
- Paint layers textures and tint.
- Adjust group of controls hue/saturation and gamma settings.

Please let me know if it helps.
If you continue to have difficulties with this, please send me the scene (with used custom textures if any) and i will check what could be done here. Surforge itself should never tint your maps with unwanted colors, taken from nowhere. There must be a source of greenish color somewhere.

 

What I have gathered is that if the compression is set to Normal Quality you get this:


And with High Quality compression its all fixed:


I think this might be either a format issue when baking the textures.
- I've checked the dirt: Its Brown
- Specular is fine, but again only if I put all of the images to High Quality Compression, the results are what they should be, so all of the images are "corrupted" if I may say.
- Skybox is also not an issue, tested with multiple them
- Layers and materials are fine, as they don't contain any green information like that, all are either brown or high white/yellow collor

Cheers, and thanks Sergey for the help

 

I don't think that image files could actually be "corrupted". It just stores pixel color information. This information is unambiguous. It could be some issue with how Unity Editor read the file formats.
Could i see the exported map files? I am going to explore them in the image editor, save into different formats and test in Unity.

 

Yeah I agree but the format of the TGA image might be the thing.

About the files no problem, as soon as I come home I'll attach them

 

Here you go Sergey:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhWJpHthcQColeUwT2fCM723JN_QPw

 

Thank you very much for sharing maps.

I explored this issue in depth. Here is what i found:
The reason is definitely not in the file format. I tried several formats, and they work exactly the same.
The reason of this issue is in how compression algo works. With normal quality, Unity uses DTX5 algo, while with high quality BC7 algo.

When your project in linear mode, and you use textures, authored in linear space, textures are later gamma-corrected in Unity Standard shader to look as intended.
But DTX5 just have not enough color quality, for very dark color areas to keep room for that gamma-correction.
It seems this is just how texture compression works in general. It is not Unity or Surforge. Just DTX5 algo peculiarity.

One of the following could be done in this case:
- Use BC7 (high-quality compression) for such textures.
- Make problematic areas of texture brighter, for pixel color have more "room" for future processing. In this particular case it is dark "chips" on Albedo map on the edge of the boards.
- Export problematic texture as sRGB, and import with sRGB option in Unity.

 

If anyone wants to read an explanation of DTX5 and BC7, in relation to Sergey's comments, try this article. I thought it was pretty good.

(Edit: In the comments it is mentioned that there is a green shift that occurs with DXT1 and DXT5, and banding in the RGB as well. What I gathered from the article was to use BC7 for HQ closeup textures, BC6 for HDR textures, BC4 for grayscale, and for lower quality textures - like maybe mobile or distant ones - use DXT1 for RGBA with minimal alpha storage or black and white cutout alpha, and DXT5 for RGBA with full grayscale alpha. If you want HQ normals, you could pack them yourself in BC5 format - which is two BC4 grayscale channels - or for lower quality but higher performance stick with Unity's standard DXT5.)

 

Thanks for the feedback Sergey, means a lot.

Now regarding the issue at hand, I've used UBER shaders, and standard ones, all the same. Then I've textured a barrel in substance, with a similar way, and substance textures had no issue in normal compression, or any greenish issues at all, and this is with a lot of changing textures, details, worn edges, etc.

This has to be some internal issue that I might not be seeing or the way it bakes in Unity, not sure honestly. Image from Substance textures:


If you need any details or anything Sergey just ask what do you need.

Cheers, Gabriel

 

Thank you, very informative.

I might be wrong, but i think Unity imports all substances as sRGB textures. So you can't have this issue with it.

 

Yeah you are right, so baking the textures in Gamma space and use them in Linear space project is that a "plausible" solution?
Also I've tried changing the grid Pow size like you mentioned ("uvGridDensity") and still no luck with it.

 

Yes, this could be one of the solutions.

To change the Grid density in UVGrid mode (grid drawn on UV islands), change "uvGridStep" value of "Surforge/Editor/surforgeSettings.prefab" in Unity Inspector tab. The default value is 4, you could change it for 5 for example. Then restart Surforge.
This will change grid for loaded 3d model UV islands, not default cube.

Please note, the grid is tightly connected with snapping feature, and set its density too high could lead to improper work of snapping. Thats why it has limiter in SurforgeInterface.cs script.
If you want to set it higher than 5, comment the line "if (uvGrisDensityPow > 5) uvGrisDensityPow = 5;" (5524 line) in SurforgeInterface.cs
Please note, that this is just a raw hack, grid density control is not yet implemented.

 

Thanks a lot Sergey, sounds awesome.

 

Hey Sergey, picked up your amazing tool a few weeks back! This is to me not just my favorite asset of all time so far i think one of the best things all year in life in general heh........yep that gooood! Seeing what you have now and what's going to happen in later updates is very exciting indeed.

Have moved this into our art pipeline for our larger game project, it's a pleasure to use and the quality results in such a short time are a great benefit to production times.

I've already used it on many objects and want to get it in the hands of existing and new art team members.

Here's' a little something to show, i have a few details to finish up on the flashlight.







Here's a scene in a level where all main models/floor are all Surforge.
https://twitter.com/Syclone_Studios/status/936694061624451072

Keep up the incredible work good sir!

 

Hello,
Thank you very much for your purchase and positive feedback.
I am very happy that your team found Surforge pipeline useful.

I like your models and texturing work a lot. Very realistic and professionally made.
Your twitter with your projects showcase is very exciting.

 

I am an art and 3D model noob, so I've been looking for any help I can get with creating good graphical content for my Unity projects. After browsing the store for a while, I stumbled upon Surforge. After reading a bit and watching some of the videos, it looked too good to be true. I picked up a copy and have only been playing with it for less than an hour. I must say, THIS is the stuff... absolutely fantastic, and I barely know what I'm doing yet! Thanks very much for making such an approachable tool for an art-challenged programmer, I am very excited to dig into it and play, play, play!

One issue I am having... I generally try to keep my 3rd party assets in a separate folder in my projects. However, if I move Surforge out of the project root into any subfolder (e.g. 3rd Party / Surforge), it gets quite angry as the Surforge tab becomes blank and the console is loaded with ArgumentException: The Object you want to instantiate is null errors. Is moving the Surforge folder around in the Project structure not allowed? I checked the docs but didn't see anything showing it was a no-no.

 

Some WIP builded with Surforge.

 

Thank you very much for purchasing your copy of Surforge and your positive feedback.
I am afraid you can't move or rename Surforge folder yet. Some paths still hardcoded. Changing the paths to relative already in todo list.

Good work on this model. I like it.
Military painted worn metal designs look great. You could also try some raw metal parts on joints, to have the contrast with the painted areas.

 

Okay, thanks for letting me know, I appreciate it.

 

Hi Surforge funs!
Have problem with triangle lines. Can't see them. Need close up my eyes to monitor.
Lines on edge of UV block is perfect and comfort.
Is it possible to bold this lines?

 

There is SurforgeInterface.cs script in "Surforge\Editor\Interface\" folder.
There are group of Color variables near 4443 line: uvLines, uvLinesBorder, uvHelperLines0 - uvHelperLines3.
You could try brighter colors for them, increasing its alpha valus, or try different colors.

There are also Surforge0 - Surforge7 shaders in "Surforge\GPURender\" folder.
At the header code of that shaders, you could change "_Color" property, for colors to be more in contrast with lines.
For example bright lines with darker objects colors. You need to reassign ID for objects for color changes to update.
I will add the control of these colors to the settings in the future versions.

As UV lines drawn with GL.LINES in Unity Scene View for maximum performance, i don't think it is possible to control lines thickness.
But if you accidentally know some tricks with GL and want to try, there is "ShowUVs()" method in SurforgeInterface.cs, that draws all that lines.

 

Thanks Sergeyv_3d! Set alpha to 1.0f. Looks good!

 

This is just a minor idea.

Not all materials will use height maps, so I think it would be cool to have tick box option to not export (save) height map. ( and perhaps optionally emission map as well)

so two tick box to not export height, or emission map.

 

Hi Sergeyv_3d,
First I just want to state that this asset is quite impressive and I'm happy that you have provided it to the community. Good show! I am having a couple of minor issues however.

1) I'm trying to go for a very clean, deliberately artificial, solid color look with my textures and the built-in AO is spoiling the baked albedo textures. Is there some way to turn this off? If not is there any chance that such a feature could be added in the future? I don't see much sense in using the generated occlusion map if the occlusion will also be baked directly into the albedo map.

2) In regards to the errors other are having with ScreenSpaceAmbientObscurance.cs script - this is due to the fact that they are installing your asset in the root Assets directory whereas the above script is located in Assets/StandardAssets directory which is compiled first. One way to solve this is to move the above mentioned script out of StandardAssets. It could also be fixed by moving Surforge into the StandardAssets directory but unfortunately Surforge doesn't support this due to its use of hard-coded directories. It's a pet peeve of mine when packages on the asset store don't allow themselves to be moved to different directories. Would you please consider addressing this for a future update? One trick I'ved used in my own asset package is to simply place a dummy file in the root folder of my asset, seek that file out using Unity's AssetDatabase API and then use its directory as the root when building directory strings.

 

Thank you for suggestion. I will add it.
For now, you could comment the lines for corresponding maps in "Assets\Editor\Surforge.cs" in the "ExportMapsGPU" and the following
"CreateMaterialForExportedMaps" methods to disable export of maps you not needed.

Thank you very much for your purchase and positive feedback.

There is a shader "combinePost.shader" in the "\Assets\Surforge\GPURender\" folder. You could edit it to change AO captured by Surforge.
The resultColor.r is a channel where AO stored.
Comment the 73 line "resultColor.r = ao.r * (1 - floatersMask.r) + aoFloaters.r * floatersMask.r;" to disable the AO.

The ability to move/rename of Surforge folder is already in todo list. I will add this feature as soon as possible.
Legacy ImageEffects compatibility issue will also be fixed.

 

Surforge is truly amazing. Powerful but at the same time easy to learn and to use. Really happy with my purchase!

 

Thanks a lot @Sergeyv_3d

My game becomes alive with a pro rendering thanks to you !

http://indiedb.com/games/earthborn-commander
https://twitter.com/jcNorden

 

I was finally able to get surforge implemented in my model. I feel it turned out pretty well