Surforge 1.4.5 - 3D rendered PBR texturing in Unity

Great news!
Surforge 1.4.0 update is ready and live.
Changelog

The main new feature of 1.4.0 is new High Quality ambient occlusion mode.
It allows to generate precise AO even for finest details.

There are also new prefabs: large set of scratches and dents. Like all Surforge prefabs they are meshes, so resolution independent and volumetric.

 

Awesome!

 

WOW! Went to download.

 

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

 

Hello. This may be an already answered question, but I couldn't find it. Will Surforge run on a Mac running MacOS Catalina or later? I'm using a 2019 model 16" Macbook Pro.

 

Hello.
Yes, Surforge should work fine while Unity Editor version you are using runs as intended.
Please let me know if you face any issues and i will do my best to help.

 

I will, thanks! I believe I'm going to buy it and use it with UModeler.

 

Are there plans for making it compatible with URP?

 

Yes, URP support is in plans.

For now, you could easily use exported result materials and maps in URP and HDRP projects with Unity built-in material converter.
Install Surforge to separate "3d" template project, import meshes, create texture work and export results.
Copy your exported result material and maps to your URP project and in Unity Editor "Edit - Render Pipeline - URP - Upgrade Selected Materials to URP Materials".

 

Hello Sergeyv,

Hello, I just picked up Surforge. I am having a issue with the Symm tool. When I try to cut form the outside into the center ( connection to mirror version) its not cutting. Is this the proper behavior ? I was watching this video : at 1:15 using the mirror tool.

Mine does not allow that.

It seems it is not recognizing the mirror line as outside area.

 

Hello,

Thank you very much for your purchase.
I double checked, cuts ending at symmetry line works for me, the same way as on the video.
Could you please check the following:

- Start the cutting line outside of the Poly Lasso object you are cutting.
- Select Poly Lasso objects you are cutting in the Scene View. It cuts only selected.
- Main line and symmetry line snaps together right in the same point. You should notice the snap behaviour.
Please note, for now it not snaps to the line of symmetry itself. It snaps to the center of your UV island or UVs.
Please set your symmetry with "shift + right click" to the center of UV island (or the center of canvas). The symmetry line will fit snap and work the same way as on the video in this case.
If your symmetry line set arbitrary with "left click, move, right click" it won't snap together to act as combined line for cut, only for two separate cuts.
- Hold Control key for last click on the symmetry line.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

I'm getting an error when installing Surforge on Unity 2019.4.
It works if I modify the source, but is Unity 2019 unsupported?

error message
'EventType.keyUp' is obsolete: 'Use KeyUp instead (UnityUpgradable) -> KeyUp'

 

How can I make the UV always show up in Scene View?
When the mouse cursor moves out of the Scene View, the UV disappear.

 

Hello,
Unity 2019 is fully supported. Just checked again, Surforge 1.4.0 works fine on Unity 2019.4.17f1.

As there are red errors in console, and UV disappear, it looks something went wrong with installation, probably with Unity Automatic API Updater.
Could you please check the following:
- Install Surforge to the separate new project for the first time, to make sure there are no any conflicts with third-party assets.
- Don't forget to press "Go Ahead" button during scripts import, for Unity Automatic API Updater update scripts for your Unity version.
- If something still goes wrong, you may need to press "Window - Layouts - Revert Factory Settings". This will remove missing windows of removed assets, which occur sometimes, and rarely needed.

When installed right, there should be no red errors in the console, and UV should not disappear, when the mouse cursor moves out of the Scene View.

 

Thanks for reply!
I tried your advice.

1) I made new project and install, then selected 'Go Ahead'.
As a result, no error was generated.

2) I selected Default Layout.
As a result, UV displayed always.

What I thought was a problem was my mistake.
Thank you for your quick and accurate advice!
I look forward to the continued development of this great tool.

I'm not very good at English, so I translate at DeepL.
I apologize if the text is difficult to understand.

Thank you!

 

I figured it out.
I need to have only one Scene View to always show UV.

 

Reproduced. Thank you very much for finding this.

 

Quite a few Import issues with 2020.2.1f1

e.g.

Assets\Surforge\Editor\Interface\SurforgeInterfaceCluster.cs(67,121): error CS0117: 'Handles' does not contain a definition for 'ConeCap'
Assets\Surforge\Editor\Interface\SurforgeInterface.cs(6633,181): error CS0117: 'Handles' does not contain a definition for 'DotCap'

 

I am working on the 2020.2 support hotfix. Update will be ready soon.

Unity Automatic API Updater not works for Handles in 2020.2 for some reason. Everything else works right.
If you need to run Surforge on 2020.2 right now, it is possible to update the scripts manually.

Spoiler: How to fix

- Change all "CubeCap" to "CubeHandleCap", "SphereCap" to "SphereHandleCap", etc.
- In "SurforgeInterface.cs" you need to add "EventType.Repaint" as last parameter for the Handles methods, that continue to underline red after method rename.

 

Great news!
Surforge 1.4.1 update is ready and live.

Unity 2020.2 compatibility.

fixed: Show UVs with multiple Scene Views.
fixed: Self-intersecting polygon for some prefabs.
fixed: Material drag-and-drop icons proper center.
Changelog

 

Is it possible to do future feature that will atlas all textures created with surforge ? Just asking.

 

You can use Surforge for atlas textures. Just pack UVs of your several 3d models in one texture space in your 3d editor before you start. Then switch between models while working on your atlas texture with Surforge.

 

I am getting quite a few of the following types of errors in a cloudbuild, windows 64.

3: [Unity] Assets/Surforge/Editor/Interface/SurforgeInterfaceRig.cs(158,92): error CS0117: 'Handles' does not contain a definition for 'SphereCap'
4: [Unity] Assets/Surforge/Editor/Interface/SurforgeInterfaceCluster.cs(67,121): error CS0117: 'Handles' does not contain a definition for 'ConeCap'

unity 2020.1.17f1
Surforge 1.4.1

I don't actually need surforge for this project, i am just copying over prefabs that were created in another project that uses surforge (just materials/shaders) and umodeler. I couldn't copy over because surforge shaders are hidden, so had to install surforge in my current project (with the above errors).

 

Hello,

This problem possibly related to the improper installation or copying Surforge between projects.
As you know, Unity change some of method names between versions, i.e "SphereCap", and "SphereHandleCap".
Surforge uses Unity feature "Platform #define directives" to switch between the code for different Unity versions.
It is very likely, when moving some of Surforge parts between the projects, the scripts not match your Unity version.

Completely removing Surforge from your project, including Surforge related things copied from previous project and reinstall Surforge fresh should fix the issue.

Your texture work final results created by Surforge pressing "export" button never use Surforge itself, and could be copied and used in the project without Surforge installed.

In the case you need to transfer your intermediate results, like material presets in Surforge format, please do the following:
- In the project you need to copy your custom Surforge materials from, select the needed material on texture view with Control key or with drop down menu, and press the button with arrow "save current material", located under texure view. This could be done to entire material sets, currently selected on texture preview, with "save material set" button.
- Check "Surforge/CustomPresets" folder, where your materials and material sets saved, as .mat + .meta files.
- Install Surforge fresh to the new project, and check it work as intended.
- Copy only the contents of "Surforge/CustomPresets" from your previous project to the new project.
- Save new project and restart Unity. You copied materials should now be visible at the bottom of Surforge materials scrollable panel, and your material sets in Surforge material sets dropdown menu under the texture view.

If you need to make Surforge shaders not hidden, you could edit the first line of Surforge shaders located in Surforge/GPURender folder, changing "Hidden/Id0" to "Id0" to make it visible in the project.
But there is no reason to do this, as Surforge materials you saved are not shaders, but .mat + .meta files, and just use the shaders from your new fresh Surforge installation.

 

This is probably something I'm not doing correctly, but I can't figure it out. Using the latest Unity 2019 LTS on a windows 10 machine with 16gigs RAM, my computer slows to a crawl when I open Surforge. It's essentially unresponsive and I have to use Task manager to shut down Unity. Surforge installed without errors and I can see the interface... it just can't use it! Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

I want to paint a character with 3 submeshes, is there a straightforward way to select which one? Now I only can paint the eyes submesh.

 

Hello,
Double checked latest Surforge 1.4.1 with the latest Unity 2019 LTS (2019.4.21f1).
Works fine and smooth on 2013 year PC, Windows 10.

There could be little performance spikes in the first half-minute after starting work.
When all the prefabs are loaded, and needed RenderTextures created, the work should go even smoother.

Please don't worry, i will do my best to help.
Probably, something went wrong with the installation. Could you please check the following:
- Install Surforge to the separate new project for the first time, to make sure there are no any conflicts with third-party assets.
- Use default "3D" template.
- Don't forget to press "Go Ahead" button during scripts import, for Unity Automatic API Updater update scripts for your Unity version.
- Check you have no errors in the console.
- Press "Window - Layouts - Revert Factory Settings". This will remove missing windows of removed assets, which occur sometimes, and rarely needed.

Please let me know if this helped.

 

Surforge is designed to create single material/texture set at the result, effectively combining materials of diffrent texture areas to one, using Material IDs.
But as your model has submeshes, it is aimed to have several result materials applied.

There could be two approaches, according to the needed final results:
1. Split a copy of your model to separate meshes in your 3d editor. Create and export separate material for each mesh, then apply several separate materials to your source model with submeshes.
2. Combine submeshes in your 3d editor into one mesh, edit your UVs to avoid overlaps, for all UVs of source submeshes share one UV space. Create one final material with Surforge, and apply final result to your combined mesh. This approach is good for performance.

 

This worked for me, thanks.

 

Installing Surforge in a new project did work properly.
In the project I'm actually working on, Surforge installs cleanly with no console errors. So I'm guessing another asset I have installed is interfering somehow.

 

Hello guys,

I'm a developer of UModeler asset.

This time we've made a demo video to show how to use Surforge along with UModeler. I found that some UModeler users used Surforge to texture UModeler meshes and some others asked us to make videos to showcase how to collaborate both tools. This made us decide to get started with a sci-fi mechanic demo. As you already know Surforge works very well on the sci-fi themed meshes. Therefore we could get a very satisfactory result.

I hope you'll like the video. If you want to get more info, please visit here.

Thank you!

 

Hi does surforge work well with other stuff besides sci fi , like organic models trees , rocks, wood??

Can you bring in your own materials?

 

Hey so i just went ahead and purchased the Asset but as well as the questions
above i want to know how do assign different materials to parts of your model and how can u mix two textures like dirt with a rock texture?

 

Hello,

Thank you very much for your purchase.

Surforge is not limited with sci-fi, it is great for "things created by man".
There are wood, board, brick, stone materials and texture detail assets.
It is not suited for texturing trees or leafs, but there are some interesting 3d moss assets, handy to add greens to the stone or rocks.

You could easily add your own materials, by assigning your own textures to corresponding fields of Surforge material editor. You could then have Surforge material features on top of your own material if needed, like paint layers, noises, worn edges.
You could create variants of materials in real time and save them for future use.

You could easily add different materials to the parts of your texture, based on the feature called "material ID". Select any texture detail and add ID to it with digit buttons in material tab or keys with numbers. You could easily mark up texture areas with Poly Lasso tool, and handy "UV island fill" feature with double click. Then press space hotkey to update your texture, and drag and drop materials from Surforge material tab to the corresponding parts of the texture in Surforge texture preview.

To add noises to your materials, there are several easy to use and handy approaches. Every Surforge material has optional "paint layer" based on randomizable built in noise mask. It is not only for paint, but to mixing some noise to any type of material.
There is fine tweaking for noises/details of specular/glossiness/metallic maps.
Finaly, there is global tweakable dirt layer on the top of all your materials in your material set, based on AO generated from details of your texture.
For texturing rocks and stones there are also 3d dents prefabs, handy for adding details and mixing materials.

 

Hey thanks forgot to edit my post last night but yes i was able to pretty much answer all my own questions by reading docs and just messing around a bit, i really appreciate you making such a wonderful tool there are many customizability options, the only thing i do want to make sure i understand that i have not got working yet is the mixing of two pbr materials you say this possible? I do see the paint mask but im seeing it only adding a tint color to the mask and applying it to the material but you are saying there is an actual way to add a material to the paint mask am i understanding correctly?

Oh and also is height info supported?

 

Quick question, so i exported my textures and det them up in my project using standard spec but the textures dont look the same at all as how they look in surforge, is there something im missing?

 

This is probably due to you have different skybox in your project. When you use PBR materials, especially metallic materials, their appearance depends on your skybox. You could test (and feel free to use) skyboxes that ships with Surforge, which could be found in "Surforge/Skybox/" folder.
You could also check your exported materials in Surforge project first, they should be the same after export.
Another reason could be your exported textures compression settings.

Height map is supported and exported, but for now it has couple limitations. If you are using "floaters" and labels features, it is up to you to check that such objects not placed too high, because such objects, despite they blend to the underlaying height, draws their actual height on the heightmap.

You can't blend two separate materials with semi transparent mask or gradient. Please treat with understanding, as Surforge material system GPU based, it cannot be complicated indefinitely, while staying as much flexible and fast as possible.
You could combine materials based on material ID mask on your texture canvas. While working with stone for example, you could add groups of small details, like dents, with different material IDs to have mixed pattern of several materials.
If needed really badly, it is possible to use "export masks - separate" feature and export antialiased black and white masks of every material ID. You could then use that masks to combine different exported result materials in you image editor.
But the paint layer feature should be enough for most layered/noisy material designs, as you have two of them, and with tweakable specular/glossiness/transparency/noise controls, it is much more powerfull than just tint.

 

One the left is how its looks in my project and on the right how it looks in surforge, the squares to the left on the texture are the one i blocked out my uv with using poly lasso , and on the albedo u can clearly see they look like ot exported them blocked out that way im just not understanding why it looks different in surforge compared to in my project...

 

so far as height i see it can export a height map which is great but is it possible to load a height map into the asset, I want to be able to pretty much use every texture that comes in my pbr material.

And so basically there is no way to mix two pbr materials on one material Id so like a ground with dirt material with a rock material mixed over that? This i think you should add everything else is awesome and works great but i think you should be able to break up the repetition in tiled textures, even an option to add noise to the actual material would be nice and not just the 2 paint layers although i really like the paint layers the option to add another material with a mix slider too mix two materials and the ability to add noise to the those materials either together or independently would really be some game changing additions for surforge and im running on a lower spec laptop and surforge runs good, so i dont think adding these options will really break performance of the asset for a more modern gpu which i should have lol. Like trust me im not expecting surforge to be the next substance or something but there should be at least a quick amd dirty way to mix two pbr materials it just makes sense with all the other programs out there and you said i could use an image editor but im really trying to prevent from having to leave unity to do any type of texture work, i only want to use photoshop to prep custom mask and other things i may need to bring into surforge not the other way around at least not all the time if that makes any sense.

 

Thank you very much for your feedback. Material blending and semitransparent masks would be nice feature to have. I will explore what could be done in this direction.

It looks like on the left screenshot there is something wrong with UVs. UVs not match the texture, or maybe tiling/offset properties of the material in Unity inspector.
If you could share the model and exported maps, i will do my best to check and find out. It would help a lot, as screenshots not that informative.

 

Awesome i really hope you can implement those features,,, I've invested in surforge to be my texture software because it really is to me the best texturing tool out to date, and it would be awesome to have those features to make high quality textures models for realism use cases which is my only focus...
and yes heres the zip , Thanks so much for taking the time to help, really great support my friend.

 

@Sergeyv_3d


Im sorry about this but the picture above in my first post with the two images ....this was the one on the left that looks tiled all funny and that's because i had manipulated the tiling on the material and forgot to put it back to 1,1 This is how it actually looks...youbcab tell its still not how its suppose to look but you can tell that The uv map is the same so its not the uv but just for some reason the textures look very different from how it should look like on the picture on the right in my first post.

 

I checked model and textures, textures looks exported correctly, and everything looks right.
But there is no specular map in the archive you shared (or metallic if you use metallic workflow).
The difference in material look may come from specular/metallic map and maybe skybox you use.

I could see in new screenshot, you have redish colors from albedo much more visible, than on your screenshot from Surforge. This may be due to improper specular, as the specular/glossiness map could overlap albedo a lot with certain settings, especially with bright skybox. As you model surface oriented top, check the skybox you selected in Surforge, maybe it is somethng like bright sky, and it overlaps the reddish with its specular color, and you get that bright looking material. It is good practice to switch between different skyboxes when working on your texture, for your material look not to be tied to the certain skybox.
This also could be from improper linear/gamma setting of your textures in Unity inspector, if you use linear workflow for your project.

Please check the following:
- Exported specular/metallic map assigned to the material.
- You use right material type for your workflow. If you used specular workflow with surforge, you should use specular material type for exported maps, and for metallic workflow you should use metallic material.
- The same is for gamma/linear settings for Surforge project, this setting should match your target project. If you use linear, check for the corresponding option for the exported maps in Unity inspector.
- Check if it is not very much difference in skybox you use with Surforge and skybox of your main project.
- Check your exported maps has enough resolution for clean details.

You could also decrease the global dirt amount in Surforge, as this unwanted redish comes mostly from dirt of your material set. You could find global dirt settings in dropdown menu where you select active material under Texture Preview, or just hover your Texture Preview with mouse pointer and use "shift + mouse scroll" to scroll through dirt variants.
By the way, when markup your texture areas with PolyLasso, you could decrease the border size of your poly lasso objects. To do it, select your Poly Lasso objects and press "[" hotkey several times.

 

Thanks for taking a look for me can you send me a screen shot of how the model.looks textured for you amd can you send me the settings u have so i van make sure its right for me?

 

So i was able to get the textures looking closer to what i expect but the quality of them still does not resemble how they look in surforge they seem lower res when i actually exported them with a higher res, you mentioned a few things like skybox and compression ive put the skybox in my project and the res is still bad is there somewhere, could it be the compression?

 

It could be the compression, as in Surforge you see all textures uncompressed. It could be also the texture resolution is too low for your details exported as intended.
Setting up material in Surforge, you could in theory use settings that exceed the resolution of your exported texture, for example high tiling values. But you still need enough resulution of your exported texture to handle results.
Maybe you could improve the UV design of the model to use texture space more optimal. There are good room for optimization, as there some unused texture space between UV islands of your model.

 

Okay im going try a few things when i get home but far as my uvs go i think they are fine.... inside of surforge i get the right amount of detail i want but moving forward how can surforge bypass having this type of issue in the future, like you mentioned the res not being what i needed because surforge can up the res based on settings, but the textures i put in surforge originally were 2048 so i had did the res change from there, someway surforge should export the settings that were orginial is best as possible.

 

Well, it is not Surforge issue, but the way texturing works in general. To store your texture information, obviously, your exported texture should have enough resolution for your details, no matter what texturing tool you use. This could be increased by using larger UV islands, better packing, splitting your model, using higher resolution of final texture.

You could use 2k texture, but when important details focused on a small UV island, and the large part of your texture space unused, you don't get the full benefit of your high resolution texture. The largest central part of your model surface textured by the smallest of your UV islands.


As texture fields in Surforge has tiling settings, there is no way (and no need) to prevent user to change that tiling settings as needed. For example you could load a seamless 512 texture, and use x4 tiling to get 2048 texture. As being GPU based, Surforge composer shader is resolution independent where it is possible.

This is actually a huge advantage, not a disadvantage.
In compare with CPU based texturing, like image editor plugins, that is tied to the resolution on your canvas, GPU texturing allows you to change target resolution at any time, combine textures of different resolutions in one material, finetune tiling and texture rotation and so on.
But of course nothing could prevent user to load high resolution texture and set high tiling, and GPU will draw you superfine details in the shader, which will be limited by the resolution of your result texture when you export. This is just how shaders work.

 

Hey

Hey i sent you a pm check yo inbox

 

I replied your PM. Please let me know if you have any questions.