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Surprising results converting existing texture for Unity 5 standard shader

Discussion in 'Unity 5 Pre-order Beta' started by Steve-Tack, Mar 1, 2015.

  1. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

    Joined:
    Mar 12, 2013
    Posts:
    1,240
    I'm 99% programmer and 1% artist, so I rely on the asset store for art assets at the moment. I've been pretty intimidated by the whole Unity 5 PBR/standard shader talk, so I started playing around with it without worrying about all that junk about measured values, blah blah blah.

    My first attempt at converting existing textures was with a free spaceship model that only included a JPG diffuse and a normal map. The results were "interesting" but it's tough without source layers. My second attempt was with a paid model that only had diffuse and specular (no normal!?), but luckily it included the Photoshop PSD with everything nicely separated.

    This is the result of my first attempt on that second model using metal/smoothness. I'm sure artist types would spend countless hours defining each material properly (as they should!), but I think this is pretty cool for a quick-and-dirty conversion. The original using the legacy Specular shader doesn't actually look as bad as this (not sure why it looks like THAT in Unity 5). I mean, in Unity 4 at least the specular of the out-of-the box one is at least slightly visible, though it's still kind of anemic.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28342849/PBR Texture Test/PBR Texture Test.html

    My thoughts:
    1. If you're going to rely on the asset store for models and will be using the Unity 5 standard shader, favor those that include PSD files.
    2. C'mon artists, time to step up and start including PBR maps: flat albedo, metal/smoothness, and AO.
    3. Unity 5 PBR is kinda sick!

    If you don't want to do the web player, here's a still image comparison:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/rpnu1kaqmghzpm4/Fighter2_legacy_vs_pbr.png?dl=0
     
  2. p87

    p87

    Joined:
    Jun 6, 2013
    Posts:
    318
    yeah, something looks messed up w/ the one on the left in the screenshot, lol. Looks like it might not be set up with the legacy shader right. If it only has diffuse and specular, then I think you would want to use the legacy "Specular" shader that takes Base (RGB) Gloss (A), and make sure there's gloss data in the alpha channel of the diffuse. Looks like you may have saved that texture without any gloss data in the alpha channel.
     
  3. Steve-Tack

    Steve-Tack

    Joined:
    Mar 12, 2013
    Posts:
    1,240
    The texture is straight from being downloaded from the asset store. It does have specular in the A channel and it's set to Legacy Shaders/Specular. It must be some sort of bug or weirdness with Unity 5 RC3, as it doesn't look quite THAT bad in Unity 4. The out-of-the-box version is still a bit dull in Unity 4 though:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/y40phtgs6kmrlux/fighter2_Unity4.PNG?dl=0