Dedicated PBR container shader (metalness process)

[jawetch]

As the shading and texturing of 3d assets becomes more and more entangled with the developments of the industry-standard PBR process, I think now would be a good time to rethink Vray's utilization of PBR. Although the increased features in Vray Next for metalness support was nice, it is only a starting point. I propose a dedicated Vray shader type, Vray PBR Mtl, which acts as a container format for assigned PBR (metalness compliant) maps. Ideally it would work like this: you assign the Vray PBR Mtl to your object, which exposes the file selection to the user. There are two modes: auto-generate and packaged. Auto generate allows you to select the folder containing your maps, which are then intelligently assigned perhaps to a standard Vray Mtl. The packaged option would allow you to load a single .vpbr file, which contains the pre-assigned maps. The UV tiling and displacement amount could be exposed to the user as editable parameters. This would save a lot of time and increase the usability of assets without complicated workarounds, as well as being an artist-friendly way to utilize PBR materials in Vray. Additionally, the Vray PBR Mtl would make the Vray Blend Mtl even more useful, for example using a terrain .vpbr as the base material with things like leaves and debris added on top using the masking function of the blend amount. Thank you for considering this idea.

[MarkBTomlinson]

I really like the idea of a container workflow for PBR especially for things like substance painter textures which can be organised in a way that would make this workflow very efficient.

[francomanko]

yeah sounds a great idea.

[vlado]

Thanks for the suggestion; before going down that route, I'd like to see what Autodesk will do with MaterialX though.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jasonhuang1115]

What is the .vpbr format? Any pointer? Did a quick Google search but couldn't find related info.

[vlado]

What is the .vpbr format? Any pointer? Did a quick Google search but couldn't find related info.

There isn't one, this was the suggestion - to create one

Best regards,
Vlado

[jawetch]

Thanks for the reply Vlado, I hadn't heard of materialX before you mentioned it but it looks promising for sure.