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Normalize illumination for texture creation


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A stupid question, starting from my phone photo what to try create a 3d texure to be used in game engine.

Problem is there is a distinct centered circle where the illumination is different from the borders.

Wondering how is possible to normalize the illumination on the whole picture (see example)

IMG_20190323_094544_800.jpg

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Hi @davide445

Not a stupid question at all. Try taking into the Develop persona, go to the Lens panel, and apply the Vignette correction. That's what it looks like is a lens vignette.

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Hi @Ron P., thanks for your kind words.

Using Remove Lens Vignette option better the situation, but in fact expand the central light making the image a bit too bright, also I did see still a bit darker corners, I can't completelly eliminate without making it even brighter.

Playing with Exposure and Contrast didn't change so much the situation, I can make it more washed but not eliminate completelly the darker corners. There is anything else I can try in your opinion? 

IMG_20190323_094544_800_nov.jpg

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Would be much better to make a tile and create the texture from scratch.

This was made in Affinity Photo 1.7 beta using the procedural texture filter and a bit more :D
Screen-Shot-2019-03-27-at-10-45-37.png

Tiles only opens in 1.7 beta.afphoto (14MB)

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@firstdefenceyou started from my image, or just created it procedurally?

Since I need to recreate real buildings my idea was starting with real images of their materials to create the textures. 

Maybe an idea can be just use the pictures as reference and extract their components (base color, roughness, noise, surface patterns) to recreate the texture using this one. This is what you suggest? 

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I did it procedurally, I think you'd get more consistent and controllable results this way. You could then create variations or rotate say a tile to give a more authenticate look.

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10 minutes ago, casterle said:

This is very interesting, and with variables no less. So much to explore!

Yes brings a nice creative aspect and with a bit more work I could have probably gotten a very close facsimile of the tile. It would be great if normals, bump, diffuse etc could be gleaned and exported en masse. Then Suddenly you have a texture exporter within Affinity Photo how cool would that be.

I have filter forge which is just off the chart awesome and you can export all manner of textures and its bump, normals, diffuse etc files, so I have that but I'm sure Affinity Cuke Crew could push the envelope. 

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55 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

:):):) - sorry, couldn't find gold stars.

57 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I have filter forge

Is that equation-based? I'm curious - how did you learn the math required to produce the texture in your example? Do you have a math background?

On a more fundamental level, what are textures used for? I've seen them applied for artistic effect in some of the AP tutorials, but surely there's more use for them in AP.  I've played briefly with the Lighting Filter, but only for a few minutes - perhaps textures interact with this light? So much to learn!

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4 minutes ago, casterle said:

:):):) - sorry, couldn't find gold stars.

Here you go: star.gif star.gif star.gif

Alfred spacer.png
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1 minute ago, casterle said:

Is that equation-based? I'm curious - how did you learn the math required to produce the texture in your example? Do you have a math background?

I am not @firstdefence, but I have been exploring Filter Forge. Much of the filter/texture creation in FF is by choosing a suitable process (such as Perlin Noise) and then varying the parameters.  You can, in fact, create Perlin Noise in Affinity and it is quite configurable, but not as much as FF. I don't know about @firstdefence, but I do not have a mathematical background, just self-taught. This is not to suggest that getting to grips with creating textures is easy. It takes persistence!

John

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So interesting.

Even if not a specialist I was used to the Unreal Engine materials node editor to change materials behavior.

Now testing Unigine materials for more simulation oriented work and wanting to more realistically create real world one by using photos.

Testing Quixel Mixer specifically made for game creation it's nice but in fact allow you to primarily use Megascans huge materials database to create yours one. You can import your textures but you need first to find them.

Testing Materialize need to say produce nice results from my photos, my original question was to improve the quality of the original texture.

Filter Forge seems to be a nice alternative with huge available database and node based editing.

Was testing Affinity using this tutorial to create Unigine shader material, and seems not to be so streamlined.

Need to understand with all these options what's the most efficient for my needs.

 

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2 hours ago, casterle said:

:):):) - sorry, couldn't find gold stars.

Is that equation-based? I'm curious - how did you learn the math required to produce the texture in your example? Do you have a math background?

On a more fundamental level, what are textures used for? I've seen them applied for artistic effect in some of the AP tutorials, but surely there's more use for them in AP.  I've played briefly with the Lighting Filter, but only for a few minutes - perhaps textures interact with this light? So much to learn!

Re math background, no just a curiosity in certain areas. Fractal geometry, cryptography things like that interest me, I can't always tell a 6 from a 9 but mathematical patterns fascinate me.

 

fxLayerIcon_lightui.png

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An example of what Filter Forge can create.

 

Main Image
Tile BlockImage.jpg

 

Reflective Occulsion
Tile BlockImage-ro.jpg

 

Normal
Tile BlockImage-normal.jpg

 

Diffuse
Tile BlockImage-diffuse.jpg

 

Ambient Occulsion
Tile BlockImage-ao.jpg

 

Bump
Tile BlockImage-bump.jpg

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4 hours ago, firstdefence said:

I can't always tell a 6 from a 9 ...

In the spirit of 'Suddenly' ....

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There is a little app called Crazy Bump that will make Normal, displacement maps etc from an image that can be used in Affinity lighting filter 

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There are many alternatives for the normals work, in different periods I have tried many of them such as Knald, xNormals, CrazyBump, AwesomeBump, MightyBake...

Curious to try also ShaderMap that appear to be powerful.

At the end I prefer the one allowing an end to end workflow and not being focused only on one step, just since being this not my full time activity but more a prototyping for project planning I need to test fast how a concept is working, what I can do with it, what kind of assets and skills are needed, what budget and time is needed.

Reading a bit appear Filter Forge can be managed trough API programming?

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11 hours ago, davide445 said:

Reading a bit appear Filter Forge can be managed trough API programming?

I'm told that Filter Forge 8 now works as a plugin to Affinity Photo but for Macs only. In Windows, it gives me error messages.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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https://www.filterforge.com/more/help/Scripting/GettingStartedwithScripting.html

So appear is possible in fact to use Lua to script Filter Forge behavior.

The seems to be possible also with ShaderMap

https://shadermap.com/docs/_lua_api.html

Important for my needs since need to be mostly executed from other software components.

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3 hours ago, John Rostron said:

I'm told that Filter Forge 8 now works as a plugin to Affinity Photo but for Macs only. In Windows, it gives me error messages.

John

Have you tried in 1.7 beta?

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9 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Have you tried in 1.7 beta?

As I said in the link: I tried   with AP 1.7 Beta and FF8 gave me the same error message as in 1.6, but did not freeze AP.

John

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I like the procedural approach, and I like to generate textures from scratch, or crazily mixing sources. Today though, unless is for indy games or fast protoyping, I'd say this way is a kind of frowned upon, as is now almost a must (even for small studios using typically Unity and Unreal engines) to use a PBR based workflow. This means using high quality scans of realistic textures, then use a strict set of maps, which are all established, and that tools like Substance Paint/Designer or Quixel, have normalized so that the values stay in the PBR standards. I'm old school, and this has made less fun for me texturing, even  when considering how we'd texture for mods back in Quake 1-2 mods times, the fun has gone decreasing since then, lol. But the PBR arrival was the "fun is over", for me. And I did it as a job, not a hobby... but started as a hobby... is less and less artistic and more and more a matter of replication and using specialized tech ....very rigid procedures.

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@SrPx next Wednesday will be on the location of a construction I want to map the materials, to develop a version of his simulation with maximum similarity (there will be also other versions more relaxed in term of realism).

Based on current PBR workflow a better way will be use the photos just as reference and use product such as Mixer to achieve the result "mixing" other available Megascan materials and decals, or better use the actual photos and products such as Materialize to create the final material, as from the beginning of the thread.

What do you think about the best option?

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