Quixel download settings for blender?

[Bruno]

Hi, I recently became member of Quixel.
I am using the Quixel Bridge app that works really well with Blender, since is possible to transfer on the go all the maps into blender with one button and a material will be created.

Bridge mainly works first downloading that material/asset etc you want and after that you can export it to Blender. My doubts are, what type of maps should I download?

Once in Bridge the first step is to decide which maps you will be downloading from that specific material.

As you can see there are presets that will enable automatically those maps needed for example:
Unreal 4
Unity…
and so on,

First question ? Any of those settings are shared with Blender too? This questions goes directed maybe to someone that Is familiarized with Bridge.

But also, there is the possibility to pick yourself what you need from that material and create your custom settings, I would like to know those maps Blender will make use of and those I do not need.

In green those ones I believe Blender will make use of it:
Albedo
AO
Displacement
Opacity
Translucency

I might be wrong, so if any of these are not necessary please feel free to share your thoughts.

Then in blue those I believe are alternatives and different softwares will use one or the other:
Gloss
Roughness

I guess these two are kind of a pair, in terms that they work towards the same goal, but depends on which type of engine you are using you need one of them. I am not sure, Blender works with roughness right?

Then in orange the other pair I am in doubt, since Blender has the two slots in the principle shader and maybe its not one or the other , but both depending if I am using a metal or a plastic ?

Sorry a lot of theory I do not know.

[Scoped]

I’ve been using Megascans for a while and honestly, I can tell you that you only need 3 maps most of the time. These are albedo, roughness and normal (not normal bump I believe). For metallic shaders just add metalness texture on top of those. When it comes to plans you will additionally need translucency and opacity and that’s basically it. I’ve seen virtually no difference with other maps so I stick with the minimum to save memory and render time.

And when it comes to theory, there are 2 types of engines. Some, like Corona, work with specular workflow while Cycles works with metalness workflow. For us, the only difference is that we usually don’t have to touch specularity slider in the principled node and when we’re not dealing with metallic shaders we don’t really need metalness maps. A nice thing to remember is that gloss and roughness maps are the exact opposites of each other. If you have a glossiness map, just use the “invert” node and it’s now a roughness map.

I hope this will help you a little

[Bruno]

Super clarifying, thank you.

In regards to the metalness / specular:

What happens when is not a metal, lets say plastics or marble. Do we still need to use metalness maps if they are available? What is driving the reflection if not? I understand you do not usually use those maps, but lets say for feature troubleshooting I would like to use them…should I use specularity on those cases or the map is still the metalness for those materials too?

Thank you

Edit: just realized you are the one doing the insane (positive use) archviz. Have so many questions about your lighting. I am not focus in archviz, but furniture and objects.

[Scoped]

For dielectrics (non-metals) you never use metalness maps unless the texture is a combination of metal and a different surface, like i.e. paint.

When it comes to specularity, in 99% of cases leaving it at 0.5 works just fine. Don’t touch it and you’ll be fine. Only cases when you want to play with it is when you need more contrast within the reflections when light is overwhelming the shader (floor against a window or something like that). You can then make some parts of the wood grain almost non-reflective using some node tweaking.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I’ll be happy to help!

[Bruno]

Thanks a lot! I really appreciate your insights.
Just a theoretic so I get a little bit more into the material world, the dialectics in Blender usually do not need the map Quixel offers, but in an extreme situation “specular” will be the one to choose instead of metalness

[Scoped]

For dielectrics that’s true but if you have a combination of metal and dielectric (rusty knife for instance) you will have to use metalness and not specularity map.