PixPlant 3D Material Tab Help

# 3D Material Tab Help

## 1. Getting Started

The 3D Material tab allows you to create normal, displacement, specular and diffuse (color) maps from the current texture in the Texture tab. To build these maps on the 3D Material tab you can simply load an existing texture into the Texture tab or generate one there from Seed images. Although generating a texture from a seed image has advantages (you can make it seamlessly tiled as desired) it is not required: you can simply load an existing image into the canvas and generate normal, displacement and specular maps here.

To create 3D material maps you can simply:

1. Load an image into the Texture Canvas in the Texture tab. Or generate one from Seed images.
2. The normal, displacement and specular maps are generated here and displayed in the 3D Preview.
3. Tune the surface parameters in the 3D Maps area, for example to add or remove fine detail as best suited to the material.

After the material is customized you can save the maps into image files and use them in your 3D application.

## 2. The 3D Preview Area

The left side of the 3D Material tab displays a 3D preview of how the normal, displacement, specular and diffuse maps will appear when rendered on a 3D model. Each time a setting is changed at the 3D Maps area on the right, PixPlant will automatically calculate and update the 3D preview area on the left.

The texture upon which the 3D maps are generated is the one generated (or simply loaded) into the Texture Canvas in the Texture Tab.

The previewed model is rendered with parallax mapping (also called offset mapping or virtual displacement mapping), to aim at the best possible realism while offering interactive frame rates. Parallax mapping requires a 3D graphics board capable of version 2.0 pixel shaders: any board sold since 2004 should support these without problems.

As with any other 3D application which uses your 3D graphics board, it's important that you have the latest drivers and DirectX 9 installed. If you see any problems with the 3D Preview please check for the latest versions. Running the PixPlant installer will scan and offer to update DirectX.

### Previewed Maps

The Previewed Maps setting at the top-right corner of the 3D Preview area controls which of the maps are rendered in the 3D preview.

It's usually a good idea to first tune the normal and displacement maps, then the specular and diffuse maps: to simplify this the checkboxes at the top-right corner of the 3D Preview area can be selected and unselected, which will only render the enabled maps.

### 3D Material Tiling Mode

On this option you can select whether the generated 3d maps should seamlessly tile, horizontally and/or vertically.

This setting is synchronized with the one displayed at the same location in the Texture tab - if you change one the other will also change. However if you change the setting, the texture still needs to be generated in the Texture tab.

### UV Scale

This setting controls the number of times that the 3D maps will tile around the current model preview. For seamless tiling the Tiling Mode setting must be have the appropriate value and the generated/loaded texture in the Texture Tab must must also tile as selected here.

### 3D Model

Change this setting to preview the 3D maps on a different model. The default sphere is usually the best model for quickly understanding depth and normals.

## 3. The 3D Maps Area

The 3D Maps area at the right side of the 3D Materials tab is where the characteristics of the normal, displacement, specular and diffuse maps can be tuned. Each time a setting is changed, the effects are calculated and displayed both in the current tab and in the 3D Preview area.

The Save button and popup at the bottom allows you to save or copy to the clipboard the current map or to save all the 3D maps.

### Common Surface Settings

The Common Surface Settings area is always available at the bottom-right corner of the 3D Material tab and allows you to customize settings common to the generation of the normal, displacement and specular maps. In general you should first try to obtain a good relief by changing these settings - usually by previewing only the Normals+Displacement in the 3D Preview - and later customizing the settings specific to each map.

The following settings are available:

- Relief Invert: Select to invert the relief depth if elements that should be higher are instead appearing at the bottom (or the other way around).
- Equalize Relief: If checked this setting will massage the surface in order to create a more uniform depth map.
- Fine Detail: This setting controls the amount of fine detail (high frequency visual detail) included on the surface.
- Medium Detail: Controls the amount of medium-level detail (medium frequency visual detail) available on the surface.
- Large Detail: Controls the amount of coarser (lower frequency) detail on the surface.
- Base Surface: This setting controls the overall roughness of the surface, with lower levels building a smoother (and more flat) relief.

### Normal Map

The Normal Map tab displays the normal map generated from the current texture. With the Intensity slider you con control the strength of the surface normals, with higher values producing a rougher relief while lower settings create a smoother map.

### Displacement Map

The Displacement Map tab displays the displacement (depth) map generated from the current texture. The intensity of the height values can be controlled with the Depth slider.

### Specular Map

This tab displays and includes controls to refine the specular map generated from the current texture:

- Specular Brightness: Controls the specular intensity with higher levels producing more shininess, while lower levels will cause little or no reflections.
- Specular Contrast: This setting controls the amount of difference or contrast between the highest and lowest specularity levels in the map."
- Specular Noise: This setting adds noise to the specular map which is usually useful for some grainier materials.
- Specular Metallicness: Positive levels of this setting tend to improve reflections of metallic materials, while lower levels help removing the metallic look on the reflections of certain materials.

### Diffuse (Color) Map

The Diffuse tab displays the diffuse map which is created from the texture in the Texture tab plus a light equalization setting which removes shading and highlights from the diffuse map. Be careful as higher levels might introduce color shifts in the map.

## 4. The 3D Material Options

The Options dialog is available by selecting the Menu button at the bottom-right corner of the PixPlant window both in the 3D Material and Texture tabs. It contains the following options:

- Normal Map Y-Axis: This option selects whether the normal map should be saved with Y-axis (green channel) positive values pointing up or down (default). If you're having problems in other applications with exported normal maps please try flipping this setting.
- Normal Map X-Axis: This option selects whether the normal map should be saved with X-axis (red channel) positive values pointing left or right (default). If you're having problems in other applications with exported normal maps try flipping this setting.
- 3D Map Save Suffixes: The suffixes automatically added when you save all 3D material maps.
- Normal Map Preview: This option selects whether the normal map in the 3D Preview is rendered from an 8-bit map or from a floating point map. If you see artifacts, usually in specularity, change this setting to floating point. The bad news is that using floating point might slow-down 3D previews after changing settings, specially in older 3D graphics boards. These artifacts usually appear in smooth materials - for example:
- Anti-Alias 3D Preview: This option selects whether the 3D Preview should render with anti-aliasing (only if supported by the 3D graphics board). You'll need to restart PixPlant for the change to work.

Also available in the Options dialog is the JPEG quality level, used when saving JPEG files both in the 3D Material and Texture tabs.

## 5. Shortcut Keys

The following shortcut keys are available in the 3D Material tab:

Ctrl + C | Copy the current 3D map into the Clipboard
Ctrl + S | Save the current 3D map
Ctrl + Shift + S | Save all 3D maps
Shift + F1 | Show interactive quick help
F1 | Display this help

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