Luca Deriu Blog

A detail of Real PBR tool in action.

Starting from version 1.7 of Real HDR, the 3D artists will find a new flag in the options window that will expose a temporary buffer to Real PBR. By using this new option it will be then possible to precisely adjust the lights by using Real HDR while watching the realtime HDRI update result in Real PBR.

In this scene of my colleague Elena Kartseva, you can see a prototype of a room for a VR game, where I moved the focus from the entire container to a detail.

There are no materials applied and the models are approximated since the small interior is just a prototype, but the 3D Scene Management and the camera movement are great. I have to add some parameters related to the sensitivity and the flip of the movement axis though.

In this picture below you can see the usual model I received from my former colleague Ville Niemi for testing purposes. Ville is also supporting me with insiders’ requests so I prepared for him the Master Texture slot. I am sure this will be appreciated by many users since it will let import the AO, metalness, and Roughness by using a single texture. I kept the Emission in a separate Map (my thoughts about that here). As an alternative to the Master Texture, I left the previous individual slots. I strongly suggest using one or another since the result is practically a sum.

This is off topic but I couldn’t resist from using my very old assets from a first-person shooter videogame I was developing back in 2008 using the amazing Unigine…can’t imagine that this is what was happening at PlaySys 11 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DCA3rZMIs4

There are also new slots in the material including a Metalness Map that in future will be derived by a single channel of an RGB map like a Red channel of a Master Texture. I am not sure I want a Master though since I don’t like the idea of the Emission Map packed in a single channel and multiplied by a flat color. These days I am playing with the super-duper Borderlands 3 and there are so many blinking lights of different colors…”Unreal Engine” you’d say, fair enough, but still, I don’t want to limit the 3D artists to a single luminosity value * color value.
So, long story short, this is why in Real PBR there is a Map for the Metalness and an RGB Map for the Self Illumination.

There are few changes in the Camera Settings as well, where I have now obtained a more suitable range of the parameters. The Shutter Speed will drive the Motion Blur behavior while the Aperture will manage the Depth of Field. Everything is on my list and is a matter of priorities and free time now.

The new User Interface style is visible in the Scene Structure. This is an important part of Real PBR since the user can find here all the meshes in the project.
I added a show/hide command as well as a lock to prevent accidental mistakes.
Once again, common functionalities, but somebody has to do them.

This is how real PBR Startup Screen looks like.

This is how Real PBR looks on a new scene. Is it too essential? I am planning to add a wizard to “break the ice” and help the users to move the first steps.

A quick preview of the drop-down menus of Real PBR. As a difference from Real IES or Real HDR, this new tool has a redesigned UI engine that helps me with the layout of the various commands. Real PBR window can also be resized or used in fullscreen. Sounds common possibility but it is not so obvious from the layout perspective…at least for me.

Here is an example of how I managed the division of the various tools available in Real PBR: Scene Structure, Scene Properties, Camera Settings, Material Editor, Animation Tools and Render Settings.

I had previous experience on 3D mesh parsing from an OBJ file on Real HDR, but I am very happy I moved to Assimp. Real PBR can import all the imaginable 3D file formats now (actually for the moment OBJ, FBX, and Collada). Within the mesh data, there are UV, tangents, normals, smoothing groups and all the useful elements to work efficiently. However, for personal tech reasons, I changed the post-processing structure in favor of my needs.

Here is how an imported object looks in Real PBR’s Scene Structure. The parsing process reconstructs the meshes and their hierarchy as it was in the modeling 3D software.
This model – for example – has been modeled by my friend Ville Niemi using 3dsMax (and ZBrush I think?). The import and reconstruction phase is also very quick. Now I have to figure out how to structure a save file for Real PBR projects, so the user can resume its work. I will probably create a project folder where I will copy files on import…byte by byte

And here we go: the Material Editor! This is the fundamental part of Real PBR since the importance of the shading models in use.
From here you can assign a color to the meshes, apply Albedo textures, Normal Maps and emissive texture. Two sliders are affecting the metalness and the roughness and for the moment that’s all I have, but in the next weeks, I am going to add many more Map containers.
There is also the possibility to save and recall materials for fast material application and – more importantly – for instancing of memory content. Lot has to be done to avoid excessive RAM consumption and this is the first step.

Here are few camera settings for Real PBR. I am recreating a workflow that can be as much similar to what happens in real photography. Physically Based rendering means this too and it must be provided by my tool. Also, these features are appearing in V-Ray, Maxwell-Render, Corona, Arnold, and many more back to my times of Brazil and finalRender.
Anyway, whatever, these settings are a must and here they are