Add optional detail bump map input to L2IBLCARBODY shader

Discussion in 'Wish Lists' started by CrossPly, Mar 10, 2020.

  1. CrossPly

    CrossPly Registered

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    Hi,

    The new IBL Carbody shader is awesome and a great improvement over the old carbody shaders, really nice job!

    The one thing I do miss though (and something that is preventing me from switching some cars over to the new shader) is the ability to add a detail bump/normal map as an input.

    I can tell from the recent S397 cars that the poly count has been upped quite a bit across the board which does kind of reduce the need for bump maps so I can understand why it hasn't been included but there are some details that are just better suited to being done with maps rather than with polys.

    For example:

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    The body rivets on this car are a pretty big part of this cars overall look and they are all produced using a bump map and using the pre-IBL carbody shader. From most angles the effect is quite effective.

    If I were to switch this car over to the IBL carbody shader the rivets would look much more flat from all angles and the highlights and shadows they produce would no longer be dynamic as they would have to be baked into the AO map.

    For a different project I've been able to work around this limitation by using the damage bump map and setting the vertex alpha to make some small parts permanently "damaged". This allows me to still retain the use of bump maps for some details with the tradeoff that these parts are no longer able to show visible damage. Losing the ability to show damage on the entire body (which would be the case if I used this trick on the above car) seems like too big a compromise.

    Another solution would be to model every rivet into the mesh (and although it would be a quite a bit of work I'd be prepared to do this) but to support different skins each rivet would need its own UV space and the car would become very difficult to paint skins for which again seems like quite a big compromise.

    Considering the various compromises at the moment it seems the best solution is to simply stick with the old shader for these cars which is a shame.

    Based on some of the recent roadmaps there is quite a lot of shader work going on at the moment so hopefully this is something that can be considered, not just because it would get me personally out of a bind :)D) but I'm sure there are other cars and details out there that would benefit from the feature as well.

    In the meantime if anyone has any other ideas or workarounds please reply here or send me a PM!
     
    SRGP, TheGame316, Emery and 4 others like this.
  2. Chris Lesperance

    Chris Lesperance Registered

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    Hey Crossply, not sure if you got anything on how to do this. This would be helpful with some older rF1 models that could be converted that don't have the details of the current generation. But I would be interested if this was possible
     
  3. Chris Lesperance

    Chris Lesperance Registered

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    I don't really have a car to test, but I have a question on this.

    Looking at the Tatuus as a base. The WCCARBODY material is listed as a generic T1. For the IBL/PBR, you essentially just need to add a .json line in the .veh. So you can have the model still using the "Carbody paint + damage + rain" shader. Now my question, does adding the .json line full replace what the model uses, or does the IBL/PBR go on as an addition to the other shader? If it is in addition to, then the bump map still might work.

    Just a very late night thought, as one of my next projects might be dependent on bump map use
     
  4. CrossPly

    CrossPly Registered

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    Nah it doesn't work like that. The material settings from the json completely replace the material settings in the gmt.

    I think that's actually a good thing. In game results would be very confusing if the material settings interacted with each other like that.
     

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