Dear Developers,

We really appreciate your steady contribution in content development.  Since the transformation of Character Creator in support of PBR content, the team here at Reallusion would like to familiarize you with the new PBR development workflow just in time for our New Visual grand launch for 2017. 


The workflow of content development

• Follow the CC 1.52 + iClone 6.5 PRO workflow to develop the base mesh. (There is body template available for download, so 3DXchange 6 Pipeline is optional)
• Content development guide, resource and video tutorials
• 3rd party tool workflow
• Assign PBR texture maps in CC 2.0 Beta, and export CC contents.
• Submission guide

Content Usage

• The CC non-PBR contents you've previously created, purchased and installed in CC 1.5x is compatible with CC 2.0.
• For the coming new release of CC PBR contents made by Reallusion, they will be installed to CC 2.0 folder, and can be loaded by CC 2.0 only, not by CC 1.5x.
• CC content created in CC 2.0 can't be loaded in CC 1.5x (Not backwards compatible)

Advice and Tips

• [Developer] Texture Instancing to Save on File Size
• [Developer] 8-bit vs 16-bit Textures
• Dealing with Mipmapping
• Dealing with Anti-aliasing

If you have any plans about PBR content development and would like apply for the license for CC 2.0 Beta, please contact me (Miranda) at event@reallusion.com with the title of "PBR content development". Look forward to hearing from you!

Texture Instancing to Save on File Size

Please upgrade to 3DXchange 6.51 or above to utilize texture consolidation, preserving one instance of the texture rather than having multiple copies of the same textures within a scene.
Once 3DXchange has been upgraded, one can use the paint bucket tool to copy and apply materials to multiple objects.  
No matter how many times the material is applied with this method, the textures all reference the same texture files, thus use up less video memory.



Here, a total of 8 materials must use the same texture sets.



You can use the paint bucket to drop the same texture sets on different materials.



Once all of the materials are consolidated to source from the same texture set, one could see a drastic improvement in the file size.



The resulting file size can have significant bloat from creating each material separately and input textures on each one separately, instead of using the paint bucket.

8-bit vs 16-bit Textures

The general rule of thumb is that artists working on textures should do so in 16-bit per channel mode to increase fidelity of pixel data.  When one is ready to export the PBR textures to iClone, storing the file in Png format will suffice.  Png format will neither compress, loss data, or become too large.  Also make sure the mode is relegated to 8-bit/channel during export or else the texture size can increase more than two-fold.  Due to the fact that there is no noticeable visual improvement from sRGB 8-bit to 16-bit under iClone's PBR environment, one should avoid using 16-bit textures in case of file bloat.

Exporting 8-bit png texture files from Substance Painter:



Changing 16-bits/channel png to 8-bits/channel png in Photoshop:



16-bit texture file sizes are more than double that of 8-bit.  We recommend using 8-bit textures because that is sufficient for the sRGB color-space within iClone:

Dealing with Mipmapping

Mipmapping is a technology that processes texture files into progressively lower resolution sequence of images.  These images are then saved in memory as a set of mipmaps which allows real-time swapping depending on the distance from the camera.  This can be great for real-time animation, which is what iClone is good for.

In order to match the visual quality of Marmoset or Substance Painter we suggest that you turn off mipmapping under Preference > Real-time Render Options > Mipmap.



Once mipmap is disabled, iClone's visual quality is approaching that of Substance Painter: 




*Updated: to know more about mipmap, please check grabiller's post.

Dealing with Anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing is a software technique to combat problems of "saw-tooth" edges in the viewport.  By default iClone's anti-aliasing settings are set to either low or none at all, this is so that animations can run at a decent frame-rate.

If one wishes to match the visual quality of Marmoset Viewer or Substance Painter than it is recommended to turn on the Anti-aliasing settings under Preference > Anti-alias.



However, if the quality of anti-aliasing is still not ideal, one can increase super-sampling via Export Image /Video.

Hi, 

I think this post is misleading regarding the benefit of using mipmapping for final rendering. If there is an issue using mipmapping for final rendering, the issue is with iClone/CC, not with mipmapping, and should be fixed. Mipmapping should always be used in final rendering (granted there is no issue).

In professional production environment, we do use mipmapping for final rendering, without loss in texture detail and fidelity. As you mention it, mipmapping is a technology that processes textures files into progressively lower resolution (usually divided by 2 in size at each step) sequence of images, or tiles. The proper tile is selected according to the distance from the camera (in fact it is a bit more technical, considering the solid angle of texels in screen space which indeed depends on the camera distance, but not only).

Ideally, the right tile is chosen so the tile texels are ruffly the size of pixels. Not larger, or else you loose definition. Not smaller, or else you may experience flickering (also known as texture aliasing). In practice this is a bit more complicated because a texture, hence a tile, does not always face the camera and you generally end up with a range of texel sizes for one tile and at this point texture filtering enters the game. If the calculations are correct, there is no reason to have losses in texture detail and fidelity.

If there is, then it is because:
1) A wrong tile size is chosen. A smaller one (loss in definition) or a bigger one (texture aliasing).
2) Texture Filtering is missing or not set up correctly and I admit it is not always easy to set it up correctly.

Your message has a tendency to imply that mipmapping - the technology - is a bad feature for final rendering which is incorrect and misleading. Not a single 3d animated movie or blockbuster vfx sequence is rendered without the use of mipmapping, vital for final image quality and anti-aliasing.

If there is currently a mipmapping issue in iClone/CC, just fix it, don't blame mipmapping please :)

Cheers,
Guy.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

@Grabiller,

Great post, above.  Thanks.

I had been going to suggest that the MipMapping option appear on the Render panel (default="Off"), where you could easily turn it on/off for final render purposes without affection the realtime project setting.  Until the root issue is addressed per Grabiller's post, that still might be a bit of an improvement.

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Hi grabiller and justaviking,

Thanks for your feedback! The original post was intended to match the visual quality, but it turned out misleading the users. I will modify the post immediately.
The knowledge sharing from grabiller is great, thanks a lot!
Also, I've forwarded justaviking's suggestion to Development Team. Thank you :)

@Miranda
You are welcome, always glad to help pushing iClone product range to the maximum of quality that is possible!

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

@Miranda - Thanks for listening, and passing it on to Development.  :)

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD