>>Josh: Hey, everyone. Josh Powers here with Quixel. And in today's video,
I'd like to show you how we can retexture numerous
Megascans assets with just a single smart material. So let's jump right in. All right, now that
we're in Mixer, I can go ahead and
load a 3D model from the Megascans library. So to do that, I'm just going
to go up to the Setup tab here. And then I'm going to change
the type from plane to 3D asset. And this is going
to load all the 3D assets from the
Megascans library that I've downloaded locally. For this tutorial, I'll select
this Roman gravestone asset right here. All right, now
that that's loaded, I'm ready to start texturing. So to do that, I'm going to
go back to the Layers tab and then click the Add
Surface Layer icon right here. I'll type in concrete
in the search bar and then choose this
concrete smooth surface from my first layer. OK, there's not a whole
lot of changes I'm going to make for the surface. I do want to give it a name
to keep things organized. But all the blend and
placement settings I'm going to leave alone. However, I am going to give the
albedo a more brownish-tan look to it by punching in a hex
value that I wrote down earlier. And that's about it
for this base layer. So what I'm going to do
now is go up and make sure that the layer's selected. And then I'm going
to hit Control D. And that's going to
duplicate the layer for me. I'll give it a descriptive name. And then the first
thing I want to do is give it a brighter albedo
value for some staining. I don't want it to
be too overpowering. So I'll pull down the
opacity quite a bit to keep the effect
pretty subtle. And then I'll change the
angle of the box projection to give the details
of the texture a little bit of an offset
from the base layer below. All right, now,
we need a mask so that we don't have the
entire layer showing through. So I'm going to go
ahead and go down to the bottom of the layer stack
and click on the Mask Stack icon. And the first component I'm
going to add is a Perlin Noise. If I hit nine on the keyboard,
I can go into Mask View. And as I adjust the
seed slider, you can see that it's just
giving me random values for this particular noise. So I'll go ahead and
just set this to 37. And for the amplitude,
the higher the value, the more we see
those darker grays go to black and the
lighter values to white. So it's like playing
with the contrast. So I'm going to pump this
value all the way up to 10 to give me a really strong
contrast for this noise. And then the frequency,
as it sounds, means the higher I
push this number, the smaller the pattern looks. And then the lower I adjust it,
the larger the pattern becomes. I'm also going to go ahead and
set this to around 10 as well. Increasing the active
will take the fall off a gradient of
that noise and start to add some grungier-looking
transitions so that it's not something smooth like this. So as we bump it up,
it'll feel a bit noisier and natural and less of
a procedural feel to it. OK, I'm going to leave the
lacunarity and persistence alone right now. And then I'm going
to go ahead and go up to the Modifier button and
add a projection modifier. And if I change this from
tiling to box projection, I can grab this handle
and spin it around. And it'll change the
projection angle of our map. So I'll spin this to
around 168 degrees. And then I'll also adjust the
tilt of the box projection to further fine
tune the results. We can use the radius
slider to tweak the blend sharpness between the
different projection angles. So I'll lower this a little
bit to sharpen the results. And then for the
height influence, I'll go ahead and lower
that down as well. And in this case, I'm going
to leave the scale set to one. If I go back to
the PBR mode, it's a really, really subtle effect. But you can see it right here
that there's some darker values and then some brighter values. And if I toggle the
layer on and off, you can really see
what it's doing. Again, it's a really
subtle effect. But subtlety is key in
making believable textures. So an effect like this
will go a long way. All right, now, I want to
add some little splotches of weathering and grime
and things to that effect. So I'm going to add
a new surface layer and just use the concrete
floor surface right here. After assigning a quick name,
I'll type in a hex value to change the albedo for
a slightly lighter more yellowish tinted color. And then I want
to lower the Wrap to Underlying just a tiny bit. And I'll explain why I
did that in a few minutes. Beyond that, the only thing
I need to do for this layer is lower the scale of
the texture quite a bit. There we go. And now I'm ready
for a Mask Stack. So I'll click on
this Mask Stack icon. And I'll start off
with a map component. And what the map component
does is lets us either use a custom mask
image that we've made. Or I can use one of
the Megascans surfaces. I can either choose
Layer Map, which lets us use one of the
surface layers already loaded into the scene. Or I can choose Library Asset
and then select a surface from my local library. For this mask, I'm going to
go ahead and choose a library asset. And then I'll type Pebbles
into the search bar. And I'll select this beach
pebbles round surface here. And so if I hit nine and go
back to the Mask View again, you can see that since it's
using the AO map of the surface currently that the AO map of the
surface is acting as my mask. And I can invert it
and play with the range to get different results,
which is really powerful. But in this case, I
don't want to use the AO. And instead, I'm
going to change this to the displacement texture. Now you can see that
the displacement texture is being used as my mask. So I'm going to play with
some of the settings to tweak the results a little bit more. So what I'm going to do now is
bring the lower range slider up a bit to 0.6 or so. And then I'll just drag the
upper one down a little bit. And as you can see,
the darker gray pebbles dropped lower to the
point of being black, while the brighter values
got closer to white. And this gives the mask a bit
more sparse and random look to it, which is
what I'm going for. Now, the mask details
are a bit too large. So I'm going to add a
projection modifier. And I'm going to select
the box projection again. And I'll leave these
settings alone up here. But I am going to drop the
radius here a little bit. And my height influence,
I'm going to drop to zero. And for the scale, I
want to nudge it up just ever so slightly. All right, now, I'm going
to throw on another noise. But this time, it's
going to be a Worley 2. Again, I'll play with the
seed amplitude and frequency to find something
I'm happy with. And then before
long, you'll notice how we have a really cool
cellular-looking pattern. But as I start to adjust
the octaves, lacunarity, and persistence,
the noise really starts to take on a
different look feeling less and less procedural. With that finished,
I'll invert the results and then multiply the
component, which gives me a really cool chunky
look to the mask below, which has completely
repurposed the original pebble mask that I started with. So if I toggle the
layer, you can really see how it's impacting
the layers beneath. All right, I'm going to
add a gradient remap next. And the first thing
I'm going to do is drop the repeat down
to zero and then adjust the range sliders, which acts
as if I'm adjusting the levels. So after adjusting the
sliders a little bit, I'll drop the curve
down a little bit, as well, to further
refine the mask. OK, now I'm going to
add a normal component. And a normal component acts a
lot like a position gradient. But it does take the
world normals into account to determine how
the mask falls off. So for this layer, I'm going
to leave the angle at zero. But I am going to pull
the tilt to the center so that it's coming
entirely from above. And then I'll adjust
the range, which, again, is like playing
with the levels so that I can really
tighten the transition. After that, I'll set
the blend to multiply, which is going to keep
the majority of the mask to be restricted to normals
that are facing upwards. However, I don't want this
to be exclusively the case. So I'll lower the
component's opacity down so that we
ease back in some of those details on the
other parts of the model. Now, I'm going to add
another gradient remap. And I'm just going to pull
down on the upper range slider a little bit. Then I'll bump the
repeat up to two. And then I'll set
the blend to overlay to soften the impact
of the modifier. Then lastly, I'll drop
in another Perlin Noise and quickly set the seed
to something I like. The rest of the settings
are fine as they are. So now I'm going to go ahead
and change the blend to distort. Distort will actually use
the effects of the component to distort the rest of the
mask, which is really powerful. But as you can see, it's
pretty easy to overdo it. So it's best to keep the
distort intensity pretty low. So I'm going to go ahead
and set it to around 0.3. All right, if I hit one
to go back to PBR mode, you can see that we have some
nice little chunky grunge details that we've added
across the material. And this will help further the
look of weathering and decay of the material. So if I go back to the surface
settings and go to the Wrap to Underlying, the more I drop
this setting, the stronger it wants to bump out. If I go into normal
mode, then you can see as I change that slider,
it's becoming less dependent on the underlying normals. And as a result, it is much
sharper and more natural. There's plenty of times
you won't want to rely on the underlying normals. But for this piece,
I just wanted to nudge that down a
tiny bit so that we get a little bit of an extra bump. But it's still relying
almost exclusively on the normals underneath. All right, now that
we're finished here, we're ready to move
on to some moss. For the moss, I'm
going to do something a little unconventional here. And instead of using one
of the many moss options we have inside the
Megascans library, I want to show you how we can
quickly repurpose a completely unrelated scan for that. So let's start by adding
a new surface layer. And I'm going to go ahead and
search for a plaster material. And I'll just grab this
plaster wall right here. I'll call the layer
Scattered Moss. And then the first thing I'll
do is change the albedo value to something that's a
little more mossy in color. Now, back at the
top, I can change how the layer will blend in. Normally it's opacity mask. But if I change it
to be from above, you can see that the
layer blends in as if it's coming from outside the model. However, if I
change it to below, we'll see that it's coming
more from the inside. And in this instance, I'll
set it to be from below. And then I'll pump
up the value enough that I get full
coverage on the model. And, again, with
Wrap to Underlying, I'll pull back on
the slider just a tiny amount to give
it a bit of a pop once the mask is applied. I'll adjust the scale of
the texture again, as well, to ensure that we have
some nice crisp details. And then, lastly, I'm going to
go to the displacement channel of the layer and
expand it so that I can lower the strength of
the displacement a bit. This way when we set
up the mask for this, the edges won't be
too overpowering because the displacement
for this particular surface is quite intense. So having this kind of
control over the scan surfaces is really great. All right, with the
surface property set, I'm ready to add a Mask Stack. So I'm going to go ahead and
drop in a map component again. However, instead of using
a library asset option, I'm going to choose
the layer map. By default, it selects the
layer you're already on. But I do want to use
this layer anyways. So I'm going to go ahead
and leave that alone. And I'm also going to leave
it set to albedo texture. I'll go back to the Mask
Mode and started adjusting the range sliders a bit. I'll bring the two
sliders in quite close to each other, which
gives me a really cool base mask to start working with that
already feels like some moss spread. I'll add a Gaussian blur
modifier on top of this and reduce the strength so that
we can get just a slight blur on those edges. Now, I can use a gradient remap
to further refine the mask. I'll play with the
range a little bit. And then I'll set
the repeat to two. And when I do that,
you'll see that we have this really cool border
ring around most of the mask. And if I go back
to PBR View, you can see that we
are already getting some really cool sharper-looking
mossy fall off here. And so by adding
that extra repeat, we have this really nice effect. And then for the curve, I'm
going to bump it up a bit here-- nothing too extreme, though. And then if I set this
to Overlay and lower the opacity a bit, I think I've
struck a pretty nice balance with the strong pronounced
border around the moss. Yet, it still feels
fairly natural. And, again, I was
able to do this utilizing a surface
that was never intended to be used as moss. It's a really cool way to
repurpose the scan data from the Megascans library. All right, we're ready
for our next layer now. But instead of using a
surface layer this time, I'm going to use a solid layer. I'll name the layer
miscoloration. And then I'll give it an
albedo color of something a little more greenish-yellow. I'm then going to pull back
on the opacity a little bit so that some of the underlying
layers start to show through. OK, now, I'm going
to add a Mask Stack. And I'll kick things off
with a normal component. Like before, I'm
going to make sure that this is coming from above. And then I'll bring the range
sliders together really tight. So if I go back into
Mask mode, you'll see that I have a
very sharp edge here. So I'm going to want to
soften that up a tad. And I'm going to do that
by another Gaussian blur. And, again, I'm going to
keep the strength very, very low just a bit to keep the
border from being razor sharp. I want to throw in another
Perlin Noise on top of that. And then, as before, I'll
change the various settings until I have a look
I'm happy with. And then I'll set the
blend mode to multiply. However, I don't want the
mask to go full black, which removes a layer entirely. So I'll lower the
opacity way down so that it acts more like some
value changes in the layer rather than removing
it altogether. So now we have some value
breakup in the layer. But overall, the upward
faces have the green tint to help further sell the mossy
growth on the gravestone. OK now, I want to add even
more layers of moss coloration and grime. So I'm going to add another
solid layer here and call it Moss Overlay. I'll also give this layer a
greenish tint for the albedo value and then lower the
opacity down to around 0.6 so that, again, it doesn't
feel too overpowering. Next, I'll create a Mask Stack. And then the first
thing I'm going to do is add a position gradient. I'll hop back to the Mask View
to better see what's going on. And I'm going to make sure that
the tilt is set to 9 degrees. Now, I want this thing
to come from below. So I can either change the
setting to be from below. Or I can keep it above and
then simply invert the results. It's the same difference. Now, I'm going to add
another Worley 2 Noise. And as before, I'm going to
play with the seed, amplitude, frequency, and so on to
get the look I'm going for. And then I'm just going to
set the results to Invert. And then I'll set the
Blend Mode to Add. And now it's added on top of
the position gradient below. So if we go back
to PBR, you can see that we not only have some
nice splotches of green across the model, but we
also have a nice subtle green coming from below to give it
more of the aged and weathered look that we're going for. All right, this is
looking pretty cool. So I just want to add a
few finishing details. And the first thing I'm going
to do is add another solid layer and call it Edge Highlights. And instead of changing the
color of the albedo or anything like that, what
I'm going to do is change the blend mode of the
albedo from normal to add. And obviously this is
a little too intense. So I'm going to drop the
opacity down to around 0.35. So now we'll go
into the Mask Stack and simply add a
curvature component. If I hit nine, you can see
what the curvature component is doing. And so as I start to play
with the level settings a bit, I'll end up with
some nice highlights on the edges across the model. When I go back to
Render mode, you can see that I have
these nice, yet, subtle highlights going
across the entire texture. Now, I'm going to do
a very similar process for some cavity detail. I'm going to use a solid
layer and name it Cavities. And then instead of using an
add blend, I'll use multiply. And then I'll lower down
the opacity as well. I'll add a new
Mask Stack and then drop in a curvature component. But instead, this time I'm going
to change the default curvature to cavities only. So if I go to the
Mask mode, you can see that only the cavities
are being masked off. So I'll play with the
level sliders a bit until I'm happy with
how broad the mask is. And then if I hit one
and toggle the layer, you can see what kind of impact
it's having on the texture. If I hit two and go
into Albedo View, you can see the results even
better and the kind of impact the layer's having
and how we quickly added some great
depth to the texture with just a single
mask component. And that should
just about do it. As you can see, we were able to
take a 3D asset from one biome and quickly give
it a fresh new look as if it was created for a
completely different biome. And it only took a handful
of layers and masks. This process, which is
simple, yet, very robust, allows you to
custom fit any model to the theme of your choice. And since these
layers were built with the procedural
masks, you can simply swap out the asset for another. And you'll get the same results. This allows you to apply your
custom made mix to any assets so that you can fill out
your environment in a hurry. Or if you want, you can even
group the layers together and make a smart material so
that you can quickly apply it to any Mixer scene you have
so that you can then custom tailor the settings for
each model your texturing. The process is fast,
powerful, and, of course, user friendly, which
is one of the biggest points of focus for Mixer. I hope this tutorial
was helpful for you. And we can't wait to
see what you make. Thanks so much for watching. And we'll see you next time.
