Testing your 3D model's textures and materials is an essential step in creating realistic and appealing 3D graphics. Textures and materials define how your model looks and interacts with light, shadows, reflections, and other effects. In this article, you will learn some tips and techniques to test your 3D model's textures and materials effectively and efficiently.
Depending on your 3D modeling software, you may have different options to test your textures and materials. Some software, such as Blender, Maya, or 3ds Max, have built-in rendering engines that allow you to preview your model in different lighting and environmental settings. Other software, such as ZBrush or Substance Painter, have dedicated texture painting and material editing tools that let you fine-tune your model's appearance. You can also use external software, such as Marmoset Toolbag or Unreal Engine, to test your model in real-time and see how it performs in different scenarios.
It is very important to choose the right software depending on the design style or the shapes. When the designs are organic or needs parametric control and accuracy, best is to build them in softwares like rhino, houdini or blender and then render them up in vray or unreal engine. Otherwise, initial modelling can be done in 3ds max or maya and feed the data to the right renderer. So it is quite important to find the right pipeline for the project to save costs and time.
UV mapping and unwrapping are the processes of projecting your model's surface onto a 2D plane and creating a layout of the texture coordinates. This is necessary to avoid stretching, distortion, or seams in your textures and materials. You can use various methods to UV map and unwrap your model, such as automatic, manual, or projection-based. You should test your UV mapping and unwrapping by applying a checkerboard or grid texture to your model and checking for any irregularities or errors.
PBR stands for physically based rendering, which is a method of creating textures and materials that mimic the real-world behavior of light and matter. PBR workflow and standards ensure that your model's textures and materials are consistent, realistic, and compatible across different platforms and engines. PBR workflow typically involves creating four main maps: albedo, normal, roughness, and metallic. Albedo defines the base color of your model, normal defines the surface details and bumps, roughness defines the smoothness or roughness of your model, and metallic defines the metalness or non-metalness of your model.
Texture resolution and compression affect the quality and performance of your model's textures and materials. Texture resolution refers to the size of your texture image, measured in pixels. Higher resolution textures provide more detail and clarity, but also consume more memory and processing power. Texture compression refers to the method of reducing the file size of your texture image, usually by discarding some data or information. Compression can reduce the load time and bandwidth of your textures, but also introduce some artifacts or noise. You should test your texture resolution and compression by zooming in and out of your model and checking for any blurriness, aliasing, or loss of detail.
It is very important to have a right balance of texture resolution and compression based on the size of different models. Smaller firms doesn't need to have high resolution textures and they eat up a lot of memory and give bad performance. It is also better to decide what is the purpose of the 3d model. If it is for construction and manufacturing they don't need high resolution textures unless specifically mentioned. If it is for rendering and still visualizing of designs then decide which models are central and important wrt to size. Based on that you can decide where to use high resolution materials and respective compression. If it's for VR then it is better to avoid high resolution textures/materials for a better performance.
Testing your model's textures and materials is not only about finding and fixing errors, but also about exploring and enhancing your model's aesthetics and mood. You can experiment with different settings and effects, such as lighting, shadows, reflections, refractions, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering, or post-processing. You can also try different color schemes, contrast levels, or saturation values to create different atmospheres or emotions. You should test your model's textures and materials by changing the settings and effects and observing how they affect your model's appearance and impression.
The final step in testing your model's textures and materials is to get feedback and iterate. Feedback can help you identify any issues or areas of improvement that you may have overlooked or missed. You can get feedback from different sources, such as your peers, clients, users, or online communities. You should ask for constructive and specific feedback that can help you improve your model's textures and materials. You should also iterate on your model's textures and materials based on the feedback and your own evaluation. You should test your model's textures and materials again after making any changes or adjustments.
On the Vectary platform, you can build your own material library and create an interactive 3D configurator with a material switcher. Simply click on the hotspot of a specific part, and a floating UI with material swatches will appear, allowing you to test all your assigned materials and send a link to your team for feedback and evaluation. Additionally, you have the option to open the configured 3D object in augmented reality.