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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-

2017

Quixel Suite - DDO Quick Guide


Contents
Introduction........................................................................................................... 1
Navigation............................................................................................................. 2
Mesh Preparation................................................................................................... 3
Colour IDs.............................................................................................................. 4
Set Up.................................................................................................................. 10
Assigning a new smart material..........................................................................14
Basic Editing..................................................................................................... 16
Editing a Dynamask............................................................................................. 18
Painting on the mesh with Dynamask...............................................................19
Adding a new material or painting.......................................................................22
Exporting maps.................................................................................................... 24
Saving and moving the project............................................................................ 25

Introduction
This guide covers the basics of using DDO which can be found as part of the
Quixel Suite. This piece of software works in tandem with Photoshop and allows
you to create, edit and assign materials to a mesh. The software allows you to
create PBR maps for your meshes. It will allow you to export your maps ready for
UE4, Unity (Specular), Unity (Metallic) and various other pieces of software.
I would also recommend watching the following videos specifically on DDO in
order of importance:
http://quixel.se/tutorial/quixel-suite-2-0/
http://quixel.se/tutorial/ddo-painter-for-beginners-azog-breakdown/
http://quixel.se/tutorial/ddo-painter-color-id-primer-part-1/
http://quixel.se/tutorial/ddo-painter-color-id-primer-part-2/
http://quixel.se/tutorial/ddo-painter-for-characters/

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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Navigation
Navigation in DDO is very similar to Photoshop.
When working on the masks or image maps and not on the mesh these shortcuts
might be useful:

Navigation Shortcut
Pan Space + Left mouse button drag (when zoomed in)
Zoom Alt + Middle mouse button (in and out)
Scroll Middle mouse button (in and out)
Move Tool V will select the move tool
Free Transform CTRL + T will start free transform. Move, scale and
rotate layer.

When painting directly on the mesh these shortcuts might be useful:

Navigation Shortcut
Rotate Alt + Left mouse button drag
Pan Middle mouse button drag
Zoom Middle mouse button (in and out) or Alt + Right button
drag.
Rotate light source Shift + Right mouse button drag (horizontal only)
Rotate light source Shift + CTRL + Right mouse button drag vertical and
fully horizontal)
Increase brush size B + Right mouse button drag
Rotate brush B + Left mouse button drag
Opacity B + Left and Right mouse button drag
Select Colour ID Shift + C then click on the mesh

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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Mesh Preparation
Before using NDO or DDO you should ensure you prepare your mesh and UVs. In
order to use DDO your mesh must have been UVW unwrapped. If it isnt
unwrapped then it simply wont work. If you wish to create unique texture details
on all surfaces then you must have unique UV space for all faces.
In order to use your mesh in DDO you first need to export it as an FBX.
1. Select the mesh you wish to export in 3DS Max.
2. Go to File (Max logo) > Export > Export Selected.
3. Pick a suitable location and ensure .FBX is selected as the export type.
4. Use the following settings:

5. Thats it for the mesh.

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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Colour IDs
DDO will map the materials secelected to specific parts of the mesh through the
use of a colour ID map. This map defines areas of the UVs that require specific
materials. The colours themselves dont matter too much (unless youre using
the auto matching feature) however each different material needs a different
colour.

Heres the colour ID map for the Robot character used in previous sessions. All
common materials are grouped together by using the same colour. When
materials are assigned DDO will read this colour ID map and replace the specific
colour with the material.

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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Here you can see the colour ID for the zombie character. You can see the skin has
been marked with the pink skin colour, the shorts with the purple, the belt with a
brown, eyes with black, teeth with cream and the skull with the light brown.
This could be created in Photoshop manually by importing the UV map and then
painting over the top.
However, Quixel have provided a MAXScript plugin that will make this job much
easier for us. To use the script you need to follow the guide below:
1. Open up your mesh in 3DS Max.
2. Ensure it is finished and the UVs have been unwrapped and finalised.
3. Go to the Utilities tab > MaxScript button > Run Script:

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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4. Navigate to the Quixel Suite folder in Program Files then find the colors
folder. Select the MaxRun script:

5. The directory will look something like this : C:\Program Files\Quixel SUITE
2.0\colors\MaxRun.ms
6. This will open the Quixel Colors window:

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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7. Here you can select and assign colours to your mesh.


8. First set the resolution to match the resolution of the image maps your
wish to create. 4096 is a good default to go for.
9. Select the Folder icon and choose a render path. Set it to the same
location as your mesh and/or NDO project.
10.Now you can start to assign some colours.
11.Use your standard selection tools to select the specific polygons you want
and then search for a material type that matches the material as close as
possible. Here Ive selected the shorts and searched for cotton.

12.Double click the name of the material to assign it:

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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13.Above you can see it has now been assigned.


14.Do this for the rest of the mesh. Quick tip: If you cant find a material
name to match just assign it something unique. As I stated previously, the
colour doesnt matter (unless using the auto-generate option) and
therefore you just want unique colours that DDO can assign the material
to.
15.If you have similar materials on a mesh, like two types of cotton, then
again just select a different material.
16.Ensure the whole mesh has been coloured:

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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17.Once complete you can hit RENDER to render the image to a file. You must
ensure the mesh is selected when you hit RENDER.

18.Thats it. Youre now ready for DDO.

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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Set Up
In this guide we will focus on setting up DDO ready for texture map creation.
1. Boot up Photoshop and then open up Quixel Suite.
2. You will be presented with several button options. To open DDO you need
to click the icon with the D:

3. This will launch the project window:

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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4. If you are returning to a project then you can click Load Project and find
the project folder you were previously working on.
5. If this is a new project then you need to populate the inputs.
6. First, click Mesh and then navigate to the location of your mesh in FBX
format.
7. If you have multiple objects in the export then they will show here in the
drop down. Youll need to populate the maps separately for each object.
8. Next, click Material ID and select the location of your Colour ID previously
created. See previous section for help.

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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9. Next, if you have a normal map previously created (such as one from NDO)
then click Normal and locate your normal map.
10.Finally, tick the Bake in 3DO for the Curvature option. This will help when
using the mask editor.
11.Leave the ID preset empty and then choose the appropriate Export Target.
For your assignment you will want to use Unity 5 (Metalness Workflow).
12.Finally the Save In option should be populated, however you can change
the save location if necessary.
13.Hit Create.
14.It may take a moment to create all of the maps, etc.
15.Once complete youll see an empty Maps window and an empty albedo
map.

16.Next, start up 3DO by clicking the blue 3 icon. This will present your mesh
in 3D.
17.You should now see your mesh in 3D and if you included a normal map you
should see this in effect:

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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18.See the previous navigation section for controls when working in 3DO.
19.Thats it. Youre ready to start adding materials to your mesh.

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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Assigning a new smart material


This section will cover how to add a smart material to your mesh and then some
basic editing you can apply to the material.
1. Ensure 3DO is open and in focus. To add a new material you will need to
use the Colour ID map to select which area of the mesh you wish to assign
a material to.
2. In 3DO press Shift + C, this will display your Colour ID map on your mesh:

3. With Shift + C held down you need to click on one of the coloured areas on
the mesh using left mouse button.
4. This will prompt the Smart Material library to appear.

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5. Search or browse the material library for the material you require. If you
cant find one then you either need to create a new material
(http://quixel.se/tutorial/ddo-painter-material-primer/ ) or find one that is
similar and work with that. An example of this is the eyes for the zombie
character used in lectures. I used the latex material for this to get the
highly reflective surface data and then imported my own eye image onto
the albedo map.
6. Once youve found the right material, select Create.
7. The material will now be applied to the area covered by that Colour ID:

8. Youll see a new entry has been added to the maps window. As this is a
smart material youll see it has multiple layers.

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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9. Here you can make changes to individual layers or simply turn them on or
off.
10.Once youre happy with the changes you need to back out of the current
material before adding a new material.
11.Do this by clicking all. This will take you to the root of the layers:

12.Clicking the folder icon next to the layer will allow you to return and edit
the layer.
13.There are several ways you can edit the individual layers in a material.
There are basic edits and mask edits. The basic edits are covered below.

Basic Editing
There are several different ways you can edit a material or layer in a material
without editing the mask. These are:

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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N Tool Description
o.
1 Material Map This will allow you to change the material map associated
with this layer. You can swap this out with any material
from the material library.
2 Dynamask This is the mask that defines what parts of the material
should be visible. Double click this to launch the dynamask
editor.
3 Reflectance This is the general colour of the layer. Use this to change
the colour of the material. Almost all smart materials allow
for the colour to be changed.
4 Scale This is the scale of the material. Decreasing the number
will increase the number of times the material is tiled.
Essentially make the details larger or smaller.
5 Intensity How intense should the material be? Increasing the
number will make the map more prominent.
6 Opacity How opaque or transparent the material is.
7 Blend modes This allows you to use the build in blend modes, such as
multiply, overlay, linear light, etc. This is how the current
layer blends with the layer below it.
8 Save Smart Allows you to save the current material as a new smart
Material material. This is useful for when youre making lots of
changes to a smart material and wish to use it on different
meshes. You can save it as a new pre-set in the library.

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With those options you can tweak a material quite bit. However, for full control
you will need to edit the dynamask.

Editing a Dynamask
The power of DDO is driven by a feature called Dynamasks. Masks in Photoshop
allow you to define areas of transparency on a layer. The same idea applies to
Dynamasks. They define areas of transparency for a material or material layer.
This is useful for layers like scratch layers, or dirt layers, where you only want
parts of the material to show dirt or scratches.
DDO also has several built in dynamask presets that you can choose from. These
presets cover use cases such as wanting dirt to show in crevices, or wear and
tear on edges or areas that should show as being damaged. This is why we ask
DDO to bake the curvature during the creation process as it is used to find the
edges on the mesh and apply effects appropriately.
To edit a dynamask you need to double click the dynamask icon on the layer:

The icon gives you a preview of the layer mask. The Wood Base is fully white as
we want it to always display as it is at the bottom of the layer stack. Edge Wear
has a mixture and is mainly focused on showing as opaque (ish) on the edges
and transparent on the main surfaces. The cavity dirt is mostly black but does
have some white and this is only on areas that have ambient occlusion and
therefore are seen as crevices.
Double clicking the icon will open the editor. It will give you the option of opening
in full shaded mode. This is because we can edit the mask directly on the mesh.
Full shaded mode will show the texture, non-shaded mode will show only the
black and white mask on the model but it is much better for performance.

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In the image above you can see the Dynamask editor. You can see the presets
that you can browse through or search. It is common to start with one of these
and then tweak as necessary.
Below this you can see further options. The texture options allow you to load
grunge and texture effects from the library. You can see a scuff texture has been
applied to this one. Ambient occlusion is used to find the crevices. Curvature is
used to find the edges of a mesh. Displacement uses the normal map of the
material to find areas where it should be highlighted on the mask.
There are also several useful post-process options, such as black-white balance,
brightness, tightness and contrast. I would recommend trying to get the look you
are going for with the main options first then tweak with the post process
options.
Once you are happy with the mask then you must hit ACCEPT MASK to save it.
You can find more information on using the above options here:
http://quixel.se/tutorial/ddo-painter-material-primer/

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Painting on the mesh with Dynamask


You can also paint directly onto the mesh whilst using the dynamask editor. This
will allow you to use various brush effects to have much more manual control
over the layer mask.
You can start painting on the mesh any time you are in the Dynamask editor.
I would recommend turning on Undo. You can find this under Performance >
Undo:

This might cause some slow down on less powerful machines but will work fine
on the games lab machines. The main brush and painting options are as follows:

Option Use
Brush This will select the brush tool. This allows you to paint
detail onto the mesh. It will use the brush currently
highlighted on the brush type icon.
Eraser Erases detail from a mesh. Useful if you have run out of
undo steps.

Brush This will display which brush type is currently selected.


Type Hit the drop down for more options. See section below
for more details

Opacity This sets how opaque the normal should be. I tend to
leave this on 1.00.
Brush When editing masks remember, white is fully opaque
colour and black fully transparent. Use greys to get something
in between.

Youll notice that when working on the mesh directly you can only use the brush
tool. If you want to use more complex tools youll need to paint directly onto the
mask image in Photoshop. Below you can see some of the brush options.

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Here you can see the different shaped brushes grouped and they are selected by
clicking a tab. In each group you will find a selection of brushes. To use one,
simply select it and then tweak the settings. You can change the size, rotation
(angle) and spacing. Decreasing the spacing will create a smooth line when
clicking and dragging. Increasing the spacing will give you a larger space
between each brush placement and is useful for creating dotted lines etc:

Youll find a lot of brushes that a great for adding scratches, wear and tear,
damage, etc. to the mask.

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Adding a new material or painting


You can add additional materials to a smart material or material layer. This
means you can start to create your own materials that will be unique to your
character or asset. DDO has a selection of standard materials you can add or you
can add another smart material.
You can add material or new layer any time you are on a material group with the
following buttons:

Option Use
Add Smart Allows you to add a new smart material to the current
Material material group. The new smart material will be nested
in the current material and will give you all the same
options.
Add Allows you to add a single material layer to the current
Material material group. Single materials consist of a single layer
and therefore are not as complex as a smart material.

Add Clean Adds a new empty layer to the material group. Can be
Layer used to add a material manually or for simply making a
new colour overlay as seen above.

Add This gives you a layer that focuses on purely painting


Colour directly onto the mesh. Think of it like painting in
Paint Mudbox with just basic colours and not a texture. Works
Layer well with complex brushes and adding highlights or
wear and tear to a mesh. See the dynamask section on
how to paint on a mesh.

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The first two options are the ones you are most likely to use. Below is an
example of where it could be used:

In the image above you can see many different layers in use to create the head.
The base layer is the green alien skin I then added the bone smart material. The
actual bone layer was turned off but the dirt layer was left on to create the dirt
effect around the tables and scar. The dynamask was edited to ensure it only
covered this part of the skull. The Dusty Steel basic material was then added.
Again the dynamask was manually edited by reverting it to black (fully
transparent) and then by painting directly on the mesh to specify which parts
should be opaque.

The brain effect was a custom material I created and was added inside the Bone
layer. Above you can see the bone base has been turned off but the other effects
are still in use to add some dirt to the brain.

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CO5034 Characterisation and AI for Interactive Environments Lee Beever 2016-
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Exporting maps
Once you are happy with your materials you will need to export them in the
correct format for the engine you are using.
Luckily DDO has many built in pre-sets for popular engines. To export you images
you need to click the following button:

This will bring up the exporter window:

Check that all the details are correct. You can edit the location of the maps, by
default they will be in the project folder in the Flats folder. You can also tweak the
naming conventions by giving it a default name and then changing the way the
map type is appended. You can also select the file type here.
Finally, select the Export Target. In our case we want Unity 5 (Metalness
Workflow). Then hit EXPORT ALL MATERIALS.
Thats it. Youre materials should now be ready to be added to the engine.

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Saving and moving the project


Once you are finished with the project you must save it. To save it simply click
the save icon:

This will save all of the maps. You can then close down Photoshop. You may be
prompted to save additional images, so ensure you save these as appropriate.
To move your project you will need to copy the whole project folder to an
external source or cloud storage service. Note: DDO projects can be quite large
in size due to the PSDs and working at large resolutions.

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