TUTORIAL: How to use ultra realistic Quixel Mixer materials with Fusion 360 [Part 2]

Welcome back! In Part 2, we’ll explore adding Quixel Materials to your designs in Fusion 360 and setting up a rendering scene. If you haven’t already, review Part 1 and install Quixel Mixer. You’ll want to create and export a mix for use in Fusion 360 prior to the steps in this tutorial, or download an example material set here.

First, let’s create a new project in Fusion 360:

  1. Creating a new Fusion 360 Project

After you open Fusion 360, Click “Save” and give your project a name. In this example I used “QuixelMaterialDemo.”

After you save your project, we’ll want to create a new component and make it active.

2. Create a new Component

This is generally a good practice with Fusion 360, because we can more easily manage changes made to the design when the timeline is broken up by individual component histories. Name your component “Floor” and then make sure “Activate” is selected (should be by default), click “OK” to continue.

Next, we’ll want to create a sketch to define the floor’s dimensions. Click “Create” and make a Center Rectangle on the bottom plane.

3. Create a Floor

Make your sketch 3 meters x 3 meters in size, with the Origin at the center. Click “Finish Sketch” to continue. If you’ve done everything right, then you should have a sketch that is fully constrained (i.e., you’ll see black lines instead of blue lines for the outer dimensions of your sketch).

Next, we’ll extrude the sketch below the plain. This will create a new body, based on our sketch dimensions.

Click Create and then Extrude. Then, extrude the sketch -1mm below the plane and click “OK.”

Next, Save the design. You’ve created your first body and now would be a good time to save your progress.

Note the reason for your save and Click “OK.”

Next, we’ll want to change the Appearance of our floor. Click Modify Appearance to bring up the Appearance Window.

4. Add material

Here we can see the default material for the Floor body. We’ll want to replace that material with our Quixel Mix. To do that, let’s start by downloading a similar material.

Note: in general, you’ll find it is easier to add Quixel Mixer materials when you adapt an existing material in Fusion 360 with similar attributes. In this case, we can use the existing Asphalt Material.

After the download finishes, click and drag the Asphalt material into your design.

We can then replace the default material with the Asphalt.

5. Replace Fusion 360 Material with Quixel Mix

Next, we can begin modifying the Fusion 360 Asphalt material with the Quixel Mix.

As mentioned in Part I, the materials in Fusion 360 are made up of individual map image files:

Albedo/Diffusion/Color — the color a material reflects

Normal and/or Height Maps — the bumps and imperfections along a surface

Roughness — the smoothness of a surface (ranging from a sharp reflection to fuzzy/diffuse)

Reflectance/Specular/Metalness — the reflectiveness of a surface (ranging from mirror finish to a dull surface)

Anisotropy/Ambient Occlusion — the shadows along a surface

Refractive —how light bends through a surface

Emissive — how much light a surface emits (glow)

Translucency/Opacity — how transparent a surface is to light

If you’re using the included sample images, you’ll find some but not all of these maps. Depending on what materials you’re mixing, you’ll need different image maps. The sample image package includes:

Floor_Diffuse.png — Color (placed in Parameters)

Floor_Roughness.png — Roughness (placed in Parameters)

Floor_Specular.png — Reflectance (placed in Parameters)

Floor_Normal.png — Normal (placed in Relief Pattern (Bump))

Floor_AO.png — Anisotropy (placed in Advanced Highlight Controls)

By replacing and adding these map files to the Fusion 360 Asphalt material, you can transform it to the Quixel mix. To start this replacement process, open the Appearance window, double-click the Asphalt material and then click “Advanced…”

Rename the material to “Quixel_Asphalt” to distinguish the material from the original Fusion 360 Asphalt.

Under Parameters, we can add three (3) image maps. First, we’ll apply the diffusion/color map to the Image input in Fusion 360. Click on the Image filename 1_mats_surface_asphalt_color.jpg and navigate to your replacement images.

Select your Albedo/Color/Diffuse map file. If you’re using the sample images, it’s the file named Floor_Diffuse.png. Click Open to replace the default image file.

Next, we’ll repeat the process with the Reflectance and Roughness maps. By default, these two material attributes are set as Slider values, click the drop down arrow and then select Image to replace the slider value with an image map.

Next, select the Metallic/Specular image map if you’re using the sample images, select Floor_Specular.png and click Open.

Next, repeat the same steps for the Roughness value. Select Image and then select your Roughness Map. If you’re using the sample images, select the Floor_Roughness.png.

Now that we’ve completed the three Parameter maps, we can move on to the Relief Pattern (Bump) map. Once again, we’ll replace the default image file (1_mats_surface_asphalt_.jpg) associated with the material. Note: Fusion 360 supports both bump and normal maps. If you want to know more about these two approaches to texturing a 3D model, then click here.

Next, we need to change the Relief Pattern from a Height Map to a Normal Map. To do this, we need to Edit the image.

Next, scroll down to Advanced and change Data Type to Normal Map.

Next, we need to ensure that all of our maps are using the same Sample Size. Be sure to repeat this step for all image maps. We also need to ensure that all of our Maps have Linked texture transforms. Check the Link texture transforms under the Transforms section of the Texture Editor. Be sure to repeat this step for all image maps.

These steps are important, because they ensure that all of the image map data are aligned equally to the material in Fusion 360. After you’ve verified these settings, you can click “OK” to finalize the changes to this material.

Now that the material has been updated you can Close the Appearances window.

To check and validate our new material, we need to switch to the Render Workspace in Fusion 360. Click on the Workspace button, and change it from DESIGN to RENDER.

6. Test render scene

Next, let’s save the design to capture the new material settings in your Fusion 360 Timeline. Click File and Save.

Fusion 360 will prompt you to describe your save point. Let’s name this save “Quixel Material Added” and click OK.

Before we can test our new material, we need to edit the SCENE SETTINGS from the SETUP Menu. Open the SCENE SETTING Window and Click+Drag “Dry lake bed” to the Current Environment and then Click Close.

We also need to change the IN-CANVAS RENDER settings to FAST, so that we can easily see the material’s performance during rendering. To do this, click on the IN-CANVAS RENDER SETTINGS icon and Click on the Fast tab. Then, Click OK to update the rendering method.

Next, we can preview the rendering, and see how the various maps work together under different lighting conditions. To do this, start the In-Canvas Rendering and then open Scene Settings, click on the Position Icon to bring up the Rotation and Scale Sliders. By changing the rotation, you can see how the surface of your floor object casts shadows at different angles, corresponding to the surface material.

Make sure to save your project to retain your rendering settings. If you’ve made it this far, then congratulations! You now have all of the information necessary to import Quixel Mixer materials in Fusion 360. In Part 3, we’ll explore some techniques for applying these materials to complex geometries, and how to post-process your images for additional realness. In Part 4, we’ll take these realistic models and generate Augmented Reality experiences for iOS.

Stay tuned!

Scripting in Blender

For folks who use blender to create animated characters for Unreal Engine, you might find the process of creating a rig fairly tedious. You may also discover that some constraints in Blender are causing problems with your exported skeleton in Unreal.

If you need to sanitize your bone constraints, this work can be labor intensive if done manually.

Here’s a simple script that will automate that process. (shoutout to manuDesk for providing this)

import bpy

for bone in bpy.context.selected_pose_bones:
    for c in bone.constraints:
        if 'Constraint Name' in c.name:
            bone.constraints.remove(c)  # Remove constraint

Replace “Constraint Name” with the name of the constraint you wish to remove from your rig, and then run the script. This could save you hours of work.

Suppose you need to copy constraints between a control rig and a deform rig. CGDrive has provided an entire video tutorial on this process. Below, is the code used in their script. Watch the video for a basic workflow, as there is some preparation necessary for this script to work.

import bpy
sel = bpy.context.selected_pose_bones

for bone in sel:
    name = bone.name
    bpy.context.object.pose.bones[name].constraints["Copy Transforms"].subtarget = name

Summer Internship: mid-July Update

It’s been nearly a full month since my last update, so what have I been working on?

The last few weeks have been incredibly busy. I’ve had several interviews and job application submissions. My gallery and design pages received some helpful updates. I’ve successfully built a standardized data format for a visualization project and introduced some of my fellow interns to the history and purpose of data visualization, and its role in matters of social justice and equality. I’ve also continued to make leaps and bounds on my 3D character work.

I’ve resolved the primary issue that was plaguing me early on in this project: mesh topology.

To be efficient for a game engine, it’s important to resolve mesh geometry with minimal faces. Unreal Engine 5 supports a new level-of-detail automation called “nanite,” which allows 3D modelers to create elements with a virtually unlimited number of faces (geometric detail). This does not seem to work with animated characters, however — if you know a way around this, please send me a message!

A “face,” in this context refers to a plane that has 3 (tris) or more points. Ideally, the geometry should have faces with 4 points (quads). While modern engines and graphics hardware have gotten significantly more advanced since the early days of 3D gaming, it’s nevertheless still important to avoid models with excessive polycounts (the sum total of faces in a model).


The challenge with my model is that it requires several tangent geometries that intersect with a central body. Image if you were modeling Tree Character, and you need to cover the various branches with leaves, blossoms, or pine needles. Blender can easily generate these elements using weighted vertex mapping and particle systems (hair). The difficulty, however, comes from trying to export this data for use in Unreal Engine.


Unreal Engine supports FBX models for import, but FBX models do not support shape keys. By default, Blender applies Particle System modifier as a shape key. You can, however convert particle instances into their own individual body/mesh component in Blender prior to export. This works, Unreal will interpret the model as being several individual bodies with shared coordinates. When exporting this type of arrangement, animation rigs cannot deform the free meshes — your leaves (or whatever) will stay in place while the rest of the tree animates.

You may already be thinking to yourself, “why not just combine the meshes?” And since the beginning of this project, I anticipated that this might be necessary at some point. The challenge then is how to create a combined mesh that is free of visual artifacts. Additionally, the boolean modifier in Blender only allows you to select a single target body to combine (union).

Thankfully, there is a Blender add-on for this last issue: BoolTool.

Suppose you want to combine all of your individual leaf meshes to the main tree body, but you know it would be insanely time consuming to go through the tedious sequence of selecting each leaf, one at a time, applying the modifier, creating a new modifier, and repeating that x700.

You could try writing a script, to automate this process, but you’d need to write it in python, and that would be a can of worms unto itself. You can already imagine the mission creep setting in…

BoolTool makes this process dead simple. You just select the mesh body you want everything to join with (active object), and then select all of those other meshes. Go to the BoolTool menu and select “union.” You may think that Blender has crashed, but give your computer a break. Grab a cup of coffee, meditate, embrace the here-and-now… *BING* [Your mesh combine operation is complete!]

BlenderBool.png

Assuming you created an efficient mesh, primarily out of quad faces, with intersecting meshes containing the same number of vertices, then you should have a single mesh geometry that is ready for rigging and animation.

I’ve tried dozens of other approaches so far, and this method produces the best results all-around: faster, easier to execute, high fidelity, and with the lowest poly count.

I’m still working out the kinks on my current model, and the animation sequences will be a next-level creative challenge for me (I have a lot of inspiration and ambition on this front), but I feel confident in the current direction, and early tests have been quite promising.

I’m also starting to make simple prototypes for augmented reality, and will add some notes about that later this month.

Week 2 mini-update: outputting video from Unreal Engine 5

Usually, I only update my blog on Sunday nights — I like to reflect after the week is done and I’ve had a full dose of daylight to consider what matters.

I’m breaking that rule because I’ve learned something that I think might be useful to others. Last week, Epic Games released a preview of Unreal Engine 5. If you haven’t looked at this tech, it’s worth your attention. We’re rapidly approaching a point where individual creatives (equipped with modern hardware) will be capable of producing photorealistic graphics in realtime. This is due to a convergence of procedurally-generated content, open libraries providing physically based materials, templates, and raytracing technology.

I’m a huge advocate for 3D technology. Being able to show something instead of telling it is huge. Consider all of the times in your life that you had an idea, something that you could clearly, vividly see inside your mind, but you felt was difficult or impossible to describe? What if you had the tools to quickly take your idea and represent it visually, with no limits to fidelity or realism? These tools exist, and they are getting better every day. Additionally, many of these tools are free and have a wealth of community-led learning and support.

Today I was asked to come up with a way to capture video from unreal, and I discovered a great way to do it in Unreal 5 Engine. Here’s how!

Geigertron’s Very Practical Guide to Exporting Video From Unreal Engine 5

For this example, I’m using a sample project based on MetaHuman Creator, you can download UE5 preview, it’s all free!

1) After opening the sample project, click on the clapperboard icon (“Cinematics”).

2) In this example, there’s already a sequence (MetaHumanSample_Sequence), so we’ll select that. To learn more about creating a cinematic sequence, click here.

UE5_Record_Cinematics_3.png

3) Within the sequencer window, there is another clapperboard icon on the top row menu. Click this to open the “Render Movie Settings” window.

4) From the Render Movie Settings window, you can select, output format for image and audio, resolution, compression, and output file location. After setting up, click the “Capture Movie” button on the lower right and wait for UE5 to finish rendering and saving your output file.

UE5_Record_Cinematics_5.jpeg

This operation completed in near realtime and the output is pristine. If your scene contains audio, then you’ll need to merge/combine it with the video output. I did this in After Effects, but other programs would probably work equally well.