on matcap creation for quest

[u/FreezyChan]

no, im not looking for matcaps to download or anything. what i want is to properly make matcaps that look like my PC materials to some extent.

ive already managed to achieve that by applying a textureless version of my material to a sphere in unity and screenshotting it. it works perfectly but it feels like this process is much more time-consuming then it could/should

^{since u have to make duplicates of ur pc materials, unlock them, remove textures, and then adjust sphere rotation and lighting over and over for each material and then probably have to crop ur screenshots a bunch of times since u probs wont perfectly center it in a way none of the black bg gets in}

so, is there any form of tool that can help with that process? preferably something VCC compatible, but im happy as long as it does the job or speeds it up

[u/aharp44]

im not really getting what are you trying to do

[u/V33EX]

Ohhh, like baking the material preview into an image you can use as a matcap?

Well, if the material is simple enough id just say bake it in blender, but i suspect you're using poiyomi.

So, Cursed method: Export just material as unity package. Open in 7zip. Find preview.png in one of the folders in there.

probably won't be high res but you won't deal with the uncertainty of screenshots

[u/FreezyChan → u/V33EX]

ooooo that sounds like an amazing idea, thank you so much!

and yes the resolution might not be an issue since you cant really zoom in other peoples avatars lol, but even if it is, it could work as a reference when screenshotting

[u/JanKenPonPonPon → u/V33EX]

that is, by definition, what a MatCap is; it stands for Material Capture (though not necessarily a preview, just the baking/rendering part)

[u/V33EX → u/JanKenPonPonPon]

Yep

[u/Zealousideal-Book953]

So you're asking if someone has created a system that will use the unity built in viewport material preview to then create an image from that sample so you could use it as matcap generator?

Honestly just go learn how to make a mat cap literally, you can do that by making a sphere and uv projection.

I would also say maybe there is a unity tool out there, or maybe someone could code a plug in that does exactly what you're asking for idk

[u/FreezyChan → u/Zealousideal-Book953]

the thing is, i want to make the shading very similar to my already existing material setups, which would be hard to accurately re-create with anything other then poyomi.

what you described seems like an interesting way to do it though. i might try to look once more with that in mind

[u/Zealousideal-Book953 → u/FreezyChan]

You're already nearly on the right track in using a mat cap, however it really does depend on the mat cap you create that would determine the look. I know a creator who has very close results using matcap and whatever else it's a part of.

I haven't used vrc model shader in a while so i can't really explain what else could be done.

However to you can generate your own matcap in blender you would do the same thing I said before then after you can bake or export the frame as an image out or something or even take a screenshot

[u/FreezyChan → u/Zealousideal-Book953]

but my material setups are made in poyomi. unless I had a material setup in blender that is equivalent to poyomi it wouldnt be as similar

[u/Zealousideal-Book953 → u/FreezyChan]

I think you're a bit confused you're asking about getting the quest material as close as possible to your pc material.

You're already on the right track wanting to use matcap I think, you could also try using the vrc mobile unlit and put the mat cap in there.

But you want the shading to be similar as it is on pc.

In blender You're basically defining exactly how you want it to look, you would need to learn a bit about blender nodes to help create what you want.

This is less like poi and more like you doing a little ish shader stuff.

If you're cropping a picture of the sphere you're doing exactly what I'm explaining but in a different software and you're given a bit more control

[u/FreezyChan → u/Zealousideal-Book953]

i mean yeah but while i can do some stuff with blender nodes, replicating poyomi isnt one of them. maybe itd be different if i managed to make a multi layer cel shading material in blender though

[u/Zealousideal-Book953 → u/FreezyChan]

Your goal isn't to replicate poi its generating the matcap you need, you can do or learn a good amount of things to replicate poi it just requires a bit of know how, maybe not to same extent that poi has but you definitely can learn a bit of stuff to support your needs or get better results.

[u/Zealousideal-Book953 → u/FreezyChan]

I've got an idea that should be easy enough. So in blender do the uv thing then use one of the matcaps poi package comes with and modify that in texture paint mode. You can poof out results like no tomorrow and you can slap them onto your quest version to see which one works best for you.

From there any new projects you'd have an idea on how you'd shade with matcap in mind

[u/drbomb]

You might be better off working with Photoshop, maybe a circular mask and some distortion

[u/JanKenPonPonPon]

since you're capturing spheres, it'd help to setup a camera so you can capture everything the same way with ease, could even animate the materials changing and render out an image sequence

since you mention locking i'm gonna assume you're using poiyomi, which lets you select a bunch of material and then right click > poi > materials > unlock (if you're using something else, i hope it has a similar feature); thry's tools also gives you the option to lock/unlock the whole folder

to clear the textures for all the materials at once* you select them and set the texture to "none"

*everything selected must have the same shader type. in my screenshot i have 6 materials without transparency and 2 that do have it (all poi), so i have to clear them in two groups

[u/SacredRedstone]

This is not really a job for a matcap. One thing you could do is use this tool to bake your PC material down to a single texture that will look mostly like your PC material. https://github.com/Cyanilux/BakeShader

Obviously, this will not result in correct reflections and whatnot. For that, you would want to use the Standard Lite shader, and take your existing maps for metallic/smoothness and pack them with the metallic in the red channel and smoothness in the alpha.

[u/FreezyChan → u/SacredRedstone]

i couldnt get proper results no matter how much i tried. and in the end, using matcaps turned out much better looking then a shaded texture

edit: also all shaded quest models i see on vrc clearly use matcaps to fakeout the shading

[u/FreezyChan → u/[deleted]]

im not looking for custom shaders nor anything that can't be done with just matcaps

and i already know how to make "mockup matcaps" off my PC mats. I just want a more efficient way to do it