Darker textures in Daz Studio
Rafmer
Posts: 564
I have a problem when importing props into Daz Studio; textures are way darker when loaded in Daz Studio than I see them in Substance Painter or the Windows Image Viewer.
This only happens with Base Color textures, black and white ones are okay. I have checked the gamma; it's 2.2 in render settings, 0 for base color textures and 1 for B&W ones; which I believe it's the standard values. Why is this happening?
Thanks in advance for your answers!
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Comments
As I recall, if you click on the image file in the surface settings and select Image Editor, then look at the Gamma there. If it is "0" it means it doesn't think there was any gamma information in the file and Studio will make it's best guess. You might try applying a gamma value between 1.6 and 2.2 yourself to see if it helps at all?
Windows Image Viewer will give the raw image, Substance (if you mean the previwe) and DS are using lighting but their mdoels may be different (certainly the non-Iray modes, but even if both are Iray the light sources won't be the same).
I'm not talking about the rendering result, but the texture image itself. The raw image you can see with the image editor of the surfaces tab of Daz Studio is darker than the one you can see in the Image Viewer.
Could it be related with the .jpg compression and the way Daz Studio handles it?
I doubt it. Are you actually taking a screen shot and comparing it? If not I'd suspect it was down to the surrounding UI elements in the different applications as those can have a very strong effect on how colour is perceived. Colour Management may also be a factor, I think the Windows viewer does respect it but I don't think DS does (not sure about Substance).
I guess it is just a matter of perception; because I made a screenshot of the image editor and then uploaded the texture to the forum and both looked equally dark in the preview post. I will take it into consideration in my workflow and deal with it. Thanks for your answers.
Yeah, that was the first thing I tried with no changes.
As @JonnyRay says, gamma conversion may not always be handled correctly. This appened to me with some assets and I had to fix it in the image editor. Also to make a fair comparison you have to take a screenshot both in daz and in substance, then upload the sreenshots in the forum. If you upload a daz screenshot and the texture itself you may have different gamma information.
Here is a comparison of the two screenshots; the intended color I chose in Substance and what Daz loads.
It is clearly not the same tint of grey. You can try fixing it with the gamma option in the image editor.
Nevermind, switching the gamma to 1 in the base color seems to fix the issue. I don't know why I couldn't see it before; I swear I tried it too.
Thanks for your help!
Ok, just a few clarifications to posterity. Variations of the gamma in the image editor do not update in real time when Iray previewing; that might be the cause I didn't fix it before. And second; oddly enough, 1 seems to be the only value in gamma that causes a change in the render; any other value seems to not do anything.
Ok, last report. Changing the gamma to 1 causes artifacts to appear when rendering, so I will just adjust all textures again so I can keep the gamma at 0.
For anyone interested, I discovered when then problem is appearing. Either in the photoshop texture export plugin or the submerger plugin to merge all textures in one image. In one of these plugins the gamma gets modified somehow. Exporting the textures directly from substance painter don't cause any problem.