Quixel SUITE/PBR shader for Octane inside c4d Tweet

[Ferdinand13]

Hey Chris,

First of all, the biggest apologies for taking so long to get back to you. Life happened and unfortunately dragged me far away from C4D and Octane.

Either way, thanks a lot for your suggestion about simplifying the file names to the actual file name only, omitting the path.

I tried it on my PC and it does work brilliantly, in the base C4D project. However, as soon as you nest this project file into another project (or a couple of times in my case) the link gets broken and you and up with the Quixel Mix Material showing up 'empty'.

Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Since the Quixel Suite is PC only anyway, I may be able to work with this limitation, but should you have figured out something else in the meantime, I'd be keen to know.


All the best, Ferdinand

[ChrisMills]

You could try putting the file path of your textures in the Texture Path slots in the main CInema4D Preferences (it's under the "Files" heading).

If CInema4D can't find a texture in the same directory as the Cinema4D project file, it will look in through the folders in the Texture Path slots.

[Ferdinand13]

Thanks a lot, I'll try that.

[Ferdinand13]

Hey Chris,

This really seems to have done the trick. Thank you very much!

Just in case somebody else should encounter the same problem, here's what I did.

In the "Preferences" menu under "Files" I set the first path to the main Cinema4D texture folder (let's call it "Project\tex\") and the second path to the XRef texture folder (Project\XRef\tex\) on my Dropbox.

Within my texture folders I've got sub folders that contain the textures for each object and sometimes these sub folders contain additional sub folders (otherwise the amount of files generated by NDO and DDO can make things quite messy).

Now for each Cinema4D project - or let's say "Object" - I set the individual Quixel Maps file paths for Albedo, Roughness, etc. as follows:

./InnerFloor_Walkway/DDO/Walkway_Combined [Albedo].psd
./InnerFloor_Walkway/DDO/Walkway_Combined [Roughness].psd
etc.

The importance is the "./" at the beginning, followed by the file path to link directly to the file, which may be hidden in sub folders, as is the case with my project.

The great thing is, even though the file path is now relative, the textures show up as they should within each nested project! I was about to go crazy over this.

I set this up on my PC, but I had a quick look on my MacBook Air, where I set the texture file paths in the Preferences menu accordingly, so they would point to the same folder on my Dropbox as on the PC.

Naturally the file structure is a little different (i.e. /Users/[username]/... vs. C:\Users\...) which is why the links were always broken in the past. But thanks to setting those texture file paths globally under Preferences and then leaving the individual Quixel Maps file paths relative, you can make changes to the maps wherever, but they will always update correctly!

I had a quick check on my MacBook Air and although it doesn't allow me to render with Octane to prove it for sure, the material thumbnails have updated accordingly (before they were greyed out, hinting at the broken links).

Once again kudos to Chris!

[Ferdinand13]

Hey everybody,

It's me again. Just wanted to ask a (hopefully) simple question.

In which colour space does the Quixel Suite export its maps? Are they linear or not?

Following from that, how does Chris' amazing PBR shader inside C4D interpret them?

Just want to make sure, I'm not messing up the colour space as I go along.

Chris will probably know best, but if anybody else has got an idea, I'd be grateful to hear!

[Ferdinand13]

Hey everyone,

Just in case you're still struggling with Octane's Quixel/PBR shader inside Cinema 4D, I might have found a way to simplify the process.

Have a look here: https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=65410&p=331354#p331354