Roughness map causing artifacts

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    In Revit 2020 using the new material type and a PNG file in the roughness channel, there are close-up rendering artifacts when viewed in Enscape 2.6.2.

    The textures were generated in Substance Designer and exported to bitmaps. I've tried both 2k and 4k resolutions, but the results are identical. Here's a crop of the full map:



    And here's an up-close from Enscape:


    I've gotten the same results in three different projects and on two different computers.

    The first has a GTX 1080 card, the second has an RTX 2080TI card.

    Another material in the same project is doing something similar. I used a very simple height map in the roughness channel that has a consistent grey value for the tile, and a darker value in the grout joints (I need to invert the image because i need the grout joints rougher, not shinier). The color map is NOT striped the way it is appearing in the render, as a result of the roughness channel.

    The height map:

    Trinity_Sync_Black_height.png


    The render: (look closely at the joints where the height values transition from grey to black

    I have a hunch it's because you're using PNG file format: try re-saving the bump & shine as JPG and see if that makes a difference.


    (The 'halo' effect is very similar to what you get with trying to make a graduated transparency into an on/off transparency - the alpha/transparency channel of a png is grey scale and Enscape prefers binary on/off)


    But it could be something completely different.

    Quote from Gadget

    I have a hunch it's because you're using PNG file format: try re-saving the bump & shine as JPG and see if that makes a difference.


    (The 'halo' effect is very similar to what you get with trying to make a graduated transparency into an on/off transparency - the alpha/transparency channel of a png is grey scale and Enscape prefers binary on/off)


    But it could be something completely different.

    Please don't do that - it's actually vice versa ;) PNG is lossless compression, while (depending on your quality settings) jpg textures will introduce significant compression artifacts.


    medmonds we'll have a look why this is happening. Can you observe the issue in any project or is it tied to a specific one?

    Hi medmonds


    unfortunately I'm unable to reproduce that behavior on my end with the texture you've provied. Could you please send us feedback with log files, so that we can have a closer look at what's going on? Thanks in advance!

    Yes, the problem occurs on multiple projects on every material that uses a roughness map.

    I Installed the 2.7 preview release yesterday to see if the new engine release fixes it, but after hitting the start button, it appears that im stuck on the Enscape Loading screen. May need to downgrade back to 2.6.2

    Although changing the image to RGB instead of grayscale corrected one problem, I'm continuing to have issues with roughness maps either not working at all or working strangely. Does Enscape prefer 8 bit per channel or 16 bit per channel depth?

    All material textures get converted to 8bit per channel internally, so this would be the preferred format to avoid additional conversion overhead. Can you provide us with a texture file that's not working properly for you?

    The issue is the roughness map looks like it is being rendered at a lower bit-depth even than 8 bit. In the image below, you can see across the top row and in some of the field panels a sharp contrast in reflectivity/roughness. (My material in Revit does not have a reflectivity map assigned.)