Best Practice for Setting up Materials in Revit for Enscape Renders/videos

    Hi,


    What is the best way to set up our Revit materials to get the best results in Enscape?


    When & where should we be using DIFF, DISPL, NORM, SPEC etc. Do different materials require different setups?


    Appreciate that this is a broad query, but any help would be appreciated?


    Weve provided a screenshot of a material we have created, this seems to work well for the brick. However using similar principles for gravel it just lacks depth. Are we doing this correct?


    Thanks in advance


    Jacob

    Let me just start off by saying it's going to be hard to get materials like gravel to look great with textures only, if it's important I'd try to add some pebbles from the Enscape library on top of the texture, or add several layers of pebble-surfaces with cutout-textures.


    A good way to get familiar with the texture maps is to check out the advanced Revit materials "replace this asset" in the top right of your image.


    Looking at your image, first of all whatever looks good... but If we are picky the correct slot for DISPL(acement) is actually Relief Pattern and if you'd rather use a normal map (like you have) you should click the normal map image and change Advanced->Data type to "Normal map".


    So basically DISPL and NORM does the same thing, I've found normal gives a bigger effect but the "depth" doesn't seem to be controllable in Enscape (pretty much on/off)


    In Roughness there would usually be a ROUGH map, but honestly this way probably works fine especially if there is no such texture, if you want some extra control over the "shininess" of the material you can click the image in the slot and pull down brightness to make it more shiny (dark = shiny) or do the same thing with an external image editor if you need it less shiny, or if it's not a very shiny material you can just use the slider.

    Thanks for your comments.


    We generally use one of the Advanced Revit Materials as a base then amend the images accordingly. As you mentioned we have also found that normal map gives the best effect. Within the Revit control you can normally change the normal map height from between 1-5 but not sure if this then actually changes anything within enscape...?


    Depending on where we download our textures from we sometimes get a ROUGH map but this isn't always the case. So would you recommend not bothering with a roughness image if we do not have one or use the Displacement image as we have done?


    Do you use Ambient Occulsion images at all?


    We use sketchup texture, texture heaven are there any other websites you use for textures?

    Quote

    Depending on where we download our textures from we sometimes get a ROUGH map but this isn't always the case. So would you recommend not bothering with a roughness image if we do not have one or use the Displacement image as we have done?

    As I said, whatever works. But if its a flat non-shiny object like this brick wall you can probably use the slider at the low end, if it's a bathroom tile and you want the grout to stay flat you can use the DISPL inverted etc.


    I do usually use the Ambient Occlusion, but I got to be honest and say I'm not sure how/if it works.


    Here are some good sites I found (apart from the ones you mentioned):


    http://www.texturise.club/


    https://www.cgbookcase.com/textures/


    https://3dtextures.me/

    First of all, you should use the new Revit PBR Material Shaders (not the Legacy ones, which have a yellow triangle at the bottom left corner). So, when you create a new material, go to the "Appearence tab", click on "Replace this asset" and choose a base material under the "Appearence Library > Miscellaneous > Base Materials", based on the shader you want (under the "Type Column", you have the following options: Layered, Transparent, Metal, Opaque or Glazing)


    Currently, I think Enscape do not support Layered materials (maybe someone can confirm)


    Depending on the shader you chose, you will have the following options:


    Image: this is the place for your albedo/diffuse map (the colored one);

    Reflectance: if you have the reflectance map, you can use it here (I am not sure if it is supported by Enscape, I think it isn't)

    Roughness: here you can use your roughness or glossines map (if you use a glossiness image, make sure you check the "Invert Image" checkbox)

    Relief Pattern: you can use either a bump or normal map (make sure to choose

    Cutout: A cutout map determines, with black and white, what parts are visible and what parts are removed

    Advanced Highlight Controls: anisotropy map (but this is not supported by Enscape as for now)


    Ambient Occlusion (AO) is not supported by Revit, ergo you should not use it. The AO map contains a distance-triggered shadow. What you can do, actually, if you need a deeper relief, is to place both your albedo and AO maps on photoshop (on separate layers) and make the AO a "multiply" layer with reduced opacity (something between 5~20%)


    What we do here, is to create like a showroom of materials (see attachment), so they can easily be imported to any project you have. Also, when you are testing your materials, make sure you test them on a real project (so you can make them as realistic as possible).


    This is the workflow we have here at our construction company, I hope it helps you somehow (because it took me a lot of time to test this, I know how hard it can be at start)


    ---------------

    Websites for textures:

    (free) https://cc0textures.com/

    (free) https://www.sharetextures.com/

    (free) https://www.texturecan.com/

    (paid) https://www.textures.com/

    (paid) https://www.poliigon.com/search?type=texture


    Explaining to revit materials: http://wiki.bk.tudelft.nl/toi-pedia/Advanced_Materials