Using the PSD files in V Ray - Working with Maps from the Painter Application
[Instructor] Having seen how easy it is to work with the EXR files that we exported from Substance Painter, what we want to do now is look at how we might also go about using the PSD file that we saved, as well. To take a look at that, probably the first thing we will want to do in the Material Editor and Chair tabs, is, this time, drop a V-Ray material onto the canvas, given that for the PSD file, if you remember, we actually use the V-Ray export module, as opposed to just the generic PBR metal roof option that we had previously employed.
After adding a Bitmap Node to the canvas as well, let's, in the dialogue that appears, go ahead and select the single .PSD file that we exported from Painter. This should instantly bring up the PSD Input Options dialogue, where we essentially have two options open to us. The first would be to import the whole PSD file into Max as a flattened image, which wouldn't be of any real use to us in this instance, and the second would be to choose a specific layer to be imported. As this is the option that we want, let's grab the Diffuse Color layer and click OK.
Once that is hooked up to the material, we can apply the material to the chair geometry, and then turn on the "Show Shaded Material in View Port" option. Now, at this point if we were to copy the Bitmap Node and then try to add the next channel to it, as we did in the previous exercise, we would find that we can't actually access the PSD Input Options dialogue in this way. And so, what we need to do now is add Bitmap Nodes one at a time from the Map Browser, and add the relevant channels or layers to them as we go, until we have the reflection, normal, glossiness, and IOR layers all loaded as well.
Again, we will want to connect these two, the relevant inputs on our V-Ray material, remembering that we will also need a V-Ray normal map node, adding to the normal chain. If I just go ahead and take a render though, we can see that something is clearly wrong, and so let's go back into each of the Bitmap loaders, and this time set the Gamma Option to an override value of one. Meaning that when we render now, things look much better. Although, I think we will make one final tweak by setting the Diffuse Map to a gamma of 1.5, which will give us exactly what we want as we render again.
In fact, let's go ahead and save this render to the history list, as we're going to need it for analysis at the start of the final exercise for the course. Whilst a slightly more unusual way to get the map channels that we need out of Painter and into Max then, the PSD export option does have the advantage of keeping all of our material elements, or channels, together in just a single file. One that can then be imported layer-by-layer into 3ds Max and rendered as a part of either a physical or V-Ray material setup, depending on the export options chosen when coming out of Substance Painter.