How is setMetalness supposed to work?

[jwwalker]

My experience from the Filament rendering software is that designating a material as "metal" basically means that it does not reflect diffuse light, except for ambient light. But in Ogre, when I say

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pbsdatablock->setWorkflow( Ogre::HlmsPbsDatablock::MetallicWorkflow );
pbsdatablock->setMetalness( 1.0 );

I'm seeing only specular reflection, regardless of ambient light, so the metal looks too dark. What am I missing?

[jwwalker]

My metal looks somewhat better if I set a medium-gray cube map as a PBSM_REFLECTION texture. But that's not ideal because it's not affected by the amount of light.

[old_man_auz]

Incase this is helpful:

• Make sure that the `brdf` and `workflow` parameters in the PBS datablock are set to values that are valid for a `metallic` workflow.
• The V2 mesh viewer here https://github.com/chchwy/ogre-v2-mesh-viewer lets you play with metalness values a little to adjust a look.

[jwwalker]

I did say

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setWorkflow( Ogre::HlmsPbsDatablock::MetallicWorkflow );

, but I left brdf at the default setting. The documentation of the various BRDF settings don't mention anything about some of them being compatible or not with metal.

[jwwalker]

By the way, the documentation on setWorkflow talks about textures, starting:

The texture types PBSM_SPECULAR & PBSM_METALLIC map to the same value.
When in metal workflow, the texture is used as a metallic texture, and is expected to be a monochrome texture.

It should be OK to use a metallic material that is not textured, right?

[dark_sylinc]

It should be OK to use a metallic material that is not textured, right?

Yes.

The documentation just says that if you're using a texture, whatever was bound to "PBSM_SPECULAR" becomes "PBSM_METALLIC" (since they're literally the same value in the enum) and if there is something bound, we expect it to be monochrome (unlike specular which can be either coloured or mono and makes sense in that workflow)

[old_man_auz]

I did say

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setWorkflow( Ogre::HlmsPbsDatablock::MetallicWorkflow );

, but I left brdf at the default setting. The documentation of the various BRDF settings don't mention anything about some of them being compatible or not with metal.

Sorry, It was late and I didn't read your post properly.