Roughness Power of 2

Question

I use 2.79 Principled Shader, Do I still need to increase the SP roughness map to Power of 2 before inputting to the PS?

Thanks

Answer 1 · 2018-03-22T22:50:13Z

Jonathan Lampel replied March 22, 2018 10:50pm

Yep, it'll be that way until 2.8 comes out.

Answer 2 · 2018-03-23T18:59:28Z

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replied March 23, 2018 6:59pm

thanks..... other then this is there really any advantage for beginners like me to upgrade to 2.8 when it comes out? I am just getting around to upgrading blends using the principle shader....(PS.. where is there a vid on using Basic color and AO to combine and attach to Principle shader?) Maybe someone could do a paper or ? for us non-professionals....

Answer 3 · 2018-03-23T19:56:14Z

Jonathan Lampel replied March 23, 2018 7:56pm

2.8 is going to be a huge change, so it really all depends on what you're most comfortable with. It'll have a lot of improvements but will also take some time to get used to. As for AO, you don't need to use it with the principled shader, since Cycles is a path tracer. You'd need it in Substance and in game engines like Unity, but it's not required in Blender.

Answer 4 · 2018-03-23T19:59:50Z

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replied March 23, 2018 7:59pm

thanks..... I noticed in Youtube some people using it with the PS but did not seem to make sense to me.

Answer 5 · 2018-10-07T08:50:11Z

replied October 7, 2018 8:50am

@jlampel I don't think, that it's needed for principled shader

Here is Cycles render without a power of 2:

And here is Iray in Substance Painter. Seems pretty consistent

While Cycles with the power of 2 looks far less rough than it should be

Answer 6 · 2018-10-08T15:44:27Z

Jonathan Lampel replied October 8, 2018 3:44pm

Ah you are so right, thanks for the catch! I must have been thinking 2.78. In 2.8 all roughness will behave that way BTW, not just the principled shader.

Answer 7 · 2018-12-10T20:41:11Z

replied December 10, 2018 8:41pm

In the Principled shader, Non-Color Data with a Power of 2 actually looks identical to Color Data with no Power of 2. So for Principled shader, we can just plug in the roughness map as Non-Color data without anything else? (This seems to be how the Poliigon Material Converter add-on does this.)

Answer 8 · 2018-12-11T17:43:51Z

Jonathan Lampel replied December 11, 2018 5:43pm

That's how I do it!