Materials dont carry over from blender to Godot

PizzaHutsAlat

I made a model in blender and made some decent procedural materials for it. In Blender:

but the material doesn't fully carry over to godot. The color property, metallic and roughness properties carry over, but my procedural material doesnt. in Godot:

Tomcat

PizzaHutsAlat but the material doesn't fully carry over to godot. The color property, metallic and roughness properties carry over, but my procedural material doesnt.

Procedural textures and shaders are not transferred from Blender to Godot. They must be created in the engine. Material Maker may be helpful.

PizzaHutsAlat

Tomcat Are there ANY ways to carry them over? I already made quite a few of them and preferably I don't want to lose them. Im also using Godots feature of being able to save the .blend file itself into the game files and load it in without ever exporting it, if that's important. I plan to export them all to a better format at some point down the road. Because of that it won't let me change the materials in godot.

xyz

PizzaHutsAlat "Procedural material" is a very broad term. You cannot really export blender shader networks to standard 3d asset formats. You can only export numerical material properties and bitmaps. So any results of shading networks that are plugged into material properties must be baked to bitmaps. Of course, you'll need to have tidy UVs on the models for baking to work properly. The only alternative is to re create procedural effects using realtime shaders in Godot, as already mentioned above.

Tomcat

PizzaHutsAlat Im also using Godots feature of being able to save the .blend file itself into the game files and load it in without ever exporting it, if that's important.

As correctly said above, Godot converts the .blend file to glTF first when importing. But in practice, it is better to do it from Blender. In this case, you can control the process and access the settings.

Procedural textures created (recreated) in the engine have their own advantages.

PizzaHutsAlat I already made quite a few of them and preferably I don't want to lose them.

So that this does not happen, usually first study the documentation and check the workflow on a simple model before starting large-scale work.

ArDanZ11

What file format are you using? Maybe you should try FBX. If you already have, then just screen shot the material properties in Blender and then create a material in Godot. Then you should just copy it from the screen shot. If you already thought of that, then I don't know what to tell you.

PizzaHutsAlat

ArDanZ11 Godot has a feature where you can load in .blend files without ever exporting them. I've been planning to export my models at some point down the line, but I've been putting it off until I can figure out how to get everything to work, like materials.

ArDanZ11

PizzaHutsAlat Just use Blend file

xyz

PizzaHutsAlat Godot has a feature where you can load in .blend files without ever exporting them

You can't really. It just runs Blender under the hood and exports via glTF, as stated in the docs:

The editor can directly import .blend files by calling Blender's glTF export functionality in a transparent manner.

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/4.4/tutorials/assets_pipeline/importing_3d_scenes/available_formats.html#importing-blend-files-directly-within-godot

Expecting that you could just import a Blender file directly into a realtime game engine is very naive. Blender has a massive feature set that engines simply have no business dealing with. It needs to be funneled into standard 3d asset feature set.

So as I said, it's either baking procedurals to bitmaps or re-creating shaders in Godot.

PizzaHutsAlat

ArDanZ11 I am, my problem is that the procedural shader materials are not carrying over from Blender to Godot. My models all work fine, its just that the only material properties that carry over properly are albedo, roughness, and metallic. I beleive you misunderstand my problem

PizzaHutsAlat

xyz I understand that Godot won't simulate all the features of blender, I just assumed there would be a way to carry over the materials to Godot, though not automatically. I've had all my models for a while, I just haven't been actively focused of getting materials to work. I understood it wouldn't all carry over perfectly. I'm just now starting to work on getting materials in the game, through whatever means need be. I am just unfamiliar with blender and thought here would be a good place to ask around, and discover options. I'm more invested on the technical side, and not very good on the art side.

xyz

PizzaHutsAlat PBR materials are carried over fine. You just can't carry stuff you plug into material properties if that stuff is calculated by Blender as opposed to just being stored in bitmaps or plain numbers. Those calculations can get infinitely complex and are thus not suitable for realtime rendering. There's no straightforward way to convert an arbitrary Blender shading network into a glsl shader used by an engine. Even if there was, rendering it in realtime would be inefficient for game engine performance standards.

Blender's renderers can bake shading networks (as well as illumination) into textures. That's the common workflow when making assets for games.

kuligs2

Shake-n-bake, the ol reliable.

Ive been there, so this is your only way to get the look and feel you made in blender over to godot. Create textures color normal and anything else you need, then bake it and then just recreate material... wait.. i rememebr there was tutorial on how to make it automatic in godot.. like you keep the baked material in blender and then godot somehow recognizes this.. cant find the tutorial atm

xyz

kuligs2 then just recreate material

You don't need to recreate it. Bitmaps (file textures) that are plugged directly into material's common PBR properties, will be picked up by the glTF exporter, and the material+texture(s) will appear as expected in Godot.

kuligs2

Tomcat Godot converts the .blend file to glTF

yes this was very handy, until i ran into problems that it exports stuff i dont need, and i went back to gltf, where you can select what to export and have better control and easier to maintain, Also it weighs less than full blend file with complex meshes.

PizzaHutsAlat

xyz

kuligs2
I'm stuck at a crossroads of 2 options right now. I might decide to bake the materials in Blender, or I might create my materials in Material maker and assign them in Godot. Thank all you guys for the feedback though.

xyz

The docs should really not state that Godot imports .blend files because it's misleading, as we can see from the above discussion.

It's just glTF export/import with all export options turned to the max. The only convenience is in not needing to run Blender gui and explicitly click on "export"

xyz

PizzaHutsAlat I'm stuck at a crossroads of 2 options right now. I might decide to bake the materials in Blender, or I might create my materials in Material maker and assign them in Godot. Thank all you guys for the feedback though.

It really depends on the purpose of those materials. If you need realtime in-game control over procedural parameters, then re-create the materials. If all procedurals are only tweaked when modelling - then bake.

PizzaHutsAlat

xyz I messed around with MaterialMaker and I now think I'll go with that option because it looks way better for the art direction of my game. I'll have to redo all my renders but I feel it's worth it.