Quixel Suite 2

Some of my work on the good old Quixel Suite 2, posted here in celebration of its official retirement. While this tool is obviously obsolete at this point, it remains where I got my start in the industry and I'd still argue NDO beats any contemporary tool when it comes to creating normals.

I was responsible for most usable content within Quixel Suite 2, including the materials, Smart Materials, Masking Patterns, brushes, etc. Some of the base stuff was made from scratch, some based on early prototype Megascans, some scanned by me, and some not. But in the end, nothing in there went untouched by me. Pretty much everything was cleaned up, modified, and/or repaired. Part of it never could be repaired due to the limitations of the software.

I also did extensive QA on the tool and conceptually created many of the features that made it in and many that never did. All of them were ultimately programmed by Teddy Bergsman, of course.

"Smart Materials" have automated functions, such as edge wear and so on, "Base Materials" are basic standard material texture sets with no automation and/or fancy functionality.

Quixel Suite 2 release trailer.

Smart Materials. This idea hardly needs an explanation today, but it was quite novel at the time. These were complex materials with automated features, based on baked maps and the library of "Base Materials". These materials were about 10-30kb each.

Base Materials. These were the core of Suite. Restricted to 2k in size and 256 color-indexed files, yet highly effective. Quixel Suite was under development when PBR hit the scene, and all of the maps had to be converted to fit mid-project.

Masking Patterns. This function was created as I wanted a simpler and less resource-intensive way to add detail over loading a full material.

Part of this concept later morphed into what became our "Surface Imperfection" asset category on Megascans.

Brush Library. I created all the brushes available in the tool. All of them were made by hand and/or sourced from early prototype Megascans. They were tested as Photoshop ABRs and an ABR-importer/translator was planned but ultimately never implemented.

Smart Material: Cast Iron

Smart Material: Old Painted Machine

Smart Material: Aluminum Foil

Smart Material: Tarnished Bronze

Smart Material: Tarnished Brass

Smart Material: PVC Plastic

Smart Material: AKM Bakelite

Smart Material: AK74 Bakelite

Smart Material: M4 Polymer

Smart Material: Varnished Wood

Smart Material: Old Bare Wood

Smart Material: Tarp

Smart Material: Worn Leather

Smart Material: Dirty Cotton

Smart Material: M90 Camo

Smart Material: Burlap

Quixel Preview Orb

Preview orb design process. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I designed this model, but I was and am very happy with how it came out, and I still use it all the time.

Unimplemented conceptual feature: A base material creator replacement that would have been more streamlined, as well as warned/informed the user if values were out of range and generally smooth out the base material creation process.

Unimplemented conceptual feature: A reworked version of how the Quixel Suite 2 handled a project's physical size and resolution when adding materials and textures.

Unimplemented conceptual feature: A reworked version of the Masking Pattern system, where the singular masks would be replaced by a set of maps that seamlessly tiled to avoid repetition and maintain resolution.

Unimplemented conceptual feature: "Normal Stamps". The idea was to have these full normal decals that could be stamped out inside the painting engine in both NDO and DDO.

Base Material: Greasy Steel

Base Material: Marble

The source of this piece was my mom's massive living room table with an unattached top slab, which slid off due to a flawed base design and nearly amputated my foot, I was lucky and got away with a minor crushing injury. True story.