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4 Stage 4 of 6

Texture Filters

Evaluate and adjust baked texture maps through a non-destructive 11-filter stack, and write out a filtered treatment when you need one.

On this page The filter pipeline On this page
  1. The filter pipeline
  2. 11 filter reference
  3. Baked map previews
  4. Two kinds of export

Stage 4 is where you judge the bake. Filters render on the GPU over the top of the baked data — the binaries on disk are never modified, so you can reset or re-stack at any point.

The pipeline

The filter pipeline

Select any generated map in Texture maps and click Edit. You can layer, reorder and tweak filter operations in real time without altering the raw baked source.

The Texture maps panel with Albedo selected. Map tiles are on the left, the Edit control opens the filter stack, and Base Stage parameters sit underneath.

  1. Open the Texture Viewer

    Pick a baked map — Albedo, for instance — and click Edit to open the non-destructive editor.

    The map preview menu, for moving between baked channels without leaving the viewer.

  2. Add filter layers

    Click + Add Filter and choose from 11 types — Root/Tip Tint for length gradients, Detail Boost for edge sharpness.

    The Add Filter gallery with Curves selected. Filters stack, so the order you add them in changes the result.

  3. Set blend modes and opacity

    Reorder layers, adjust opacity, and pick a blend mode: Normal, Add, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Darken or Lighten.

    Curves filter controls. The opacity slider at the top blends the filter's result against everything below it in the stack.

  4. Write the treatment out, if you need it

    Click Save Texture As… inside the viewer to write the filtered preview as PNG, TGA or JPEG. This is a different operation from the toolbar export — see below.

    Preview toggles and the padding slider, which control what the viewer shows rather than what gets written.
Reference

11 filter reference

Stackable filters for map contrast, tint and high-frequency detail.

Scroll horizontally to view all columns.

Supported Non-Destructive Filter Types
Filter Type Key Parameters Technical Effect
Brightness / Contrast Brightness [-1, 1], Contrast [-1, 1] Adjusts linear tonal offset and contrast expansion.
Levels Black Point, White Point, Gamma [0.1, 5.0] Remaps black/white clipping points and midtone gamma.
Hue / Saturation / Lightness Hue Shift [-180°, 180°], Saturation, Lightness Color space rotation and chroma intensity adjustments.
Invert Invert RGB / Invert Alpha Inverts color channels (useful for roughness/smoothness flipping).
Blur Radius [1, 32 px] Applies separable Gaussian blur filter pass.
Threshold Cutoff [0.0, 1.0] Binarizes image channels into hard black/white masks.
Solid Color Color Picker, Opacity Overlays a solid color tint using active blend mode.
Root / Tip Tint Root Color, Tip Color, Blend Bias Multiplies root-to-tip vertical color gradient onto albedo maps.
Curves Spline Control Points S-curve tone mapping for custom contrast response.
Detail Boost Sharpness Radius, Strength High-pass sharpening filter to emphasize fine hair strand edges.
Gradient Remap Color Ramp Preset / Custom Ramp Maps grayscale intensity levels onto a multi-stop color palette.

Controls for the individual filters, in the order they appear in the gallery:

Brightness and Contrast controls.
Levels: black point, white point and gamma.
Hue and Saturation controls.
Invert, separately for RGB and alpha.
Blur radius.
Solid Color, which relies on the layer blend mode to do anything useful.
Detail Boost: sharpness radius and strength.
Gradient Remap, mapping grayscale levels onto a colour ramp.
Base maps

Baked map previews

What each channel actually looks like coming out of the bake. Compare these against your own output when a map does not behave as expected in-engine.

Albedo: base colour, with the root-to-tip gradient already present.
Normal: surface direction encoded into RGB, in bake-canvas space.
Roughness: how sharp the specular response is across the strands.
Alpha: the opacity mask that cuts the card silhouette. Never dilated, so this edge is exact.
Root-to-tip: a vertical ramp from 0 at the root to 1 at the tip, useful for driving tint in-engine.
Ambient occlusion, derived from the height and normal passes.
Export

Two kinds of export

These are not the same operation, and confusing them is the most common surprise here.

  • Primary toolbar export writes raw baked map binaries — un-filtered Albedo, Normal, Roughness and the rest — for engine shader pipelines.
  • Texture Viewer export writes one filtered map preview to disk as PNG, TGA or JPEG.
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