I'd like this too. It feels like I'm stuck with UE for it, with it's metalness only setup.
:
Yea, I need to know when I choose dif/spec.gloss channels, it will actually output maps that fit previous gen engines. The bit after watching a video on it that its all still using pbr, just unity diff method vs unreal metal method has me concerned.
Can anyone better enlighten?
I encountered my pen not being sensed by painter as being released when held down correctly. Making it keep acting as if it was held down for an additional second or so after release. I came back to the program later (was in background) and it started working correctly. Yes, I have the latest wacom drivers.
I'm pretty new to the Substance applications... but, can't you just work with PBR and then use the Diffuse/Metallic/Roughness to Diffuse/Specular/Glossiness node in Designer afterwards?
There is no specific shader for non-pbr stuff yet in Painter. The final release will allow you to load any shader though, just like Substance Designer.
In the meantime, what we added in the latest build is a converter at export time that generates a specular map out of the roughness and metallic maps. It's an approximation but it works fairly well in Unity for example.
You can also indeed use the filter provided with Substance Designer that is made for this type of conversion.
@Mr.Moose Yes, you can use B2M in addition to the Substance Utilities to create self contained substances that embed your bitmap + the B2M settings that you can then import in Substance Painter.
Are the Indie/Pro packs on sale in the Unity Store the same as purchasing anywhere else? If so, is it possible to get a Steam key when buying via that route?
jerc, will you have some of these alternative shaders as a list of links on your site? The engine Im in changes the default dx shader language to fit its own internal ideal, while its ogl version is still a wip. Thus I cant grab those files as a replacement.
There isn't a thread in Tech Talk for it yet, so guess will ask here. I got the latest beta .7, The brush size on the mesh/image does not match the size of the brush limits when changing its size. Point in fact, I have the brush at .1 and it still about 1000% bigger than the paints reticle (changing size with alt) when I actually attempt to paint with it.
I can't figure out if its a bug with this release, or?? For shits n giggles I made the mesh 500% larger and then imported, but still same results.
@ oXYnary: Do you have the same behavior on different projects and/or using different tools?
Just tested, default mesh is fine. Its something weird with this mesh, I will give the link in a PM. The only thing I can think of since its mirrored with some of its mirrors offset from the main UV tile. (Actually as an aside a check box to treat all UV as on the same tile would be nice. So I could paint a model without reaching a mirror and its stopping or having to explicitly export any mesh I want to paint with going and setting all its UVs into the main tile).
Its some areas of the mesh it will suddenly "blow up" the size of the brush.. even on the same island.
@joebount We added an export option that converts the metallic+roughness maps into a spec+gloss model, but it's not very accurate yet. We will have proper support for the spec/gloss PBR model later on.
BTW, we just released a series of tutorials to get started with Substance Painter on Youtube:
I have to thank you for the glory that is Beta 7, and the glory that will be Beta 8, of Substance Painter. You guys and gals are doing great work, you really hit it out of the park with this latest update!
Watched those tuts last night and this evening, Wes did a great job with those
Any chance that we could get tooltips or popup examples when selecting the different map types? So we know exactly what they effect, such as the IOR (index of Refraction) map for instance?
This may have been asked already, but I can't find it.
Will there be a "non-PBR" workflow setup by any chance for painter? I am still atm working on a game where PBR isn't our standard right now. So Diffuse, Specular, Normals, Opacity Masks, etc are the norms. Along with not needing the whole PBR material preview. Rather use a standard Phong preview. Thanks
Yes, according to Wes Mcdermont (not sure if i've got his name right), who is doing the Painter tutorials, non pbr support should be implemented at or near the 1.0 release, as he stated in one of the more recent ones.
We already have an option to convert the metallic+roughness maps to a specular+glossiness setup at export time, but an actual Phong shader support is in the works.
Is it possible to get the twenty substances without purchasing the indy pack? I've purchased the Designer and Painter programs on steam and all i'm missing is the B2M. I especially wanted to check out the American Cherry Wood Substance actually.
Is it possible to get the twenty substances without purchasing the indy pack? I've purchased the Designer and Painter programs on steam and all i'm missing is the B2M. I especially wanted to check out the American Cherry Wood Substance actually.
Indeed, but a previous poster on this thread was offered a workaround since he was an edge case, I was wondering since my case was the same if I could get a download link.
Does Steam automatically upgrade you to the indy pack if you've got the three standalone products in your account?
Indeed, but a previous poster on this thread was offered a workaround since he was an edge case, I was wondering since my case was the same if I could get a download link.
Does Steam automatically upgrade you to the indy pack if you've got the three standalone products in your account?
"If you purchase all 3 software, Substance Designer, Substance Painter and B2M, you can also get the 30 PBR Substances as detailed in the Indie Pack. So if you ended up not buying the indie pack, but completed the pack by purchasing individually, we will also send you the 30 PBR substances. Please just send us an email using the contact form with a proof of purchase
"If you purchase all 3 software, Substance Designer, Substance Painter and B2M, you can also get the 30 PBR Substances as detailed in the Indie Pack. So if you ended up not buying the indie pack, but completed the pack by purchasing individually, we will also send you the 30 PBR substances. Please just send us an email using the contact form with a proof of purchase
We just released Substance Painter Beta 8. There are some great new features in this build and Substance Painter continues to evolve as we progress through the beta.
Say Wes, I purchased some months ago the indie pack on your companies website. How would I go about getting my substance products activated on my Steam account? The manual updating is getting rather tedious to keep up with.
Say Wes, I purchased some months ago the indie pack on your companies website. How would I go about getting my substance products activated on my Steam account? The manual updating is getting rather tedious to keep up with.
If I apply a substance effect to a layer, it ignores the AO map I add so there is no effect at all. What am I doing wrong? My AO map seems okay.
Do you have the AO on a separate layer? Is the layer with the Substance Effect overwriting the other layers? If so, you can change the layer channels blending modes to Pass Through. if you can, please post an image of your layer stack.
Nothing too fancy, but painted this in Substance Painter. It was an interesting crash course into a new piece of software.
I gotta admit, I am digging the work flow. Its quite enjoyable. Could definitely use a bit of optimization (some cases it nearly choked on itself) and a higher texture resolution (which is on its way), but for a beta its pretty damn good...depending on what you are looking for. I look forward to using it more often.
Hey perna, as far as I can tell, the layers aren't really like that. In each layer there's different channels for your diffuse, height, roughness and metallic. When you paint on a layer, you get to choose what channels you want to paint with, so some layers will have diffuse, height, roughness and metallic values, while others will only have diffuse (or whatever you're doing). In the layers tab if you click Diffuse, it'll pop up a drop down so you can alter each of the channels individually if you want, or change the opacity of some of them or whatever.
If you want to load an initial diffuse map, you have to create a fill layer first by clicking the paint bucket in the Layers tab, between the folder and the minus sign. Then you drag map onto the Diffuse slot (not the color selector rectangle, but the actual words "Diffuse-uniform color"). You can do the same for the height, roughness, and metal maps.
Anyways, on to the normals. You don't really plug them into a layer, you plug it into the base like, thing. When you first open SP it might look something like this (though I moved some stuff around) http://i58.tinypic.com/2572hkn.jpg
If you drag the viewer settings down, you should be able to see all the maps you've uploaded/can upload, like this http://i60.tinypic.com/oqlgd4.jpg
Then you just click on "Select normal map" to select a normal map (from an image you import (File > Import Image)) or click on your current normal map to replace it with another one. Hitting the - sign next to it will get rid of the normal map.
You can do the same thing for id maps, ao's, etc. if you want to use substance effects.
From what I can tell, when you're painting on the normals, you're not actually painting on a normal map, you're painting on a height map, and SP converts that into a normal while you're painting. That's why you don't load an initial normal map the same way you would a diffuse.
Hope this helped, if I sounded condescending I didn't mean to, I just hate when people don't go into enough detail when explaining stuff.
Edit: Also hope this'll let you go back to being excited about the program, cause it's freaking awesome once you get past the initial learning stage.
Layers are still similar to that of Photoshop, with the addition that each one contains multiple channels (maps for each channel that the user sets up).
The key is to make use of Fill Layers for applying existing image/map information in addition to the map input panels in the document settings.
I tossed together a quick (and sloppy) primer, as this is..at least in my case, the process I ended up going through when discovering how to use SP. Granted this is still from a new SP user's POV.
@perna For the normal map, you don';t have to have a specific name or anything, simply load your normal during the project creation or later on through the File>Import image dialog.
Then click on the Normal map slot in the Document Settings window and you'll see a popup listing the textures in your project. You can select the normal map through there.
Still, we know it's an overcomplicated workflow for now. The UI evolves all the time and most of the importing/applying textures workflow will change (for the better) in the coming weeks.
Trying to create a substance effect in designer to use in substance painter though keep getting this.
[Effect Substance View] Output normal hasn't been recognized
[Effect Substance View] Effect selected is not a substance effect designed
Couldnt find any good documentation on this. Would be nice to explore some of the default ones that come with the program but can't open them up in designer to explore the graph.
EDIT: ah sorry actually meant to use it as a stencil material rather than effect though would like to know how to setup effects.
One quick question: I've seen mention of a 3D/UV mode toggle for painting. Now when I paint on the flattened version, it still "leaks" onto other parts that are nearby in 3D. I just haven't found out where to activate the toggle though, any help?
You can find the toggle here:
Also, you can use this mode to auto mask based on UV islands as well:
You must create a white or black mask for the layer first, then use that mode to fill in UV islands or even unconnected geometry with a white or black value.
Also, any plans for the viewport? I found the material rendering quite weak
I concur with this to some degree. The solo channels are fine, but once it goes into full PBR mode everything has this washed out look to it.
Still, we know it's an overcomplicated workflow for now. The UI evolves all the time and most of the importing/applying textures workflow will change (for the better) in the coming weeks.
The workflow isnt that complicated from what I have experienced. Its actually quite easy. The issue I think is the way in which the interface communicates with the user. For example, the boxes in which you drag maps into or the toggle between basic and advanced brush isnt very obvious. In short the workflow isnt bad, its pretty good actually but the UI could communication functionality better.
I would love to see the stencil workflow start pulling design choices from Zbrush's spotlight approach as well, as thats where I felt there was a bit less control for the user.
The rendering depends a lot on the environment map you are using. We are using the same lighting model as UE4 (GGX) and the rendering should be on par with what you would expect from UE4.
We currently have a bug that creates very bright edges on non-facing normals though and that tends to add a lot of aliasing and noise, we are working on it.
@haiddasalami Creating a stencil material is fairly easy, the only specific part is that you have to have a Height map output instead of a normal map.
We will soon release guidelines for creating Substance Effects for painter, but the syntax and conventions we use could still change in the coming weeks.
@perna Indeed, the goal is to streamline as much as possible the workflow and if some things feel cumbersome right now it's because these were implemented as a "minimal" functional state and we are refining it with every build following user's feedback.
+1for the light. I have to go back and forth Marmoset all the time to check my work.
The fact that we got Yibis is very nice but I think a bit useless for presentation without proper lights.
Speaking of working with Marmoset for preview, has anyone managed to find a way to get Painter to export over previously exported maps? So far I have had to export into a new folder every time and then manually copy and paste the files into the original folder in which Marmoset is pulling its textures from.
@perna Thanks for the feedback. I agree on the lighting and both Substance Designer and Painter need better lighting functionality.
As for the heightmap edition instead of a normal map, this is a choice from our part based on multiple reasons:
- A normal map has no height information which means that you potentially can't use displacement or parallax properly if you are compositing normal maps together. It is also a lot less accurate and more error prone if you want to blend real surfaces and materials together.
(Want to scatter rubble on an uneven surface? painting with a few bricks and rocks heightmap will allow you to do that in 2s, painting that kind of detail with normal maps would require a lot of painful tweaking).
- Having a heightmap will allow us to create very cool layer effects based on that height information. You can create anything from a height, much more than from a normal map.
- Painting normal maps in 3D is simply not practical. You would need to change the colors of your normal map brush depending on the angle of the brush, where you stamp it on the mesh, etc. There is a reason why nobody lets you paint with normal maps but uses bump instead
- About libraries and knald. As people are heading to PBR, a lot of studios are switching to scanned data, which include height information, and anyone using Knald, B2M or Crazybump actually create a height before creating a normal as this is how these tools work, they create a height and then convert that height into a normal.
You might have to reprocess parts of your existing libraries, but it's pretty much what every single studio I've talked to is doing right now as they transition to next gen.
Then I agree that there are areas where we could make that system better, by letting you visualize the resulting normal map when you are painting/editing instead of only the height (like NDo), or simply allowing you to edit the original normal map you imported on the mesh to fix seams and artefacts like you mentioned before.
Or even adding an optionnal "normal to height" conversion effect when you import a normal map in the height stack.
Wait, you say, you could control the contrast in software. But which software? Not Painter. If you are supposed to be so heightmap centric, it's surprising that you won't allow such controls.
Check out the first icon in the layer's tab, the one that says "add effect". You can, at the very least toss in a HSL node in layer form, and make adjustments to the layer in question. They probably expect to add more controls (node like effects) here.
Replies
Yea, I need to know when I choose dif/spec.gloss channels, it will actually output maps that fit previous gen engines. The bit after watching a video on it that its all still using pbr, just unity diff method vs unreal metal method has me concerned.
Can anyone better enlighten?
I encountered my pen not being sensed by painter as being released when held down correctly. Making it keep acting as if it was held down for an additional second or so after release. I came back to the program later (was in background) and it started working correctly. Yes, I have the latest wacom drivers.
In the meantime, what we added in the latest build is a converter at export time that generates a specular map out of the roughness and metallic maps. It's an approximation but it works fairly well in Unity for example.
You can also indeed use the filter provided with Substance Designer that is made for this type of conversion.
@Mr.Moose Yes, you can use B2M in addition to the Substance Utilities to create self contained substances that embed your bitmap + the B2M settings that you can then import in Substance Painter.
Hmm, curious, would xnormals work?
@oXYnary Yes we will most probably have a list of built-in shaders to cover most cases.
I can't figure out if its a bug with this release, or?? For shits n giggles I made the mesh 500% larger and then imported, but still same results.
Silky smooth Substance layer effects and masks generation, parametric painting, multi-material and free GameTextures among other things, take a look
[ame="
Just tested, default mesh is fine. Its something weird with this mesh, I will give the link in a PM. The only thing I can think of since its mirrored with some of its mirrors offset from the main UV tile. (Actually as an aside a check box to treat all UV as on the same tile would be nice. So I could paint a model without reaching a mirror and its stopping or having to explicitly export any mesh I want to paint with going and setting all its UVs into the main tile).
Its some areas of the mesh it will suddenly "blow up" the size of the brush.. even on the same island.
BTW, we just released a series of tutorials to get started with Substance Painter on Youtube:
[ame="
I have to thank you for the glory that is Beta 7, and the glory that will be Beta 8, of Substance Painter. You guys and gals are doing great work, you really hit it out of the park with this latest update!
Any chance that we could get tooltips or popup examples when selecting the different map types? So we know exactly what they effect, such as the IOR (index of Refraction) map for instance?
Will there be a "non-PBR" workflow setup by any chance for painter? I am still atm working on a game where PBR isn't our standard right now. So Diffuse, Specular, Normals, Opacity Masks, etc are the norms. Along with not needing the whole PBR material preview. Rather use a standard Phong preview. Thanks
Is it possible to get the twenty substances without purchasing the indy pack? I've purchased the Designer and Painter programs on steam and all i'm missing is the B2M. I especially wanted to check out the American Cherry Wood Substance actually.
American Cherry Wood $2 on the Unity Asset Store
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/1682
Also, it's 30 substances, not 20
Edit: And here's the Substance Database, where you can buy individual substances (or all of them for 1.59k)
http://www.allegorithmic.com/products/database
Indeed, but a previous poster on this thread was offered a workaround since he was an edge case, I was wondering since my case was the same if I could get a download link.
Does Steam automatically upgrade you to the indy pack if you've got the three standalone products in your account?
Not too sure if steam will do it, but http://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,1040.0.html
"If you purchase all 3 software, Substance Designer, Substance Painter and B2M, you can also get the 30 PBR Substances as detailed in the Indie Pack. So if you ended up not buying the indie pack, but completed the pack by purchasing individually, we will also send you the 30 PBR substances. Please just send us an email using the contact form with a proof of purchase
http://www.allegorithmic.com/contact "
And then you'd just have to put the files in the right spot which can be found here
http://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,1294.0.html
Yeah, guess i'll take advantage of the Steam Sale and get B2M then. Thanks for the indications.
We just released Substance Painter Beta 8. There are some great new features in this build and Substance Painter continues to evolve as we progress through the beta.
Cheers,
Wes
[ame="
Wow, does that work? I always just type in my card number with the keyboard.
Hi Matt,
Just send me an email at wes.mcdermott@allegorithmic.com and I'll send you Steam Keys.
Cheers,
Wes
If I apply a substance effect to a layer, it ignores the AO map I add so there is no effect at all. What am I doing wrong? My AO map seems okay.
Do you have the AO on a separate layer? Is the layer with the Substance Effect overwriting the other layers? If so, you can change the layer channels blending modes to Pass Through. if you can, please post an image of your layer stack.
Cheers,
Wes
Help > Settings > Display only the selected material when painting
===================
The entire object disappears while I'm painting on a mask. Why?
http://oskarswierad.com/p/screeny/substance-disappearing.gif
I gotta admit, I am digging the work flow. Its quite enjoyable. Could definitely use a bit of optimization (some cases it nearly choked on itself) and a higher texture resolution (which is on its way), but for a beta its pretty damn good...depending on what you are looking for. I look forward to using it more often.
If you want to load an initial diffuse map, you have to create a fill layer first by clicking the paint bucket in the Layers tab, between the folder and the minus sign. Then you drag map onto the Diffuse slot (not the color selector rectangle, but the actual words "Diffuse-uniform color"). You can do the same for the height, roughness, and metal maps.
Anyways, on to the normals. You don't really plug them into a layer, you plug it into the base like, thing. When you first open SP it might look something like this (though I moved some stuff around)
http://i58.tinypic.com/2572hkn.jpg
If you drag the viewer settings down, you should be able to see all the maps you've uploaded/can upload, like this
http://i60.tinypic.com/oqlgd4.jpg
Then you just click on "Select normal map" to select a normal map (from an image you import (File > Import Image)) or click on your current normal map to replace it with another one. Hitting the - sign next to it will get rid of the normal map.
You can do the same thing for id maps, ao's, etc. if you want to use substance effects.
From what I can tell, when you're painting on the normals, you're not actually painting on a normal map, you're painting on a height map, and SP converts that into a normal while you're painting. That's why you don't load an initial normal map the same way you would a diffuse.
Hope this helped, if I sounded condescending I didn't mean to, I just hate when people don't go into enough detail when explaining stuff.
Edit: Also hope this'll let you go back to being excited about the program, cause it's freaking awesome once you get past the initial learning stage.
The key is to make use of Fill Layers for applying existing image/map information in addition to the map input panels in the document settings.
I tossed together a quick (and sloppy) primer, as this is..at least in my case, the process I ended up going through when discovering how to use SP. Granted this is still from a new SP user's POV.
http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/rabenwulf/SubstancePainterPrimer_zpsf21c4b5f.jpg
Then click on the Normal map slot in the Document Settings window and you'll see a popup listing the textures in your project. You can select the normal map through there.
Still, we know it's an overcomplicated workflow for now. The UI evolves all the time and most of the importing/applying textures workflow will change (for the better) in the coming weeks.
[Effect Substance View] Output normal hasn't been recognized
[Effect Substance View] Effect selected is not a substance effect designed
Couldnt find any good documentation on this. Would be nice to explore some of the default ones that come with the program but can't open them up in designer to explore the graph.
EDIT: ah sorry actually meant to use it as a stencil material rather than effect though would like to know how to setup effects.
You can find the toggle here:
Also, you can use this mode to auto mask based on UV islands as well:
You must create a white or black mask for the layer first, then use that mode to fill in UV islands or even unconnected geometry with a white or black value.
I concur with this to some degree. The solo channels are fine, but once it goes into full PBR mode everything has this washed out look to it.
The workflow isnt that complicated from what I have experienced. Its actually quite easy. The issue I think is the way in which the interface communicates with the user. For example, the boxes in which you drag maps into or the toggle between basic and advanced brush isnt very obvious. In short the workflow isnt bad, its pretty good actually but the UI could communication functionality better.
I would love to see the stencil workflow start pulling design choices from Zbrush's spotlight approach as well, as thats where I felt there was a bit less control for the user.
We currently have a bug that creates very bright edges on non-facing normals though and that tends to add a lot of aliasing and noise, we are working on it.
@haiddasalami Creating a stencil material is fairly easy, the only specific part is that you have to have a Height map output instead of a normal map.
We will soon release guidelines for creating Substance Effects for painter, but the syntax and conventions we use could still change in the coming weeks.
@perna Indeed, the goal is to streamline as much as possible the workflow and if some things feel cumbersome right now it's because these were implemented as a "minimal" functional state and we are refining it with every build following user's feedback.
The fact that we got Yibis is very nice but I think a bit useless for presentation without proper lights.
Keep up the good work guys
As for the heightmap edition instead of a normal map, this is a choice from our part based on multiple reasons:
- A normal map has no height information which means that you potentially can't use displacement or parallax properly if you are compositing normal maps together. It is also a lot less accurate and more error prone if you want to blend real surfaces and materials together.
(Want to scatter rubble on an uneven surface? painting with a few bricks and rocks heightmap will allow you to do that in 2s, painting that kind of detail with normal maps would require a lot of painful tweaking).
- Having a heightmap will allow us to create very cool layer effects based on that height information. You can create anything from a height, much more than from a normal map.
- Painting normal maps in 3D is simply not practical. You would need to change the colors of your normal map brush depending on the angle of the brush, where you stamp it on the mesh, etc. There is a reason why nobody lets you paint with normal maps but uses bump instead
- About libraries and knald. As people are heading to PBR, a lot of studios are switching to scanned data, which include height information, and anyone using Knald, B2M or Crazybump actually create a height before creating a normal as this is how these tools work, they create a height and then convert that height into a normal.
You might have to reprocess parts of your existing libraries, but it's pretty much what every single studio I've talked to is doing right now as they transition to next gen.
Then I agree that there are areas where we could make that system better, by letting you visualize the resulting normal map when you are painting/editing instead of only the height (like NDo), or simply allowing you to edit the original normal map you imported on the mesh to fix seams and artefacts like you mentioned before.
Or even adding an optionnal "normal to height" conversion effect when you import a normal map in the height stack.
Check out the first icon in the layer's tab, the one that says "add effect". You can, at the very least toss in a HSL node in layer form, and make adjustments to the layer in question. They probably expect to add more controls (node like effects) here.
Are you serious? Grow up. All I said was that your constructive feedback needs work, stop acting like I attacked you.