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Substance Designer - Master Thread

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  • Boyordo
    Im back with another, possibly, performance related question.
    First I load my .sbs, that contains 6 graphs:

    - 5 base material graphs
    - 1 graph combining the 5 materials with masks to work on my game ready mesh.

    When I first load the sbs it loads all fine with the base box geometry showing in the 3d window. I can apply any of the graphs to this 3d object and lighting + materials display good.
    This was true for game mesh as well until now.
    When I load my game mesh into the 3D view it loads fine and can display any of the base material graphs on it without any issue. BUT when I now apply the combined materials graph t show on the game mesh it applies and all minus the image based lighting. The panorama lighting turns off. I can switch back to one of the base materials again and the panorama image lighting comes back.

    All of this worked just fine before now it doesn't. THe graoh isnt that heavy at all compared to what I have seen out there in tutorials and examples.
    In task manager I can see that substance designer almost uses all my 14gb of ram at times, but then lingers around 7gb the rest of the time. Can this be related?
    Really quite hard to work without the proper lighting, any advice?

    AH also when I try to save my sbs files as save as, it starts saving then crashes. But after the crash I can load the new files as if they were saved correctly
  • Monophobe
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    Monophobe polycounter lvl 11
    Sounds like your master/combination graph isn't using the PBR shader. Check what the material is using in the 3d view and drag one of the HDR images from the 3D Views section of the library into the viewer. If it's not displaying then choose Scene > Edit and enable background image in viewport.
  • xtrm3d
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    xtrm3d polycounter lvl 9
    and another one

    this time step by step

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WMiRGqk8Po


    No 3d object
    No uv !!
    A flat plane with an render
    100 % substance
    100 % step by step video 1 hour at 1080p

    Some swearing and language


    *disclaimer  !!
    I am not claiming to have invented that workflow.. since it is an old regular compositing way of doing things .. could do it in after effect or nuke ( as long that the 3d plane support normal maps )
    not reinventing the wheel .. it just make it shinier and rotate faster 

    mim2k14-c.jpg
  • DeepSpaceBanana
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    DeepSpaceBanana polycounter
    Hi guys,

    Im not sure if this is the right place to post this but here goes nothing. Im having some issues getting my metallic materials to look right inside Unreal 4. The object looks fine in the SD 3d viewport but when i bring it into unreal all my metallic surfaces become really dark and black..

    Here's said object in SD.
    M3nruP6.png
    now same thing in UNreal 4
    CSjFqqz.png

    I've noticed that this is caused primrily due to the metallic map,when i soften the metallic map by multiplying it with a constant it looks better, is it becuase i havn't set up the shader properly in unreal? if anyone has any idea what im doing wrong, it would be much appreciated.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Post your textures and material set up in UE4?
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
    It's probably because the Shader in Designer convert your map from sRGB to Linear space. I don't remember if the shader in UE4 expect a linear or a gamma space texture. You can check quickly by doing a power of 2.2 and see if it works in your shader. In Designer you have some filters to convert from one space to another one.

    Also keep in mind the lighting is based on IBL in both software. You maybe want to put a reflection sphere near your object to get the correct lighting in addition to the lights already present in your scene.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    It looks like your reflection is all black. Did you set up some reflection spheres in your level?
  • DeepSpaceBanana
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    DeepSpaceBanana polycounter
    ZacD wrote: »
    Post your textures and material set up in UE4?

    I havn't done anything fancy in the material setup in urneal 4. I jsut plugged the 4 maps(albedo,roughness,metallic,normal) into their respective slots. Images incoming..
    RYbyKxk.pngHXyNnNI.pngWiOluWc.pngt8If26L.pngJeN6Owl.png


    P.S sorry didn't realize how big these images were going to be =(
  • Stromberg90
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    Stromberg90 polycounter lvl 11
    As Jerc and Froyok said you need to have reflection captures place by the asset, it needs to have something to reflect.
    Also turn of sRGB for the roughness map inside unreal 4.
  • DeepSpaceBanana
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    DeepSpaceBanana polycounter
    As Jerc and Froyok said you need to have reflection captures place by the asset, it needs to have something to reflect.
    Also turn of sRGB for the roughness map inside unreal 4.

    Thanks for the quick responses u guys. turning off sRGB on the roughness seems to have done the trick. Should i be doing this with all my maps?
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    SRGB should be turned off on all greyscale maps.
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    I hear murmurs of further UE4 integration in 4.3/4.4.

    Any deets?
  • Fogbrain
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    Fogbrain polycounter lvl 5
    Does anyone know what the difference is in terms of workflow in something else like Photoshop, and also the workflow involved with Substance Designer when choosing either just the physically based metallic/roughness preset and the physically based specular/glossiness preset, when making a new graph.

    Ofcourse the results of the render are different but I'm wondering what you need to to differently and how is such an option like the specular/glossiness option useful.

    Thanks Allegortithmic btw, this is an awesome program. Here's what I made in like 20 mins today doing a crash course tutorial on it.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_rR_EhCt_umZVQ4X0lYTjJ5Y0k/edit?usp=sharing
  • ultramedia
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    ultramedia polycounter lvl 11
    Hi Computron,

    Here's Jeremy from the Allegorithmic forums saying it'll be in the final 4.3 release:
    http://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,1223.msg9265.html#msg9265
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    ultramedia wrote: »
    Hi Computron,

    Here's Jeremy from the Allegorithmic forums saying it'll be in the final 4.3 release:
    http://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,1223.msg9265.html#msg9265

    Yay!
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Hopefully it'll be built in and not require github or Visual Studio.
  • Bruno Afonseca
    Hey guys,
    After working a while on a bloated package, my AO bakes started coming out with horizontal white stripes on it:
    SD_AO_NOTOK.png

    Using the same bake settings, it comes out okay on a brand new package:
    SD_AO_OK.png

    Any ideas?
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    The stripes on AO and normal bakes is a bug introduced in 4.4, it's being fixed in the upcoming 4.4.1.
  • Computron
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    Computron polycounter lvl 7
    ZacD wrote: »
    Hopefully it'll be built in and not require github or Visual Studio.

    4.3 is out, but I don't see mention of Substance being in 4.3 according to the changelog.
  • iskandar80
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    iskandar80 polycounter lvl 6
    Computron wrote: »
    4.3 is out, but I don't see mention of Substance being in 4.3 according to the changelog.

    It is, Epic will modify the changelog soon. You can now download the new plugin from this page: http://www.allegorithmic.com/substance-ue4

    No need to recompile anything, it's now a "true" plugin. Enjoy!
  • DeepSpaceBanana
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    DeepSpaceBanana polycounter
    iskandar80 wrote: »
    It is, Epic will modify the changelog soon. You can now download the new plugin from this page: http://www.allegorithmic.com/substance-ue4

    No need to recompile anything, it's now a "true" plugin. Enjoy!

    OMG! ..I've been waiting for this!! :poly121:
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    Substance Designer and Substance Painter now have their own sub forum over here.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    Can we move the scattered threads into the main forum?
  • WhiskyDelta
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    WhiskyDelta polycounter lvl 6
    Well, just discovered and trailing Substance Designer, mainly interested in the baking aspects as an alternative to 3D Max but so far very unimpressed for the following reasons
    1. No matter what settings i try AO from mesh just does not work, i just get very pix elated strips. Using a cage and changing settings does nothing or eventually the baked texture just appears as white and even if i default back the settings, it carries on not working. I have to delete the output and add it again.
    2. It seems that the order in the stock of output textures has an effect on some of the other outputs which is stupid and buggy. Scenario: I set up a colour output which worked. Had to tweak the distances, but that's fine (although these numbers mean nothing in terms of real world distance or scale). I then set up a normal map from mesh and once it finishes the normal map appears completely black! If however i swop the output order to normal map first then colour map it is fine. Ridiculous.
    3. There was something else but i am loosing the will to live so apologies.


    Normal Maps pop out ok along with cavity and colour maps but getting an AO from a mesh is not possible, obviously all the same videos shows it to eb a 1 click operation but this is far from reality. Happy to be proven this is user error as it is quick.

    Whisky
  • NicolasW
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    NicolasW polycounter lvl 13
    Well, just discovered and trailing Substance Designer, mainly interested in the baking aspects as an alternative to 3D Max but so far very unimpressed for the following reasons
    1. No matter what settings i try AO from mesh just does not work, i just get very pix elated strips. Using a cage and changing settings does nothing or eventually the baked texture just appears as white and even if i default back the settings, it carries on not working. I have to delete the output and add it again.
    2. It seems that the order in the stock of output textures has an effect on some of the other outputs which is stupid and buggy. Scenario: I set up a colour output which worked. Had to tweak the distances, but that's fine (although these numbers mean nothing in terms of real world distance or scale). I then set up a normal map from mesh and once it finishes the normal map appears completely black! If however i swop the output order to normal map first then colour map it is fine. Ridiculous.
    3. There was something else but i am loosing the will to live so apologies.


    Normal Maps pop out ok along with cavity and colour maps but getting an AO from a mesh is not possible, obviously all the same videos shows it to eb a 1 click operation but this is far from reality. Happy to be proven this is user error as it is quick.

    Whisky

    The AO from mesh baker is indeed buggy in SD 4.4, it's been fixed in the upcoming 4.4.1 version (should be released early next week).
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    lionroot wrote: »
    Hello,

    I'm starting to understand more about substances, textures and modeling. If I'm creating a model in ZBrush / Maya, should I paint different materials onto the parts that all use the same materials (leather, painted metal, etc) so that when I bring it to substance painter / designer, I can easily create the isolated maps for them?

    Is it a good practice to separate the UV groups as well by material types?

    Thanks!

    My recommended workflow would be to create a material mask using solid colors for each material. Blue for metal, brown for leather, pink for skin for example. Then transfer this color mask to your low poly model to set the materials in SD

    And no it is not good practice to seperate your uv shells based on material, unless there is some game specific reason to do so, like modularity.

    In general the fewest UV islands is the best for solid meshes.
  • gel
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    gel polycounter lvl 7
    Great thread guys thanks for all the vast amount of knowlege.

    Hi,NicolasW
    So this is where you are now, was wondering why you were not posting on the Algorithmic forum.
  • WhiskyDelta
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    WhiskyDelta polycounter lvl 6
    Ok...that's good to know about the 4.4.1 release so will keep an eye out when the update is released.

    I have another couple of requests though to at least get feedback on if they will/ccould be implemented.

    1 - SD supports fbx but notices it doesn't support turbos mooching so only option is collapse down the model wit the modifier applied. As I am working on a model which once it has 2 levels of sub d is over 13 million tri's this will create a massive file. Will sd still handle that amount of tries if ale bough memory is available or will it support turbosmoothing?

    2 - the distance calculators don't seem to make sense, it's just a value which doesn't appear to equal to actual dimensions so it's just a trial and error job setting them. Could some sort of visual tool be provided so you can dynamically adjust the values and it shows what it means in relation to the model. A bit like showing the cage and pushing it out and in, just not for a cage.

    Finally, more of a question....is it generally a better work flow to use the min and max values as opposed the cage? I did some test with a normal map and it seemed the cage didn't do as good a bake as objects that were floating near the edge of what is just a flat polygon on the low res gets distortion but when using the min and max all the baked details are nice and square on as opposed to being stretched at an angle.

    Whisky
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    You should be able to load a fair amount of polys in the viewport, you could try with 13M as we don't support turbosmoothing.

    The distance is a percentage of the bounding box of the object. I agree it may not be the most reliable thing sometimes.

    Baking in SD without a cage gives very good results so I would advise using a cage only if you get bad artefacts without. I actually never used a cage in SD myself.
  • dzibarik
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    dzibarik polycounter lvl 10
    I've noticed that height maps don't have any effect in both PBR and standard modes.

    How can you turn them on?

    sd2oyer0.png

    sdpmilu.png
  • philwinkel
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    philwinkel polycounter lvl 4
    dzibarik wrote: »
    I've noticed that height maps don't have any effect in both PBR and standard modes.

    How can you turn them on?

    what kind of "effect" are you looking for? displacement?

    the shaders used for the PBR / standard modes might not do displacement.
  • lukors
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    lukors polycounter lvl 9
    philwinkel wrote: »
    the shaders used for the PBR / standard modes might not do displacement.

    I can't get them to do anything either, it looks like height maps should do something though because they are available to activate/deactivate in the PBR shaders.
  • dzibarik
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    dzibarik polycounter lvl 10
    philwinkel wrote: »
    what kind of "effect" are you looking for? displacement?

    the shaders used for the PBR / standard modes might not do displacement.

    wow, I tried it in tesselation/parallax and it certainly works, although I'm not sure it it works how it is supposed to work.

    Will it work in other modes some day, I wonder.
  • cman2k
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    cman2k polycounter lvl 17
    it's just a matter of having the right shaders (which are all on disk and free to modify). Anyone could try and hack it together, with enough time and energy.
  • NicolasW
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    NicolasW polycounter lvl 13
    lukors wrote: »
    I can't get them to do anything either, it looks like height maps should do something though because they are available to activate/deactivate in the PBR shaders.

    Go to materials/edit and adjust the Relief Amount value.
    It's set to 0 by default to avoid weird result on non adapted meshes.

    rqvrtl.jpg
  • Bruno Afonseca
    Hey guys,
    I'm dipping my toes in those functions and ran into a problem.
    I want to create a lil chromatic aberration node by doing a directional warp on the RGB channels separately, each on a different angle, but with a single input to keep things simple. So say, user sets angle to X, R channel is warped at X, G at X+120 and B at X+240.

    But I'm setting the angle input as an empty function and throwing the operations inside, right clicking the Add one and setting as an output. But whenever I go out of this function and go in again, it says "Invalid Function: no output selected" even though the Add node is highlighted in orange.

    SD_Functions.png

    If I keep the Function window open, the graph kinda works. Closing it breaks it... Is this a bug?
  • amokk_gw
    How do you deal with seams in Substance Designer?
    I've watched a few tutorials and in the one tutorial there is dirt "falling" on top of the model. So lets assume you have a UV seam in the middle of the head and your random dirt touches the border of your UV how do you deal with it?
    Sure you can go into a 3D painting software and clean it up, but then you would loose the biggest strength of the software, that the End User can change stuff in his Editor. Am I missing something?
  • NicolasW
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    NicolasW polycounter lvl 13
    Hey guys,
    I'm dipping my toes in those functions and ran into a problem.
    I want to create a lil chromatic aberration node by doing a directional warp on the RGB channels separately, each on a different angle, but with a single input to keep things simple. So say, user sets angle to X, R channel is warped at X, G at X+120 and B at X+240.

    But I'm setting the angle input as an empty function and throwing the operations inside, right clicking the Add one and setting as an output. But whenever I go out of this function and go in again, it says "Invalid Function: no output selected" even though the Add node is highlighted in orange.



    If I keep the Function window open, the graph kinda works. Closing it breaks it... Is this a bug?

    This is just a refresh bug, don't trust the message, your function will work.
  • FrancisR
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    FrancisR polycounter lvl 2
    amokk_gw wrote: »
    How do you deal with seams in Substance Designer?
    I've watched a few tutorials and in the one tutorial there is dirt "falling" on top of the model. So lets assume you have a UV seam in the middle of the head and your random dirt touches the border of your UV how do you deal with it?
    Sure you can go into a 3D painting software and clean it up, but then you would loose the biggest strength of the software, that the End User can change stuff in his Editor. Am I missing something?

    Some others could give better advice but a directional dirt effect could be done with a world space normal map, you've gotta make sure you've got no overlapping uv's though. The pod racer tutorial talks about it I believe.
  • amokk_gw
    FrancisR wrote: »
    Some others could give better advice but a directional dirt effect could be done with a world space normal map, you've gotta make sure you've got no overlapping uv's though. The pod racer tutorial talks about it I believe.

    No it was more of a general question and this was the example, it's not that I want to make a directional dirt effect. I'm general interessted how people deal with seams, since you do a lot of procedural texture general that can overlap over the seam borders.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    UV-unwrap better?
    Honestly when I use Substance and procedural effects seams are hardly ever an issue. Put them in places where you get seams IRL, hid them out of sights, etc...
  • amokk_gw
    How do you put the seam out of sight, if the model is viewable from every angle?
    I'm definitely not that good in Unwrapping, but you have to have seams somewhere. And just rely on hiding the seams is a bit like cheating.
    So I'd really like to clean the seams up.
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    Well it's not possible for absolutely everything, but:

    -Put seams where there are seams in real life (like clothing seams, or panel-lines), or material separations in real life.
    -Put seams at the bottom, or the side that is least visible. Every single object has an orientation that is preferred: even a 'physics-crate' that gets kicked around has a top and a bottom.
    -Hide seams in creases; lining them up with dark AO areas is a good rule.
    -Consider that these days, with much more room for higher vertex counts, it's often better to bevels (or 'double creases') on your edges and avoid the UV seam. It helps with baking, helps your normalmap quality, avoids seams. This potentially (and counter-intuitively) ends up cheaper even!

    Hiding seams is not cheating. It's being efficient and smart.
  • amokk_gw
    Yes I know it's not cheating, but it feels a bit like that to me and I'm trying to get the things as perfect as possible. So even if the seams are not visible, just the fact that they are there are annoying me. ;)

    I'm actually trying to make textures for spaceships and as those are "flying" all areas are viewable in the game so I try to get rid of the seams. I'm sure I did some mistakes when I unwrapped my model but I know that I can always fix up texture seams with 3D painting so it didn't bothered me until I found this sweet function in Substance Designer that allows the end user in Unity to make some changes.
    So I guess for now, no random rust. It would be cool though if it's possible to be able to fix seams in Substance Painter and then put it back in Designer.
    it's often better to bevels (or 'double creases') on your edges and avoid the UV seam.
    Sorry I didn't get that. How does this affect the seam? Do you have an example?
  • cman2k
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    cman2k polycounter lvl 17
    Something else worth mentioning is that it may help to change your perspective a bit. I was stuck trying to fix seams from my noise once...until I remembered how easy it was to just change my UVs and fix it that way. When you have this non-destructive pipeline and everything is already setup to bake, it can be very fast and easy to just try a few different UV layouts until your problems are gone.

    It's really easy to get stuck thinking 'the old way', in that it feels like you can't go back a step without incurring long iteration times. Just worth a reminder. :)
  • rogelio
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    rogelio greentooth
    Dirt and pebbles preview in toolbag. quick height topo chunky dirt. Color is not final.

    1910265_10201408107684540_2630421702730404997_n.jpg
    10550862_10201408107644539_9205754339006032558_n.jpg?oh=f715b3d6af1028b28c0ef46865f5125c&oe=544D4C95&__gda__=1413689072_32f57e7e9d40e19d6100362307f290d2
    10541928_10201408107404533_2913951075704366590_n.jpg
  • Bruno Afonseca
    Great results mate! How are you colorizing it?
    I'm working on some stuff too, cross-posting:
    bunker_preview_32.jpg
    This is 100% Substance Designer, ceiling, walls, floors, stain decals and whatnot are all procedural. Prop textures are made from bakes inside SD as well!
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
    Nice work !
    How did you do the font on the wall ? :>
  • Bruno Afonseca
    @Froyok: Oh on that I cheated a bit haha, I went into one of those free font websites where you can try the fonts out, took a screenshot of the text, used a website to convert to SVG and used it as a mask, quite quick. I'll probably make those substances available after I'm done with the scene!
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
    Haha sorry, I was joking (since I know you can't use fonts in Designer). ;)

    I started to do some filters in my spare time to bring some fonts too. Such as numbers. I will see if I can clean a bit that... I did some SVG too, but with inkscape in my case.
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