I just finished up December's Substance of the Month: Normal Flakes. This generator can help with all your metallic flake, snow, sand, rock, and ornament needs! The showcase renders were done in Marmoset Toolbag 2. You can download the .SBSAR from the link below as well!
Cool stuff guys. Here is my first test in substance on a Metal shader. It's quite basic but I want to build a library with all "Basic materials". I still need to work the roughness, it's not super-customizable right now. (Render: Marmoset)
Thanks Luthyn! It was alot of fun to make as well. And its very flexible too, you can adjust the slab number, shape, wear and tear, age, algae amount, colour etc.
There is an issue with the IRay license system: Renaming the .\bin64\iray folder will fix the crash. Another workaround:
right-click-->use the "run compatibility test" and then "test program" We are working with NVidia to solve the issue asap!
Here's a quick grab of my first substance. This is just the color so far, next I want to start adding some dirt and damage.
Hi Tinn, Nice first draft. You can adjust some little things though :
-Your lines between your planks looks dark and a little bit too weavy. -Your wooden pattern cannot be continuous between two planks which are in contact, you need to offset it. -It's good to have luminosity variation but for an Albedo maybe your range of value is a little bit too big and from afar your gradient around every plank give the feeling of a rounded wooden trunk wall.
Change the identifier to d for example. Only downside is you might have to link manually for viewport (not too sure). Unfortunately the user data isnt available. For baking you might have to create a custom macro in prefs - projects and edit the default resource name
Designer is so convenient on so many levels for naming /saving/ tweaking and so on and on but at the same time so inconvenient for normal image editing /composing from fragments rendered in Zbrush/3d max or just photographs / photogrammetry outputs. Lacks so many of pretty basic tools/options.
I personally find it insane to spend hours for procedural materials while they would never be a rival to anything a camera could catch. Once you see it next to each other, procedural stuff would never win actually. Quixel materials is a good proof for that.
Would it be cool if Allegorithmic just do a kind of "deep pixel" composer for non-square images with regular layers , Photoshop styled transform and adjusting tools and a few node based procedural filters and in-between layers links ?
Like all software Designer have a side effect that make your stuff look procedural if you don't spend enough time tweaking you colors or breaking your noises. Even ZBrush stuff feel like a ZBrush stuff if you don't spend enough time breaking that muddy round shapes feeling. But the fact that no one is able to be as powerful as a camera for now doesn't mean that we need to give up and just use photogrametry and all that automatic stuff.
However I really prefer losing my time on Designer , ends up with something not that perfect but keep thinking "that's my work, I have learn a lot" instead of taking a photo and cleaning it with any software. I don't really see where is my contribution then.
However everyone is free to chose, here is my last procedural not possible to win against quixel kind of floor stuff :
Designer is so convenient on so many levels for naming /saving/ tweaking and so on and on but at the same time so inconvenient for normal image editing /composing from fragments rendered in Zbrush/3d max or just photographs / photogrammetry outputs. Lacks so many of pretty basic tools/options.
I personally find it insane to spend hours for procedural materials while they would never be a rival to anything a camera could catch. Once you see it next to each other, procedural stuff would never win actually. Quixel materials is a good proof for that.
Would it be cool if Allegorithmic just do a kind of "deep pixel" composer for non-square images with regular layers , Photoshop styled transform and adjusting tools and a few node based procedural filters and in-between layers links ?
You can use Painter in tandem with Designer to do pretty much everything you're bringing up. Textures should be powers of two and if you don't want that then just use a portion of that space and crop it in Photoshop. I can not understand how you're considering pow^2 textures a con in a texturing application. If you need Photoshop tools, use Photoshop. Nothing is stopping you from using more tools to get the job done. I haven't seen much of a need for it though when using a full Designer/Painter pipeline.
Also it's both kind of naive and arrogant to say that procedural design can't do a good job replicating reality. Reality IS procedural. It's up to a good artist to find out how to break that down into a process. Quixel is a tool like anything else, just because it offers a library of presets that approximately capture the original subject's material feel doesn't mean you're making better art. But what about non realistic art? Quixel's image based presets that you praise so much won't help you there.
Finally consider for a moment that Quixel or Substance, or any software for making cg art, can't match reality until volume rendering is a solved problem. For example even a simple material like plastic is currently not going to match reference 100% due to lacking more complex transmission and multiple scattering. Shading models aren't there, even for films. There is so much ad-hoc shading models out there and energy conservation is just barely beginning to come together in the research field. We are making approximations of reality no matter what. It's important to keep this context because your "proof" of superiority doesn't hold up when Quixel can't answer these complex, interrelated problems any better. Basically, a tool should not define your art. It's just a means to an end.
In my experience the procedural stuff looks more or less ok after tremendous amount of time spent on tweaking and in fact it's not so easy to make new variations since they often need same amount of tweaking again or you just get something pretty same . It's not that you could get an easy source of nice textures popping out like a crazy . More I work with Designer more I think I do a kind of freaky sport , burger eating competition rather than rational work .
I agree those kinds of stone tiles is what it does pretty cool and I use it mostly for such subjects too. Still ones you need to put some organic stuff over tiles; moss, grass, leaves , twigs, roots, ivy coverage, it would be looking so much better rendered from Zbrush or just any 3d soft . "Sampler" in Designer is so so to be honest . New Filter forge "bomber" is so much more convenient for similar tasks. And I need to see realistically looking cracks yet , not just cells variations.
As of power of 2 I need it of course but working with 1x4 , even 1x2 , not pure square textures is really a pain in Substance Designer. Last time I tried it in Painter it didn't work with non-square at all . So Painter is collecting dust on my side mostly since we don't use square shaped textures at all for environment subjects.
I don't say procedural approach is bad in general. I would just prefer to compose the textures from pre-rendered/ captured stuff mixed with procedural one and Designer is so inconvenient for such workflow because " everything procedural" is a religion there.
Photoshop really is not an option too. Before PBR , when I could spend just 5 sec to tweak material highlight intensity and size by hand and speclevel was just a simple cavity mask mostly it was ok. Now with that damn PBR I can't work without real time preview to tweak all those indistinguishable and interrelated grayscale values .
I Just want Allegorithmic do one more Painter variant for tileable textures , with floating scalable smart objects , "deep" pixel combining ,instances , nozzles from Corel Painter, etc.
ps. When I say procedurals look less realistic I don't mean materials optical features . I mean rather character of cracks for example , some specific structure of a surface , organic coverage and dirt distribution, even stones shape. Something is always off . Plastic and scratched metal are perfectly ok in substance designer, any artificial material actually .
Painter will keep evolving and most of what you are asking for (especially for tileable and non-square textures) is coming. In the meantime, Designer with a mix of sculpts and procedurals should take care of all your needs if used right. There will be some talks at GDC in March that should shed a light on that type of workflow with Substance, keep you eyes peeled!
Still Designer imo lacks some very basic , simple things that hampers the workflow I described. For example scaling in Photoshop (or Fusion or Photoline) could be done very precisely from a center of transform / pivot placed in specific position . A mask blur works within set distance defined in pixels and stays the same while you scale things.
To be honest even layers / smart objects approach has its own advantages. I basically would like to have something in between Photoshop and Designer.
I spent a lot of time last year trying to recreate "layers" in Designer . A kind of floating objects having all the channels and blending nodes incorporated + vector mask + edge feathering + "deep pixel" composing idea Fusion and Nuke have. It never turned into something usable on my end.
Hey, I'm modelling a pennyboard and am having trouble with a small detail... I have a separate scene where I am generating diamond shapes on top of the board. I have this then being applied to a masked out area on the mesh texture. On the actual penny board this diamond texture Skews in size from end to end of the board.
I've tried using the Skew node but this can only be used in one direction and can't scale outward. To counter this I tried halving the board and using mirrored UV's with a slight skew, but the effect wasn't as desired. Ideally i'd like to use something akin to Skewing in Photoshop but it doesn't look possible
Created a leaf generator today... This thing took me way more time than I'd have liked but it's fully adjustable. I started off following a tutorial to see how he got the basic shapes, and then branched off created different damage states and color options(with more color variations to come for dead leaf options)
I've been tinkering with FX maps recently and I notice that each extra quadrant node you add to a chain dims the previous quadrant. I have messed around with the blending modes but that doesn't affect the gradual dimming effect. I can counteract this by defining a luminosity multiplier and using that in the further chains, but it seems like a ghetto way to alleviate this issue. I also see this same effect on youtube tutorials, so I can rule out some weird driver issue. Am I missing something?
Hey guys, here's my input. I've recorded a tutorial on noise masking of UV seams. Hopefully you can find it useful. I've put link to the actual preset .sbs in the video's description. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEo510MOFEU
Anyone know why my Curvature_Smooth node is giving me that really harsh gradient? The normal map doesn't contain any information like that. Everything is set to OpenGL, and it works the way it should on the regular Curvature node. Following a tutorial, I'm a noob
Solved, found the solution from a Twitter post of all things. Previous node to curvature smooth must be tiling, absolute. I don't understand why, but it does.
I have a general question regarding FX maps. I created my own brick layout with quadrants and I'm sampling 18 brick shapes for it and I get some repeated bricks a lot, sometimes right next to each other. How can I tell the FX map to randomly rotate in only 180 degree steps rather than a random float range? I've been scratching my head over this and I just can't figure out the math.
I have a general question regarding FX maps. I created my own brick layout with quadrants and I'm sampling 18 brick shapes for it and I get some repeated bricks a lot, sometimes right next to each other. How can I tell the FX map to randomly rotate in only 180 degree steps rather than a random float range? I've been scratching my head over this and I just can't figure out the math.
Try inside pattern rotation to do a random from 2, then floor, then multiply that by the angle? Don't have SD right now but should work?
Replies
I want the roughness automatically added to the alpha of the metallic so I don't have to come in and edit in photoshop
'Visible If' condition to turn a input on and off depending of a switch is set to true or false
I was able to get it to work before when I was working with an integer instead of boolean with
now I exposed the switch and gave it the identifier name of switch_paintmask
in the input visible if box I now put
but I get a exclamation mark next to it and it doesn't work, I'm improvising because I don't know how to code ^^
can anyone help me?
edit:
oke I did it like this.. feels like a bit of a workaround, but it works
I wish I could properly code ^^
edit:
hmm.. I was to quick, doesn't look like that works -_-
last edit:
oke so adding an extra 'if else' with a 0 condition for the integer and setting it to false then seems to work
The showcase renders were done in Marmoset Toolbag 2. You can download the .SBSAR from the link below as well!
http://goo.gl/Tmx4yI
Here is my first test in substance on a Metal shader. It's quite basic but I want to build a library with all "Basic materials".
I still need to work the roughness, it's not super-customizable right now.
(Render: Marmoset)
Another workaround: right-click-->use the "run compatibility test" and then "test program"
We are working with NVidia to solve the issue asap!
Nice first draft. You can adjust some little things though :
-Your lines between your planks looks dark and a little bit too weavy.
-Your wooden pattern cannot be continuous between two planks which are in contact, you need to offset it.
-It's good to have luminosity variation but for an Albedo maybe your range of value is a little bit too big and from afar your gradient around every plank give the feeling of a rounded wooden trunk wall.
Keep it up
I notice this forum gets a lot of activity. I was wondering if I could get some feedback/critique on my substance texture?
It would be much appreciated.
http://polycount.com/discussion/163693/looking-for-critique-rock-texture-substance-designer#latest
It includes the corbel models, generator, and a sample wood grain. I'm currently finishing up a getting started/future plans video to accompany the release. Check it out below:
http://polycount.com/discussion/151154/da-dawg-bowl-new-free-3d-wood-generator-substance/p1
Thank you for looking!
Edit:
Video's up!
ill check out the video later as well, always interested to see how other people 'solve their problems'
I personally find it insane to spend hours for procedural materials while they would never be a rival to anything a camera could catch. Once you see it next to each other, procedural stuff would never win actually. Quixel materials is a good proof for that.
Would it be cool if Allegorithmic just do a kind of "deep pixel" composer for non-square images with regular layers , Photoshop styled transform and adjusting tools and a few node based procedural filters and in-between layers links ?
However I really prefer losing my time on Designer , ends up with something not that perfect but keep thinking "that's my work, I have learn a lot" instead of taking a photo and cleaning it with any software. I don't really see where is my contribution then.
However everyone is free to chose, here is my last procedural not possible to win against quixel kind of floor stuff :
Also it's both kind of naive and arrogant to say that procedural design can't do a good job replicating reality. Reality IS procedural. It's up to a good artist to find out how to break that down into a process. Quixel is a tool like anything else, just because it offers a library of presets that approximately capture the original subject's material feel doesn't mean you're making better art. But what about non realistic art? Quixel's image based presets that you praise so much won't help you there.
Finally consider for a moment that Quixel or Substance, or any software for making cg art, can't match reality until volume rendering is a solved problem. For example even a simple material like plastic is currently not going to match reference 100% due to lacking more complex transmission and multiple scattering. Shading models aren't there, even for films. There is so much ad-hoc shading models out there and energy conservation is just barely beginning to come together in the research field. We are making approximations of reality no matter what. It's important to keep this context because your "proof" of superiority doesn't hold up when Quixel can't answer these complex, interrelated problems any better. Basically, a tool should not define your art. It's just a means to an end.
I agree those kinds of stone tiles is what it does pretty cool and I use it mostly for such subjects too. Still ones you need to put some organic stuff over tiles; moss, grass, leaves , twigs, roots, ivy coverage, it would be looking so much better rendered from Zbrush or just any 3d soft . "Sampler" in Designer is so so to be honest . New Filter forge "bomber" is so much more convenient for similar tasks. And I need to see realistically looking cracks yet , not just cells variations.
As of power of 2 I need it of course but working with 1x4 , even 1x2 , not pure square textures is really a pain in Substance Designer. Last time I tried it in Painter it didn't work with non-square at all . So Painter is collecting dust on my side mostly since we don't use square shaped textures at all for environment subjects.
I don't say procedural approach is bad in general. I would just prefer to compose the textures from pre-rendered/ captured stuff mixed with procedural one and Designer is so inconvenient for such workflow because " everything procedural" is a religion there.
Photoshop really is not an option too. Before PBR , when I could spend just 5 sec to tweak material highlight intensity and size by hand and speclevel was just a simple cavity mask mostly it was ok. Now with that damn PBR I can't work without real time preview to tweak all those indistinguishable and interrelated grayscale values .
I Just want Allegorithmic do one more Painter variant for tileable textures , with floating scalable smart objects , "deep" pixel combining ,instances , nozzles from Corel Painter, etc.
ps. When I say procedurals look less realistic I don't mean materials optical features . I mean rather character of cracks for example , some specific structure of a surface , organic coverage and dirt distribution, even stones shape. Something is always off .
Plastic and scratched metal are perfectly ok in substance designer, any artificial material actually .
In the meantime, Designer with a mix of sculpts and procedurals should take care of all your needs if used right.
There will be some talks at GDC in March that should shed a light on that type of workflow with Substance, keep you eyes peeled!
Still Designer imo lacks some very basic , simple things that hampers the workflow I described. For example scaling in Photoshop (or Fusion or Photoline) could be done very precisely from a center of transform / pivot placed in specific position . A mask blur works within set distance defined in pixels and stays the same while you scale things.
To be honest even layers / smart objects approach has its own advantages. I basically would like to have something in between Photoshop and Designer.
I spent a lot of time last year trying to recreate "layers" in Designer . A kind of floating objects having all the channels and blending nodes incorporated + vector mask + edge feathering + "deep pixel" composing idea Fusion and Nuke have. It never turned into something usable on my end.
Crossposting this. Testing tessellation on WIP rock wall.
I'm modelling a pennyboard and am having trouble with a small detail...
I have a separate scene where I am generating diamond shapes on top of the board. I have this then being applied to a masked out area on the mesh texture.
On the actual penny board this diamond texture Skews in size from end to end of the board.
I've tried using the Skew node but this can only be used in one direction and can't scale outward.
To counter this I tried halving the board and using mirrored UV's with a slight skew, but the effect wasn't as desired.
Ideally i'd like to use something akin to Skewing in Photoshop but it doesn't look possible
Any help would be cool, cheers.
Thanks!
Working on a rotten wood floor material for Substance Share.
Crosspost from here.
Cheers!
Some progress:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Wg9GJ
Crosspost from here.
Following a tutorial, I'm a noob
Previous node to curvature smooth must be tiling, absolute. I don't understand why, but it does.
I have a general question regarding FX maps.
I created my own brick layout with quadrants and I'm sampling 18 brick shapes for it and I get some repeated bricks a lot, sometimes right next to each other. How can I tell the FX map to randomly rotate in only 180 degree steps rather than a random float range? I've been scratching my head over this and I just can't figure out the math.