I like it, you can set up a lot of baking stuff inside substance designer. I've skipped all the procedural make art nodes so far and baked my polypaint as an albedo base.
I really like what I see people do with Substance Designer but holy crap does the learning curve seem steep. I've messed with it a bit and actually bought it last week, but it is pretty tough to learn how the different generators work together to make such complex materials
Definitely no gimmick if you ask me, if it's worth to learn depends on you right. Some people head's explode (in a bad way) when faced with the complexity (though Painter really isn't that hard), while I feel it opens up so many more creative options.
I love designer... I am actively trying to work this more and more into my everyday pipeline. Watch Mike's GDC talk - http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150007 to get an idea of why I think Designer is a key part of our current / future dev pipeline.
I wish it could output PSDs, that's currently been a show stopper for clients. I can just export everything out of substance and compile it into a PSD but then negates any speed gained by it. I'll still use it for personal work.
I bought Designer several years ago. Now it's even not installed on my pc although I do use hi-res texture templates i did there all the time. Concrete and rusted/painted metal mostly.
Nodes are too tedious to do and not that streamlined comparing with Fusion for example. To make your own unique noises you would need to go too deep into the math. Too bad they didn't follow their own old MapZone approach where you could make new noises by hand quickly.
For environment textures it makes a bit too repetitive textures, it's something coming of the fact you have little control over base noises . You have actually but too puzzling to bother.
ps. I have a few good substances and use Substance player for variants . Haven't felt a necessity to open Designer for years
Imo it lacks seriously convenient tools/nodes for composing things rather then generating. Would they borrow a few from Blackmagicdesign Fusion I would be paying immediately
I like it, you can set up a lot of baking stuff inside substance designer. I've skipped all the procedural make art nodes so far and baked my polypaint as an albedo base.
I just wanted to comment about that because I can understand if people see Designer just being about "procedural" stuff since it's how we communicate about it.
However nothing blocks people to use regular bitmaps in their work. Designer can be used as a simple tool for compositing bitmaps. Painter also offer a similar layer stack and a lot of tools to easily work on your mesh if you are interested in manual work (like using custom brushes and painting).
The benefice compared to Photoshop is that you have access to a lot of filters and the ability to visualize your 3D Mesh with the right shader on it really quickly. So you don't need to do any back and forth between other programs.
I'm wondering is it worth learning substance designer if you have no tech art skills at all?
Designer can be scary at first look, but the nodal interface can quickly become very powerful. We have a lot of tutorials and as I said above you can work with regular bitmaps if you want. I believe it's easier when beginning with Designer.
I bought Designer several years ago. Now it's even not installed on my pc although I do use hi-res texture templates i did there all the time. Concrete and rusted/painted metal mostly.
Nodes are too tedious to do and not that streamlined comparing with Fusion for example. To make your own unique noises you would need to go too deep into the math. Too bad they didn't follow their own old MapZone approach where you could make new noises by hand quickly.
For environment textures it makes a bit too repetitive textures, it's something coming of the fact you have little control over base noises . You have actually but too puzzling to bother.
In a few years Designer changed a lot, I would recommend giving it a new try.
And designing noises is not that hard with FX map, at least basic noises.
Froyok: sorry for coming off as anti-procedural, maybe I am a little bit, lol. I used substance to bake almost everything out except for a thickness map I did in xnormal, here's my graph:
Froyok: sorry for coming off as anti-procedural, maybe I am a little bit, lol. I used substance to bake almost everything out except for a thickness map I did in xnormal, here's my graph:
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They streamline workflows, to put it simply.
Nodes are too tedious to do and not that streamlined comparing with Fusion for example. To make your own unique noises you would need to go too deep into the math. Too bad they didn't follow their own old MapZone approach where you could make new noises by hand quickly.
For environment textures it makes a bit too repetitive textures, it's something coming of the fact you have little control over base noises . You have actually but too puzzling to bother.
ps. I have a few good substances and use Substance player for variants . Haven't felt a necessity to open Designer for years
Imo it lacks seriously convenient tools/nodes for composing things rather then generating. Would they borrow a few from Blackmagicdesign Fusion I would be paying immediately
And if you allow me, I will answer some questions.
You can even get 4.6, our minor releases are free (but not our major, that's why you need to pay for SD5).
I just wanted to comment about that because I can understand if people see Designer just being about "procedural" stuff since it's how we communicate about it.
However nothing blocks people to use regular bitmaps in their work. Designer can be used as a simple tool for compositing bitmaps. Painter also offer a similar layer stack and a lot of tools to easily work on your mesh if you are interested in manual work (like using custom brushes and painting).
The benefice compared to Photoshop is that you have access to a lot of filters and the ability to visualize your 3D Mesh with the right shader on it really quickly. So you don't need to do any back and forth between other programs.
But of course I'm biased. :poly136:
Designer can be scary at first look, but the nodal interface can quickly become very powerful. We have a lot of tutorials and as I said above you can work with regular bitmaps if you want. I believe it's easier when beginning with Designer.
In a few years Designer changed a lot, I would recommend giving it a new try.
And designing noises is not that hard with FX map, at least basic noises.
Don't be. Wanting to handpaint your work it totally fine. The artist has the choice of the tools, I totally respect that.
THIS!!! Though I wish there was a re-vamp on the painting features to make them more user friendly. Love the tiling feature though