Substance Painter. Textures + Material ID. Texture borders. Too ugly.

boombyte

Hello.
This is ID from Maya (png)---
http://prntscr.com/ddcpmz

This how SP it "convert" to a mesh---
http://prntscr.com/ddcqjt

Base colors exported from SP---
http://prntscr.com/ddcs46

After exporting textures this poblem is in all maps (metal, rough etc.).
Dilation on 5.
2K textures.
What I do wrong?

poopipe

in substance material ID masks are basically 1 bit  masks so all the lovely antialiasing you get from your render is wiped out. the hardness/tolerance settings are what is used to blend. 

I find I get the best results using very distinct colours - eg 100% red, 100% blue etc. that way you can use larger numbers in your hardness/tolerance settings to blend them in

boombyte

poopipe 
Sorry, I don't understand--are you mean that I can't use blended colors like green-blue, red-white-grey etc? (for good results)

huffer

You should work with full colors as much as possible (RGB 255,0,0 or 255,255,0, etc), then you can try tweaking hardness/tolerance, last resort is to add a small Blur on top of the color selection, then a Levels to make the now blurred mask tighter, this will smoothen the jagged edge.

Bal

Blur + Levels on the color selector mask is the best way to go usually I feel.
You can also make a Border Detect filter in Designer and use it in Painter for this kind of stuff.

boombyte

Thanks. 
It gives a more acceptable result----
http://prntscr.com/ddndz3

But still not fine... Why is here a white border? They are blured as white color around mask...
http://prntscr.com/ddng60

ZacD

The white border is just due to the limitations of metalness and transition from metal to non metal. Just work in Substance painter at one resolution step higher than what it will be in game, and these tiny artifacts you only see when you are super zoomed in will blur out. 

poopipe

boombyte said:

poopipe 
Sorry, I don't understand--are you mean that I can't use blended colors like green-blue, red-white-grey etc? (for good results)

I think the other guys have covered how to deal with it..

but..

What I mean is that if you choose (255,0,0) as your mask colour then that is the only colour value that substance recognises - any blending in your ID map is ignored - you end up with a simple 1 bit on/off mask.
you can tell substance to widen it's range to include more colour values but it will still generate a 1 bit mask. 
you can tell substance blur the resulting mask but the results will not necessarily be the same as the blending in your original ID map.

If you're using designer you can use single material blends to get around this as they offer a full greyscale mask (I've not tested this since 4.1 tbh) but afaik that's not possible in painter.

boombyte

ZacD
Can I avoid this borders?

poopipe
One a big problem--I need learn SDesigner.

How it looks in Quixel (4K)---
http://prntscr.com/ddz8xg
Albedo---
http://prntscr.com/ddza8p
Rough---
http://prntscr.com/ddzaep
Other maps give the same pixelization.
Need a blur for all of them? Or maybe another ways?

gnoop

    Those edge artifact is a trait of metalness PBR.  More specifically a result of too contrast black to white pixels and their filtering , Same problem with roughness channel too, just  less visible.
     If your object textures are hi res enough  (characters,weapon)  it's usually ok  and not a problem at all.    If it's  an environment object with not that high texture resolution you have to deceive the shader and find a decent compromise.       Just make metalness channel  less contrast and  compensate the base color darkness in both metal and non metal parts too . Even if it's not physically correct it often looks better then those ugly artifacts.   After all  environment things are rarely  100% metal  and making them a bit gray in metalness channel does nothing wrong.

Dethling

I had the same problem if I create the color ID map with SP.
Seems SP always try to blend the edges between two colors in some ways (never got clean edges, always some blending).
I normally export the baked color ID map to Photoshop and then do a quick paintover (magic wand etc.) to get some clean, crisp edges.
This will then make the selection much cleaner and I didn't get any unwanted artifacts.

boombyte

gnoop
But i see this white edge clearly. It is weapon. And if for 1st person shooter it will be noticable...I think.
How I can decriease Metal contrast? Change intensity or color?

Dethling
No, this ID map from Maya. I have a lot of problem with SP (like a normal map with seams, not a best AO etc...even ID SP bakes not for 100% correct and need 1-3 pixels dilation)

gnoop

boombyte said:

gnoop
But i see this white edge clearly. It is weapon. And if for 1st person shooter it will be noticable...I think.
How I can decriease Metal contrast? Change intensity or color?

I meant to deviate from purely  black or white  binary metalness channel (if you are using "metalness" approach) .     So add to both ends a little bit  of gray.  And at the same time adjust base color  so the metal one would be a bit darker and non-metall  accordingly  brighter to compensate.     it would ease that edge thing a bit  while spoils nothing essential in perception of material qualities.    PBR is not a dogma to follow fanatically.
Or switch to specular workflow  if you engine/shaders allow it . Would be probably even more right thing to do.   Wonder why nobody use really. 
https://www.marmoset.co/wp-content/uploads/metalnessedgeartifacts01.jpg
But in general it's for environments where pixels are around 1cm each .   On weapons it should be enough resolution to just forget about it.

ps. in fact specular workflow  also makes edge  halos around too contrast glossiness values, just not so noticeable 

boombyte

gnoop 
Thanks for info. The 1st aim is UE. But I wish use a more actual, "modern" method like Metal\Rough. Not matter--need to try.
(I make metal color gray and with blur it looks almost 100% good in 4K)

kanga

Dethling said:

I had the same problem if I create the color ID map with SP.
Seems SP always try to blend the edges between two colors in some ways (never got clean edges, always some blending).
I normally export the baked color ID map to Photoshop and then do a quick paintover (magic wand etc.) to get some clean, crisp edges.
This will then make the selection much cleaner and I didn't get any unwanted artifacts.

How do you reimport the corrected color map into substance painter from PS? Can you only do it by including the corrected color ID in the extra map import dialog at the begining of a project?