PBR Texturing Workflows and Industry Standards

ZeroStrike

Hello Polycount. I know that I am kind of late to this party, but I want to know 'in general' which PBR texturing workflow people use Substance or Quixel? And why/what they use it for?

I already have Quixel Suite, but not MegaScans. I have only really completed one project as a test of the technology a few years back. I am still very new to PBR in general. I am planning on possible investing more into PBR skills/software. What are some of the strengths and weaknesses of each program? Do AAA studios normally use Substance now? Kind of like how Zbrush become king after a few years with Mudbox basically dead?

I would like to get more skilled at doing AAA Environments would Megascans or is Substance more versatile?

Is there another forum here which has cover this topic already?

Thanks for your knowledge and experience.   

ZeroStrike

Nothing? I guess, I'll post in FB 10k see if I get an answer there.

Axi5

Just use them and see how you feel.

Most people seem to be leaning towards Substance but the more and more I use it, the more limitations and annoyances I find. Studios will just use what they have, just comfortable with the workflow.

ZeroStrike

Thanks for the replay. I'll cross post any answer I get.

ActionDawg

Axi5 said:

Just use them and see how you feel.

Most people seem to be leaning towards Substance but the more and more I use it, the more limitations and annoyances I find. Studios will just use what they have, just comfortable with the workflow.

What kind of limitations and annoyances have you experienced? I've had basically nothing but good times with all their software.

Axi5

somedoggy said:

Axi5 said:

Just use them and see how you feel.

Most people seem to be leaning towards Substance but the more and more I use it, the more limitations and annoyances I find. Studios will just use what they have, just comfortable with the workflow.

What kind of limitations and annoyances have you experienced? I've had basically nothing but good times with all their software.

I'll be fair, I'm being picky and Substance is all round good software. I just fancy a bit more power, so I'm testing Mari out.

I made this list at work a few weeks ago:
- Can't backface project, can only paint where the camera is facing
- No radial symmetry
- No moving the symmetry plane
- No lattice/warp deformation tools for stencils
- No easy way to project decals onto the mesh. Seriously the whole workflow of creating square textures + alpha's etc. is a bit longwinded.
- No quick way to bake layers down to improve performance, speaking of, performance isn't particularly good on my Quadro 4000M at work.
- No way to apply filters to a group of layers
- No true UDIM painting, not a big deal to me but considering how long it's been requested...
- No way to disabling tiling on stencils or projection masks
- No 3D textures

There are lots of pro's I can think of too, but I had one of those days where lack of everything in that list gave me a few hours of annoyance. They might have even fixed one or two of those things on my list but I'm stuck in SBS 2.6 not their latest 2017 version.

I'll keep using it, it's really great for doing props incredibly quick, but i get frustrated when I try to do a hero asset with it.

Bletzkarn

considering that a lot of the industry is using substance, your smart materials are going to be optimized for painter and will be easier & faster to lose. Even if a program isn't the best, it's value increases the more people use it. 

I've seen plenty of jobs requiring 3DSMAX experience and only 1 for Maya. 0 for every other program.

Zelfit

- No way to apply filters to a group of layers

As a workaround you can use empty layer with Passthrough blending mode. Applying  filter to that layer will affect all underlying layers.

ZeroStrike

Sounds like it would be worth it for my to drop Quixel and pick up Substance. It might be worth looking into more tutorials as well for both programs. One thing that I notice was the number of likes from facebook for the two programs. Not sure if it exactly representative of the industries that use them. Quixel 190,000 vs Substance Painter 40,000.  

throttlekitty

Quixel did a lot of their communication and support via Facebook, maybe they still do. I see updates and news from Allegorithmic, but I don't use FB to get their news. Not that this matters too much. Personally I recommend Substance over Quixel, I find it's a much more powerful and wider tool of the two.

Carlosan

Just wanted to chime in here, try 3D-Coat.
New version 4.8 is a great contender.

Synaesthesia

It's worth mentioning that Quixel is a company, not a tool. Our Facebook page encompasses everything Quixel develops, including the Suite (NDO, DDO, 3DO), and the Megascans service with its accompanying programs Bridge and Studio.

If you're using DDO or NDO, I've written up a pair of comprehensive tutorials that cover both programs which you might find useful:

https://quixel.se/tutorial/vehicular-hard-surface-detailing-using-quixel-ddo/

https://quixel.se/tutorial/vehicular-hard-surface-detailing-using-quixel-ndo/

odd_enough

throttlekitty said:

Personally I recommend Substance over Quixel, I find it's a much more powerful and wider tool of the two.

I disagree on this point. I've used Substance Painter for a few years and have gotten to know its ins and outs quite well. There really isn't a lot of depth to it. It's a very easy tool to get into, but aside from learning about new features as they add them, there really weren't any moments where I went "oh wow, I didn't know it could do THAT!". It is straight forward, and while that is a strength at first, it quickly becomes an annoyance when you realize there isn't much flexibility without diving into Designer.

Unfortunately in this case, going into Designer to augment your texture process in Painter is a herculean time commitment, and is by no means a smooth workflow between the two programs. I've banged my head on my desk in frustration so many times trying to get things to work the way I want them to. This shouldn't happen. Not between two programs that are in the same software family (Also looking at you, Autodesk!). 

Quixel Suite, by contrast, is an insanely powerful and flexible set of programs due in part to the VAST array of tools and options that Photoshop brings to the table. The fact that you can literally copy and paste layers and masks between NDO and DDO is nuts. And the ability to make a selection and translate/warp details around easily is an incredible advantage. Also, 8K painting :P 

Axi5

@odd_enough I completely agree with everything you said. I fired up my copy of suite last night though and I'm still unimpressed with performance. I'm having a lot less stability problems with it than I once had though, so that's good! I hope in future I won't have to wait for 10-20 seconds each time I apply a material.

Trying out 3D coat later, I keep forgetting it exists.

odd_enough

Yeah there is a performance hit, but I did a small test between wait times for Painter and DDO. Using Painter in 4K res was just as bad due to the shorter wait times but much higher frequency of waits. Turning a layer on, painting a stroke (actually, applying first point of a paint stroke was a wait and then lift up from stroke was also a wait), changing ANYTHING was a 5-20 second wait.

Comparative to DDO where authoring in 8K res where there were less waits overall. Painting was buttery smooth, changing layer parameters had no waits provided I didn't have 3DO open :P, while material and mask applications had wait times upwards of 5-10 minutes. But part of this seemed to be Photoshop's fault as well. It felt the need to try and initiate a save operation in the middle of processing materials/masks. Maybe this is an action DDO requests as part of the process? I feel like this could cut wait times down drastically. Apparently it didn't like trying to save 12gb PSB files for some reason though. Can't imagine why, hah.

Feels like it balances out though. Maybe Painter feels faster because of the smaller blips of waiting? Not sure.

sprunghunt

A lot of studios use the substance suite because it allows for better teamwork and better automation. It's much easier to fix the metal on 300 assets when they're using a shared smart material on all of them. 

poopipe

Yeah, substance works with properly organised pipelines and quixel basically doesn't.

On an individual asset there's no reason to pick one over the other beyond personal preference but when you're looking at hundreds or thousands of assets you'd (imo) be insane to pick quixel over substance. 

cgvinny

Hey, without going into the debate (as I may be biaised :-)), here is the link to Substance Academy (our learning platform):
https://academy.allegorithmic.com/

cgvinny

This one in particular is a really good start:
https://academy.allegorithmic.com/courses/06b7361bcd1b5895ecbcf7b31055a603/youtube-Qk_YRkDsJrQ