I read a couple pages ago that a commonly used workflow is starting from a height map and create the other maps from there. The graphs makes sense, but I'm not very familiar with getting a height map. What's the recommended/common way of getting a height map? Sculpt and bake? Photo to height?(I believe Knald does this? I can't remember). Would like to know more about how to approach that.
I read a couple pages ago that a commonly used workflow is starting from a height map and create the other maps from there. The graphs makes sense, but I'm not very familiar with getting a height map. What's the recommended/common way of getting a height map? Sculpt and bake? Photo to height?(I believe Knald does this? I can't remember). Would like to know more about how to approach that.
You can indeed sculpt something, even if non tileable, you can make it tileable in SD later. Or you can start from images/photos. For that, Bitmap2Material does the exact same thing as Knald but can be used directly in SD.
Like they said, FX maps are where the true power is, but you can also use some basic noises found inside of substance to get basically anything that you want. Either way, I hope you have fun with it .
I'm having an issue when I attempt to publish an .sbsar file from Substance Designer, it's throwing me a very big list of errors, and I'm not sure what to do as I've only just started using SD yesterday.
Here's a pastebin link for the error that it's throwing me.
If I could get some help with this, it would be very much appreciated! If you need more info, I can provide it, though I'm not sure what else might be needed.
We have some memory management issue when publishing packages that contains large bitmaps and this may be the cause of your problem.
Try to set the bitmaps resources compression to "jpeg" instead of "raw".
Here's a comparison between what I'm seeing in SD, vs Toolbag 2
The normal map and roughness translated properly over, but the albedo didn't transfer over, and the Metalness map that I had set in SD didn't register in TB2 at all, the material just stayed on Specularity instead of switching to Metalness, and it didn't hook itself up either. Any ideas?
Eh, I find it's usually faster and easier to save out bitmaps (make sure it automatically exports maps on changes) and import them manually. With an SBSAR, you have to re-export after every change, and then re-import in TB2. With bitmaps, it automatically exports and imports.
Eh, I find it's usually faster and easier to save out bitmaps (make sure it automatically exports maps on changes) and import them manually. With an SBSAR, you have to re-export after every change, and then re-import in TB2. With bitmaps, it automatically exports and imports.
is substance integrated with TB2? if it is then SBSAR will let you make those changes directly in TB2??
Yes it's integrated, but it's slower to use SBSAR than bitmaps. You can only do small tweaks via the SBSAR, and you have to manually set up those parameters. I just find it faster to change something in SD, then click over to TB2 on my second monitor and it's instantly updated, which you can only do with the automatic bitmap export at the moment.
Hey everyone, I posted over in the allegorithmic forums but thought you guys might be interested too. After watching the tutorial videos on FX Maps in Designer, I was dying to dive into creating some. Here is my first one, it took me about an hour, it's not bad for replicating the kinds of metal with safety metal bumps. It's just the FX map, but I thought maybe someone could use it. The link to some pictures and the download
You can indeed sculpt something, even if non tileable, you can make it tileable in SD later. Or you can start from images/photos. For that, Bitmap2Material does the exact same thing as Knald but can be used directly in SD.
Where is that function of B2M located within Substance Designer?
Another question: Is it possible in substance designer to proper texture a sphere? Because as everybody who tried to texture a sphere know, the poles get screwed up and in Photoshop you can do the pole distortion to fix that.
Any idea if something similar would be possible in Substance Designer?
Is there ever going to be a way to bake Zbrush's polypaint? I realise it's a bit of a hack in Xnormal (Or so I've been told), but hack or not: it works, and I rely on it for certain workflows.
Or is there currently a way to do so?
Is there ever going to be a way to bake Zbrush's polypaint? I realise it's a bit of a hack in Xnormal (Or so I've been told), but hack or not: it works, and I rely on it for certain workflows.
Or is there currently a way to do so?
I'm curious. Hack how?
Zbrush's polypaint is nothing more than vertex colors. So you should be able to bake that down just fine in Designer by using that option.
Unless I misunderstood you MightyPea, you can already bake the vertex colors of a mesh with the baker "Colors from Mesh". It works with vertex colors in obj files exported from zBrush or with FBX files.
The vertex color support in the OBJ format is not a convention or under any specification, Pixologic just added the feature by modifying the obj files exported from their application. A lot of software then followed them to be able to read the modified format. So it's a hack because by default the format doesn't support vertex colors.
The vertex color support in the OBJ format is not a convention or under any specification, Pixologic just added the feature by modifying the obj files exported from their application. A lot of software then followed them to be able to read the modified format. So it's a hack because by default the format doesn't support vertex colors.
Thanks for the explanation, I haven't heard that before.
How would guy approach creating this type of stone wall ?
I've been sitting on it for few hours already, and can't figure out anything.
I'm not taking about depth even, but just about very irregular shape of bricks.
So i recently downloaded the hotfix for Unreal 4.4.0, and since then the substance plugin has stopped working? I even tried re-exracting the plugin but it still refuses to compile. Any ideas?
How would guy approach creating this type of stone wall ?
I've been sitting on it for few hours already, and can't figure out anything.
I'm not taking about depth even, but just about very irregular shape of bricks.
This is the perfect example of what is almost impossible to reproduce procedurally: organized man sculpted organic shapes with different materials (sometime a mix of dfferent materials within the same pieace of rock)
Honestly, you may spend more time trying to make this procedurally than sculpting / photoscan it.
So i recently downloaded the hotfix for Unreal 4.4.0, and since then the substance plugin has stopped working? I even tried re-exracting the plugin but it still refuses to compile. Any ideas?
So are you using the 4.4.1 version of the engine ? Do you have a specific compilation error ?
How would guy approach creating this type of stone wall ?
I've been sitting on it for few hours already, and can't figure out anything.
I'm not taking about depth even, but just about very irregular shape of bricks.
Creating the diffuse/roughness/specular from a good sculpt should be much easier though, as the heightmap and ids of your high poly elements will carry all the information you may need.
Got a question for you - I've been making lots of spritesheets from spare images, from sizes between 2x2 to 5x5 tiles. What's the best way of handling that? I have quite a bunch of Transform 2d and blend nodes, but maybe that'd be smarter with FX Maps? What do you think?
Got a question for you - I've been making lots of spritesheets from spare images, from sizes between 2x2 to 5x5 tiles. What's the best way of handling that? I have quite a bunch of Transform 2d and blend nodes, but maybe that'd be smarter with FX Maps? What do you think?
Best way is just to build a big ubernode that can handle a lot of cases, and use that from now on.
FX-maps aren't that useful if every/frame sprite is from a pre-made bitmap. If you're generating the sprite inside the FX map, or modify a single image sequentially, then maybe it makes more sense.
FX-maps aren't that useful if every/frame sprite is from a pre-made bitmap. If you're generating the sprite inside the FX map, or modify a single image sequentially, then maybe it makes more sense.
I think they can make his life simpler in this case since the quadtree structure inherent to FxMaps will take care of the sprite layout for him.
Setting up 16 2D transforms and blends to make a grid layout isn't fun. With an FxMap ,to make a 4x4 grid he can simply use 16 inputs and a 3 level high quadrant tree (4 inputs 2 levels high for 2x2). Anything higher than 4x4 will require that you plug your FxMap in another FxMap because FxMaps can't have more than 16 inputs.
Bruno, i rendered your tiles materials and they are unbelieveable, any chance in the future you can do something with showing up scratches and wear on metal, please.:)
Is there a correct or preferred way to make textures that aren't square? I.e: a 256x512 or 2048x1024.
Just keep in mind that most nodes you place will get stretched then. Almost all Noises in the library assume square proportions. If you place it in a non-square graph, you'll have to force their resolution back to square (like from 2by1 to 1by1), and then bring it back to no square by either tiling or cropping it with a Transform 2D.
I saw in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WMiRGqk8Po that the guy is using a custom color keyer node where he is able to pick a specific color (from an mat id bitmap).
I searched in SD a similar thing but I only found a color to mask node, sadly with the option to "pick".
I'm a newbie at SD, so is this color keyer node available somewhere? or similar? or is there any particular workflow I can reproduce to do the same thing?
Thank you.
This color key you might be talking about is a custom one that was made. Though algorithmic has very similar ones within the material blend/mix nodes. I belive he is also using a shader that helps him isolate ID colors which is also custom. These are custom and will likely never come out unless remade by the community. Which it is not all that hard to do.
This color key you might be talking about is a custom one that was made. Though algorithmic has very similar ones within the material blend/mix nodes. I belive he is also using a shader that helps him isolate ID colors which is also custom. These are custom and will likely never come out unless remade by the community. Which it is not all that hard to do.
This chair i used your Bunker sbs of the Locker and replaced all the maps with the chair ones, only problem is i lost the shinny metal chrome from the roughness. i tried adjusting contrast and luminosity but didnt help.
How did you know which node goes where.
Love the way you blend it all, very smart.
Hi i got a question been searching but haven't found an answer.
My mesh that i am working on got 2 mat ID, and i am looking to apply bot substance to one single mesh in the designer 3d view. I haven't found the option to do this in 4.4.
its probably a simple click somewhere but i havent found it thanks if anyone knows how to do this.
Either apply two materials to your object in Maya, or using your ID map, mask out each substance to only show up where you want it to. Does that make sense?
I probably do something wrong, but i was wondering if anybody else have such unsharp pixelated effects in SD & SP. Some effect do not even show up on the model.
It looks like one pixel is more then 1 centimeter in real life.
So at first i did download the hot-rod and exported the Cymourai models for size comparison. They are both pretty different where the hot-rod is much bigger then the Cymourai.
Sizing my model down to the hot-rod size did matter for the quality in SD (so i think) but in SP it looked like sizes did not matter.
I also did use the transform2D node in both apps but i can't belief that i need such a node with every effect i use.
Edit: I did Try out the effects with the Cymourai in SP but the results are the same.
So what is it i'm doing wrong, how do i get better/ sharper/ finer texture quality:
Is there any way to combine the parameters you've exposed from for example, effects masking to be combined into one overall parameter?
Like if I wanted to activate all my parameters of aging into 1 slider from clean to dirty.
You could use a function to do that. For example you have a "cracks opacity", and the "Aging" parameter. For the opacity on the blend nodes where you blend in your cracks, create a function. Inside the function, input the Cracks value, and overall Aging value into a Minimum node. That node will spit out whichever value is smaller. So if your cracks are 1 (fully visible), and Aging is 0 (clean), then it would output 0 for your cracks opacity.
INversely,if your aging is 1 (dirty) and your cracks are 0, it would still output 0. Which may or may not be what you want.
this is off the top of my head, not sure if that exact setup will work but youd definitely use a function to do that.
I probably do something wrong, but i was wondering if anybody else have such unsharp pixelated effects in SD & SP. Some effect do not even show up on the model.
It looks like one pixel is more then 1 centimeter in real life.
I'm not sure what you mean. On the Android screenshot, the effect looks fine to me, if you want more detail, you would have to increase the resolution of the project (4k coming up in a few weeks) or modify the UVs.
On the bottom screenshot, looks like some parts of the effects are more blurry than the rest, this may be due to a noise that is not scaled properly. What mask generator are you using?
It'd be great if we could set the format of exported images in preferences or somewhere. It's a little annoying to have to toggle it off bmp to something I actually use like tga. Also, it'd be great if it would remember the last folder where files were exported. Usually I export to a project folder that is located nowhere near the substance designer default folder.
Any hope on this front?
I'd additionally like substance to remember the custom strings I've input for the file names. It's really annoying to have to redo all these settings per export.
I'd additionally like substance to remember the custom strings I've input for the file names. It's really annoying to have to redo all these settings per export.
For the filename we have something in development about that. Regarding the file extension, the dropdown that allow you to choose it should remember your last choice.
For the filename we have something in development about that. Regarding the file extension, the dropdown that allow you to choose it should remember your last choice.
Yup, but would be great to have those settings saved on the package! Is that possible?
Yup, but would be great to have those settings saved on the package! Is that possible?
Saving this type of data in the package is problematic on certain levels. However we could store it in the preferences along some other changes we are making. I will add that on our to-do list.
Replies
How do I properly load a autosave .sbs? I want it to use the proper links etc, as the autosave version seem to add its own paths.
If you want it to be procedural..which is the real power of substance designer is to use FX Maps, if not of course you can sculpt or manipulate images to get the height map.(good start for learning FX Maps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61TmAi7hoc0&list=PLB0wXHrWAmCwLRTzdb-RxadGk_xBBQKar&index=9)
Never knew about that FX maps thing, will dig into them(and the functions stuff), thanks.
Here's a pastebin link for the error that it's throwing me.
If I could get some help with this, it would be very much appreciated! If you need more info, I can provide it, though I'm not sure what else might be needed.
Try to set the bitmaps resources compression to "jpeg" instead of "raw".
This should allow you to publish the substance.
However, now I've got a new one
Here's a comparison between what I'm seeing in SD, vs Toolbag 2
The normal map and roughness translated properly over, but the albedo didn't transfer over, and the Metalness map that I had set in SD didn't register in TB2 at all, the material just stayed on Specularity instead of switching to Metalness, and it didn't hook itself up either. Any ideas?
is substance integrated with TB2? if it is then SBSAR will let you make those changes directly in TB2??
It is, but as you can see it's not flawless as it's not hooking up the maps. For now I'll just export the bitmaps I guess.
http://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,2206.0.html
Where is that function of B2M located within Substance Designer?
Another question: Is it possible in substance designer to proper texture a sphere? Because as everybody who tried to texture a sphere know, the poles get screwed up and in Photoshop you can do the pole distortion to fix that.
Any idea if something similar would be possible in Substance Designer?
Or is there currently a way to do so?
I'm curious. Hack how?
Zbrush's polypaint is nothing more than vertex colors. So you should be able to bake that down just fine in Designer by using that option.
The vertex color support in the OBJ format is not a convention or under any specification, Pixologic just added the feature by modifying the obj files exported from their application. A lot of software then followed them to be able to read the modified format. So it's a hack because by default the format doesn't support vertex colors.
Thanks for the explanation, I haven't heard that before.
How would guy approach creating this type of stone wall ?
I've been sitting on it for few hours already, and can't figure out anything.
I'm not taking about depth even, but just about very irregular shape of bricks.
This is the perfect example of what is almost impossible to reproduce procedurally: organized man sculpted organic shapes with different materials (sometime a mix of dfferent materials within the same pieace of rock)
Honestly, you may spend more time trying to make this procedurally than sculpting / photoscan it.
Remember that scene I was working on? It's done, made all the textures in substance:
I put the floor, wall and locker substances in a small pack if anyone wants to look through it. Here's the download link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10717062/Bunker_SampeSubstances.7z
If you have any specific questions, you can ask me in the thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=2121704
Awesome job Bruno!
Got a question for you - I've been making lots of spritesheets from spare images, from sizes between 2x2 to 5x5 tiles. What's the best way of handling that? I have quite a bunch of Transform 2d and blend nodes, but maybe that'd be smarter with FX Maps? What do you think?
Best way is just to build a big ubernode that can handle a lot of cases, and use that from now on.
FX-maps aren't that useful if every/frame sprite is from a pre-made bitmap. If you're generating the sprite inside the FX map, or modify a single image sequentially, then maybe it makes more sense.
Setting up 16 2D transforms and blends to make a grid layout isn't fun. With an FxMap ,to make a 4x4 grid he can simply use 16 inputs and a 3 level high quadrant tree (4 inputs 2 levels high for 2x2). Anything higher than 4x4 will require that you plug your FxMap in another FxMap because FxMaps can't have more than 16 inputs.
Just keep in mind that most nodes you place will get stretched then. Almost all Noises in the library assume square proportions. If you place it in a non-square graph, you'll have to force their resolution back to square (like from 2by1 to 1by1), and then bring it back to no square by either tiling or cropping it with a Transform 2D.
I searched in SD a similar thing but I only found a color to mask node, sadly with the option to "pick".
I'm a newbie at SD, so is this color keyer node available somewhere? or similar? or is there any particular workflow I can reproduce to do the same thing?
Thank you.
thank you
This chair i used your Bunker sbs of the Locker and replaced all the maps with the chair ones, only problem is i lost the shinny metal chrome from the roughness. i tried adjusting contrast and luminosity but didnt help.
How did you know which node goes where.
Love the way you blend it all, very smart.
My mesh that i am working on got 2 mat ID, and i am looking to apply bot substance to one single mesh in the designer 3d view. I haven't found the option to do this in 4.4.
its probably a simple click somewhere but i havent found it thanks if anyone knows how to do this.
it is fixed now
Like if I wanted to activate all my parameters of aging into 1 slider from clean to dirty.
I probably do something wrong, but i was wondering if anybody else have such unsharp pixelated effects in SD & SP. Some effect do not even show up on the model.
It looks like one pixel is more then 1 centimeter in real life.
So at first i did download the hot-rod and exported the Cymourai models for size comparison. They are both pretty different where the hot-rod is much bigger then the Cymourai.
Sizing my model down to the hot-rod size did matter for the quality in SD (so i think) but in SP it looked like sizes did not matter.
I also did use the transform2D node in both apps but i can't belief that i need such a node with every effect i use.
Edit: I did Try out the effects with the Cymourai in SP but the results are the same.
So what is it i'm doing wrong, how do i get better/ sharper/ finer texture quality:
thanks
[IMG]http://www.muezli.com/ForumPics/Sp_ Pixels.PNG[/IMG]
You could use a function to do that. For example you have a "cracks opacity", and the "Aging" parameter. For the opacity on the blend nodes where you blend in your cracks, create a function. Inside the function, input the Cracks value, and overall Aging value into a Minimum node. That node will spit out whichever value is smaller. So if your cracks are 1 (fully visible), and Aging is 0 (clean), then it would output 0 for your cracks opacity.
INversely,if your aging is 1 (dirty) and your cracks are 0, it would still output 0. Which may or may not be what you want.
this is off the top of my head, not sure if that exact setup will work but youd definitely use a function to do that.
I'm not sure what you mean. On the Android screenshot, the effect looks fine to me, if you want more detail, you would have to increase the resolution of the project (4k coming up in a few weeks) or modify the UVs.
On the bottom screenshot, looks like some parts of the effects are more blurry than the rest, this may be due to a noise that is not scaled properly. What mask generator are you using?
It's pretty close to the overlay, the behavior is roughly the same but the overlay in PS will give you a more saturated result.
Any hope on this front?
I'd additionally like substance to remember the custom strings I've input for the file names. It's really annoying to have to redo all these settings per export.
For the filename we have something in development about that. Regarding the file extension, the dropdown that allow you to choose it should remember your last choice.
Yup, but would be great to have those settings saved on the package! Is that possible?