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Substance Designer - Master Thread

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  • Bruno Afonseca
    I'm already in love with this update :) Those new toys will be super useful. I wanted something like the scratches generator forever (using different shapes though), but didn't knew it was possible. Maybe you guys could make one that has a custom shape input? I'll tear this apart to make my own but other people might find it super useful too.

    Also the "light" one is great. Is it possible to have something like that but that fakes a point light instead of a directional one?

    What uses do you had in mind for tile sampler and curvature smooth? I'm looking at it but nothing comes into my mind.
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    I'm using curvature smooth with light to get a nice start on a hand painted look. And ro-ambientocclussion.

    I tried breaking curvature smooth apart but too complex for easy tweaking. Any chance on getting some controls on it like smoothness intensity?

    Loving these new nodes as well.
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
    The "Curvature smooth" produce a curvature map much more soft and with less artifacts that the one from our baker. However, it doesn't take the mesh into account (since it's a filter). So it depends of your needs. After that, a curvature has a use in a lot of our mask generator.

    For how to modify it, well, that's too complex for me. One of my colleague will have to answer for me. :)
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    Thanks for the answer froyok. I was actually thinking about it today and I think I can get some of the effects I want by creating a node with curvature smooth and isolating the concave and convex areas and running them through some processes
  • marks
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    marks greentooth
    Do any of you guys have experience using Designer in a large-scale team environment? If so I'd love to hear your thoughts on structuring that, how it's used, what is best practice etc (would appreciate PM if you don't want to post on here!).
  • boumay
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    boumay polycounter lvl 6
    marks wrote: »
    Do any of you guys have experience using Designer in a large-scale team environment? If so I'd love to hear your thoughts on structuring that, how it's used, what is best practice etc (would appreciate PM if you don't want to post on here!).

    Yes, me too...
  • CoD67
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    CoD67 polycounter lvl 10
    Is there anyway to rotate the background environment without going to 3D view setting ? In substance painter I can just hold shift + left mouse to rotate which is much faster , in Substance Designer it only moves the light :( .
  • boumay
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    boumay polycounter lvl 6
    Sorry but I would like to know also about the BG, how to change it? I searched everywhere...
  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    Which 'BG' do you mean? The HDR in the 3D viewport? Just drag and drop any HDR onto it and it will swap. You can also turn HDR display off and then change the solid color by going into the Scene > Edit menu from the 3D viewport.
  • boumay
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    boumay polycounter lvl 6
    Xoliul wrote: »
    Which 'BG' do you mean? The HDR in the 3D viewport? Just drag and drop any HDR onto it and it will swap. You can also turn HDR display off and then change the solid color by going into the Scene > Edit menu from the 3D viewport.

    Lol, thank you, it can be so simple sometimes.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    marks wrote: »
    Do any of you guys have experience using Designer in a large-scale team environment? If so I'd love to hear your thoughts on structuring that, how it's used, what is best practice etc (would appreciate PM if you don't want to post on here!).
    I sent you a PM.
  • montana2008
    Hi all, im trying to follow rogelio tutorial on creating rocks using generators etc but i'm stuck on the first bit. how to you convert the height map to normal? i try and view the normal map node it always displays in grayscale. i've tried various convertors :-/
  • thegreyman1
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    thegreyman1 polycounter lvl 11
    Alright, I don't want to get any abuse for this as I'm not trying to just be a dick. I'd like to get everyones opinion on substance designer and painter. Honest opinions.

    I'm at a point where I have to seriously consider abandoning it in favour of a traditional method of texture creation or sticking with it but I can't tell whether or not its worth it.

    Personally, having originally thought it held a huge amount of promise I am extremely disappointed with it. I've managed to produce some nice looking base materials with it but that isn't so impressive when you compare what I've created with how long its taken me to learn even the basics.

    It isn't in the least bit intuitive as far as I can tell, not the node based workflow- thats surprisingly ok but stupid things like the overall project structure, how you apply the materials to your mesh etc.

    I spent an entire day yesterday creating a really nice material only to have it delete about the last 1/4 of what I had done to my graph despite having clicked save all before I shut it down. SAVE ALL should mean save all.

    Then when I loaded up an older version of that graph it will only apply the normals to my model for some reason. I click view outputs in 3D, no other options come up and it applies my normals to the model but nothing else. And the various outputs actually have the right textures in them.

    Plus, for some reason when I try to view a specific output on my mesh it gives me the option to apply that output to various textures- diffuse, spec etc despite the fact that my ENTIRE project is PBR. I don't understand why this is even in there.

    And couple these infuriating problems with the fact that the mask generators and weathering produce crappy looking artifacts unless your normal maps etc are ABSOLUTELY perfect. I also cannot figure out how to produce actually tiling patterns with my own tileable textures. Theres always a slight offset for some reason, you'd think by default there would be no offset or other options applied, just a proper, seamless tiling texture and then you can edit the options to tweak it.

    The actual allegorithmic tutorials too are not great. They are much too wide in scope and don't focus on how to do a certain task. They overarch big functions and jump from one topic to another instead of just concentrating on one small thing at a time. What I'd like to see is "how to tile a tileable texture" and "using colour IDs to apply your materials".

    In summary, while I see some promise in substance designer it has been an infuriating experience. And I don't say that lightly. I mean infuriating. I've never been so angry at a piece of software for not making the simple things obvious.

    If somebody can help me with specific problems that would be great but honestly thats not even why I came here. I want to know if others have the same issues or if I'm just not capable of learning this stuff cos I'm at my wits end.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience with SD :(

    I can answer a few of the issues you ran into though.

    The project structure is indeed pretty different from other software, but it serves the purpose of being able to share assets through an entire studio, having those shared resources separate from asset specific resources is a huge plus for big teams.

    About the Save All that didn't save all of your package, it might be a rare bug, I never came across this issue before.

    Th issues you had with the 3d view most likely come from the same source issue: The shader applied to your mesh is not the right one (Physically_Based). The sahder used should be remembered by the substance but it can in rare occasions switch back to the default, which is a non-pbr shader. If this happens, simply go to the Material menu and select the right shader in the drop down menu.

    I'm not sure about the mask generators. I've been using them with some pretty rough input maps without issues, could you point me toward the actual mask generators causing issues?

    The tiling pattern issue is also a bit unclear to me. Are you using one of the Tiling nodes of the library? Would you have screenshots or an example of this offset problem please?

    Finally, our tutorials are more in the form of going through the whole process of texturing an asset indeed, it allows people to "get" the workflow by working on a specific asset from A to Z and is much more effective than specialized tutorials because SD is such a deep tool. But it would be nice to have some kind of wiki or better documentation on how to do these specific tasks, I agree.

    Hope your experience will get better over time, if you have any question or something blocking you, you should definitely ask either here or on our forums, it's pretty active and there is a good chance someone already had the same issue as you.
  • montana2008
    I have a question. How come on my mesh seems to implode when i move the material height scale up? its as though the height information is reverved. Ive tried various inverts. any ideas?

    I seem to get this when i add an height output, it doesnt seem to happen when i add the height output at the beginning of setting up a new substance graph.

    Also how do you stop tessellation breaking the UV seams? there are gaps when i apply my height map with tessellation
  • NicolasW
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    NicolasW polycounter lvl 13
    Can you post a screenshot ?
  • montana2008
    Its as though the levels in the height map need adjusting i've tried adding a levels node which helps but then i get gaps within the UV seams.

    Also this might be a stupid question but why cant i see my colours when previewing the tesselation?

    When i add normal maps as a tilable normal )detail normal map) how is this possible? i.e. is there a texcord node?

    Also i tend to get seams when applying various textures and effects, is it the case of exporting the maps back into substance painter to get rid of the seams?

    Sorry to spam you many questions. Great program btw


    Zx6sNkh.jpg
  • final_fight
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    final_fight polycounter lvl 10
    Is there any guides on high poly workflow with SD?
  • montana2008
    This master thread seems pretty dead to me considering this piece of cool software. What kind of high poly workflow are you after? ripping various maps? if so take look on youtube.
  • final_fight
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    final_fight polycounter lvl 10
    By that I mean working with high poly mesh and not with low poly which has normal map. It's obvious that tangent normal map won't available for high poly, so curvature map can be created.
  • oblomov
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    oblomov polycounter lvl 8
    The curvature baker in Designer can work without a normal map. You need to select the "per vertex" algorithm instead of the default "per pixel" algorithm. THe quality of the result will depend on how finely your mesh is tesselated as the curvature is only calculated per vertex and interpolated on each triangle in this case.
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    I don't think Substance is very ideal for doing high poly workflow - I haven't tried it.
    Never thought about doing per vert. Cool idea.

    Some programs can generate a curvature map based on your high poly.
    Zbrush can if you select peaks and valleys, paint the peaks and bake out a vert color map.
    Modo can create a vert map based on curvature.

    Currently working on some substances - 27kb all using a single substance. Such good software - rendered in UE4
    wood.jpg
  • Pennywise
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    Pennywise polycounter lvl 18
    arvinmoses

    That is really looking good. I just started using Substance Designer, have not even touched painter yet. So far designer has been a real struggle for me, cant seem to figure it out yet. Could you post a high resolution shot of the graph for that? Again very cool stuff.
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    Thanks man! Really appreciate it.

    I can post a high rez of the complete graph. Graph is too big and kinda looks like a wash.

    I can kind of try to explain. Like I said - I plan on giving away either that wood texture or this stone:
    SubstanceTextures2.jpg

    and also do a video on how I did it, but have been busy with random life things - cars breaking down, sick kids, still trying to finish portfolio to find work.

    Just giving it now won't be very helpful because I kinda just connected nodes without really commenting on what I'm doing or organizing it.

    I can tell you this -

    I started off by generating a height map using the tile generator node. I changed the shape to a ridged bell that I used transform 2d to skinny up. I created 2 different branches - one for big slashes and one for small ones.
    start-1024x424.jpg

    I used warp to bend those lines using cells to create the wood like warping
    2-1024x665.jpg

    And ... I have to go now... I'll try to give away more about it soon.
  • Pennywise
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    Pennywise polycounter lvl 18
    Awesome, thanks. Looking forward to the tutorials and videos
  • red2blue
    Hi arvinmoses,

    thanks for your samples and the description. Your stuff is really awsome. I am looking forward to read / see more of your work!

    Thanks for sharing!!!!
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    my pleasure! Thanks man!
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    Decided to go ahead and do some metal plates
    metalplate.png

    Quick update:
    screenshot000.png
  • Kosai106
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    Kosai106 polycounter lvl 13
    Just purchased a copy of Substance Designer as a birthday gift for myself. Suffice to say, I'm really glad I did!

    I don't really have anything mindblowingly awesome yet, but I did try to re-create a floor texture that I saw in the AC:U art dump. (The albedo is garbage, I know.)

    79f05ba7b4.jpg
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    Yea 4.6 is out! Go, go, go!
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    Nice work by the way Kosai106!

    Great for just getting a hold of SD!
  • Kosai106
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    Kosai106 polycounter lvl 13
    arvinmoses wrote: »
    Nice work by the way Kosai106!
    Great for just getting a hold of SD!

    Thanks! I've been watching tutorials for at least month prior to purchasing a license, so that has taught me a few things.
    It also helps that I'm not new to node-based systems. :)
  • CoD67
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    CoD67 polycounter lvl 10
    Your textures are very awesome arvinmoses , it's have a very unique style ( kind of blending between Hand Painted and Realistic ) :D . Is there any chance you'll do a video tutorial ? :)
  • Jerc
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    CoD67 wrote: »
    Your textures are very awesome arvinmoses , it's have a very unique style ( kind of blending between Hand Painted and Realistic ) :D . Is there any chance you'll do a video tutorial ? :)

    Thanks! It was exactly what I was going for. Always good to know when you hit a target. I'll be doing one really soon. I'm happy to say I scored a really nice gig creating substances for a very cool project, so I have some time I can put into making a few videos. I'd say some time around the new year.
  • cman2k
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    cman2k polycounter lvl 17
    I crashed while doing something dumb and got this.

    7jD3tiQ.jpg

    That's deep guys.
    /me questions life
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
    "No dumps were harmed during this process."
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Here some rock "sculpts", all of those are using one graph ;)

    procedural_rock.jpg
  • Froyok
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    Froyok greentooth
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Is there a way to get the emboss to use more pixels? I also wonder why the ambient occlusion is so bad :(
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Here's another substance i did today! I would love to know how to do slope on the heightmap, if anyone has any ideas...

    rust_substance.jpg
  • oblomov
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    oblomov polycounter lvl 8
    bugo wrote: »
    Is there a way to get the emboss to use more pixels? I also wonder why the ambient occlusion is so bad :(

    Which one : the image-space AO node ? the GPU AO baker ? the CPU raytraced AO baker ?

    We'll need at least a description of the problem or a screenshot, and how you set things up, to be able to help you with that.
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    Nice substance! Mind doing a few screen shots of what you would consider major nodes?

    As far as ao use Rogelio Olguin's ao. More control. Will link later
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    I'm working on a new AO node myself that should give you much more control than the stock one, I'll post it later today.
    Awesome texture btw.
    By slope do you mean large, low frequency details or like a global directional slope on the whole texture?
  • arvinmoses
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    arvinmoses polycounter lvl 13
    Looking forward to this Jeremie!
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    Here is my AO node.

    The graph is very simple and it has only 3 parameters that are pretty self explanatory for a quick setup. I've been testing it on an array of cases and it seems to hold up prety well. It requires a normal map as input and not a heightmap.

    Please let me know if you have any feedback, remark or request :)
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Oh, wow, that is a really good AO node Jerc, one thing is, I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I can't seem to get more than 512px on it.
  • Ben Milette
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    Ben Milette polycounter lvl 10
    If you open the sbs up and change the output size from absolute to relative to parent it'll change to the proper resolution.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    My bad! The size was set to absolute, I fixed the file.
  • bugo
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    bugo polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks! Any ideas on how can I create a slope on the heightmap guys? By that I mean I want to get a transition inbetween black to white or vice versa, but have a smooth gradient, without blurring the edges. Let me know.
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