Ah awesome! I mostly wanted to see this because I could not replicate the FX map no matter what I did. I was using background and image 1, not two images..
I suppose I just don't understand FX maps >:(
ETA:
How does one make something still tile seamlessly if they add a 2d transformation onto it?
How does one make something still tile seamlessly if they add a 2d transformation onto it?
Only scale by whole numbers: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, or 50%, 33.33%, 25%...
That pretty much means only use type-ins for scaling, never do it manually.
Offset and rotation is still fine though.
Only scale by whole numbers: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, or 50%, 33.33%, 25%...
That pretty much means only use type-ins for scaling, never do it manually.
Offset and rotation is still fine though.
Derp. I didn't even look at the sidebar to see the numbers there.
Also on an unrelated note, Was just asked to activate again.. So thats still happening lol
Annndd..
If I change the integration attributes to rgb, rather than rgba. With that export the targa as 24 bit now rather than 32? I am not using the alpha on my work so I'd like to eliminate it for improved processing speed.
Started working on Substance Designer for a while. Definitely liking it so far. Here's what I've been working on, mainly done through one base texture on both the brick wall and the floor tile.
Is it even possible to see what changes you did with the transformation node? I can't find it anywhere. The Offset seems to work as expected at least.
to the lower right of the scale and rotate controls is a button marked "matrix"
the first time you click it, it's f'ng awesome, but the next couple of times is kind of a let down.
no wait, sorry, bad joke.
ok click the matrix button,it'll show you the transform matrix and it saves the changes. a little experimentation will help you figure out what the numbers mean.
scaling is pretty straight-forward, but rotation can get confusing. its a very fast node so there's no harm done if you use 2 instances of it, one for scaling, one for rotation.
That is the original, and with straight planks. Looks alright. I've worked quite a bit on it and ended up with this
-nonexistent picture-
But you can see how the planks are a bit beaten up, which is nicer. But the lines aren't as thick and sometimes blend over and seem like they aren't there. I've just done a basic warp with a gradient.. The hardest part of all this is that it would work beautiful if I could just make the original plquet lines thicker. Is there a way to make those thicker? As far as I can tell there isn't, and I've been pulling my hair out over it lol
I guess I can always just pull it into photoshop and somehow thicken them there.
If one of the blend options doesn't give the result you want, you may be able to use the SVG node to mask out the lines, or have another levels adjustment to have plain black on the lines and white on the wood, so you could isolate them and use the warp & gradient set up you have. From there, you could probably thicken just the areas you masked out.
@Frawmus:
Dont you dare take that into photoshop! If your gonna be a bear, be a grizzly!
take a feed from your tile generator and plug it into a chain something like this:
tile gen --> normal mapper --> curvature --> edge select --> blur --> blend(subtract from original)
also try this, duplicate your tile gen and leave all settings exactly the same, but randomize the luminosity. use this to drive a directional warp of your wood grain texture (intensity really high,like 64). this'll break up your wood grain so it doesnt line up across planks.
I just made a similar texture. My way to increase the thickness of the lines was to blur the Pattern and then use a level node after to clamp the black value. This way you can adjust the blur to get the line size you want.
AH WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT!
I tried blur and was like ...no... but I didn't even think to levels!
Thanks to all three of you :P I'll see which method I like the best XD
Sweeett!
...now to remove the textures so no one steals them !
ETA: Should I add a mask around the outline so that it tiles seamlessly? OR does the cloud + warp still make it seamless
All the atomic nodes by default will apply their effect to make the result repeatable. You shouldn't have to worry about that. If you want to check the tilling, simply hit "space" inside the 2D view. It will tile the current node view.
That kind of roof texture.
I feel I would need to source photos in this case, otherwise make it very difficult on myself?
Also for cobble stone... Maybe I just need to learn the warping tools more?
+ If I use the Make It Tile with a cobblestone texture, and its not lining up quite right/rocks are inside of rocks that would be something I'd need to fix in PS?
ETA: Just looked at the roofing and brick tileable textures...
-heavy sigh- I have a long way to go.
I learn more every day! Such a great technique. Thank you! Took a bit to figure out how you modified the capsule, but rotate + Scale and bam
Thanks a ton!
I CAN PROBABLY DO THIS WITH COBBLE STONE TOO
AHAH!HH!!!!!!
I've been having some SD issues, mostly related to baking.
1 - I always set my bakes to be embedded, but they keep switching back to linked without my consent:
2 - How to get Height bakes like xNormal? Right now I need to keep trying to guess the maximum height so I can get a full range. In xNormal it does a smart normalization, but "Automatic Normalization" on SD just makes my bake go full gray.
3 - How to bake alpha information? I'm baking models full of holes and can't seem to find a way to get this inside SD, so I need to do that on xNormal and import it. In xNormal it's called "Bake base texture".
4 - Any chance of getting the cool xNormal padding? Instead of blurring the edges, it sharply expands the last pixel to whatever value you've set. To my experience it produces less seams and better material separation (using vertex colors as masks)
Hi,
1. this one is a bug, it's been fixed in SD 4.1.1 (it should be released this week)
2. The automatic normalization option actually map the 0 level to 0.5 (middle gray) so you might get either black or white. What you are looking for is a texture that takes the full range, right ? This would be another option in the baker.
3. not possible at the moment and actually quite complicated regarding the code architecture, you're the first one to request this though.
4. Our post process should actually give far better result than standard padding (better mipmaps, better compression), if you find a case where it is not, then please send it to us and we may consider implementing it.
Xoliul suggested me to share some interesting content I made. I start by this library of animated noises: they are all loopable and tillable.
You should use Substance Player to export image sequences (switch the time unit to "seconds" and report the "loop duration" value to the "end" parameter) , using these substances in real time might be too expensive..
I was just imagining that would look cool. You could have pulsing veins and slow wobbles in the fleshy surface. I dont even know how to view animations. HAHAHAHA I have to try out at home I am at work right now.
Hey Nicolas,
Thanks for the answers Which option do you mean at 2 though? I've tried all the possible combinations and the best output I could get was the one I posted above.
Some other questions:
The blend node has an Opacity slider. But that doesn't do anything when I'm already using a mask. IMO the opacity slider could multiply on top of the mask, no?
Of course I can work around this by using a levels node or anything, but it'd be less cluttered if the slider worked. What do you think?
Also, I've noticed that some nodes will convert the input to grayscale or color if necessary, but that doesn't happen with the blend node. Is there a reason for this?
Ok here comes the noobsauce. Can you view animations in SD?
Animation can't be viewed inside SD, you have to use the Player.
FYI the animation is driven by the $time variable, you can eventually replace (or add) a custom value to the $time in order to manually preview the animation in SD. It implies to edit the fx-map function
Yes the opacity slider gets disabled as soon as a mask is plugged, it's something we can't change easily. We actually plan to implement a brand new blend node which will add/correct some features, but no estimation for when it'll be done.
About the automatic conversion: it's a bug I add this to our backlog.
Hey Nicolas,
Thanks for the answers Which option do you mean at 2 though? I've tried all the possible combinations and the best output I could get was the one I posted above.
Sorry, forgot this one. I wasn't clear, I meant we should add another option to do that. For the moment you can use a level and click the "Auto level" button.
Hi substance abusers. I mean designers. I was wondering if you can make a tiling texture on all 4 edges of a map. I want a piece that I can rotate and tile every which way. I am stumped on this one. I feel like its possible.
Really trying to get the diffuse to pop without relying so much on materials
Sharpened it all a bit after I posted.. Looks a bit better... Any tips?
The best way I have found to achieve interesting materials was to break down a material in different "layers". For example for my wood material that I made a few days ago, I used multiple noises to achieve different levels of details and frequencies. Then I have added them one after one. As for Photoshop, the theory behind a good texture is the same : understanding the materials that you want to replicate.
Hi substance abusers. I mean designers. I was wondering if you can make a tiling texture on all 4 edges of a map. I want a piece that I can rotate and tile every which way. I am stumped on this one. I feel like its possible.
It's possible, you can mirror some parts of your texture (the borders for example) to be sure it will tiles even if you flip/rotate it. However you will lose some flexibility on the art side since it will requires much more identical pixels to tile properly.
To perform a mirror, simply use a negative transformation (you can edit the matrix in the transform node to specify negative values). Then use a blend node with the cropping area settings to only blend the half. Repeat the process to mirror all the sides.
I am really liking how this new attempt is building up. But I want to fix this problem before I continue.
I need more disorder, or to eliminate that one sploch of cracks.
I would use another grunge map and not repeat my current one. Combine the two, if it wasnt so inefficient to use another one.
Gr..
What would be "Best" to get rid of those, while keeping the overall style. Just erase it from the map? XD
Hey fellow Substance dudes, been a while since I've posted here but I've been lurking, and wanted to share with you guys some recent work that I've done. There are some Designer functions I've made to help with details and weathering, that I will make some tutorials for and distribute if ya'll are interested. It's setup to control your Albedo spec, gloss, and normal all at once. Some other stuff too, anyways, this is a recent project I'm just finished textured in Substance 4, hope you guys dig it, would be interested to know your guys process too, I'm starting to learn there are many different ways one can create something in Substance. I don't mind sharing graphs and having you guys poke around in them giving suggestions.
Technically we need a way to know the corresponding points between the low and high poly mesh so we would need both models to have the same UVs (which is the case in mudbox for instance). It's quite a important constraint, would you accept it ?
There is no plan at the moment, if the need becomes apparent we will consider adding it to Substance Designer.
Recently bought substance designer on steam and man I love it! Been a great help to me so big thanks for developing it
I only wish there was a bit more advanced tutorials out there though, like on fx maps and procedural material techniques :P
Anyway I'm currently making a sand texture and I'm having a bit of a problem getting that natural beach wave pattern looking right.
Anyone got any suggestions on how one might go about making it?
Technically we need a way to know the corresponding points between the low and high poly mesh so we would need both models to have the same UVs (which is the case in mudbox for instance). It's quite a important constraint, would you accept it ?
There is no plan at the moment, if the need becomes apparent we will consider adding it to Substance Designer.
XNormal (and I assume Zbrush) also has that same constraint. I was asking because I was working on some shaders for Unity (Web Player) that require vector maps.
Anyway I'm currently making a sand texture and I'm having a bit of a problem getting that natural beach wave pattern looking right.
Anyone got any suggestions on how one might go about making it?
Here is a quick test, the main relief pattern is made using the "plasma" noise.
I'd really love to see some breakdowns, I really like the look of the materials.
Although I'm not a fan of the 53 font.
Zac!
Thanks man, I think the font could use a change as well now that you mention it, seems kinda, not sci fi right?
I'll be sharing everything soon, but a lot of my process relies on a "material mask" to break everything up. Once I do this I can have control over spec, gloss and detail pass functions per material. It's kinda crucial to my pipeline, and lets me make changes to the foundation pretty easily. I'll be out all week for GDC but when I get back if you guys like, I can send you access to my dropbox folders that have these functions in them. I'm hoping to get some feedback too, and iterate on the process so it can better suit the needs of the community.
Replies
I suppose I just don't understand FX maps >:(
ETA:
How does one make something still tile seamlessly if they add a 2d transformation onto it?
Only scale by whole numbers: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, or 50%, 33.33%, 25%...
That pretty much means only use type-ins for scaling, never do it manually.
Offset and rotation is still fine though.
Derp. I didn't even look at the sidebar to see the numbers there.
Also on an unrelated note, Was just asked to activate again.. So thats still happening lol
Annndd..
If I change the integration attributes to rgb, rather than rgba. With that export the targa as 24 bit now rather than 32? I am not using the alpha on my work so I'd like to eliminate it for improved processing speed.
to the lower right of the scale and rotate controls is a button marked "matrix"
the first time you click it, it's f'ng awesome, but the next couple of times is kind of a let down.
no wait, sorry, bad joke.
ok click the matrix button,it'll show you the transform matrix and it saves the changes. a little experimentation will help you figure out what the numbers mean.
scaling is pretty straight-forward, but rotation can get confusing. its a very fast node so there's no harm done if you use 2 instances of it, one for scaling, one for rotation.
Thanks Jerc
-nonexistent picture-
That is the original, and with straight planks. Looks alright. I've worked quite a bit on it and ended up with this
-nonexistent picture-
But you can see how the planks are a bit beaten up, which is nicer. But the lines aren't as thick and sometimes blend over and seem like they aren't there. I've just done a basic warp with a gradient.. The hardest part of all this is that it would work beautiful if I could just make the original plquet lines thicker. Is there a way to make those thicker? As far as I can tell there isn't, and I've been pulling my hair out over it lol
I guess I can always just pull it into photoshop and somehow thicken them there.
Dont you dare take that into photoshop! If your gonna be a bear, be a grizzly!
take a feed from your tile generator and plug it into a chain something like this:
tile gen --> normal mapper --> curvature --> edge select --> blur --> blend(subtract from original)
also try this, duplicate your tile gen and leave all settings exactly the same, but randomize the luminosity. use this to drive a directional warp of your wood grain texture (intensity really high,like 64). this'll break up your wood grain so it doesnt line up across planks.
I tried blur and was like ...no... but I didn't even think to levels!
Thanks to all three of you :P I'll see which method I like the best XD
Sweeett!
...now to remove the textures so no one steals them !
ETA: Should I add a mask around the outline so that it tiles seamlessly? OR does the cloud + warp still make it seamless
Well I guess I shouldn't feel too bad. This is just week two of working with SD
Thanks again :P
I feel smarter.
How often do you still source photos when using Substance designer? I've tried to eliminate it while learning, but I am stuck on making a sort of... http://static4.depositphotos.com/1021178/342/i/950/depositphotos_3429384-Tile-roof-in-medieval-a-city.jpg
That kind of roof texture.
I feel I would need to source photos in this case, otherwise make it very difficult on myself?
Also for cobble stone... Maybe I just need to learn the warping tools more?
+ If I use the Make It Tile with a cobblestone texture, and its not lining up quite right/rocks are inside of rocks that would be something I'd need to fix in PS?
ETA: Just looked at the roofing and brick tileable textures...
-heavy sigh- I have a long way to go.
It's just the height map pattern, the other channels can be derived from that.
the sbs file :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3p5vxbbkskebyki/roofing_base.zip
Thanks a ton!
I CAN PROBABLY DO THIS WITH COBBLE STONE TOO
AHAH!HH!!!!!!
I've been having some SD issues, mostly related to baking.
1 - I always set my bakes to be embedded, but they keep switching back to linked without my consent:
2 - How to get Height bakes like xNormal? Right now I need to keep trying to guess the maximum height so I can get a full range. In xNormal it does a smart normalization, but "Automatic Normalization" on SD just makes my bake go full gray.
3 - How to bake alpha information? I'm baking models full of holes and can't seem to find a way to get this inside SD, so I need to do that on xNormal and import it. In xNormal it's called "Bake base texture".
4 - Any chance of getting the cool xNormal padding? Instead of blurring the edges, it sharply expands the last pixel to whatever value you've set. To my experience it produces less seams and better material separation (using vertex colors as masks)
Hi,
1. this one is a bug, it's been fixed in SD 4.1.1 (it should be released this week)
2. The automatic normalization option actually map the 0 level to 0.5 (middle gray) so you might get either black or white. What you are looking for is a texture that takes the full range, right ? This would be another option in the baker.
3. not possible at the moment and actually quite complicated regarding the code architecture, you're the first one to request this though.
4. Our post process should actually give far better result than standard padding (better mipmaps, better compression), if you find a case where it is not, then please send it to us and we may consider implementing it.
Nicolas
Xoliul suggested me to share some interesting content I made. I start by this library of animated noises: they are all loopable and tillable.
You should use Substance Player to export image sequences (switch the time unit to "seconds" and report the "loop duration" value to the "end" parameter) , using these substances in real time might be too expensive..
Here is the package : https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7t5cgpm3hjk4v5/Noises_animated.zip
Enjoy!
I was just imagining that would look cool. You could have pulsing veins and slow wobbles in the fleshy surface. I dont even know how to view animations. HAHAHAHA I have to try out at home I am at work right now.
Thanks for the answers
Some other questions:
The blend node has an Opacity slider. But that doesn't do anything when I'm already using a mask. IMO the opacity slider could multiply on top of the mask, no?
Of course I can work around this by using a levels node or anything, but it'd be less cluttered if the slider worked. What do you think?
Also, I've noticed that some nodes will convert the input to grayscale or color if necessary, but that doesn't happen with the blend node. Is there a reason for this?
<cheers and applause>
ps: if you need an opacity slider in addition to a mask use the other blend from the filters library.
Animation can't be viewed inside SD, you have to use the Player.
FYI the animation is driven by the $time variable, you can eventually replace (or add) a custom value to the $time in order to manually preview the animation in SD. It implies to edit the fx-map function
@fonfa
Yes the opacity slider gets disabled as soon as a mask is plugged, it's something we can't change easily. We actually plan to implement a brand new blend node which will add/correct some features, but no estimation for when it'll be done.
About the automatic conversion: it's a bug
Cheers,
Nicolas
Sorry, forgot this one. I wasn't clear, I meant we should add another option to do that. For the moment you can use a level and click the "Auto level" button.
haha my fantasy was going trough with me as you posted the idea
Will substance designer ever be able to bake out vector displacement maps?
Where can I find some tutorials on fx maps?
Thanks.
What I have right now
http://i.imgur.com/52HKYYU.jpg
Really trying to get the diffuse to pop without relying so much on materials
Sharpened it all a bit after I posted.. Looks a bit better... Any tips?
There is some details about the fx-maps over here (it's about designer 2.0, but it's not that much different of what we have today) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d1kZncqZx8 part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ96whtJbGM part 2
The best way I have found to achieve interesting materials was to break down a material in different "layers". For example for my wood material that I made a few days ago, I used multiple noises to achieve different levels of details and frequencies. Then I have added them one after one. As for Photoshop, the theory behind a good texture is the same : understanding the materials that you want to replicate.
It's possible, you can mirror some parts of your texture (the borders for example) to be sure it will tiles even if you flip/rotate it. However you will lose some flexibility on the art side since it will requires much more identical pixels to tile properly.
To perform a mirror, simply use a negative transformation (you can edit the matrix in the transform node to specify negative values). Then use a blend node with the cropping area settings to only blend the half. Repeat the process to mirror all the sides.
I am really liking how this new attempt is building up. But I want to fix this problem before I continue.
I need more disorder, or to eliminate that one sploch of cracks.
I would use another grunge map and not repeat my current one. Combine the two, if it wasnt so inefficient to use another one.
Gr..
What would be "Best" to get rid of those, while keeping the overall style. Just erase it from the map? XD
I'd really love to see some breakdowns, I really like the look of the materials.
Although I'm not a fan of the 53 font.
Technically we need a way to know the corresponding points between the low and high poly mesh so we would need both models to have the same UVs (which is the case in mudbox for instance). It's quite a important constraint, would you accept it ?
There is no plan at the moment, if the need becomes apparent we will consider adding it to Substance Designer.
I only wish there was a bit more advanced tutorials out there though, like on fx maps and procedural material techniques :P
Anyway I'm currently making a sand texture and I'm having a bit of a problem getting that natural beach wave pattern looking right.
Anyone got any suggestions on how one might go about making it?
XNormal (and I assume Zbrush) also has that same constraint. I was asking because I was working on some shaders for Unity (Web Player) that require vector maps.
Here is a quick test, the main relief pattern is made using the "plasma" noise.
You can download the package here.
Zac!
Thanks man, I think the font could use a change as well now that you mention it, seems kinda, not sci fi right?
I'll be sharing everything soon, but a lot of my process relies on a "material mask" to break everything up. Once I do this I can have control over spec, gloss and detail pass functions per material. It's kinda crucial to my pipeline, and lets me make changes to the foundation pretty easily. I'll be out all week for GDC but when I get back if you guys like, I can send you access to my dropbox folders that have these functions in them. I'm hoping to get some feedback too, and iterate on the process so it can better suit the needs of the community.