IN PROGRESS: Is there a version of the SUITE that actually works?
polycounter lvl 4
Finally gave in yesterday for the $50 black friday sale. I'm more of a substance designer guy, but some things about ddo have always appealed to me - built in library of smart materials, preset masks, overall speed of the workflow and quality of the results.
I get the suite v 1.8, and in the first 10 minutes I've ran into several bugs that I can 100% repro. SUITE is completely unusuable for me in v1.8.
Those bugs are just the ones I have seen multiple times, I have encountered other errors and crashes that I didn't bother to take note of.
Overall though it's completely unusable, I have yet to actually get base materials onto a model and start workign on something. I'm really disappointed in my purchase of the SUITE, even at 50% off. Is there a version of the SUITE that actually works?
Meanwhile, back to substance designer...
I get the suite v 1.8, and in the first 10 minutes I've ran into several bugs that I can 100% repro. SUITE is completely unusuable for me in v1.8.
- If you try to import a color map with alpha transparency it crashes. Workaround is to remove the transparency from the color map.
- Color map colors aren't being detected correctly, seems like this is mentioned in other threads..
- The other bug is one that photoshop pops up when I try to import a very basic model that has 2 materials, and I add a color map + normal map to each of them. It bugs out and the base textures aren't created correctly, and in 3DO it appears gray. The photoshop error dialog says: "System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80042260) General Photoshop error occurred. This functionality may not be available in this version of Photoshop." I'm using the latest version of Photoshop CC 2014 64 bit...
Those bugs are just the ones I have seen multiple times, I have encountered other errors and crashes that I didn't bother to take note of.
Overall though it's completely unusable, I have yet to actually get base materials onto a model and start workign on something. I'm really disappointed in my purchase of the SUITE, even at 50% off. Is there a version of the SUITE that actually works?
Meanwhile, back to substance designer...
Replies
:-(
are there any download mirrors for the old builds?
Alpha transparency has no functionality that I am aware of in a color id map so I guess it's always a good idea to keep it completely opaque.
legacy download doesn't seem to be available on the official site anymore but through the power of google: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/214uzy/quixel_ddo_53_now_free_for_commercial_use/
I believe that 1.4 was most stable.
I saved out a svg to color map in substance designer and it had transparency. Easy enough to fix, but it shouldn't cause the entire suite to crash.
thx guys, going to give up on the suite for now. More interested in Megascans anyways, its good to see they are working on that instead.
Agreed. dDo has always felt like a hackjob macro running on top of photoshop. I feel there's a lot of potential, the smart materials, mask presets, and overall speed and quality of the results are great. They should have waited to rebrand it all as Quixel SUITE until they had a standalone.
At this point I just want to use megascans in substance designer and painter. Imo quixel should just pivot into the PBR materials market. They are positioned well, with the release of megascans coming dec 10, and it doesn't seem like there is much competition or other services offering real-world scanned PBR materials. I hope to see new megascan materials added "every day", like they claim on the site. Very eager to check that out on dec 10.
But first of all I would like to say that Im sorry that some of you feel that it´s an unusable piece of software. It has bugs and problems like any other software out there sure, but the upsides of using it are incredible! I´m not an employe at Quixel fulltime, I work as a consultant on certain projects and help out in here because I really enjoy it! In most of the projects I do outside of Quixel I use the suite, even for VFX work I use it. Normally I would never have time to texture things since I am the project manager, but that is why I love the suite so much, it gives me that opportunity and buys me the time to create something amazing in a fraction of the time it used to take.
Now I deeply sympathize with you who are having show stopping bugs, and I will do my very best to solve them, sorry for my rant here but I really do wish that everybody gets to experience what an amazing piece of software this is!
Philwinkel - Sorry to hear your first experience was not as pleasant as it should have been, I will try to answer your questions one by one:
- Transparancy in the Color ID is not supported, I dont think there is a real need for it but maybe you´re doing something I havent though about
- Colors should actually be detected properly, would you mind uploading your color-id so i can have a look?
- Would you mind uploading these files as well so I can try to create the project? Also, have you tried any of our sample projects from the wiki:http://quixel.se/usermanual/quixelsuite/doku.php?id=ddo_samples
Just to rule out any probles with your inputs.
Nirsul - I would recommend you to also check out one of the sample projects! You could also upload the mesh so I can have a look!
Blazed - If you describe your problems to me maybe I can help you, as I said earlier I use the suite daily, the same 1.8 version as everybody else on a regular laptop and I blazing (no pun intended) through my textures!
Sorry for the long post, and let me know if you have more questions!
Eric, thanks for the effort you put in answering these topics. And please don't take this the wrong way - but: are you serious?
confirming issues towards some people and telling others the opposite... I think this must be a misunderstanding, right?
I agree ddo is a great product, when it works.
I am currently building a new desktop, I will install 1.8 when I get a chance and give it another go. If it blows up again, which I expect it probably will, I'll upload the files.
I was baking maps in substance designer and then using them in DDO. I saved out an SVG color map as a PNG, it had like 3 or 4 colors and a transparent background, and it would crash every time. I don't know if it's the PNG file type (I saw another thread about issues with PNG as color map), or if it was the transparency. I think I saved the color map as a TGA file and then it worked okay.
Then I was having issues where there were only like 3 or 4 colors in my color map, but DDO was detecting like 10 different colors. It wasn't a JPEG with compression or anything, I think it was a PNG that I was having the issue with. I was just sitting there like wtf because I saved out a non-compressed, non-lossy color map (several times to make sure) and it was still detecting many different shades of the colors that my map had. I'm pretty sure something was wrong in DDO.. I guess theres still a chance I was saving an image out wrong. I did it several times though, and I'm pretty adamant that it was a non lossy format. I'll try again in a few days..
When I did finally get all of my maps loaded into DDO, it was blowing up with photoshop errors when it was generating the base materials. I posted the specific error above. But overall I never actually got base materials generated using DDO. I was using the Unity 5 spec/gloss calibration preset.
again, I'll try again in a few days when I bet my new desktop built. thx for the reply.
Philwinkel - I understand your frustration, lets give it a new try when you have your new system up and running! I´ll make you a deal, if we cant get you up and running smoothly and if you don´t love the suite after trying it out I will buy you an X-mas present!
new machine up and running. Tried it again, and still having the same issues. Using a completely different mesh and maps. I can record a video or something, but really 1.8 just seems buggy. Using a completely new computer, fresh install of the latest Photoshop 2014 CC, etc.
Kind of disappointed, IMO when you have something this buggy you either need to offer mirrors of a stable build, or you shouldn't even be selling it. I'm not really interested in legacy DDO... I've used it before, I didn't buy the SUITE to use legacy DDO.
and, while quickly skimming the forums it sounds like I'm not alone.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145105
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144890
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144990
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144756
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=143954
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145229
I could keep pasting links but hopefully you've seen them all already. There are pages of forum posts of frustrated customers.
I am going to hold you to that offer! For my xmas present, I would like a spot on the Megascans closed beta. Seriously.. please? I promise I will never complain again :cool:
I had a lot of stability problems at first. For some reason i don´t quite understand the stability has improved. I think in part it might have been me doing weird things not allowing Photoshop finish computing maps and layers before interacting with the program being impatient? After 3 days of playing around with the suit i have quite a good idea how it works and the crashes are not that common anymore. It still crashes to much but it is defiantly usable in my opinion. I also use PS CC2014. NDO i have found quite stable. It only crashed once or twice but did not crash photoshop so just reloaded the suit and was up and running in 10 seconds again. I do have a decent PC with 64GB RAM, maybe this helps a bit to? Anyway the OP seem to have completely different issues in part. Just want to give my personal view. I am still on trial license but will defiantly buy it when it runs out.
I am not very good with texturing so the suit has been quite revolutionary for me. I am still very much a beginner with the suit but learning fast. Also i am used to crashes after using Zbrush. It also crashes a lot :-(
Keep up the good work Quixel. This is a winner product with some early stability problems. I´m sure you will get this fixed. You have proved its possible with earlier stable builds.
http://quixel.se/usermanual/quixelsu...id=ddo_samples
To answer your other question about other people having problems. Yes some people have problem running the suite, but far far from all the users! That is no excuse for it not working for everybody, but there are countles versions of software and hardware combinations which makes troubleshoting complicated. Quixel have opted for a very transparent bug reporting system which might give the impression that most people are having problem, this is simply not the case.
But anyway, our goal is of course that it should work for everybody and we will continue to work tirelessly to make it so, we´re a very small team and thank you for your understanding and patience!
But lets get you up and running so I wont have to buy even more x-mas presents
I'm running CS6 on Windows 7 64bit. Every time I launch the suite it asks me to install 1.8. I do and things seem to run (just doing tests for now). But once I close and try to relaunch, it asks me to update again. Am I missing something or any solutions?
When I load the project file it does open all the documents but my mesh doesn't load in 3DO or when it does, none of the textures load on it. Trying to link them using the 3DO custom loader yields nothing. If I boot up 3DO only (without loading the project in DDO) and use the custom loader to open all the textures from files it all works fine. Trying to open a project via the custom loader does nothing. When browsing for folders (via the custom loader) I go to the project folder but the project file itself doesn't show up and clicking the 'Open' button is available no matter which folder is highlighted. Clicking it does nothing, even if the correct project folder is highlighted.
Into another matter. Now as I opened up my project all masks show up as blank white in DDO but look correct in Photoshop. I had a similar problem earlier when I re-rendered the project with slightly revised base maps. That time the masks were all wrong both in DDO and in PS but once I clicked them open in Dynamask an clicked 'DONE' they worked themselves out. But this time when I clicked one of the masks hoping to open up the Dynamask Editor I got this:
("P
ollitei - For the project corrupting and the maps all turning white, have you used "Save as" when this happend? We´ve recived another bug report of this happening and we are looking in to that!
- Would you mind zipping the project files and sending them to me so I can see if I get the same results with 3do?
-Im not an ndo export, I will report this to the Dev-team and report back to you!
Hi Eric, i have been waiting for a fix for the ddo crash issue since 1.8 came out. I havent been able to fix it since then. Could you please take a look at the thread i have started to help me out as well please? http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=145714
I havent been able to use ddo ever. I have sent 2-3 tickets to support, i have checked the forum but no use.
same here. I have been trying since beta but never got assets through without it breaking sooner or later. and it's not specific to one computer or one config as we tested win 7, 8, different PS versions on different computers. I think it's a misconception that all or most bugs are just related to certain combinations of system configurations. My feeling is that this also has to do with what features you are going to use. For example I have yet to see someone get positive results working with custom build id presets over multiple assets (which to me is a core feature in a production pipeline). If I had to do single assets, I would be mostly fine with the way it works on my system. So it feels more like it is a mixed bag of broken features and system config problems combined with the non stable nature of it's photoshop related implementation.
The result of this for me is that I have wasted (so far I can't use another word unfortunately) months of trying to get it to work and am at a point where I start regretting my decision to use it.
The feedback from Eric and Teddy unfortunately often feel well intentioned but seem to collide with reality from my point of view. (a very small team committed to bug fixing and adding amazing new features and software at the same time... in my experience this almost never pans out. and it doesn't look like it in the quixel case.
Thanks Eric. I disabled my AV when installing. Does it also need to be disabled every time the suite runs?
I've already wasted too much time trying to get the SUITE to work. It's great that it works on your computer, but I paid for the SUITE to use it on my computer. It's cool that maybe the sample project works without crashing, but I didn't pay for the SUITE to look at the sample project.
The next time I mess around with the SUITE i'll submit another bug report,but every time I try it's just a huge waste of time.
Maybe you should include a way to submit bug reports when the SUITE crashes, like Unity3d.
You don't need to buy me a christmas present, please just provide me an invite into the Megascans closed beta. I'd greatly appreciate it. It's the least you could do for paying customers who paid for a product that is completely riddled with bugs to the point where it's unusable.
You may be a paying customer, so you're entitled to the working software you purchased. But that doesn't mean you're entitled to other services the same company provides, unless they feel like being charitable.
this
That's great, thanks for your opinion.
I guess unprofessional is kind of subjective. In my opinion, unprofessional is selling a product that's completely unusable and not giving a shit. Literally. Black friday sale when you know your software is extremely buggy and unusable for many users.
I'm not the one who made that whole christmas present promise. He was pulling a quixel on me anyways; he wasn't actually going to deliver. That's another thing I would consider unprofessional and dishonest, customer support making offers that you have no intention of following through on.
The SUITE is a buggy disaster, pretty obvious with a quick look at the forums. I'm not wasting any more of my time trying to fix a problem that most likely isn't even on my end. This entire forum is people reporting bugs and issues with their product.
But hey, I'm not even mad bro. $50 is the least of my concerns. It's the principle and sketchy business practices that bug me. Like doing a black friday sale on an unusable product. That was pretty shady. Low blow quixel, low blow.
In any case, I'm done here. I had good intentions, I was trying to report a bug and help quixel resolve issues. It's pretty obvious that's not going to happen. Moving along...
I understand your growing frustration as weeks have passed without a fix to the bugs you've found. Quixel is just me; for better or for worse. I'm very thankful that we have an active and transparent forum where everyone can report, chime in and help out. I read every report and never make a release unless I know/think every currently reported bug is fixed.
There are tens of thousands of active suite customers, sometimes as much as almost a thousand new users per day, and I really do work insanely hard to keep up with all requests, reports and expectations. With 1.8 a couple of previously unknown bugs emerged, despite the 3 week preview build testing where none of these issues were found, and those are currently being resolved. Thanks again for reporting.
As for the rest of your post, I'm sorry you feel that way Phil.
- Teddy
Thx for the reply Teddy. I was not aware you're single handedly holding down the ship at quixel. That's very impressive.
You should consider some kind of bug tracking software, ticketing system, etc. It seems like it would be a better way to manage bug reports.
In any case, my issue was resolved, I got a refund. I'm out. Best of luck on your endeavors .
first off, let me say that I really like the Quixel Suite and Megascan Library
and I own a license for the Suite. Ndo has helped me a lot in getting better
Normal maps, especially from random diffuse texture input.
That said, I have to say I´m frustrated with the stability of v1.7 and 1.8 and DDo.
I have tried any combination of Photoshop CS5.1 x64, Photoshop CC2014 and
Quixel Suite 1.7 and 1.8 on win7x64, running things in Administrator mode,
installing to the public folder, resetting photoshop, changing Photoshop to
english (renaming the twain***.dat files) and using a variety of *.png or
*.tga Material files as input.
DDO will crash when it starts to setup the project, right after Photoshop
(regardless of version) bitching about a wrong colorspace and prompting
me to take action (discard, convert, use).
Whatever I do, I end up getting :
System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException(0x80042260): General
Photoshop error occurred. This functionality may not be available in this
version of Photoshop.
I went as far as installing the trial of Photoshop CC2014 to see if it´s me.
Nope. Same result.
Really, Really frustrating.
I have to say, I don´t want to give Photoshop Admin priviledges in general
or dump installs (with Admin rights) into my public folder at all.
I don´t like that, at all. I don´t even want Photoshop CC2014 really but
I would have subscribed if that is the only way to run the Quixel Suite.
If there is any way I can solve this, please advise.
Aside from that, I wish you´ll find a way to get rid of the Quixel Suite´s
Photoshop dependency. It starts to annoy the hell out of me.
If there is any way, please provide a standalone browser/viewer for
the Megascan library as a start.
Personally, I could always resort to loading a Megascan Material´s maps
manually into Photoshop or Substance Designer/Painter and would actually
welcome this level of freedom now, espcially in contrast to how unstable
the DDO in the Quixel Suite feels atm.
All that said, Thanks again for trying to come up with a great tool.
Kill the Photoshop dependency...
Kind Regards,
tim
it's not 1.8 bugs tho. I`ve tried all the way back to 1.6 and have not found a single version to work with custom presets. I also haven't heard about any workaround.
I know that Quixel is basically a one man show and you are doing impressive things Teddy but I have to disagree on the focus of development. I love the theoretical possibilities of the Suite but the sad reality is that I had to move on to a competing software, simply because it is stable and robust and can handle a production workflow (even tho I dislike the results and workflow there)
Have you tried disabling the Photoshop color profile check in the first place ? It is a useful feature (I use it often too as it is a good way to avoid all kinds of problems when working with images exported to web and/or print), but it it is understandable that a bug related to this dialog might have slipped through the cracks of testing, since very few photoshop users are aware of this feature. It's worth a shot !
thanks for the suggestion! That would make total sense.
Disabling Colormanagement was the first thing I tried, I forgot to mention.
I also reset Photoshop´s preferences, using the STRG+ALT+SHIFT hotkeys
on starting Photoshop via the windows startmenu, trying to bring my
Photoshop setup close to an replicable test scenario but no, didn´t work.
The gut feeling I have is that my creation profiles got corrupted between
updates or installs because in very rare cases, I somehow managed to
get through the creation process of a project by trying random co,mbinations
of base profile and export settings. Not consistent, the same settings would
crash 10 minutes later on me, trying to replicate the settings.
I don´t know.
For now, I´ve uninstalled completely and decided to postpone any further
efforts until an updated install of Quixel Suite is available as a full installer.
Cheers,
tim
That being said, the tool has great uses and it's a shame that it is not working properly on your end. What do you exactly mean by "creation profiles" and "base settings" by the way ? And do the example assets actually load up properly for you ?
Just to rule out problems with your inputs!
@pior, when the "New Project Module" pops up for a click on the DDo icon
in an otherwise empty Photoshop, you can chose a preset there for texel density, 16bit materials, etc.
Then there´s also the Calibration Profiles, which let´s you output
maps that should work best for, let´s say UE4, when using that
profile to export (UE4 or UE4 optimized).
In my case, I had random luck in DDO successfully going through the setup
of a new project depending on which combination of Default (Base?) Profile
and Calibration Profile I chose but always was prompted with the ColorSpace
warning in Photoshop and prompted to select what to do with the colorspace
mismatch.
Unfortunately, I never managed to repro the successful project setup,
regardless of Calibration Profile for export used. Otherwise I would have
just stuck to those settings and only changed the Calibration Profile later,
after the initial project set itself up successfully.
That´s why I have the gut feeling something is wrong with my version of
the 1.7 or 1.8 Default Base Profile settings, maybe they got corrupted or broke in an update?
ATM, I can´t be bothered to try installing 1.8 again, I´ll wait for an updated
Quixel Suite 1.9 installer. It´s xmas, so there´s loads of other things to do
anyway...
Cheers,
tim
P.S: Pior, you have some really inspiring work on your homepage.
Still, I would highly encourage you to start by eliminating as many factors as possible, and one very straightforward way to do so would be to play around with the example test projects that Eric mentioned : http://quixel.se/usermanual/quixelsuite/doku.php?id=ddo_samples (the stylized Orc is probably less relevant than the others as it is a bit of an hybrid. The AK and the robot head are very straightforward and fully leverage what DDO is best at.)
If these projects load up correctly, and things are editable as they should be, then that would mean that your workstation is DDO compatible after all. It's worth a shot ! (and if you run into the issue of textures seemingly not loading properly, try to toggle layers on and off in the DDO interface - this brings them back for me.)
I can't possibly recommend this to my company\colleagues
I don't get any of the error messages mentioned by others in this thread; it lets me work for a while and then crashes, just telling me that Quixel Suite has stopped working, without any further details. Sometimes it freezes so completely that I need the task manager to shut it down. Could that be related to the Trial mode? Will it be better in the fully licensed version?
My system specs:
Win7 Professional 64bit, i7-5820K @3.30GHz, 16GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (4GB)
Just want to add that I really enjoy the program and the workflow. I can't really see it as a stand-alone because it is so very handy to be able to use all the Photoshop brushes and other familiar tools, so using it as a plugin makes a lot of sense to me.
If it weren't for the crashes, I'd have bought it already.
Oh by the way, are there any tutorials about tweaking materials, like adding a layer to modify the color, or how to add dirt to a clean texture?
I've pressed "OK" , after that i've tried to search the launcher of Quixel to start it , but i can't find one.
Can anyone help me?
I think I´ve reached a somewhat workable install.
I still get a pop-up from Photoshop during project creation, bitching about mismatching
color profiles I can discard and the project will create now. Fingers crossed
I´ve used the latest download of Quixel Suite to reinstall.
Prior to reinstalling, I did a Add/remove Programs uninstall AND searched my machine
for anything Quixel, then deleted anything Quixel.
This results in the license breaking, so beware. The benefit I found was that it also
cleared out anything that may have been in the way of a clean install of Quixel Suite.
I had to go to my Quixel account and re-activate my license after that but that was
easy enough (in the above cleansweep, the license is deleted but not checked out
prior to nuking relevant files).
Atm, things seem to work.
I would guess something in the various Suite Updates (between 1.4 -1.8) was broken,
lost or overwritten on my machine and made things unuseable.
In a nutshell, I did a (brute force) clean install and that did the trick for me.
Cheers,
tim
Its weird some users have very severe problems. I never had an earlier version of quixel installed. Could it be related to that? Clean install might solve some problems? Just a thought but i am sure you guys have tried everything you can already.
Hope they'd fix this soon on next version.