just discovered substance painter/designer
polycounter lvl 4
So I just stumbled across Substance Painter/Designer and they look incredible and might consider buying it/them, I just have a few questions to help clarify some things.
1) What are the main differences between the two applications? At first glance they seem to do very similar things.
2) The Substance site says it allows you to paint across all channels at once. Does that mean what you see in the viewport is directly applied to all maps (diffuse, spec, normals etc)?
3) Are they only meant to do PBR renderings or can they produce assets in the same visual style as WoW or LoL?
4) When would you use substance painter to texture over the standard workflow (maya/zbrush/max + photoshop)?
1) What are the main differences between the two applications? At first glance they seem to do very similar things.
2) The Substance site says it allows you to paint across all channels at once. Does that mean what you see in the viewport is directly applied to all maps (diffuse, spec, normals etc)?
3) Are they only meant to do PBR renderings or can they produce assets in the same visual style as WoW or LoL?
4) When would you use substance painter to texture over the standard workflow (maya/zbrush/max + photoshop)?
Replies
2) Yes, you can make a brush that paints to the diffuse/spec/normal/metalness/roughness/ etc for whatever texture workflow you are using.
3) They can do PBR and hand painted looks, even stylized games are starting to use pbr ideas.
4) Substance painter moves the texturing process from photoshop into it's own dedicated application. Photoshop isn't designed around painting textures so there's a lot of annoy aspects when trying to create a texture in photoshop for a 3d model. With substance painter you can get an accurate presentation of what the texture will look like, you can easily paint over seams, adjust different texture types, and alter them at the same time. The layers are set up to be more friendly for 3d work, and you can apply effects and wear to your model in 3d space, that you could never attempt to do with photoshop.
Hi,
@ZacD posted good answers. I'll chime in as well.
1) What are the main differences between the two applications? At first glance they seem to do very similar things.
Substance Designer's core purpose is to create substance materials (.sbsar) files that can be loaded into Substance enabled applications such as UE4, Unity, Maya, Max, MODO, C4D. SD is a node-based system that has a workflow similar to composting application. SD is non-destructive and allows you to build up textures using a material workflow. This means you can work across multiple channels at the same time. Since you are authoring a Substance, you can create a texture that is dynamic in resolution. You can also create a texture through authoring a substance that is modular. For example, a ground texture that allows you to add rock, dirt, snow by simply changing a parameter.
Substance Painter is a 3D painting package. It is build on the same core substance engine as SD. This means its non-destructive and can utilize substance materials in the texture process. SP is more of an artist friendly tool and has a workflow very similar to Photoshop/Mudbox.
SD and SP are independent applications. You can use one without the other.
2) The Substance site says it allows you to paint across all channels at once. Does that mean what you see in the viewport is directly applied to all maps (diffuse, spec, normals etc)?
This means that you are working on your texture from a material point of view rather than single texture channels. For example, I can configure my channels such as base color, roughness, metal, height and then when I paint, I am painting data on all channels at the same time. You can work on individual channels as well. By painting with multiple channels, the result you see in the viewport is the full material. This makes it much easier to work as you see the result of all channels working together.
3) Are they only meant to do PBR renderings or can they produce assets in the same visual style as WoW or LoL?
Substance Painter is geared towards PBR. Substance Designer supports non-PBR workflows. However, PBR can be used for stylized work as well. Just because its PBR doesn't mean it has to be photo-realistic.
4) When would you use substance painter to texture over the standard workflow (maya/zbrush/max + photoshop)?
SP allows you to paint directly on the 3D model. This is a major advantage over photoshop which in strictly 2D. With Painter, you can see your results rendered on the model in realtime as you work. It removes the process of working with PS/Maya where you are constantly going back and forth between the application making tweaks and rendering.
Cheers,
Wes
To elaborate on PBR/S - it doesn't mean "realistic rendering" - what PBS primarily give us is a consistent appearance under different lighting conditions, and all the "features" you would need as an artist to approximate essentially any surface in accordance with roughly real world rules.
Remember, this all basically comes from Pixar, who don't exactly do real life :P You do pretty much what ever you fancy.
can i build my own shader inside ? lets say i want to paint a translucency map, can i build a shader inside painter and then paint the translucency in real time ?
@WindchILL You can have overlapping UV shells, if you have flipped symmetrical geometry for example.
I tried using a sample project that came with the software and i wanted to test material painting, and this is what i got:
Whats the reason for artifacts coming up like this and how do I avoid them?
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=148913
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=148911
I still dont know why I'm getting the bugs though. Im not much of a computer person technical-wise, is this not powerful enough?