filter made in designer gives me errors in painter

MmAaXx

this is weird, I'm trying to make build a filter in substance designer to use in painter but I get this error.

[Effect Procedural View] Effect selected can't be used as an effect because:
no output defined

any idea? I'm using the "painter filter" preset, but I still get the error.
here is the file (very simple)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnkpmazocim02wb/filter_test.sbs?dl=0

thankyou!

Tzur_H

I'm not sure why this is happening, but if you make a fill layer, you'll see you don't have input maps slots like curvature, AO etc. even though your filter is using these data maps.
However, if you drag and drop the filter from the shelf to your layer stack it will set all the channels to pass through and will read the data maps you've used in the creation of it.

Btw, I had a play with it.  It didn't work at first, only when I changed the setup to the one below: Again, not sure why...

Maybe there's a better approach to these sort of filters :S

MmAaXx

that's right! it works.
Still I don't understand why a normal combo node is needed.

Froyok

An effect is a filter that take an input, alter it, and then output something.
This means you need an input and output node for every channel you want to modify. You can't simply put an input node alone in a graph, it would be discarded during the cooking for optimization purpose. That's why the switch si required.

Tzur_H

MmAaXx said:

that's right! it works.
Still I don't understand why a normal combo node is needed.

Froyok said:

An effect is a filter that take an input, alter it, and then output something.
This means you need an input and output node for every channel you want to modify. You can't simply put an input node alone in a graph, it would be discarded during the cooking for optimization purpose. That's why the switch si required.

Thanks, Froyok :]
Based on the info Froyok has provided, you can use a blend node set to copy instead of the normal combine, pass the normal input data to BG, pass filter output to FG, then output to normal output.  Do the blending of the layer in Painter.  I think that's a better approach.

MmAaXx

thankyou guys.
That makes sense!

Btw I can't find a way to expose  the ambient occlusion to the filter tab. I tried with the "painter filer preset" but it doesn't work.

Froyok

Make sure that your inputs node follow the right naming convention : 
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Additional+Map
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Channel+specific+filter