Need Help! Substance Painter to Redshift for Maya workflow
polycounter lvl 2
I am very close to tearing all of my hair out. I've sort of neglected the whole texturing process for the majority of the time I've been doing 3D animation. I recently started using substance painter, and my general workflow involves Maya, using Redshift renderer. I painted this chair for a uni project, and exported all of the textures. I then tried to apply them to my mesh in Maya. Some of the materials seem to work okay (though not perfect), as you can see from the images below. However, in particular, the silver material I have used for the screws and the pipe on the bottom, does not export properly at all, or rather the diffuse map doesn't. The texture image itself appears to be totally black, but when rendered it shows as fluorescent white. I've been trying to find a solution to this for a couple of days now and I'm at my wits end. Generally I am not happy with the textures at all, the main issue is the silver pipe but I think I just need someone to explain this process to me properly. I've included a screen shot of the way I've connected my nodes (probably all wrong), some of the error messages I've received in Substance and also renders from both Maya and Substance painter. It would be greatly appreciated if somebody could explain this process a bit more clearly to me, as I have had a lot of trouble finding a relevant tutorial. Many thanks in advance, and go easy on me, as I'm a bit of a texturing noob.
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I've been demoing redshift the past week, I'm pretty pleased with it, especially the speed. So here's the setup:
Roughness, Normal and Height file nodes are set to Raw, the others are sRGB color space.
The metals are appearing black because you're using the metalness workflow. In 3d, they don't have a diffuse value, the perceived color comes entirely in the reflection, so that's normal. However, you're missing the _metallic map from Substance in your Maya scene. In your rsMaterial change the Fresnel Type to Metalness, which exposes a Metalness value where that map will connect to.
Now your non-metals stay the way they are. Metals will now rely on the roughness color and environment reflections to show their color.
Displacement in Maya always runs directly to the Shading Group, redshift supplies their own displacement node to handle your textures. In your case it doesn't look like height is being used.
You have a reflection texture that you also don't need in this case, or it's using incorrect values. Generally speaking, your roughness values will take care of reflection, so keep it at the default for now.
I had read the same regarding changing the fresnel type to metalness, but there is no option in my version of Maya/Redshift? I only have the option for dielectric or conductor? This confused me a fair bit, any idea why that is?
I did remove the reflection value, and messed around with the settings a bit to no avail. I think I'm possibly using the wrong export settings in SP, as it does not export a _metallic map. I had read that I need roughness, metallic, base colour and normal? When I export I get diffuse, emissive, _f0 (not entirely sure what that is), glossiness, height and normal maps. Come to think of it, it doesn't give me a roughness map either, which I feel might actually be a massive problem.
I had plugged the _f0 map into the additional colour in the hope that that's what it was... apparently that was wishful thinking, though I did find it strange that I hadn't seen it mentioned anywhere online.
Your response has actually given me a lot to think about, and I really appreciate it. Seems to me the maps that I'm exporting are actually totally wrong, despite using the preset for Redshift? I'm pretty new to texture mapping to this extent, and only picked up Substance painter a few days ago, so I do feel very lost.
I've been using Redshift in Maya for a while now, and I find the speed to be completely exceptional, so learning to use it, integrated with Substance, is absolute top priority for me.
Perhaps you know where I'm going wrong in terms of my texture export settings? Your screenshot, and comments have led me to believe that I'm actually working with the wrong maps to begin with, and I feel that if I had the right maps I could hook them up properly now, using your screen grab as a template. If you could shed any more light on how to export the appropriate maps, I'd be incredibly grateful!
Thanks so much for this response, it makes perfect sense and has provided me with a lot of clarity!
For lack of metalness, I'm not sure what to suggest. Be sure you're using the standard redshift material, they have many types.
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Redshift+for+Maya
I forgot all about this and that's where you got the _f0 from, and was made for an older redshift release. I just use the standard PBRMetalRough, Allegorithmic does have a newer preset on this page. Though the screenshot of the material in that thread seems to match with what you're seeing.
When you go to export from SP, You choose a preset that matches the channels in your project. So maybe you're using Height in substance, but don't actually need it for renders, so you have the option to not export it. On the flipside, you want your export settings to match the texture channels you're actually using, so picking specular won't help if you're using roughness.
https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/TextureSet+Settings
Thank you so much! Happy rendering!
(Included the comparison pic below!)