large scale substance to unity workflow

gamzrock

Hi everyone! I'm facing a problem at work. We were using an old engine that only support 1 diffuse map on our 3d model and we achieved to convince them to switch to unity.  Now we are trying to make them use substance to texture our model instead of keeping the old single map. They want us to keep the same ''generics system'' library we used previously, in short a substance for all the different bolts/screws (we choose the type later in Unity), a substance for all the wires, plastic stuff etc

They need a proof that will be lighter than 1 map for each model and a workflow/pipeline. Unfortunately we don't have the time and the skills yet to create example project. We all worked with substance on small assets only and need to learn a bit more about substance on large scale. Do you think it is possible to have a project like that? Or we will have to create a custom substance for each model...

So we are a bit lost right now, we hope you will have an idea.

poopipe

I think your biggest problem here is that a live substance in engine is not lighter than a single map.

If you're planning to export a single map from substance then there's no difference 

There are many reasons to use substance, the main ones that appeal to business/management types are how straightforward it can make managing a material library, how it can facilitate automation  and how easy it is to make changes late on in the process (provided you've planned properly) - the creative reasons are well known. 

I'm a bit confused about what you're trying to achieve but if you want to swap textures on the fly there are better ways than using the substance plugin.