Substance Designer mesh input experiments
greentooth
Hello everyone!
I've been very inspired by Dannie Carlone and his zbrush+designer workflow (him and others!) that totally shows the strength of baked geometry, and that brought me back to the first thing I ever wished I had in SD: a mesh node ! (https://allegorithmic.uservoice.com/forums/257908-substance-designer/suggestions/17756503-mesh-node)
So I started trying to find work-arounds, and came to find a way to have this mesh node! finally !
Here are some lazy iray shots of 2 different random seeds and material tiling of an extreme example of the mesh node use :
I was quickly confronted to the interpenetrating geo issue, which, can not really be solved in designer as far as I know
I might go back to the Max blending mode that is offered by Tile Sampler Grayscale as it lets the meshes interpenetrate eachother in a smooth way, rather than having one on top of the other like you can see it right now.
So as I said this one example is extreme, but this flow's great when you stick to one layer, putting stuff on the ground for instance.
As of piles, I don't believe it could replace a positioning by hand or a gravity simulation. who knows...
I will be posting more examples of its use as I progress !
critics and suggestions appreciated thanks!
And thanks a bunch mr @Bruno Afonseca for answering my hundred questions..!
I've been very inspired by Dannie Carlone and his zbrush+designer workflow (him and others!) that totally shows the strength of baked geometry, and that brought me back to the first thing I ever wished I had in SD: a mesh node ! (https://allegorithmic.uservoice.com/forums/257908-substance-designer/suggestions/17756503-mesh-node)
So I started trying to find work-arounds, and came to find a way to have this mesh node! finally !
Here are some lazy iray shots of 2 different random seeds and material tiling of an extreme example of the mesh node use :
I was quickly confronted to the interpenetrating geo issue, which, can not really be solved in designer as far as I know
I might go back to the Max blending mode that is offered by Tile Sampler Grayscale as it lets the meshes interpenetrate eachother in a smooth way, rather than having one on top of the other like you can see it right now.
So as I said this one example is extreme, but this flow's great when you stick to one layer, putting stuff on the ground for instance.
As of piles, I don't believe it could replace a positioning by hand or a gravity simulation. who knows...
I will be posting more examples of its use as I progress !
critics and suggestions appreciated thanks!
And thanks a bunch mr @Bruno Afonseca for answering my hundred questions..!
Replies
Luckily, I was able to make draft of it in under 1 day time:
It takes texture rendered in Houdini via Volume Textures tool and makes some magic inside.
I'll post link in my thread when it's done.
How did you manage to implement that controller dot here ? Is it a 2017 feature?
Awesome!
Thanks for all comments been busy with work I'll use it some more and add stuff soon
Edit: Alright just found out about the dot controller with the cube 3d node, perfect use of it!
Here are the results for quick various height maps on a mesh :
So this thing is functional and saves quite a lot of time as before this I'd have been choosing my rotations and baking separately.
It's nice to visualize your height map like this, but I have to say I haven't used it yet as I prefer my <Disorder Gradient> Atlas which lets you have very good, and more than enough height variations as it covers all angles. The lower you go on the atlas, the more random the rotation is, gradually from the clean initial one. It is what I used on the bolts pile, on the original post. Again, that use of the flow was extreme, I'd recommend using it with elements that don't touch eachother too much
I am going to be off for two weeks, time for some vacations. I'll pack all my bake setups in 2018 as soon as I'm back, and release that. Nice icons and all on the nodes !
As of now, and I think it is the definitive one as I could remove any external software use - this is the flow :
- import your .obj to Designer
- generate your Atlas using the Bake model information menu
- use the Mesh Splatter/Pile Generator to spread mesh around // or pick your height maps yourself with the Mesh Tilt
- texture
You can texture it using Substance Designer, but you can also texture it in Painter or wherever, and bake your different texturing maps.
Disorder Gradient Height Atlas vs Tilt Atlas
Sorry for people who have asked me but this will wait for January I didn't fully clean my files yet.
I will also make a tutorial on how to make your own setups, and explain my graphs.
happy holliday all!
Here's a tutorial and you can download the rest for free on Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/l/pcHdw
Again, thanks to the other folks who helped me out sometimes when I was stuck with little things!
Here's the artstation post ! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qyJx2
Yes you do!
From what I can see, if you want to make a pile you cannot just use this height sampler node as you will face lots of interpenetration (+ You won't conrol depth very well)
try using Pile Layering which masks most elements that are over other ones, and manually making layers as you can see on my graph. Now that is for a pile, it will never be perfect but you can get close.
Also can you show me your height map as you said it looks weird ?
We can go on Discord if you'd like