What is the correct workflow for using a baked LP object with a Substance Material?

JakeGuestArt

Hi guys, 

I hope someone can help me with this. I've entered the artstation environment challenge and I've come across an issue I'm having. I haven't used Designer much before with bespoke objects, but in this instance I'm creating the Wild West scene and I've created some bespoke rock formations. I've unwrapped these rocks and baked their normals, AO and curvature to maps for me to use in Unreal. I've then moved into Substance Designer and created a stylised rocks texture. My issue now, is that I have no idea how to apply this to my rocks. I was originally going to blend the original LP normals and AO into the sbsar, but obviously I can't do that because the substance material is using the rocks unwrap to apply the texture.

When using the Substance Material in Unreal it's following the unwrap of the rocks (as if it were a flat texture, which obviously at it's core it is) but I'm stumped. I have no idea how to work in this workflow.

The only thing I can think of doing is to just add a box map to the low poly object to get the rock mapping the way I want it, but then I lose my baked normal, AO and curvature info.

I've got some screen grabs of the rock with it's own baked normals and AO, it's UV's and with the sbsar applied.

Rock Uv's


Rock w/ normal+AO


Rock with sbsar


The material looks like this when rendered on a sphere in Marmoset



My main question is, how do I approach this? Do I have to generate a square map for anything I want to use a sbsar file on? I also have a building I need to create substance materials for as well, (if creating wooden planks) when I approach that should my UV's all be 90 degrees so the lines make sense? 

I've been scouring the internet for a week now and can't find any mention of how to properly unwrap models for use with sbsar files and I just hoped someone would be able to shed some light on it for me.

Thanks everyone 

ZacD

You have 2 options, making a UV island that's one giant island for the front, back, top, and sides (basically unwrapping it like a cube).

Or using triplanar projection to have the textures have the textures tile in world space and ignore UVs.

JakeGuestArt

ZacD said:

You have 2 options, making a UV island that's one giant island for the front, back, top, and sides (basically unwrapping it like a cube).

Or using triplanar projection to have the textures have the textures tile in world space and ignore UVs.

That's what I was thinking. The cube method seemed the easiest to test out.

I hadn't thought of triplanar, but would that cause the lines in the texture to not match up?

I'm just finding it hard to work out a proper workflow for this since every tutorial I can find doesn't actually show the process of unwrapping an object, then implementing the substance materials in engine to then move onto creating an environment.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll test them both out (:

ZacD

The issue with triplanar is weirdness where the texture blends from the front/side projection to the top projection. Otherwise it tiles perfectly.

sprunghunt

you should modify your stylised rock substance to use the baked maps as inputs.

JakeGuestArt

sprunghunt said:

you should modify your stylised rock substance to use the baked maps as inputs.

I was thinking that too, but then how would I go about making sure the rock lines are going in the right direction in Substance Designer? Would it be a sort of mask and rotate sort of workflow?

sprunghunt

JakeGuestArt said:

sprunghunt said:

you should modify your stylised rock substance to use the baked maps as inputs.

I was thinking that too, but then how would I go about making sure the rock lines are going in the right direction in Substance Designer? Would it be a sort of mask and rotate sort of workflow?

You use your hipoly information to create the rock lines. You don't add extra rock lines that don't exist in the hipoly. 

JakeGuestArt

sprunghunt said:

JakeGuestArt said:

sprunghunt said:

you should modify your stylised rock substance to use the baked maps as inputs.

I was thinking that too, but then how would I go about making sure the rock lines are going in the right direction in Substance Designer? Would it be a sort of mask and rotate sort of workflow?

You use your hipoly information to create the rock lines. You don't add extra rock lines that don't exist in the hipoly. 

I must be confused then. I thought Substance Designer created materials that could be used as large, tiling textures to cover large surfaces such as rocks, ground planes or buildings and built into that substance could be large form details like large cut aways, raised striations or crevices. My thought behind this rock substance was that it would cover the whole rock, including raised ridges and sunken fissures that would be controlled by a height map.

If that isn't the case, then what is Substance Designer actually for? If I have to model all the striation lines into every rock I need to make, I'll be here forever. I'm just really struggling to understand how to apply anything from Substance Designer into my environment. I don't really want to use Substance Painter for every prop I have in my scene, including landscape, but I really don't understand how it fits into the workflow.

sprunghunt

JakeGuestArt said:

sprunghunt said:

JakeGuestArt said:

sprunghunt said:

you should modify your stylised rock substance to use the baked maps as inputs.

I was thinking that too, but then how would I go about making sure the rock lines are going in the right direction in Substance Designer? Would it be a sort of mask and rotate sort of workflow?

You use your hipoly information to create the rock lines. You don't add extra rock lines that don't exist in the hipoly. 

I must be confused then. I thought Substance Designer created materials that could be used as large, tiling textures to cover large surfaces such as rocks, ground planes or buildings and built into that substance could be large form details like large cut aways, raised striations or crevices. My thought behind this rock substance was that it would cover the whole rock, including raised ridges and sunken fissures that would be controlled by a height map.

If that isn't the case, then what is Substance Designer actually for? If I have to model all the striation lines into every rock I need to make, I'll be here forever. I'm just really struggling to understand how to apply anything from Substance Designer into my environment. I don't really want to use Substance Painter for every prop I have in my scene, including landscape, but I really don't understand how it fits into the workflow.

Substance designer can be used to create tiling textures to cover large areas. But you're not covering a large area. You're making a single asset.

Substance designer can also be used to create a series of rules that you apply to a 3d model to texture it. These rules can then be reapplied to every 3d model with similar textures to create the same look. You don't need to go into substance painter and hand-edit every rock. You can create a single "rock" rule and apply that to every rock. 

Also you don't have to hand-model fissures and cracks. You can use brushes and masks in zbrush to do the same thing in seconds. Here's a pack of brushes for zbrush that is used for exactly that purpose:

https://gumroad.com/l/nOkHw