Anyone here work in a games studio that uses Substance Painter? Have a shelf setup question.

capone

So when you setup a shelf in Painter on your network it's a folder full of multiple folders such as materials/brushes/alphas/filters etc. This is all contained within a folder titled 'Painter'. So do studios really all have a 'painter' folder somewhere in their project? In my experience studios tend to place their materials in very specific folders, so forcing all materials to be placed inside this painter folder is problematic.

Just curious how other studios deal with this?

poopipe

We put them in the material folder of the shelf - you can add subfolders to organise your stuff.
We use separate shelves for different teams or projects. 

I can't say it's ever caused a problem

zachagreg

Exactly what poopipe said, in our project folder we have a "Substance Painter" folder which houses all of the folders for the different shelf options. Inside those there are subfolders for specific things. For instance, we have "Bolts" and "Rivets" sub folder inside of "Hard Surface" and the entire thing is active on our source control drives on the network.

This talk by Ben Wilson went over it a little bit last year as well. How Machine Games organizes their stuff. Around 3:55.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBGDo7Y28FE

capone

Thanks. Part of what confuses me is that we initially started using substance designer only and making tiling textures. So going forward, we're going to have to move all existing tiling textures made in substance designer that we previously had in a folder called 'shared' (within the specific project) into the material folder in Painter?

Is that what you're all doing?  so any designer textures you create you place into the materials folder within the Painter folder?

zachagreg

I would have the substance designer and substance painter shelves within the same directory so that you do not have to do that. When you designate a substance painter shelf it will create the folders that is uses to search for resources and categorize them. Most of those should already exist if your Designer directory isn't just one big ol' folder with a bunch of .sbs and .sbsar's in it. So when you make a new material in designer it will show up in the appropriate category within painter.

In terms of separating meshes and common stuff we have this kind of setup:

>project folder

--->COMMON

-------->materials(this is for other things)

-------->max

-------->substance

-------->brushes

-------->scripts

-------->presets

--->UNREAL

-------->Sector 1

-------------->3d assets

-------------------->Example 1

--------------------------->max

--------------------------->maps

--------------------------->fbx

-------------------->Example 2

-------------->2d assets

-------->Sector 2

-------->Sector 3

We tend to not store our common tools and files with out stuff that goes in engine at least when it comes to custom maps and meshes. Also every object and file within that structure follows our naming conventions that we established at the beginning of the project.

capone

How ours is set up right now; divided into two sections. Artsource (source files like sbsar, psd, max etc) and Data (sbs, tga, fbx etc).

ARTSOURCE
---------> Shared
-> Concrete
-> Metal
-> Plastic
-> Props

DATA
---------> Shared
-> Concrete
-> Metal
-> Plastic
-> Props

What I'm thinking to changing it to;

ARTSOURCE
---------> Shared
-> Props
---------> Painter
----> Materials
-> Concrete
-> Metal
-> Plastic

DATA
---------> Shared
-> Props
---------> Painter
----> Materials
-> Concrete
-> Metal
-> Plastic

poopipe

We keep our designer and painter stuff separate - we use scripts to generate the painter data from our designer materials so it's easy to keep it up to date. 

zachagreg

Using scripts the way poopipe does is awesome if its possible at your place capone. I do not know if it is or not, perhaps a look into it would bare fruit. Allowing more distinction between files is always great. It reduces human error and keeps things nice and tidy. As far as what you would like to change it to I see no problem with that. I think getting the prop and unique asset data out of the reusable materials is a smart move.

capone

poopipe said:

We keep our designer and painter stuff separate - we use scripts to generate the painter data from our designer materials so it's easy to keep it up to date. 

Curious, what's the general concept of that script? When you submit a material made in designer it duplicates a copy into the Painter folder? What if you make an edit to the original? Do you run the script again to update the duplicated material?

poopipe

It generates an sbsar and puts it  in the shelf folder. You'll need S.A.T / Batchtools. it's run manually cos not everything we do for designer wants to be in the painter shelf

currently it's impossible to automate resource updates in painter files without doing some wizardry i've only head rumour of. for now we're forced to update and re-export from painter manually

capone

You know the 'material' folder within the Shelf? Is it possible to point that to another folder outside? For example say we have a 'Textures' folder somewhere else in our project? 

zachagreg

For SP? I imagine not unless you do some behind the scenes wizardry. Some sbsar will not function correctly inside of painter unless they are in the correct category. If it's image files I don't see why it would cause an issue. However painter does separate textures and materials by default in it's shelf.

capone

It's possible, look I've done it here;



It then sets up the shelf folder within that. Fantastic! but...

Substance Painter can't seem to find the .sbs files in here? I've tried putting a specific TAG in the Substance Designer and put that into the Painter searchbar in the shelf but no luck.

poopipe

Painter can't use  sbs files, it needs cooked sbsar files. 

And no,  you can't add individual folders to the shelf, it's hard coded. You can add as many shelves as you like though.

Painter uses the shelf structure to add the required type data to its resources. You would be ill advised to bugger around with it

capone

Ah yes I mean SBSAR file, sorry. It can't find my SBSARs.

Yeah I'm not adding individual folders, I just want to see my own substances in Painter without placing them in the 'materials' folder in substances default shelf. I think I'm partly there in that I'm created my own folder. Check the address folder at the top, I've made Painter put shelf content folders in my 'shared' folder. 

It's a real shame (if really true) that Substance can't find my materials in for example 'Concrete' folder. So what I think you are saying @poopipe is that I need to copy all my SBSARS into 'Materials' folder? I put one in there but SPainter still can't find it.

I'm convinced what I am asking for here is something incredibly simple and basic but it's difficult to articulate, so I'm making it sound more complex than it actually is. I've watched the official videos (and others) countless times but there seems to be nothing about setting custom shelves outside of the default even though it's clearly an option. The official documentation is incredibly vague on this subject. I fail to believe that studios really just paste their materials into the Painter materials folder.

poopipe

You can put materials into subfolders within a shelf,  that works fine.

Try importing your sbsar as a resource - if it works there, it'll work as a material in the shelf.  If it doesn't you need to set your graph up differently.

This does all work,  we have hundreds of custom built materials and filters spread across several shelves and projects. 

zachagreg

Same as poopipe on my end the only problem that you may run into when doing it by just exporting to the folders from designer is that you need to commit the change on some source controls. On ours painter won't recognize the addition until your native folders match the server folders.

Again though just importing as a resource fixes that problem.

capone

I can import a material (resource) into SP successfully. 

capone

Yet importing it puts it into the materials folder of my custom shelf. So think could be a HUGE penny drop moment for me, is that what you're all doing? Importing resources every time you want something to be stored in your shelf? Because I've been hooked on this concept that you publish substances to a specific folder and PAINTER can automatically find them as the shelf is directed in that space?

Does that make sense? 

poopipe

It will pick them up automatically if they're in the right folder - it'll even update the shelf with additions while painter is open. 

zachagreg

poopipe said:

It will pick them up automatically if they're in the right folder - it'll even update the shelf with additions while painter is open. 

I think I understand the confusion, currently capone your folders are setup outside of the normal Substance Painter folder structure. If you want your subfolders ie. Concrete, ceramic, fabric they need to be within the relevant folder within painters file structure. 

So putting Concrete outside of materials will not result in the Concrete folder showing up in the shelf editor. However, putting Concrete inside of the materials folder will result in a sub-folder of Concrete showing up in the shelf editor.

Basically whats happening is that Painter uses its folder structure to designate sbsar types (provided they are setup correctly) Once you put sub folders within the designated folders they will appear. If you need those folders to then show up in a designated shelf make sure to actually set up a shelf window in painter using the shelf-editor. 

It looks like this
 

Going through the drop downs you will see that there are subfolders within each main folder grouping. Clicking on any of these will result in an orange shelf filter to appear.

Here is the allegorithmic shelf setup follow this guideline essentially and it will work.

radiancef0rge

i symlink the relevant folders including the material folder to the designer shelf folders.

we have two parallel directories, sbs and sbsar.  one for artists (sbsars) and one for tech artists (sbs).  the shelf that is hooked up in designer for artists and what is symlinked for painter is the sbsar folder.