Mari and substance painter

melviso

So I have been doing some research about other texturing sofwares like Mari, Substance painter and Mudbox.
Substance Painter seems to be quite popular especially with udim now added and multi channel painting.
Mari does not support multi channel painting but supports huge udim painting.
Would appreciate texture artists feedback and opinions about Mari and substance and how they influence their workflow.

Can substance painter support huge udim painting?

Yerus

Take a look at this vid here, It shall answer your doubt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF3MifkvESc

melviso

I have seen the vid. Someone in the comment section said: '' Obviously this is outdated info now.....Painter can paint accross UDIMs in the latest update and you can export 8K maps so I really don't see why people would want to use Mari anymore to be honest...''

Is this true? Can u now paint across udim in substance painter or this is still being worked on?

oglu

You cant paint across UDIMs but its in development. 

But you need to paint across UDIMs only if you are working on giant continuous surfaces like a Monster Body. Everything else could be split up in logical UDIMs where you dont need to paint across. Painter is able to read the UDIM layout and does create different texture sets for it.

Like on those Cyborgs in Alita.
https://magazine.substance3d.com/alita-battle-angel-texturing-cyberpunk-future-dneg-vancouver-and-mumbai/

Or this Robot here has 180 UDIMs.
https://store.substance3d.com/blog/retrofit-af26-robot-lookdev-texturing-story-jason-huang

melviso

Found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihQTBc_e8DM

@oglu This explains a lot. Thanks for the links. They should really do something about that. UDIMs help make rendering easier by breaking ur textures into smaller maps rather than using a huge map for an asset. Painting across udim is even possible in Blender currently. 
The video I posted was uploaded almost 3 years ago. Currently, can u at least paint on one udim set without the other udims disappearing as u paint?

oglu

To make it possible is not the problem. But you have to make sure it does work with 100+ UDIMs. And thats a huge task.
Data management in that area is really advanced stuff. Swapping out the Data to Disk and back fast enough is not easy.

Have you ever tried to paint 10+ 4k maps in Blender with UDIMs?

melviso

I haven't tbh. But I have used up to 8 4k maps in Blender for simple meshes . If I had to due to performance issues, I could seperate out the mesh part I need to paint across for like 8 udims and paint that and repeat across to get the job done.
It would be nice if they start with something like 10 for now and add more performance boost later for like 100+ udims.

oglu

Could you show me how to setup UDIM painting in Blender.

melviso

@oglu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuldUVJ-FBU
https://blenderartists.org/t/udim-support-for-2-8-by-lukas-stockner-development-thread/1114538/199
It is in a seperate branch from the official blender.
Its not the most intuitive since its still under development. Might crash sometimes.

melviso

Hmm... udim now working in substance painter?  At 1:22:35. Does anyone know when they are planing a release? How many udim does it support? Up to 100?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkuHPZIe1wU

gnoop

In Mari you could recreate SPainter approach with help of built in node editor.    It has hugely superior  projective painting  to  paint with photogrammetry based color+height  images through live connection with Photoshop smart objects.   it's layer system allows to connect anything to whatever else you want with nodes or without.

It's not only UDIM support that SPainter lacking comparing to Mari actually.

Still it's too expensive, too complicated  even more than SPainter , even less suited to paint tillable  textures. 

There is 3d coat also. it supports multichannel painting, better imo brush engine than both Painter and Mari,    procedural mask generators, painting across UDIMs ( not too many UDIMs although)   but imo lacking in layer system and overall non-destructive approach both Mari and Painter could provide.

I would say there is no currently a software that could cover all your possible needs in texturing area.    I am looking forward to Quixel Mixer . They promise to turn it into full scale texture editor .    At least even being very stripped of features Mixer shows many traits of  its devs actually understand what's artist friendly means

melviso

gnoop said:

I would say there is no currently a software that could cover all your possible needs in texturing area.    I am looking forward to Quixel Mixer . They promise to turn it into full scale texture editor .    At least even being very stripped of features Mixer shows many traits of  its devs actually understand what's artist friendly means 

Very true. Looking forward to Quixel tbh.
Edit:
@gnoop Does Mari support painting udim in a different uv channel? Like uvchannel 6 instead of uv0 or uv1 ? Or the udim has to be painted in uv0 or uv1?

gnoop

melviso said:

@gnoop Does Mari support painting udim in a different uv channel? Like uvchannel 6 instead of uv0 or uv1 ? Or the udim has to be painted in uv0 or uv1?

I am not an expert in current  Mari.   I mostly used its Steam   6 uv tiles  limited version.        So might be wrong about modern one  I only dealt with trial recently.  

From what I know Mari   couldn't use different UV channels.   . In Mari you could use UV scale/multiplication feature  to make certain layer be tillable  from same unique unwrap initially .    Same as modern game shaders do usually with macro / micro detail layers. 

If I understood your question right, because uv 1001, 1002 are not uv channels  they are rather UV shifts on same UV channel.

 We don't use UDIM , rather typical material ID approach  where you could unwrap every piece in same  0-1 UV space or in UDIM style if you wish , it doesn't  matter  unless you go too far away from 0-1.      It's pain in the a.. to deal with ,I know, with too many matID especially,   still it's that  way.    Guess  UDIMs  would make few more redundant calculations for real time or something.

 Sometimes you may need second UV channel on geometry , for lightmaps for example.  But as of 6 uv channels I can't even imagine why you might need it .   Usually anything beyond lightmaps are  just decals with its own polygons laying over and using special post-effect based rendering technique in a separate pass .

ps  Imo  biggest Mari advantage beyond typical  texture resolution UDIM tiles  aspect  is  vastly superior texture projection techniques.  In Painter  the projection is fairly basic.   In Mari you could save "projections",  mesh deform source in outside soft  to be perfectly matching your object in evry smallest detail and then project back again  perfectly matching  depth, roughness whatever,  re-project again and again whatever times you want.    

  All that procedural approach for textures is cool indeed but  with Mari you could just find a photo of certain crack, rust, drips, smears  or a photo of whole building facade  and project it precisely up to every  volute  if you wish,  It's  sometimes so much time and final result  effective than tweaking non stop all that gazillion procedurals you have created.      

 I am shocked  Substance devs seems don't agree.

 

Carlosan

Another choice is 3DCoat, support multi channel painting and udim painting.

gnoop

Yeah, actually pretty good texture soft.   Udim works with no more 16k x 16k pixels in total of all udims parts, then starts to slow down.  Probably depends on video card memory, not sure.   

   Brushes are best ever   with ability to scatter random brush dabs or displaced details on the fly     without all the  puzzles of Substance splatters  but the layer system lacks all SPainter filters  and  "anchor" based  non-destructive approach.    You couldn't make layer depth/height based   mix like in Painter/Mari/Quixel mixer.   At least I couldn't find how 

  There is its own smart materials with  curvature based procedural masks but not as advanced as you could do in Substance Designer and then use in Painter

Projective painting lacks Mari saved "projections" but still much better than SPainter one. At least you could set the center of transform  where you want and mesh deform source.

wilson66

melviso said:

Hmm... udim now working in substance painter?  At 1:22:35. Does anyone know when they are planing a release? How many udim does it support? Up to 100?

No, Painter still doesn't support painting across UDIMs. They are working on it though, and announced a closed beta for that feature for a limited amount of users starting early next year. No limit to UDIM count was announced.

melviso

Thanks for the info guys.
I saw zbrush 2020 new features. Polypaint has some really cool tools and zbrush supports udim baking..I think. Can zbrush bake edge maps?

onionhead_o

Mari is still king in Film/VFX field. Substance Painter is Great for games and non hero assets. I recently did a task with mainly Painter and oh boy it was a pain in the butt to paint an asset with only 15 udims. It has nice material presets and Smart mask, but painting wise its not that fun to use. I was struggling to get painter to display 4k on each udim. Most of the time i had to work in 1k preview, its fine for base material. But When you have to paint detail scratches or fine detailed mask, its hard to see what you are painting when its so low res in the viewport.  Even in the Robot Example, The author had to split the model in different scenes to complete it.

And I don't think zbrush can bake edge maps/curvature out of the box yet. you have to do some workarounds to get that.

melviso

@onionhead_o Thanks for the info. Zbrush has so much power so I think they may be coming up with some baking and painting features soon hopefully.

gnoop

melviso said:

Zbrush has so much power so I think they may be coming up with some baking and painting features soon hopefully.

I wouldn't stake much on it.   For decades they did so many weird useless features already but not anything sound for texture painting . Guess it's not that simple.

melviso

I think they are paying more attention to polypaint now. Some artists seem to prefer doing their textures in zbrush and export to as textures.
Also, seems u can create edge maps in ZBrush, sort of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGeAixOAsIY

gnoop

melviso said:

I think they are paying more attention to polypaint now.

Yeah, I am one of those crazy ones who prefered to do everything in Zbrush.    It has few advantages. You get more predictable and understandable  control  of cavity masking there  than what usual nomal map to curvature , or hipassed height to curvature  do in regular texture editors.           The whole work flow is more in line with typical artist approach "from general form to details" including textures  in opposite to Substance Designer  and even Painter.           

 In fact I did my most real life looking textures in Zbrush probably  because of that.   it's true Art tool.  Whatever "procedural" look you get from noises of fibers  your hand fixes it in no time at kind of subconscious level   while in Substance designer it's never-ending fight with  that robotic look it tend to produce.

But lack of non-destructiveness , lack of  noise variations ( procedural noise editor is pathetic)  and never-ending glitches, weird quirks  like normal map material having gamma error  and needing ambient light set to zero + BPR render to render hairs. You always forget to switch something on or off .   Off screen render is terrible and unstable , no ID pass or cryptomatte,   Keyshot is just a toy and too slow for texture rendering.   All that turns it into a non stop torture.

Still I don't understand why they couldn't fix all this.   Make 2,5D mode something like quixel Mixer for example .  I used it it   to make environment textures for years.  It really needs a few touches only .