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Is Alchemist worth one more try already?

gnoop
polycounter
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gnoop polycounter
Last time I tried Alchemist it was totally useless and monstrously inconvenient . Couldn't do a thing there  beyond lots of useless depth blending  that could be done even in Photoshop easier ( with more control)  by groups clipping .   And somewhat  soft,/blurry, not crisp enough outcome.   

Is it closer to what SPainter is now?    Any new features?    like  painting brushes to blend layers and do masks?     Decal style  layers ?    Materials scaling with non integers only?     Non-square textures?

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  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    I'm evaluating it now as a tool to allow artists to create tileables from a library of base materials and filters created by specialist material artists 

    Im answer to the painting questions, the short answer is no.  The manual masking tools are rudimentary although from my initial tests they're actually pretty effective for the sort of work you'll need to do so I'm not sure you'll actually miss the fancy stuff from painter. 

    The AI image to material stuff is basically magic on organic stuff like rocks or ground materials and theres definitely value to be had there 

    Im going to start looking at how It fits into pipelines tomorrow,  based on the docs and some guesswork it does appear that it will be possible to actually work with it in a studio setting but I'm reserving judgement for the moment. 
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    Thanks poopipe
    Have their AI learned to do  proper  shape reconstruction or something  for the rocks?   
    In first release  I tried it seemed nothing  special  IMO,  hardly AI , Just typical  crazybumping .
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    My biggest issue is with working in a shared network environment. Not sure why they had to follow or reinvent the project-like way of thinking as mixer did. I would prefer simple files I could open from where ever. 
    So I stopped evaluation and went with Mixer for the time being. 
  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    The height extraction seems to be very smart  - largely based on me dumping a bunch of crap from textures.com into it and seeing what happened. I can see it being useful for generating data that is then fed to designer to build large surfaces that tile properly.

    @rollin
    That's my biggest issue with the setup - however, it is possible save working projects to actual disk locations and export finished materials to wherever you want. 
    You can also set it up to load specific libraries on startup so shared libraries across the studio are feasible. 

    I don't have to worry about network stuff as everything lives in source control and is accessed locally but I agree - this sort of fuckery is precisely why otherwise great software just fails at being usable in a professional environment.


    **edited for clarity
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    gnoop said:
    Thanks poopipe
    Have their AI learned to do  proper  shape reconstruction or something  for the rocks?   
    In first release  I tried it seemed nothing  special  IMO,  hardly AI , Just typical  crazybumping .
    The first release of Alchemist had basically Bitmap2Material in it. The new method has nothing to do with B2M and is actually using a trained AI. Results on outdoor grounds and walls materials should be night and day, we're currently training it on a larger amount of various materials to improve it for indoor sources as well.
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    Jerc said:
    gnoop said:
    Thanks poopipe
    Have their AI learned to do  proper  shape reconstruction or something  for the rocks?   
    In first release  I tried it seemed nothing  special  IMO,  hardly AI , Just typical  crazybumping .
    The first release of Alchemist had basically Bitmap2Material in it. The new method has nothing to do with B2M and is actually using a trained AI. Results on outdoor grounds and walls materials should be night and day, we're currently training it on a larger amount of various materials to improve it for indoor sources as well.

    Sounds really cool .  Does it need special lighting in photos, learned to ignore shadows? 

    What about non-square textures and  ability to scale imported images or sbs  by something like  0,8955   and deal with tiling seams later /higher in the stack?

    When I tried I could make it  x2  or likewise. It was supper annoying   since a half of our textures are  kind of trim sheets .  Clamped to  a specific  wall height or road width.
  • Jerc
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    Jerc interpolator
    You have a crop layer that should help but we plan on improving that with a native crop tool rather than using a substance filter to do it.
  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    Are there any plans to make it a bit more studio friendly?  Right now it feels very toy-like in terms of project management etc. - everything lives in appdata / home directory, it's all hidden from the user etc.. 

    It could well be that I just haven't worked out how to use it properly yet but it seems that even compared to painter - which is a pain in the arse (sorry :) ) - it's going to be difficult to integrate it effectively into our pipeline
  • gnoop
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    gnoop polycounter
    Jerc said:
    You have a crop layer that should help but we plan on improving that with a native crop tool rather than using a substance filter to do it.

    Thanks Jerc. Would be nice to see a youtube video of those new features and how they work. I seems can't find anything about  that crop layer

  • BaptisteMnt
    poopipe said:
    Are there any plans to make it a bit more studio friendly?  Right now it feels very toy-like in terms of project management etc. - everything lives in appdata / home directory, it's all hidden from the user etc.. 

    It could well be that I just haven't worked out how to use it properly yet but it seems that even compared to painter - which is a pain in the arse (sorry :) ) - it's going to be difficult to integrate it effectively into our pipeline
    @poopipe It is in our plans to improve this system and give more flexibility like one file per project, the ability to define the project location... If you have anything in mind or request, don't hesitate to share.
    gnoop said:
    Jerc said:
    You have a crop layer that should help but we plan on improving that with a native crop tool rather than using a substance filter to do it.

    Thanks Jerc. Would be nice to see a youtube video of those new features and how they work. I seems can't find anything about  that crop layer

    @gnoop Here is a video explaining how to use the Crop filter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFv01Aen7js&t=379s



  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    @poopipe It is in our plans to improve this system and give more flexibility like one file per project, the ability to define the project location... If you have anything in mind or request, don't hesitate to share.

    Thanks :)

    I've not finished my evaluation yet (it comes second to more pressing project matters) but I will certainly be in touch in an official capacity if that sort of thing is welcomed.

    The ideal for me is Alchemist filling a spot similar to painter in our pipeline. Where painter allows non-specialist artists to use our material library to texture uniquely mapped assets, alchemist would facilitate creation of tileable textures  -thereby leaving our material specialists free to make base materials and concentrate on more complicated matters than generating tileables, 
  • rollin
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    rollin polycounter
    poopipe said:
    The height extraction seems to be very smart  - largely based on me dumping a bunch of crap from textures.com into it and seeing what happened. I can see it being useful for generating data that is then fed to designer to build large surfaces that tile properly.

    @rollin
    That's my biggest issue with the setup - however, it is possible save working projects to actual disk locations and export finished materials to wherever you want. 
    You can also set it up to load specific libraries on startup so shared libraries across the studio are feasible. 

    I don't have to worry about network stuff as everything lives in source control and is accessed locally but I agree - this sort of fuckery is precisely why otherwise great software just fails at being usable in a professional environment.


    **edited for clarity
    Hey @poopipe (how) did you manage to setup a shared project? Not talking about shared resources.

    I'm thinking about exporting / importing the project towards a source control folder and then using the merge functionality if different people export different versions of the project with their personal changes included. 
    But it seems bit awkward to do it that way.
     
    Hey, @Jerc, as you're here anyway: how about some sneak-peak input on this?
  • poopipe
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    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    @rollin

    I don't think there's any real hope of handling merges/conflicts - technically you could since the builk of the data is json but it all has gibberish names and it's just dumped in a folder. 
    I'm assuming if it moves to a single file it'll be binary and we'll be as fucked as we are with Painter so I've decided it's not worth worrying about and will just work out a way to treat a project folder as if it were a binary (i'm considering just zipping projects up tbh). 

    Practically speaking I don't see it causing a problem with the users I'm going to target for our first few licenses but longer term there's definitely a need for something clever.

    Honestly if it were a standalone product this sort of thing would be the difference between us buying 5  licenses and 100 licenses and I imagine it'll be the same anywhere else that has more than a handful of artists. 
    Under the subscription model we're paying for it anyway but I'll still be holding it back from the general art team as we do with Designer if I can't work out a good way to deal with version control.





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