Something is wrong with height representation in Substance Designer

pixelquaternion

Hi there, i am having lot of issue with height representation in the 3d view, it's not the same as others even if i put the exact same settings and resolution, i have tried everything like playing with scale factor, height node settings and normal node settings.

I use a simple shape node with tile pyramid

My specs, intel I7 2600k, 16 gb ram nvidia geforce RTX 2060 with driver : 451.48

Here picture to describe the issue better, the height shape differ on many pyramid and i cannot get a clean pyramidal shape they are all curvy as you can see.

Here the height node :

Here my nodes setup

wirrexx

I did a shape without tiling it.

This way, the shape has more resolutionspace.

Added it to a tile sampler to tile it and a blur hq on 0.05 to smooth it out.

poopipe

this is mostly an artefact caused by limitations in the shader - neither POM or tessellation is particularly accurate - POM is particularly prone to wobbles 

a couple of things that might help

I don't think the pbr base material uses the full height range by default (i think it compresses to 0.5) - increasing height scale in shader to compensate will lose precision

if you're tessellating use the high-resolution plane and increase tessellation factor in the material settings 

wirrex - if you have the same number of tiles and the same number of pixels in your output then the resolution of the shape is the same - the final bitmap is what gets sent to the shader. i think you're getting a better result because of the factors above and the blur

pixelquaternion

Hey hi wirrexx and thank for the reply, i just repeat the nodes setup like yours and i still have different result than yours, it has improve a lot but still have curviness and pyramid shape look very different from yours.

I include the .sbs and you would be very kind if you can look at it because i am going nut over this issue since all the tutorials i follow step by step yield a different result and i am starting to think maybe my video card has something to do with it.

pixelquaternion

poopipe said:

this is mostly an artefact caused by limitations in the shader - neither POM or tessellation is particularly accurate - POM is particularly prone to wobbles 

a couple of things that might help

I don't think the pbr base material uses the full height range by default (i think it compresses to 0.5) - increasing height scale in shader to compensate will lose precision

if you're tessellating use the high-resolution plane and increase tessellation factor in the material settings 

wirrex - if you have the same number of tiles and the same number of pixels in your output then the resolution of the shape is the same - the final bitmap is what gets sent to the shader. i think you're getting a better result because of the factors above and the blur

Thank for the tips poopipe but i still have strange results after following all the tips and certainly not on your side but something is wonky on my side.

poopipe

yep - that is strange.

it looks like there's actually a curve to the gradient - couldn't see that when it was wobbly. 

Try switching to the software engine and see if it goes away - if that fixes it we know its something to do with the hardware engine

gnoop

I can't re-create the issue

I set tessellation to 64 on hi res plane. 

But I am using last year version of SD.    Tired to adjust to its quirks after  each update. 

  I recall  few years back  SD haven't clipped  the height beyond 0-1 range.  Now it does.  I was super annoyed with that since you have to always put auto levels now.

pixelquaternion

poopipe said:

yep - that is strange.

it looks like there's actually a curve to the gradient - couldn't see that when it was wobbly. 

Try switching to the software engine and see if it goes away - if that fixes it we know its something to do with the hardware engine

I have already tried switching engine with same result, i am going nut over this since i didn't have this problem a few weeks ago and it start when i download and install the latest substance designer version for trial.

pixelquaternion

gnoop said:

I can't re-create the issue

I set tessellation to 64 on hi res plane. 

But I am using last year version of SD.    Tired to adjust to its quirks after  each update. 

  I recall  few years back  SD haven't clipped  the height beyond 0-1 range.  Now it does.  I was super annoyed with that since you have to always put auto levels now.

Thank for looking at it and i would appreciate if you could send me your sbs if don't mind just to verify every single settings in it. I am on substance designer 2018 version so if you are on latest version then i wont be able to open it.

gnoop

Here t is.

ps.   oh. it's 2020 version,   Sorry I don't have older ones