Quixel Suite - Substance Designer - should I use them?
Okay, first of all, let me explain to you guys something! I am graduating this year 
and I will be creating my graduation reel soon. I know the in and outs of nDo but I never really touched dDO, 3Do and the same goes for Substance Designer.
Today, I was seeing the Quixel suite demo and also the substance designer one. I loved'em both. Now, I got a few questions:
a) Do these software suites have a great future in terms of workflow integration and working?
b) I know these are extremely efficient, but I'm still going to ask for you guys' opinion! Is it really that efficient?
c) I heard someone say that we students should make rust, grunge, decay etc. textures from scratch and not use the hep of any 3rd party softwares. Is this true? I mean to say (I sound like a super noob here :poly124:), will it hamper the manual ability to create finer detailed stuff like rust, grunge etc. using these third party softwares? I am also under the impression, don't know how far true this is, that studios prefer artists who can create all those finer texture details manually with the main softwares like photoshop, zbrush, mudbox etc. rather than taking help from 3rd party softwares. I dont yet use 3rd party softwares to create those details.
So, should I use them? Any help would be greatly appreciated! thanks!
and I will be creating my graduation reel soon. I know the in and outs of nDo but I never really touched dDO, 3Do and the same goes for Substance Designer.Today, I was seeing the Quixel suite demo and also the substance designer one. I loved'em both. Now, I got a few questions:
a) Do these software suites have a great future in terms of workflow integration and working?
b) I know these are extremely efficient, but I'm still going to ask for you guys' opinion! Is it really that efficient?
c) I heard someone say that we students should make rust, grunge, decay etc. textures from scratch and not use the hep of any 3rd party softwares. Is this true? I mean to say (I sound like a super noob here :poly124:), will it hamper the manual ability to create finer detailed stuff like rust, grunge etc. using these third party softwares? I am also under the impression, don't know how far true this is, that studios prefer artists who can create all those finer texture details manually with the main softwares like photoshop, zbrush, mudbox etc. rather than taking help from 3rd party softwares. I dont yet use 3rd party softwares to create those details.
So, should I use them? Any help would be greatly appreciated! thanks!
Replies
I started with the Quixel Suite right now to get a feeling for it as I would plan to go working as a freelancer and for personal use, but still I am not going to rely on it. As far as I get it it makes only sense for projects where you have high poly meshes to bake normal maps and ambient occlusion (might not be the chase when you are making mobile games for example) - without those maps you can't use the suite. You might create those maps with NDO, but I guess its not the best workflow.
The program itself seems to be extremely efficient and powerful from my first attempts, but it should just enhance your workflow, not be a necessity. It will also take some time to grasp it completely to use it to its full capability. So my suggestion is learn the manual way to make textures and once you get it and understand it, check those 3rd-party software to speed up your process.
Yes. These kinds of tools are certainly representative of the direction that the industry is moving in - this is evidenced by the adoption of these and similar tools by studios across the world, my own included. I'll go into why further along in this post.
Well, it depends on how you define efficient. Because I can't really tell exactly what you mean, I will instead give you my thoughts on them and await a response:
It should be noted that Substance Designer and the Quixel suite are not two sides of the same coin - they are similar in some ways but different in others.
Before I start, I'd like to emphasise that they do not magically produce better artwork than working manually, instead they allow for consistent artwork, and they allow us to produce said artwork much faster than working manually. This allows us to spend more of our time on being creative and less on manually manipulating pixels.
These applications give us an alternate way of constructing images, they allow us to work non-destructively, non-linearly and parametrically. What this means is that we can effectively create template workflows that can be applied very quickly across an entire project's worth of art, and if we need to make a change to the artwork, we can make these changes incredibly quickly to all assets. (almost) Gone are the days where we would have to re-paint from scratch a hundred models because the art style has changed slightly mid-project. Instead we can adjust our substances or quixel template files and apply them to our models again quickly.
It is still a lot of time spent, but its time better spent. Particularly for the artists that work on the assets - there is still going to be somebody designing the substances or the quixel presets and this takes time (and in your case being an individual outside of a production environment, that is going to be you), but so far as the girls and guys creating the artwork, it is certainly faster
I want to re-iterate that it is not because they produce better artwork, it is because we are able to work consistently, non-destructively and quickly within them.
Additionally, Substance Designer is able to output what it calls Substances, these are a fraction of the size of a traditional texture and this is very useful in the real world outside of portfolio work where this matters more.
Ultimately, to get the best results, particularly out of something like Substance Designer, you need to understand how it works under the hood. Sure, you have parametric sliders that create grunge textures at the press of a button, but you aren't REALLY going to get very far unless you have a good understanding of HOW it is doing these things.
Substance Designer is still very manual in it's setup, its just automatic in it's execution. Effects aside, you really do need to manually connect nodes in the same way you would create Photoshop layers, its just a different way of working, and a way that is transportable between assets.
I would never hire anybody that did not understand how to manually create any texture you could generate in Quixel or Substance Designer parametrically. It would indicate a fundamental lack of understanding and therefore an inability to properly use these products. At the end of the day, if you don't actually know HOW it works, and cannot demonstrate this knowhow, you cannot effectively use them.
It is analogous to somebody thinking they can get by just using Photoshop filters, if you get what I mean?
There are no short cuts for learning, and if the reason you are considering these applications is because you think it will save you from learning things, save you having to do the hard legwork, then you won't get particularly far in this industry. The short cuts it provides are in production, not in understanding.
It's very late (actually, it's early!) here, I've not slept yet but I hope I was coherent enough. What I've said is from my own professional experience and may not represent the views of everyone here, but I'm hoping they chime in!
I hope I have been able to help, please respond if you would like me to clarify anything, and to anybody else already using these tools in production: I'd love to hear your views on them too
Best,
Giuseppe
I agree with you. I had a huge doubt over this thing. I started with the manual texturing process and still date am doing with the same manual process, but I will learn'em both for enhancing my workflow, to speed it up! Thanks for the reply!
Thanks!
You know, I was thinking the same thing, but was still confused but not anymore! Thanks!
Well, in this case, I define efficient as being able to work faster personally and in production.
Can you tell me the real big difference between these two suites?
I loved the consistent artwork thing you said here!:) I believe the production guys would love this for they help them work so much faster!:D
Could you explain how are they achieving this?
I totally agree with you on this one. I'm still doing the manual way, but as you said - let me quote "I want to re-iterate that it is not because they produce better artwork, it is because we are able to work consistently, non-destructively and quickly within them."- I feel encouraged to try them in addition to my - the usual manual workflow!
I totally agree with you! There are no short cuts for learning! Indeed!
"but I hope I was coherent enough". Are you kidding me?!:D You were excellent in explaining the things so well! I loved how you took your time to explain all the necessary things. People like you are the ones who we depend upon so much!
Thank You very much for helping me out here!
Any studio SHOULD in my opinion use solutions like this, and is the future of game development, as we are always looking for more effective workflows right? It's all about creating the biggest, most impressive environment in the shortest amount of time.
Quixel Suite is so cheap if i was your boss i wouldn't even think about it. But ever studio might have their own workflow you have to learn, so your knowledge now might not always be relevant to what they need you to know.
When you need more complex textures and you can afford doing high poly models for baking and all this stuff it becomes quite useful to have DDO. I won't argue with that