Do you keep multiple materials in the same .sbs file?
The more I use Substance, the more I'm confused how SBS files were intended to be used. Initially I kept each material in a separate SBS, e.g. RockA.sbs, RockB.sbs, RockC.sbs. But then I noticed that I can put many graphs in the same SBS and it doesn't affect loading times or anything, so I just put all my rocks into one Rocks.sbs. But some of my files DO load slower (or even fail to load a lot), and it doesn't seem to depend on the amount of graphs - I don't really know what does it depend on. The types of nodes used? If generally the same nodes are used in multiple graphs the SBS file will load fast, but if many graphs use many different nodes, then it loads slower? I don't know.
How do you treat SBS files - as separate materials or packages to keep multiple materials?
Replies
its generally best to keep things separate unless they are very closely related
eg. if you made grayscale and color versions of a tool it would make sense to keep them in the same package.
I wouldn't package two different grass materials together - if they shared resources(eg. a grass blade gerenator). I'd package the shared resources separately and link them in to the final material packages,
one of the worst things you can do in the long term is introduce cross package dependencies - it makes managing your things a nightmare
Yeah, cross package dependency is a nightmare for sure. I know it it from my own experience . Even if you drop a tool that doesn't have any outside resources but its sbs file has other graphs that do , you would waste minutes answering useless missed something yes/no choices.
So best course of action is to save evry sub graph as it's own sbs file . Keep evrything that could be reused as a tool in a special folder and make a cloud synced backup of that folder evry time you add anything new.
And even following that rule I often can't open my sbs files older than 4-5 month because I had to move some folder , or dropped something carelessly , removed junk files to free some disk space etc.
From all software I ever used SD is a champion of time dumping because of missing resources.
As a plus you constantly re-do what you already did before because of that. Since it often takes less time .
And in each new iteration you invent something better :)
We're still using things we made 5 years ago :p
It comes down to planning and unless you've built a few similar systems before it's pretty difficult to get it right first time
I have a few that old and still working too. Magically :) Now I am planning a lot , spend sometimes more time on that than on actual art and it drives me crazy . Recently had to move my work environment from home desktop to a laptop . Did everything from a cloud backup and damn thing still doesn't work as expected in a third of sbs files . 🍄 😬
Blender, 3dmax, Clarisse FX all have same kind of distributed resources and each own quirks too but neither of them ever make so much pain in your a..
I arrogantly believe it's not my IQ but something in user experience regard is not simple or easy enough in their approach.