Importing existing UDIM Textures

[Campi]

Hi,
we are very excited for the even basic UDIm support in 2.1 and would like to get going with Painter 2.1 on small props as fast as possible.
One question comes up almost immediately what is the most elegant way to import existing udim maps into a bunch of Texture Sets - let's say 10.
Do we really need to load every udim for every channel into a shelf, then drag it into the slots ?
Is there maybe a script out there that already automates it ?
I would love to have a simple right mouse click,import udim sequence for example but I know this is not yet in there so I am just looking for the most elegant alternative.

Thanks,
Jens

[Jeremie Noguer]

Hi Jens,

Currently there is no easy way to import preexisting udims to Painter. How does this process work in Mari for example? Can you point to a folder and have all the maps applied on the right udim in a new layer depending on the naming convention?

We are currently missing a bunch of scripting hooks to do this, namely being able to grammatically create fill layers and affect textures to them, as well as scripting the import of resources.

[Campi]

That's a shame. As for Mari there are several ways to it there:

1) On Project creation

Mari allows you to point to a folder and 'SCAN'.
Mari will then evaluate files in there based on a Naming Template.
It'll then present a list to you where you can choose to 'CREATE' (which will just create
the channel but not import anything) or 'CREATE & IMPORT' which will create the Channel and Import the
Udim Sequence

2) In a Project into a channel

You can just import a sequence into Mari via their channel system. It will create the necessary channels for you
In addition the same Options from 1) to Scan, Create and Create & Import are available as a 'Channel Presets' Option you can launch after project creation

3) in a layer

You can just right mouse click on a paint layer and 'Import into Layer'.

Any of those but at the very least 3) would be necessary to make any back and forth between painter and another app not painful (which it seems a little at the moment). Mari isn't going to be replaced over night so there needs to be some compromise that allows as to use both apps at their various strengths and switch between them, importing and exporting udims, without sacrificing the speed gains we might have from using painter to manual data wrangling.

Jens

[Jeremie Noguer]

Thanks for the details.
I think we can acheive this by exposing just a few more things in the scripting API:

• Creating fill layers in a texture set
• Plugging resources from alocation in the shelf to the channels of a fill layer

This should allow you to write a script to automate the whole thing as long as you imported your set of textures somewhere in the shelf.
This will require having subfolders and a customizable hierarchy in the shelf but we're working on that as I write.

[Campi]

Going forward I think that UDIM sequences should be handled as a single item in the shelves.
Not just for easier API access but think Objects with dozens or more UDIMs and multiple channels. The shelves will get flooded otherwise.

I know the current texture set solution is a stepping stone (a good one) to a full solution at which point importing
udim sequences onto a single Texture set will become even more of an issue and probably should be a one click solution of 'importing into shelf, importing into layer'.
In Mari we quite routinely rebuild old assets (from previous projects for example) just by pointing to a mesh and scanning and importing udim sequences.
It saves us from having to keep work files around indefinitely after a project finished.

[karaslee]

It's great to support udim,but cant paint across udim? only paint one texture set (one udim) a time?

[Froyok]

It's great to support udim,but cant paint across udim? only paint one texture set (one udim) a time?

Yes, that's a current limitation that will change in a future update. We are working on improving this.

[walfridson]

The original question from Campi, importing udim texture maps into texture sets, is there any option for that yet?

[pbowmar]

Not yet unfortunately. Hopefully the long delay is that it's being done well and robustly. It's pretty much the main thing holding back Substance Painter in the VFX world. I can't speak to its impact in Games.

[monitorhero]

I guess there are multiple threads on this but this thread (https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php?topic=9432.0) is older than a year and it is still in development? I am not ungrateful but I really hope this feature is coming soon since it is vital for the VFX world like pbowmar said. If you can't paint across texture sets it's not very useful for me.

[Jeremie Noguer]

It is still very much in development, it's a huge task though that required a deep rewrite of the painting engine and memory management in the tool, hence the very long development time, but we are still commited to full UDIM support.

[Jason Tsai 1]

Hi there,

Just wondering if SP currently supports importing existing UDIM textures? I was searching for a solution for this topic and found this thread..

Thanks!

[Jeremie Noguer]

There isn't an easy way to batch assign UDIM textures to a project yet, we hope to have a solution for this shortly though.

[Sebastian Becker 1]

Is there an ETA for importing UDIMs and prebaked mesh data into SP?  I'm working on a character in VFX and this would make my life a lot easier. I have to bake out UDIM textures from SD and paint them together in Mari currently, which is not great.

Thanks!

[ManuelGPz]

I was wondering how this is going? Is there a way to easy bath import mesh maps into substance ( Albedo, AO, Normals )?