3ds Max Plugin Update - Beta plugin (2017 Version)

[Wes McDermott]

Hello Everyone,

We are working on a new version of the 3ds Max substance plugin. We now have a beta version which updates the current plugin in Max to support Substance Engine 6 (Designer 6.x). I have attached the updater to this thread. Please give it a try and let us know if you run into any issues.

This is not the full plugin we will be releasing but we wanted to get something to our Max users as soon as we could. You can now use Substance Designer 6 published substances in 3ds Max. We don't have any new features yet, but this is the first step for our version 2 plugin.

UPDATE:
Now supports Max 2018

KNOWN ISSUES:
The updater doesn't work with the Substance GPU Engine. This means you can only set textures to a maximum of 2K. The option to use the Hardware Renderer (Substance GPU Engine) is still available, but it doesn't work at this time. Switching to the GPU engine is not working.


Max vray material script:
Installation
Be sure to have administrator privileges in order to be able to add files to 3dsMax sub-directories.
1. Launch 3dsMax using right click->Run as administrator.
2. Use "MAXScript->Run Script" to execute the .mzp file.
3. Click on "Customize->Customize User Interface". Click on "Toolbars" tab.
4. In "Category", select "Substance" and drag & drop "PBR to vray material" in 3dsMax UI to add it as a button.
Optional: you can create your own toolbar by clicking on "New" Button.

Cheers,

Wes

[MathisP]

The Plugin works perfect!
I tried to use a couple of materials I downloaded from substanceshare and after installing the plugin I had no problems using these directly in 3ds max.
Thanks a lot for your great work!
Using 3ds max 2017 SP3 student

[Wes McDermott]

The Plugin works perfect!
I tried to use a couple of materials I downloaded from substanceshare and after installing the plugin I had no problems using these directly in 3ds max.
Thanks a lot for your great work!
Using 3ds max 2017 SP3 student

That's awesome to hear! We will have more to share with 3ds Max in 2017.

Cheers,
wes

[Maxime Devauchelle 0]

Hello,

Personally mine isn't working at all.
It seems that some blended nodes doesn't work.
For example mix a concrete map with a cracks map. the cracks map doesn't appears in my sbsars substance in 3ds (Vray).
And the reflection map is only a greyscale.
I tried this with 3ds max 2016 and 2017

Can you have a look to these issues please ?

Thank you for all

[mitviz]

sorry am new to substance, what does this do?

[werwack]

Hi Wes,

Will you also compile the plugin for 3dsMax 2015 or 2016?

Thank you

[werwack]

Hi Wes,

Will you also compile the plugin for 3dsMax 2015 or 2016?

Thank you

Oups, I asked the question before installing the plugin. Both these versions are in the installer. Thanks a lot for that

[Wes McDermott]

sorry am new to substance, what does this do?

Hi,

Welcome to substance! This plugin allows you to load a substance material published from Substance Designer into 3ds Max.

Cheers,
wes
 

[Wes McDermott]

The Plugin works perfect!
I tried to use a couple of materials I downloaded from substanceshare and after installing the plugin I had no problems using these directly in 3ds max.
Thanks a lot for your great work!
Using 3ds max 2017 SP3 student

That's awesome to hear! We will have more to share with 3ds Max in 2017.

Cheers,
wes

Thanks for posting these issues. We will be working on the feature set for the plugin. This update is just a patch for getting the substance engine 5 support.

Cheers,
wes

[dominik_diener]

Just logged in to say Thank you Wes   

Last year I got SD, learned and loved it, but then gave it up because of various issues with the old Max-implementation.

It's great to see you started working on your own Max-implementation. And while I have a slight hope that 16-bit color space might be a topic in your plugin, already being able to use Engine.5 is a big step - Thank you again and good luck   

[Wes McDermott]

Just logged in to say Thank you Wes   

Last year I got SD, learned and loved it, but then gave it up because of various issues with the old Max-implementation.

It's great to see you started working on your own Max-implementation. And while I have a slight hope that 16-bit color space might be a topic in your plugin, already being able to use Engine.5 is a big step - Thank you again and good luck   

Thanks very much : ) Although I will say all of the work and credit goes to the integration engineers : ) Those guys work the magic.

Can you please explain what you need with 16-bit color for the plugin support? Just want to make sure we have a full understanding of your workflow.

Cheers,
Wes

[dominik_diener]

Sure, the engineers who work on it, the managers who assign it a priority - thanks to the team :-)

Regarding the 16-bit I meant, all colors from (16-bit) Substances appear as/at 8-bit color depth in Max.
The #1 with this fact is that using substances with/for normal-maps in Max looks bad.

In example I inputted a 16-bit texture into a subsance -> wanted do some things inside the substance, but for the test the substance is just a simple input/output (all set to 16 bit) ->and then I wanted to use the substance's output as normal map in Max...but the ouput in Max is 8-bit.
A picture of this test, comparing the texture as normal map and what happens when this texture goes through a (simple pass through) substance is here https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,8857.0.html
______
Edit:
I just tried a substance I made a while ago, and it was a rocky re-start. I think it's the best place, and maybe the best moment to mention the further issues besides the 8-bit limit. For demonstration I used the Flower-substance that ships with Max. In Max2017:
- The substance-map must be set to 'Software rendering', otherwise no substance in viewport or rendering.
- Adjusting the sustance's size by setting setting "Tiling" to 0.2 (in the texture coordinates rollout) didn't work. Somewhat ok in viewport, but total pixelation in rendering.
- As alternative I changed the object's UVW to adjust the scale, which worked better than scaling in the texture-coordinates-rollout...but there seems to be no texture-filtering, the rendered imagelooks still 'pixelated'
First picture: in the substance's rollout "Coordinates" set tiling U/V to 0.1 -> a bit pixelated viewport, and total messy rendering
Second picture: Coordinates/tiling back to 1.0, and stretched the objects' UVWs to adjust the substance-size -> viewport ok, but rendering still pixelated, no filtering happens. (increasing the substance's resolution to 2048 helped of course, it made the pixels smaller...but they remain unfiltered, which means flickering and other issues when rendering animations)

[ikben]

I installed the "Substance-3ds_max-updater-1.0.0.exe." but my Max "Substance" node (in materials) seems to be the same as before the install.  I used your "Rocky Ground" (from tutorial   https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php?topic=5546.0), which has three components (stones, crack, pebbles).  But so far I have not come close to replicating the beauty and detail of the Designer material in Max (2016).  For the "Substance"  "Material" in Max, is that supposed to be 2.0.1 build 1608031118? If not, how to I update this node being as I have installed the updater and rebooted?  I also have been trying to follow this guide, though I am using Corona and also Scanline.  Thanks!  Also, I plan to migrate to Vray soon.

[ikben]

Also, The plan I am using has noise and displacement added via Max.

[RandomOutputGames]

The plugin works just fine for me in 2016 & 2017, thanks for the hard work. However, it does seem to be a little light on features, a lot of games and there cinematics are made in 3ds Max and options that Maya has, would greatly speed up the substance workflow. For example, Export images to disk is missing, granted we can right click and save manually and reload but this will take quite a bit of time per texture. We also do not have the workflow switcher to change from classic, PBR or custom. There is no option to switch the normal type from Direct X to Open GL as well. Are these features that will be added to the full release please?

Thanks again for the plugin!