An Update on Substance support in Unity 2018.1

[mykillk]

I'd rather that Allegorithmic take their time, even if it releases after Unity 2018.1, if that means the migration process will be smoother. Having to manually replace hundreds/thousands of materials wouldn't be much fun.

[trilo]

The ship has unfortunately long since sailed on the notion of a smooth migration.  Any artist or creator whose projects are working with Unity 2018.1 (which is now on beta 13, and a couple short weeks away from general release) has either had to halt production and development or manually replace hundreds/thousands of materials because even a rudimentary beta is not available.

For me, the lack of a beta is becoming a more significant problem as time goes on.  Back in January it was mostly just listening to the lamentation of friends whose work was directly impacted, and for me just testing that I couldn't do on the early beta releases... but now that we've gotten so far along with nothing at all from Allegorithmic, the project I spend the majority of my time with (a Unity-based virtual world) is looking at delaying their development by a period of weeks to months.  That really stinks, as they take their time with development and testing (it took them 6 months to finally get their 2017.2 compatibility rolled out to their live client)... so instead of them being able to roll into Unity 2018.1.x in early fall it may slip to the end of year or even beginning of next year.  I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that.

[simonnielsen]

Thanks for the update, Trilo! I'd missed some of those developments.

Of course, whenever I and we start using this plugin, that'd generate test data. I hope we get our hands on it soon.

[Wes McDermott]

The ship has unfortunately long since sailed on the notion of a smooth migration.  Any artist or creator whose projects are working with Unity 2018.1 (which is now on beta 13, and a couple short weeks away from general release) has either had to halt production and development or manually replace hundreds/thousands of materials because even a rudimentary beta is not available.

For me, the lack of a beta is becoming a more significant problem as time goes on.  Back in January it was mostly just listening to the lamentation of friends whose work was directly impacted, and for me just testing that I couldn't do on the early beta releases... but now that we've gotten so far along with nothing at all from Allegorithmic, the project I spend the majority of my time with (a Unity-based virtual world) is looking at delaying their development by a period of weeks to months.  That really stinks, as they take their time with development and testing (it took them 6 months to finally get their 2017.2 compatibility rolled out to their live client)... so instead of them being able to roll into Unity 2018.1.x in early fall it may slip to the end of year or even beginning of next year.  I'm really hoping it doesn't come to that.

We will be releasing the new plugin alongside Unity 2018.1 official release. We will launch in open beta and the plugin will be available on the asset store. We completely understand the frustrations and are working as quickly as we can to make the plugin available.

To give some back story, we have had to rebuild the integration from scratch and to be totally transparent, were not given adequate warning that the integration was going to be removed. I'm very sorry if it seems we have been dragging our feet. Please know nothing could be further from the truth in this regard. We have had little time to create a new integration from scratch. With the 2017.2 compatibility update, this was given to Unity and they delayed the release. It was out of our control. In the long run, having the plugin external will allow us to add features we were not able to add before as well as fully control the update cycle so compatibility issues like we had with 2017.2 will not happen again.

I know this sounds like we are shifting blame and perhaps even cheap talk with nothing to show, but we don't fault Unity. Unity is doing what they need to do to make their engine the best it can be. We applaud this step from Unity and they are a great partner for us. This new integration is a major change and it takes a lot of time to switch directions like this. We are not hiding anything or purposefully taking our time. It just takes time. As a user myself, I know that is frustrating. As I mentioned, we will release in open beta so we can get the plugin in user's hands and gather feedback to make this new integration the best version of Substance in Unity.

Please let us know your concerns of questions you have and we would be more than happy to have open discussions. We will get there and have a great integration with Unity 2018 and beyond.

Cheers,
Wes 

[trilo]

So, to be clear.... you will be releasing the new plugin alongside Unity 2018.1 official release.  However, what you are releasing at that time will "launch in open beta"?

I could totally understand it taking 5 months after getting surprise news if this was a plugin asset being made by an indie/individual asset developer, working in their spare time and without any experience doing these things... but Allegorithmic has staff that do this stuff for a living, and they provide .sbsar support through a plugin asset with another game engine... it seems crazy to me that with more resources, and some experience in the area, it still takes 5 full months just to get a first beta out.  And of course betas being betas, that could very well mean weeks or even months of things not being very stable.

I went from sympathizing with friends who were directly affected and being a little frustrated that I couldn't do any advance testing, to now being directly (and negatively) affected.  The Unity-based virtual world I make things for has put their 2018.1 development on hold specifically because of the lack of .sbsar support, and if they're not able to get something stable very soon they are considering changing course to 2017.4 for their next major update (in the fall, as it takes them a while to get everything ready), and likely no 2018.1 support until 2019.

I do appreciate the information, but hopefully you can understand my frustration.  The lack of openness and transparency hasn't helped, getting any info has been difficult and tough to swallow.

[jlentine]

We're all anxious for the release, but they did say this was sprung on them rather suddenly by Unity.  For a developer to shift gears like that, 5 months is actually pretty impressive when they're still putting out updates for Designer and Painter.

[Wes McDermott]

So, to be clear.... you will be releasing the new plugin alongside Unity 2018.1 official release.  However, what you are releasing at that time will "launch in open beta"?

I could totally understand it taking 5 months after getting surprise news if this was a plugin asset being made by an indie/individual asset developer, working in their spare time and without any experience doing these things... but Allegorithmic has staff that do this stuff for a living, and they provide .sbsar support through a plugin asset with another game engine... it seems crazy to me that with more resources, and some experience in the area, it still takes 5 full months just to get a first beta out.  And of course betas being betas, that could very well mean weeks or even months of things not being very stable.

I went from sympathizing with friends who were directly affected and being a little frustrated that I couldn't do any advance testing, to now being directly (and negatively) affected.  The Unity-based virtual world I make things for has put their 2018.1 development on hold specifically because of the lack of .sbsar support, and if they're not able to get something stable very soon they are considering changing course to 2017.4 for their next major update (in the fall, as it takes them a while to get everything ready), and likely no 2018.1 support until 2019.

I do appreciate the information, but hopefully you can understand my frustration.  The lack of openness and transparency hasn't helped, getting any info has been difficult and tough to swallow.

I completely understand your frustration : ) I also appreciate your feedback.

We have been actively posting many updates in the official Substance thread that was started by the Unity team. I apologize for not relaying that information here as well. Here is the thread: https://forum.unity.com/threads/an-update-on-substance-format-support-in-unity.509408/page-3#post-3468027

I know it sounds like 5 months should have been a lot of time for Allegorithmic, but unfortunately that is not the case. We have many dev teams working on projects and the integration team has many different integrations projects to juggle as well. Unity is a part of that team. The issue is that this is a brand new integration, built from scratch and it just takes time. There really isn't any mismanagement issues or sinister ploys. It really just comes down to time.

Yes, we are launching in open beta in the Unity asset store along with Unity 2018.1 official release. From there, we will be on a vigorous update schedule with resources solely dedicated to updating Unity. We are releasing now simply because we have something we can release. Our goal has always been to get something in users hands ASAP. We don't want to keep you guys waiting. We didn't release a beta early because we just haven't been in a state where we had a usable version of the plugin. We didn't want to give users a completely broken plugin. Also, we are working very fast on this release and updates where happening on a daily to even hourly basis. It would have been more difficult for us to manage those updates with a large open beta version while in early development.

Your feedback is constructive and I appreciate your openness to have these conversations with us. 

Cheers,
Wes

[Wes McDermott]

We're all anxious for the release, but they did say this was sprung on them rather suddenly by Unity.  For a developer to shift gears like that, 5 months is actually pretty impressive when they're still putting out updates for Designer and Painter.

Thanks : ) Yeah I'm very impressed with the team and what they have done with this turn around time. It's been pretty great how quick they sprung into action. I know that's difficult to see from a user standpoint and we completely understand that.

Cheers,
Wes

[trilo]

I look forward to good news at some point.

[Wes McDermott]

Hey Everyone,

I'm very happy to say that we will be releasing the Substance in Unity 2018.1 plugin on April 26th (tomorrow)! We will be releasing as an open beta and will publish a blog post tomorrow with all of the details, tutorials and full documentation.

Cheers,
Wes

[Wes McDermott]

The plugin has been released and is now live on the Unity Asset Store!

Here is the new documentation: https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/integrations/Unity+2018
Please be sure to check the beta release information: https://support.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/integrations/Beta+Information

Here you can find tutorials for the new plugin: https://tutorials.allegorithmic.com/courses/649a0212242a813826322b9468c275f8/youtube-Dy177PrxRfs

This is only the beginning : ) We have lots more work to do. I will be posting updates as we continue to provide plugin updates.

[trilo]

Hooray, and thanks to you and everyone on the team for getting the beta process started.  My fingers are crossed that things go well and that the Unity-based VW I make content for is able to start moving forward testing and prepping for their next big update.

[OmarVector]

I'm using Vertex painter pro inside unity, and since they removed substance from their tool, things got so hard for me.

at least, any expectation when the load behavoir will be finally functional, bec I guess this is the only way to cache the file and separate them from the substance graph from my understanding.

Hope u do it fast. I mean I know how its hard to deliver it fast, but u know also how we struggle

Edit:
Also, Normal map has no Blue channel, and the overall texture go too dark after painting if I attach normal map from .sbar file.

Edit:
The normal map issue if fixed, if I disable compression. and set it to raw

Edit:

also , I dont know how to extrace the final texture and save them to the asset folder as separate textures, I cant even find any GetGeneratedTexture() inside your new API . there is any fast way around to do this right now , I'm running out of time , thats the problem.

[argh]

Great news!

Lack of mobile runtimes is still keeping us from upgrading, do you have any approximate ETA for ios/android?

[director_1]

Thanks so much for the hard work you guys have been putting into this.

I have a question, I have been enjoying playing around with Unity's HD Render Pipeline, will there be any support for the new "Lit" shader?