Substance Plugin 1.0.0 for 3ds Max 2018 and 2019 Released

[xyz11811]

Installed the new plugin, it works well with corona, but for vray, whenever I try to save the file, it crashs. Anyone knows what happens? Great thanks!

I tried the old plugin, it seems work with max2018 very well, much better than the new one.

[Martin Bech]

Is distributed rendering supported with this version?

Hi @jessepmartin@gmail.com,
This version does not yet support distributed rendering but this is a high priority. You can expect support for this within either 1.1 or 1.2 versions of the plugin. 

Cheers!

I am SO much looking forward to this! After having spend the last couple of days and nights (literary) searching through my scenes for an explanation as to why everything comes to a complete halt when using distributed rendering...
It renders fine on the workstation, but for production Substance is still a no-go for me at least.

[rob_aspray]

After installing the new plugin over the old one I got the same error as above and delt with it but now despite my plugin working fine all my old scenes with the old plugin crash. So if I start a new scene and use substance plugin there it works great. Trying to open old scenes where the older version of plugin was used and it crashes right at the start. Good thing I kept the installation file of the old one too. It works ok when I go back.

EDIT: I know you warned us that the plugin is not working with previous stuff but what I wanted to bring to your attention is that it literally made the scenes impossible to open and it would have been a ton of work to rework all the stuff.

This needed to be made MUCH clearer as I had this problem in a production environment. Thankfully I also had the older version installer.

However, this represents a huge barrier to being able to use the new version. How could we properly take a scene built with the old version and convert it to the new?



As reference this is the error that pops up when trying to load an older scene. I wouldn't see any reason that the new version can't be either made to work with scenes using the older one or auto-upgrade them, etc.

I sadly don't have the original installer and need to open an old file. Is there a solution to this?

[RobBraithwaite]

in Testing rendering with 3ds Max 2018, Substance, and Vray 3.6.04 on our render farm, Using Deadline for render management, I've run into an issue. The render nodes return what are essentially "Blank" images, that is to say that the geometry renders but everything that Substance is doing in the shaders isn't there. My test scene is a simple sphere with a carbon fiber weave substance into a Vray blend material with a clearcoat blended over it. if I send the same file to a workstation, through Deadline, the workstation will return a correct image. Any clue why this would be? the render node I'm using for testing has the latest substance plugin for Max 2018 installed, all running Max 2018.4.

Workstation
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipM3vup_GkA6Oktvj9JF1if1t6nH58yEIAvikwGD


Render Node
https://photos.app.goo.gl/HPfcNexEUR1yByYX6

[bobweb]

I have several problems with this plugin:

- After installation in 3ds max 2019 I could no longer save the slate material editor content. Every time the scene was saved and reopened, the editor was empty again. Assigned materials were still saved with the model, but all unassigned materials were lost.
- Uninstallation is not clean at all. Then I get an error starting max (substancedealer not initialized), the substance menu is still there, but the old substance map is gone as well. Even after completely uninstalling and reinstalling 3ds Max, the substance menu is still there (with greyed-out "missing"-entries). How do I get rid of that?
- The vray connection does not work (as already said here: https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,22585.0.html)

So, for now, thanks, but no thanks. The potential is great and I would love it, if it worked, but it is unfortunately far from production ready! Especially with such a work-destroying bug regarding the material editor, which could only be fixed by completely uninstalling 3ds Max, repair only did not work. A lot of time wasted, since I had to do it several times until I found out, that this plugin created the erroneous behaviour.

[bobweb]

As much as you "love feedback" (see first post), I think I speak for the other users here as well when I say: We do too. It has been two months since the last comment from staff in here and several issues piled up. Are you still interested in it? Do you need more info to fix these problems? Is this a "not-interested"- or "too-busy"- silence?

[Galen Helfter]

Hello @bobweb ,

We have been listening and taking in feedback. Most of the issues brought up have been addressed or are currently being addressed. We have been and currently are working on the next version, which we plan on releasing in the near future.

[bobweb]

That is great news, thanks! I am looking forward to using a fixed version. If you still need any more info about the problems I have encountered, I'll be glad to help.

[Galen Helfter]

@bobweb

Some more information on the SME clearing would be good to have. I could not reproduce it with the most recent development build and I could not reproduce it with the currently released build yet on my machine, both with 3ds Max 2018.

I will have to test it later with 3ds Max 2019, as its behavior with the SME may have changed between versions.

[Galen Helfter]

@RobBraithwaite

I'm not familiar with Deadline, but if it doesn't run the scene directly through 3ds Max and parses the scene file on its own, then it would be completely outside the Substance plugin's execution. The workstation render sounds like it fires up 3ds Max and runs it through that, which would allow the plugin to run.

[RobBraithwaite]

@RobBraithwaite

I'm not familiar with Deadline, but if it doesn't run the scene directly through 3ds Max and parses the scene file on its own, then it would be completely outside the Substance plugin's execution. The workstation render sounds like it fires up 3ds Max and runs it through that, which would allow the plugin to run.

My understanding is that it does run Max, it just doesn't load the UI so it doesn't need to pull a workstation license, this works the same, no matter what the machine is (Workstation or render node).

[bobweb]

@Galen Helfter O

Yes, this one is really strange. I have tried to reproduce it on another PC as well (one of my render nodes with the same other plugins installed, but starting 3ds Max as trial then), but there it worked fine. Still, the only installation difference between a working and a non-working SME in 3ds Max 2019 on my workstation is the installation of the substance plugin.

For what it is worth, here are my system specs:
i7-5930K, 64 GB RAM, GTX 1080
Windows 10 Pro 1709
3ds Max 2019.1 (21.1.0.1314) on maintenance plan, Forest Pack, RailClone, Vray, Phoenix, Clone, Greeble, Bercon Maps, Labyrinth, RPManager, Soulburn Scripts
Substance Player 2018.1.2, Substance Designer 2018.1.2
3ds Max 2016 with the same plugins
Adobe stuff (PS, AE, AI etc.)

What else could I do or tell you to find or fix the problem?

Thanks,
Bob

[Mark042]

Hi

I don't know if this is the plugin or Max, itself, but it's happened in both Max 2018 and 2019 in that after a few sessions, my Substance menu completely disappears.

The menu label is still there, but there is no flyout; there are no options.

It's the only bug I've encountered, but the only solution I've found is resetting the user settings in Max, which, unfortunately, also involves needing to reinstall several plugins and scripts (Removing the ENU folder).

First, does anyone know why this could be happening in the first place, and second, is there a way to recover without removing the ENU folder?

Thanks!

[Galen Helfter]

@bobweb

That should be enough. I'll have to test with that version and see if I can reproduce it. At first glance, it sounds like the current slate view is getting closed somehow, as that would do the behavior you talked about, since Max will cull unused nodes when a view is closed, but it'll take more investigation and a reproduction to confirm whether that's the case.

@RobBraithwaite

Thank you for the information on it. We'll have to investigate later how that works and whether we can make it work.

[Mark042]

Hi

I don't know if this is the plugin or Max, itself, but it's happened in both Max 2018 and 2019 in that after a few sessions, my Substance menu completely disappears.

The menu label is still there, but there is no flyout; there are no options.

It's the only bug I've encountered, but the only solution I've found is resetting the user settings in Max, which, unfortunately, also involves needing to reinstall several plugins and scripts (Removing the ENU folder).

First, does anyone know why this could be happening in the first place, and second, is there a way to recover without removing the ENU folder?

Thanks!

This is becoming exceptionally annoying.

Has anyone else run across this?

Is there another way to make the menu stable so that it remains?

Win10
3ds Max 2018 and 2019.

New file.  Existing file.  Doesn't matter.

Yes, I have an old processor, but I don't see why that should affect a menu.
32GB of memory, but again, why would that affect it?
Just restarted my PC (and again, and again, and again.  Not in a row, but over time, and it keeps happening after a while of it working just fine.).

I hope someone might have an idea of what's happening.

The Substance menu is the only menu affected.