4.5 no textures without lights, environment lighting no longer works

[artaq]

Yeah I'm a bit frustrated right now, kicking myself that I didn't use version control on these Substances before I upgraded.  I can't even re-install the older version as all my autobackups are incompatible.  Note to self: Don't upgrade in the middle of working on a project.  Lesson learned!

[horst-peter]

Back from dreamland. Here are my results.

[EricW]

Yeah I'm a bit frustrated right now, kicking myself that I didn't use version control on these Substances before I upgraded.  I can't even re-install the older version as all my autobackups are incompatible.  Note to self: Don't upgrade in the middle of working on a project.  Lesson learned!

I hear ya.

 

If you guys want a work around in 4.5 for now, just use blinn and turn ambient light up to medium gray.

[artaq]

Should both the diffuse and/or basecolor be attached to the diffuse channel?  This is on a multi-material blend node.  It appears that if I connect the basecolor of the pbr material to both the diffuse and basecolor of the blend node, and have both diffuse and basecolor output nodes I can correctly see my textures in the 3d view.  Note that this is on a graph setup in 4.4.1, I haven't created a graph from scratch to see if this holds true otherwise.  It really seems as if the old graphs are simply not compatible with the new formats being used for PBR.  Any suggestions?

[EricW]

In 4.5 base color is supposed to go with metal pbr shader, diffuse is supposed to go with spec pbr.  In 4.4.1 I don't think there was a difference, diffuse worked fine for both shaders, I think?  I've been working with the spec pbr, myself.

Specifically, I've only noticed base color inputs just added to nodes that didn't have them previously.  That means they are processed different than the diffuse now, where as before they weren't, you'd just stick them in the diffuse inputs.

[artaq]

Thanks Eric,  I've personally been working with the metallic/roughness pbr type as this is what our engine supports, and up to this point I've been using diffuse just fine (like you said).  I assume then I need to go back and change all of my input/output nodes from diffuse to basecolor?  Only issue I have there is that some nodes such as multi-material blend and material color blend only output to diffuse and not base color; does it matter if I feed the output diffuse to an input base color at that point?  What a mess.

UPDATE:  Ok it appears that Designer does not update the old graphs to use newer, updated nodes.  Adding a new multi blend and material color blend adds the additional basecolor outputs (along with several other new outputs).  I'm going to attempt to reconstruct one of my graphs with the new nodes and see if this corrects the issues I've been seeing.  Hope this helps others that might be in a similar bind!

[EricW]

The material blend nodes have both base color in and out on my nodes.  Just tested, they seem to work, if I pull a line out of the diffuse output it's just blank cause there's no input.

On the other hand, I tried a solid color into diffuse and base color and checked the output for diffuse and base color, they look identical.  Testing on the material switch node.  Opened the reference for this node, it's just a pass through for this node, so diffuse and base color do the same thing.  Can't say that for all nodes, haven't checked.

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

Yes we have added a basecolor channel on all  "material based" nodes to match the UE4 name convention.

Also it'll allow us to distribute substance materials who support both workflow: diffuse/specular and basecolor/metallic. In many cases the diffuse channel in a diffuse/specular workflow stores different information than the basecolor in a basecolor/metallic workflow. That's why it has to be two different outputs.

And no we don't update user pakages to change things plugges in diffuse to base color, it's too risky
So you can still use a diffuse channel in your metallic workflow, the PBR metallic shader will accept it. However You might want to switch to the basecolor channel in case you want to use materials from the library (these ones have been updated) and blend these with your own materials using the material link, otherwise you'll have to manually plug the basecolor output from the library material to the diffuse channel of the material_blend node.

Cheers,

[artaq]

Ah thanks Nicolas, I've gone ahead and plugged all my basecolors into the diffuse channels and they appear to be working correctly again.  I have some PBR materials purchased through you guys that are still using the diffuse channel and not basecolor, so there was a bit of confusion as to why some were working while others weren't.

[artaq]

Decided to go ahead and revert back, I was having too many issues that I don't have time to sit down and work through ATM.  Hopefully when this project is done I can upgrade to 4.5 (or newer).  Thanks for your support guys!

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

We have fixed the lighting issue with PBR shaders, it'll be available in the upcoming 4.5.1 version.

Concerning the basecolor thing, if you want to stay with the diffuse channel on 4.5 it's ot a problem at all, everything will work exactly as in 4.4.1.

[EricW]

Cool, thanks for figuring it out so quick