Can't set format of generated textures

[stefan]

I need to have control of the textures that substances generate, but when I set the "Components" to "RGB" and "Usage" in Substance Designer to "Any" and import the substance in Unity, the textures are generated as grayscale/Alpha8 textures.

How can I force all outputs to be the format that is specified in Substance Designer?

[korindian77]

Having the same problem. Using Unity 2019.3f4 and HDRP 7.1.7, and Substance plugin 2.4.3

If I export a bitmap from a graph in Substance Designer and import into Unity, the texture looks correct and I can choose the compression settings appropriately.

If creating a SBSAR and importing into Unity, there are 2 problems:

1. Setting Format to RAW instead of Compressed creates an Alpha8 UNorm texture in Unity, missing RGB values and only putting something in the Alpha channel, whereas setting to Compressed creates an RGBA Compressed DXT5 texture correctly.

However, the compression looks bad, with lots of square artifacts. It's as if the compression mode is "Normal Quality" in Unity, whereas if we could set "High Quality" compression in Unity the artifacts go away.

2. If trying to bake a texture using the SBSAR in Unity, it will bake out either the Alpha8 texture if format is set to RAW, or the compressed version of the texture with artifacts (even with no import compression settings) if format is set to Compressed. This is really messed up.

[Wes McDermott]

Having the same problem. Using Unity 2019.3f4 and HDRP 7.1.7, and Substance plugin 2.4.3

If I export a bitmap from a graph in Substance Designer and import into Unity, the texture looks correct and I can choose the compression settings appropriately.

If creating a SBSAR and importing into Unity, there are 2 problems:

1. Setting Format to RAW instead of Compressed creates an Alpha8 UNorm texture in Unity, missing RGB values and only putting something in the Alpha channel, whereas setting to Compressed creates an RGBA Compressed DXT5 texture correctly.

However, the compression looks bad, with lots of square artifacts. It's as if the compression mode is "Normal Quality" in Unity, whereas if we could set "High Quality" compression in Unity the artifacts go away.

2. If trying to bake a texture using the SBSAR in Unity, it will bake out either the Alpha8 texture if format is set to RAW, or the compressed version of the texture with artifacts (even with no import compression settings) if format is set to Compressed. This is really messed up.

Hi,

Thank you for reporting this issue. I will ask our team to look into this and we will make support tickets for this issues. I'm sorry I don't have a workaround for this but I will ask our team to make this a priority bug fix.

Cheers,
Wes

[korindian77]

Awesome, thanks for taking a look into this!

[Wes McDermott]

Awesome, thanks for taking a look into this!

HI,

Taking a look at the compression setting. Are you using the latest 2.4.3 plugin? In 2.4.3, setting the compression to RAW results in an RGBA UNorm map. We did have an issue in previous version where alpha8 was used.

Cheers,
WEs

[korindian77]

Hi Wes,

Yes, I can confirm the plugin is 2.4.3.

Attached Pic 1 is a screenshot of the version in the Package Manager for Unity 2019.3.0f4. Also tried installing directly from the Asset Store instead of the Package Manager, but still the same problem.

In pic 2, you can see the substance target settings as compressed.

In pic 3, you can see the generated texture.

In pic 4, you can see the setting changed to Raw and being applied, and the texture being grayscale.

In pic 5, you can see a grayscale generated texture as Alph8 UNorm with the RAW setting.

In pic 6, you can see this "RAW" texture shown as black in Unity's project view.

This is happening in both the Built-in render pipeline as well as HDRP 7.1.7. It's a simple test substance with a noise in the red channel, and full white in the G, B, and A channels. This particular substance has the same problem in both pipelines, and while other substances may or may not have problems in the built-in pipeline, all of them have this problem in HDRP.

Also, will we able to choose the compression settings as well, and not have the substance bake the compressed version? Thanks.

[Wes McDermott]

Hi Wes,

Yes, I can confirm the plugin is 2.4.3.

Attached Pic 1 is a screenshot of the version in the Package Manager for Unity 2019.3.0f4. Also tried installing directly from the Asset Store instead of the Package Manager, but still the same problem.

In pic 2, you can see the substance target settings as compressed.

In pic 3, you can see the generated texture.

In pic 4, you can see the setting changed to Raw and being applied, and the texture being grayscale.

In pic 5, you can see a grayscale generated texture as Alph8 UNorm with the RAW setting.

In pic 6, you can see this "RAW" texture shown as black in Unity's project view.

This is happening in both the Built-in render pipeline as well as HDRP 7.1.7. It's a simple test substance with a noise in the red channel, and full white in the G, B, and A channels. This particular substance has the same problem in both pipelines, and while other substances may or may not have problems in the built-in pipeline, all of them have this problem in HDRP.

Also, will we able to choose the compression settings as well, and not have the substance bake the compressed version? Thanks.

HI,

Can you please send me this sbs file? I am checking other sbsar files and the RAW settings for color and greyscale is RGBA8 UNorm. However I can reproduce this with HDRP. I will have the team take a look at this bug.

Cheers,
Wes

[korindian77]

Just sent an email with the files to the address listed in your signature.

While all substances have this problem in HDRP, the one I sent you has a problem in built-in as well. Other substances sometimes have the problem in built-in, sometimes not, and I can't figure out why.

Hope the file helps.

[Wes McDermott]

Just sent an email with the files to the address listed in your signature.

While all substances have this problem in HDRP, the one I sent you has a problem in built-in as well. Other substances sometimes have the problem in built-in, sometimes not, and I can't figure out why.

Hope the file helps.

Thanks for sending the files : )

Cheers
Wes

[korindian77]

Any news about when the fixes will be available for HDRP?

I see that the above problems are still listed in the "Known Issues" for the latest 2.4.4 release.

[Wes McDermott]

Any news about when the fixes will be available for HDRP?

I see that the above problems are still listed in the "Known Issues" for the latest 2.4.4 release.

Hi,

We updated the plugin today with several fixes. It's now live on the Asset Store version 2.4.4. The issue where some Substances are not generating the Mask Map is caused by the engine being out of date to the latest build of Substance Designer. We are working on the Substance Engine update. We are also adding the new 2019.3 API for HDRP assets which will properly identify if HDRP is used.

Cheers,
Wes

[korindian77]

We updated the plugin today with several fixes. It's now live on the Asset Store version 2.4.4. The issue where some Substances are not generating the Mask Map is caused by the engine being out of date to the latest build of Substance Designer. We are working on the Substance Engine update. We are also adding the new 2019.3 API for HDRP assets which will properly identify if HDRP is used.

Cheers,
Wes

Hi Wes, I'm not sure if your reply includes the specific known issue listed in 2.4.4 which this thread is about:
"While using the Substance plugin in a HDRP project, using Raw compression sets greyscale textures to Alpha8."

Just wondering about the timeline for that known issue to be fixed. Also, it would be great to be able to select the compression settings, such as DXT1/DXT5 etc. Thank you.

[-kg-]

We updated the plugin today with several fixes. It's now live on the Asset Store version 2.4.4. The issue where some Substances are not generating the Mask Map is caused by the engine being out of date to the latest build of Substance Designer. We are working on the Substance Engine update. We are also adding the new 2019.3 API for HDRP assets which will properly identify if HDRP is used.

Cheers,
Wes

Hi Wes, I'm not sure if your reply includes the specific known issue listed in 2.4.4 which this thread is about:
"While using the Substance plugin in a HDRP project, using Raw compression sets greyscale textures to Alpha8."

Just wondering about the timeline for that known issue to be fixed. Also, it would be great to be able to select the compression settings, such as DXT1/DXT5 etc. Thank you.

Hey korindian77,

The Alpha8 issue should be fixed in the next plugin update. I'll ask the devs about the compression settings.

[korindian77]

That's great news. Regarding the compression settings, due to some tests I believe as of now the substance plugin chooses "Normal quality" compression settings as determined in the following link:

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-TextureImporterOverride.html

Providing the high quality compression settings such as BC7 would be desirable as well for non-normal maps.

[korindian77]

Tried Substance 2.4.5, on Unity 2020.1.0b7 with HDRP 9.0.0 (due to some Shader Graph fixes in that version). In 2020.1, Unity uses the PackageManager exclusively for importing/updating Asset Store assets. The PackageManager shows the latest build as 2.4.4, however when I install it, in the Substance > About menu option, it shows as 2.4.5 (beta).

Although 2020.1 is still in beta, I wanted to point out that the latest version does not fix the Alpha8 problem when compression format is set to Raw.

There is also another problem with texture compression. The setting "Compressed" makes the alpha channel the same as the red channel. The setting "CompressedNoAlpha" shows the alpha channel as it is supposed to be, interestingly enough.

Additionally, using Unity's new "Preset" functionality in the top right of the inspector of the Substance textures causes the editor to hang when trying to save a preset.

Can someone take a look into this for 2020.1?