Substance Plugin Update - Version 1.2

[a_block]

NOTE 2015-11-20: If you downloaded the update since yesterday, please download again. Version 1.2 contains an important bugfix.

Hello everyone,

it took a long time, way longer than expected, but finally the first update for the Substance Plugin for Cinema 4D is released. I hope some of the added features will make up for the long wait.

The download can be found here.

NOTE: There's currently a limitation with Cinema 4D R17 Team Render, it will be fixed with SP2 for Cinema 4D.
NOTE 2: The online documentation has not been updated, yet. Sorry for that, but we didn't want to hold back the update any longer. The new documentation is included as PDF in the downloads.
NOTE 3: Minimum requirement for the plugin is Cinema 4D R16 SP3 (version 16.050)

And finally the list of changes, so you know, what to expect:

Version 1.2

Changes

• Improved naming, when Substances are duplicated

Fixes

• Freeze on undo after parameter change on a Substance with image input
• Materials not being updated after undo

Version 1.1

Additions

• Command: "Duplicate Substance(s) with Material(s)"
• Commands: "Select Substance(s) from Object(s)" and "Select Object(s)"
• Commands: "Apply Substance Preset", "Merge Substance Preset" and "Export Substance Preset"
• Commands: "Create Metallic Material(s)" and "Create Glossy Material(s)"
• Substances can now be disabled/frozen
• Tested with Cinema 4D R17 (try for example Take System and Substances!)
• Support for Team Render Server (please see Limitations!)

Changes

• Updated Substance Engine libraries (version 16895)
• Substance Ambient Occlusion output is now mapped to C4D's diffusion channel
• Renamed "Remove Substance(s)" into "Delete Substance(s)"
• Busy mouse pointer during Substance load
• Slightly reordered menus and added separators
• Changes for optimized PixelBerg support

Fixes

• Speed improvement, especially noticeable, if several Substance Shaders are mapped into Cinema 4D's Reflectance channel
• Crash, when an object with a Texture tag with no assigned material got copied
• While in the last release main focus was on standard Cinema 4D materials, with this update all commands work with Substance's in Hair,
  Sketch&Toon or non-standard materials like “Banzi”, “Cheen”,... and also with objects and tags (like e.g. Displacement Shader). For example if such
  materials or objects get copied into a new document, the Substances will follow. There are also chances, that this works with 3 rd  party materials as
  well.
• Undo on "Duplicate Substance(s)" and "Remove Substance(s)"
• Attribute Manager update on "Remove Substance(s)"
• Sometimes shader previews in shader hierarchies were not properly updated
• Substances being changed (inputs added), while scene is not loaded, could lead to a crash
• In conjunction with Cinema 4D R17: Relative image inputs and Cinema 4D's “Merge...” command (see Limitations section for more info on fixed issue)
• Deadlock in conjunction with TRS (might also have caused instabilities in other situations)
• On “Save Project with Assets...” image input filepaths were not correctly changed
• Several minor fixes and improvements

[davon92]

Hello, I have been trying to install the plugin on my copy of R16 but i cannot find the CLD File that it is asking for. also just dragging and dropping the substance folder into the plugins does not load it into cinema4d. What might be the cause? how else can i install it? : Edit : Found out my cinema4d wasnt upgraded in a while, updating it made it work.

[a_block]

Hi,
I'm sorry you are having problems with the install, not sure what's happening on your end.
Are you on Windows or Mac? And who is asking for a CLD file? Can you provide me with the exact error message?

[davon92]

yea sorry i just needed to update cinema4d, however because not updating runs rampant in the work place ,i'm not sure how to fix it in those settings.

[phillipbuckner]

I installed 1.2 on my Windows 10 C4D-R17.  I have found that only some of the substances will load.  I do not understand why only a few will work.  I am using .sbsar formats, as this is what I understand to be the correct format to use.  Is there some trick to make the .sbsar files I wish to use workable?  This is getting extremely frustrating since I can not get professional, production ready software to work.  Please advise.

[a_block]

Hi,
I'm sorry you are having problems. I'm not aware of a single Substance, that does not load. Can you please provide me with one you are having problems with?

[phillipbuckner]

Printed_circuit will not load and the info in the status line states "Invalid Substance Asset file" The vast majority of materials sbsar will not load inside C4D-R17 (Windows 10).  Do the files need to be in a specific location.  Does that location need to be added to the maps in preferences.  I did get one material to load---it was COAL.sbsar.  Nothing else seems to want to load.  In the meanwhile, I am falling critically behind on a couple of projects.  So, if this software is just beta software that the consumers are testing for you, I need to know that immediately so that I can turn to more reliable solutions.  Please advise.  Please help.

[a_block]

Hi,

as I said before, I'm sorry you are having problems with the plugin.
I downloaded Printed_Circuit from the database and here it loads just fine (see attached screenshot).
I'm really not sure, what the problem is on your side. But I can say, the plugin is definitely not in beta state. Several users have downloaded the updated plugin and we have not received a single bug report. I'm not saying, this is definitely no bug. And if it is a bug, we will try to fix it as fast as possible. But I will definitely need your help in finding it.
Can you please provide me with your Printed_Circuit Substance, so I can have a look, if there are any differences?
Maybe your file got corrupted on download?
Does it open in Substance Designer or Substance Player?
Is there maybe anything special with the place the file is located? Does the path contain any special characters (no, I'm not aware of any limitations regarding this, just guessing)? Are there any special access permissions?
Are you sure, you correctly installed the updated version 1.2 (or 1.1 in that regard) of the plugin? Open the console in Cinema 4D (Menu Script -> Console...). Do you get the startup message from the plugin saying the following?
Initializing Substance Plugin (version 1.2)...
Substance Engine: xxx
Substance Plugin successfully initialized.


Please, help me to help you.

[phillipbuckner]

I have attached the requested files.  I check the console readout and it states the Substance 1.2 loaded successfully.  I have all my substances in the C:\users\phillip G. Buckner\documents\allegorithmic folder.  I checked the security on the folder and admins and myself have access.  Again, it is not just the Printed_Circuit that I am having trouble with---it is almost all materials.  Printed_Circuit opens in Designer and the player just fine.

Thank you for your quick response and courtesy.

[a_block]

Hi,

I loaded the Printed_Circuit.sbsar from Printed_Circuit-pkg.zip and here it simply works. Tested in R16 and R17. I also added a sub-folder "phillip G. Buckner", just to make sure, the dot in that directory name doesn't cause any side effects (which of course would have been a bug). But that caused no problems, either. I could post another screenshot, but it would look like the last one.
I'm running out of ideas here...
Can you do me a favor and freshly extract the Printed_Circuit-pkg.zip into a temporary directory (for example C:\temp)? Then double check, your user has read permission on the file Printed_Circuit.sbsar. I know, you already checked permissions, but I'm running out of ideas here. Just to rule out some variables...

[phillipbuckner]

I unzipped the files to my desktop.  Still having the same issue.    However, I did notice that the whole directory tree is set to Read-Only.  I don't seem to be able to change that.  No matter what I do, the directory tree reverts back to read only.  My download directory is on the C: drive under Users.  Could this be the issue.  Should I re-download everything?  Before the 1.2 update the Printed_Circuit did work, then suddenly it quit working like most of the other materials.  Why would the Read-Only attribute effect C4D?  BTW, I have the Substance dialog palette nested with other palettes.  Say hocus-pocus and make it work.

[a_block]

Well, the file is read-only for my user here as well. Cinema doesn't want to do anything else than reading, so that should be ok.
I don't want to suggest to re-download everything, but perhaps you could try it with one single Substance? Just to make sure...
Perhaps you can check the permissions of a working one, to see if there's a difference.
Unfortunately I'm out of hocus-pocus for today. I really have no idea, what's going on on your system. I'll conduct some more tests tomorrow.
I'm sure, we will get you going one way or the other.
Oh, one more idea:
If you suspect the 1.2 update to be the culprit. Do you still have your version R16 installed? Do you still have version 1.0 of the plugin (you can simply downgrade be re-installing from the old archive)? Then perhaps it's worth a try, if the Substance can be loaded there.

[phillipbuckner]

I did install V1 in C4D-R16 and it did work.  But I cannot work in C4D-R16 as all of my current projects are in R17 format now.  I did read somewhere that C4D-R17 would be releasing SP2 soon.  Maybe that would fix it.  Thanks for your efforts.

[a_block]

Hm? I don't understand? What do your projects have to do with this test? It's all about starting up R16, loading the Substance, done. Then it works or not?
As I currently have no evidence, that this is a problem of Cinema 4D or Substance plugin, I wouldn't bet, C4D R17 SP2 will solve this issue. I really think, we need to find out, what is going on on your system.

[phillipbuckner]

ok...what should I try next, now that we have established that the R16 version works.  I have not tried V1.1 in R17 yet.  Is there a certain .Net framework needed or anything else from Microsoft?