Messages

1

Substance Painter - Discussions - Running multiple versions of Painter ..

 on: May 17, 2021, 06:26:55 pm 

I asked this on Discord too but does anyone know if its possible to run multiple versions of Substance Painter? 

So a co-worker is working on Project A using the most recent version of Substance.
I'm on Project B and C and using a much older version ( I've learned the hard way never to upgrade in the middle of a project, let alone two ).

However I need to temporarily help out my co-worker and work on some of his files.  I can't .. without updating my copy of Substance, which, or so I've been told before, is not undoable.

Is that correct or is there any work around for this?

Cheers,

Pat

2

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Re: Project Configuration bug?

 on: August 26, 2020, 02:44:52 pm 

Dear lord .. its one of those days .. yes it was .. but you can delete the thread if you want, as it wouldn't let me.

3

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: Changing mesh collapses layers

 on: August 26, 2020, 02:19:22 pm 

Yes. I and other freelancers I work with have noticed this and it majorly screws up our workflow. I'm having it sometimes delete some layers ( usually all the smart materials ), sometimes it deletes everything.

It means I can no longer send out a sample file and have people just swap in a new mesh and rebake/import their resources/mesh maps knowing materials will be assigned to the correct IDs etc..

4

Substance Painter - Technical Support - [SOLVED] Project Configuration bug / empty layer stack

 on: August 26, 2020, 02:14:07 pm 

Solved .. reassign texture sets rebuilds the layers.  I think very simplified workflow and asset creation is the reason I've never seen this happen before. We only have one texture set and its always called the same name for consistency. We now have a few freelancers using Max which seems to of changed things without them realising.



So, my usual workflow is that I'll work on a project to completion.
Then, when I've a new project thats for the same engine, requires many of the same base materials etc. etc.  I'll use the Edit/Project Configuration panel to swap in a new model. Once I have new resource textures I'm good to go. I've the same shader setup, the same display settings, the same materials, the same color masks assigning the correct materials to the same ID colours. 

It's a huge time saver, ensures consistency, and reduces error. If I decide a mesh needs tweaking and rebaking during the texture process then its non destructive.  I've used this approach for many years now because it works and means that the quantity of models I and a bunch of freelancers are expected to texture is feasable.

Except now it doesn't.
Now, when I select and load a new mesh via Project Configuration, Substance deletes most, and sometimes all, of my Layers!

5

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: How to paint dirtiness around normal mapping bump detail?

 on: February 21, 2020, 07:19:22 pm 

In order to create illustrative black outlines around masked elements, we copy the mask, blur it and the use levels to tighten it up. It can be a little imprecise once blurred but if you have a mask of your normal map detail it might help create the effect you want. 

6

Substance Designer - Technical Support - Re: Baking has lost a feature? How to have unique dilation values per baker?

 on: January 16, 2020, 08:36:04 pm 

Yeah I've always been a bit awkward. I can get round it for now but I'd never turn down a freebie ... thanks.

7

Substance Designer - Scripting - Re: Plugin giveaway: Export DDS files with mipmap generation

 on: January 16, 2020, 03:34:12 am 

It works great. The only issue I'd have is that it doesn't save its settings with the file so I've got to reinput everything everytime I export .. but still .. this is fantastic.

Thanks.

Pat

8

Substance Designer - Technical Support - Re: Baking has lost a feature? How to have unique dilation values per baker?

 on: January 16, 2020, 03:06:26 am 

Being available in the earlier versions it bacame part of my workflow.

I got into the habit of doing multiple bakes and having an action in PS to combine them. Do do this I'd output some bakers without difusion and save them as a png with transparancy. These would then be loaded and used to create specific masks for combining specific elements in specific orders (usually via ID colour). All done via PS actions so as automated as we could.

There's probably better ways of doing it now but it was the easiest way we could find to do it quickly back in the day and until we stop producing DLC I need to keep doing it this way.

Thanks for the tip about double clicking.  I've just updated to 2020 and am finding lots of unexpected changes that are causing a few surprises.

Can you explain why you removed this functionality?

9

Substance Painter - Feature Requests - Re: Color Picker Hex Code field

 on: January 15, 2020, 11:16:34 pm 

Another for hex values and standard 0-255

10

Substance Painter - Feature Requests - Re: Can we get baked...

 on: January 15, 2020, 01:01:35 pm 

There have a been a lot of seemingly small features removed but they're having a big impact on our work.

Baked Lighting Stylised is similar to the original but different enough, even with as close to the same values as possible, to cause us problems.

11

Substance Painter - Feature Requests - make the colour picker popup draggable again.

 on: January 15, 2020, 12:58:55 pm 

Using 2019.3.1

In previous versions it was possible to drag the colour picker popup where ever you wanted and it would stay there. So you could move it close to where you were painting and could get colours without having to move your cursor across the screen. Not a biggie but overtime it becomes very tedious.

But worse is that I now find it can obscure areas of the screen that I want to look at or access and I'm not able to move it out of the way. That is not good.

12

Substance Designer - Technical Support - Baking has lost a feature? How to have unique dilation values per baker?

 on: January 15, 2020, 02:16:25 am 

So I'm now on 2019.3.0.

I've only just upgraded and in my previous version there was a tick box to "Override parameters common to all bakers"  .. so I could use different dilation widths, select specific UV maps, turn diffusion on and off and various other settings for each baker. 

This seems to of vanished which is kind of a shame as it was an essential part of my workflow and allowed me to get the baking passes all done quickly in one go. Have I just overlooked it or has it really been removed? 

Some of those features are suggested in the Bakers Render List but they can't be edited, except globally, so seem pointless.

Cheers.

13

Substance Designer - Scripting - Re: Plugin giveaway: Export DDS files with mipmap generation

 on: January 09, 2020, 03:50:56 am 

Oh man this is not a niche topic for us.
We're a publisher and 70% of our developers don't use any of the big engines. So lack of .dds support is proving a big obstacle with Substance, forcing us to waste a lot of time and rely on unsupported plugins in Photoshop. A time consuming extra set of steps that are prone to error.

I was looking for something that would at least do the same as the Nvidia and Intel plugins and be able to store settings so it can be a one click export. Your plugin could well be a huge boon for us. I'll test it tomorrow and let you know if we have any issues.

Thanks so much for creating this.

Pat

14

Substance Painter - Feature Requests - Full .dds export support

 on: January 09, 2020, 03:33:40 am 

I first asked for this about 4 years ago and it was declined.  Since our situation hasn't changed I'm asking for it again.

We're a game publisher and 70% of our developers use proprietary engines .. ie. non of the big names with their built in file compression. So for Substance Designer and Painter to be able to export directly to a properly supported dds exporter with settings that could be saved so exporting is automatic, would be a god send.

ATM we rely on unsupported free plugins for Photoshop ( very old Nvidia and newer Intel ) that are extremely labourious to use and could cease working with every new Photoshop update. This is really very, very bad. I could use more descriptive language but I'm sure you understand.

Thank you for the consideration.

15

Substance - Purchases & Licenses - 22days until my license expires .. what happens then?

 on: January 08, 2020, 03:13:47 pm 

Due to some very long projects I've been locked into early versions of Substance for several years - Painter 1.7.3 and Designer 5.62.

I'm now free to upgrade to 2019 versions and in doing so find there's only 22 days left of my Indie Subscription. Since the next projects are also likely to take several years I expect once the pipeline is tied down I'll be locked into this for the foreseeable future meaning there's little point in maintaining a subscription .. so with the new Adobe take over, what will happen in 22days? Will I automatically recieve a perpetual license?

Thanks,

Pat