Messages

31

Substance Designer - Discussions - Operating Substance in SP with custom channel.

 on: April 15, 2017, 04:11:34 am 

 Hi.

 In my opinion, using SP with custom Substance is one of efficient ways and so that's the mindset I'd like to keep when I work.

 I've seen the video in Allegorithmic Youtube channel(That's my regular visiting place).

 The video is "GDC 2017: Substance pipeline and toolset for Paragon heroes w/ Brad Smith".

 In that video, He introduced how he utilizes Substance in SP with custom channel. That was great and so inspiring because before I saw it, I hardly imagined that I could use Substance as a new channel.

 In fact, the Substances he showed are made for custom filter but they are not just a filter. He associates them with custom channel in SP so that he can paint them out as we do with almost same way on basecolor, roughness or other basic channels.

 At the end of the video, he introduced how the Heat filter(one of his custom filters) is organized and the way of utilizing it in SP so I really appreciate for that.

 Another cool filter is Paint Blistering filter(shown on 28:37) but I'm confusing because it doesn't look simple that much.

 As shown below, as the Age channel value gets increased, the number of blister sample gets larger and when the channel value reaches to near 1.0, the filter shows quite different another effect like worn paint not just blister. I think this doesn't look like just changing area which used to be implemented simply with level node but it looks like controlling the actual number or shifting of something but I couldn't see how the filter's nodes are organized to enable this wonderful works so this is why I'm confusing.

 Is there anyone who understands of how it goes?

 I know my question might sound so generic or I didn't may get the point of what he taught.
 I just want to discuss with this topic freely and get some hints.

 Thank you very much.

32

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: How do you bake normal map with cylinder model?

 on: February 13, 2017, 02:19:29 pm 

Indeed, this issue is unavoidable. But I think the issue in general is that normal maps are abused to simulate edge detail. I do the same, everyone does, because of hardware limitations.

There will be a time in the (not too distant) future where all edge detail (such as chamfers, fillets) will be modelled into the geometry because you can. Normal maps will only be used for fine surface detail. Until that time, you have to accept  rendering errors from a too crude approximation.

 Hello~

 Yes! I hope someday I will be able to escape from all the technical problems thanks to very enhanced hardware and I really hope that the day when normal map plays for only surface detail will come soon. Thank you very much.

33

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: How do you bake normal map with cylinder model?

 on: February 13, 2017, 01:59:34 pm 

No, there is no solution to this, it's a direct unavoidable consequence of mapping a highly detailed, refined model to a lower resolution model.
It will only ever look good from one angle. In your first image, it looks good from the angle of the averaged normal at the edge.

There's people straightening the normals in texture, or - as you said - people who edit the cage.
The result of this it it will look great directly  from the side, but will produce similar issues from all other angles(incl the one thats working fine in your first image).
 
The angle that's working for you in your first image, is arguably the most important one for any 'free' asset(unlike a weapon, that is hold in a specific angle towards the camera). It displays like the highpoly, despite having fewer segments.

Unless you see the model from a certain, specific angle all or most of the time, such as a weapon model, there's no point in changing anything here.

If you only ever see the asset from the angle in the second image, then it is justified to change the cage accordingly and there's no option in Painter or Designer to do that work for you.

 Hi~

 Thank you for your kind explanation. As you said, a way how I bake normal map must be implemented by the render mesh's usage and I agree with that. If I'm working with top down style project like Diablo3, I'd go for like the 1st image's way.

 But I have been always eager to know of perfect method for baking normal with cylinder model in case I'm working for various projects. In most case, I think, small props tend to be placed along with no certain camera angle.

 That's all right any way. I'm going to keep in my mind what you taught for flexible work flow. Thank you.

34

Substance Painter - Discussions - How do you bake normal map with cylinder model?

 on: February 11, 2017, 03:21:53 pm 

 Hello.

 I Have a problem with baking normal map when it comes to a cylinder type model. Here are some images to explain what this is about.

 Above one looks decent to me but when the camera's position changes like below one, wavy line shows on the edge. That means, I suppose, the normal map has not been created by right way. I know this issue belongs to general CG theory so I apologize to ask here.

 And I know one of solutions. That is an editing cage in external application. But sometimes doing that is pain to me so I want to know if there is a way how I can get clean and nice normal map in SP or SD baker without custom cage.

Thank you very much.

35

Substance Designer - Feature Requests - Re: Improvement for "Color Random" in Tile Sampler

 on: January 09, 2017, 02:53:16 pm 

 Dear Mr. Danchenko.

 I got a good news today from you.

 You understood my intention and showed me great ways!! I also got a motivation that has me implement to customize the "Tiling" nodes as you've done.
 I got your Tile Sampler as well as Filter Random Tiles Grayscale Generator and tested out both ways. I saw they works very good. Getting slow with custom Tile Sampler doesn't matter now because my project is supposed to go to bitmap exporting method:)

 I really thank you for giving me a lot of information and the attachment.

 Best Regards

36

Substance Designer - Feature Requests - Improvement for "Color Random" in Tile Sampler

 on: January 08, 2017, 12:18:10 pm 

 Hello. Happy new year~~

 I'd like to ask a feature improvement of Color Random in Tile Sampler(and all nodes that have same function).

 When I make tiles, I feel, color random is super fantastic feature for it saves tones of time. In my usage, I usually set it for making mask so that I can feed it to Blend node or Directional Warp(like Fig.01). Of course, I know it also works for height map however that's not an issue this time.

 In the way of Fig.01, I always have to set double Tile Sampler because I want color random to work for being a mask not for height information. With this way whenever the upper one get tweaked for tile amount, scale, etc. I have to do same things to the below one manually so that's the topic I want to say.

 I think if Tile Sampler had another output called "Color" like Fig.02 and the color random information would not give changes to the upper output but would do only to the below one, I'd be able to make works much more productively so I request this function with my gratitude.

 If there are other ways that can solve my problem without adding new feature, please let me know how I can get it.

 Thank you very much.

37

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Re: Utilizing 'input' node in UE4 problem

 on: October 05, 2016, 01:45:35 am 

Hi, Mr. McDermott.

I've tested out as you taught and found that it worked very well.
What I want to do, however, is to assign textures generated from Substance in UE4, not manually imported one. So I hope I can use SD with the feature someday.

I think what you have taught is also helpful though because I face a lot of cases developing game graphic so I truly appreciate with your help:)

38

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Utilizing 'input' node in UE4 problem

 on: October 04, 2016, 08:27:06 am 

Hi

I'd like to know if it's possible to utilize input node of SD in UE4.

The major purpose of using input node is for making atlas. I've saw the video tutorial(Creating a texture atlas series) and I wanted to use the atlas Substance with input node not with linked/imported bitmap so that I can handle it with various textures come from other Substances inside UE4 directly.

For quick test, I made very simple Substance that has input node in it and published.
But I couldn't put bitmap(generated from Substance in UE4) into input slot as the slot doesn't allow to have showing red square.

I really want to make it for better using of SD in UE4 so I definitely need your help:)

Thank you.

39

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Re: Visible if function issue with UE4.

 on: September 07, 2016, 02:21:01 pm 

Hi~

I'd like to know if 'visible if' function works well within UE4.
I made a Substance including the feature and exported to UE4 but I found that the function doesn't work.
In my case, the parameters bound to specific one under 'visible if' always show up on Substance Graph Instance editor.

I've tested with UE4 version 4.12.5.

I think this might not be a big issue but hope fix for better use:)

Thank you very much.

Hi,

The "visible if" is exported in the sbsar file. It is up to the integration to support. I will check with the devs to see if this can be updated for the UE4 plugin as well.

Cheers,
Wes

Hi, Mr. McDermott.
Thanks for your consideration as usual:)

Adding more information to make things clear, I've exported to UE4 in the sbsar file.
I checked that the "visible if" works pretty well in SD but the parameter always shows in UE4 no matter how the visibility condition is.

Best Regards

40

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Visible if function issue with UE4.

 on: September 03, 2016, 11:22:23 am 

Hi~

I'd like to know if 'visible if' function works well within UE4.
I made a Substance including the feature and exported to UE4 but I found that the function doesn't work.
In my case, the parameters bound to specific one under 'visible if' always show up on Substance Graph Instance editor.

I've tested with UE4 version 4.12.5.

I think this might not be a big issue but hope fix for better use:)

Thank you very much.

41

Substance Integrations - Unity - Re: Shadow issue with opacity mask asset in Unity5

 on: July 20, 2016, 01:48:54 pm 

Dear Wes.

I got your attachment and tried to test for casting shadow in Unity.

I saw nice shadow with it so I'm going to look for what's wrong with my setting:)

I really appreciate with your help.

ps. Thank you for your all great video tutorials!!!

42

Substance Integrations - Unity - Shadow issue with opacity mask asset in Unity5

 on: July 12, 2016, 02:51:49 pm 

Hi~

I'm working in mobile game project with SP and SD. I included using Substance in team rule for taking advantage of its overwhelming convenience.
So every mesh has Substance in Unity.

But I have a small issue about casting shadow.

A mesh which doesn't have opacity mask casts shadow well. So that doesn't belong to this case but
A mesh which has opacity mask doesn't cast shadow in my project(shown as Fig. 06). Light and GI are baked mode.

I composed nodes as Fig. 01.
Sometimes I don't include opacity output and in this case, opacity bitmap node goes to base color's alpha via channel shuffle(Fig. 02).
Mesh has double planes(Fig. 03).
I used standard unity shader and set rendering mode to cutout(Fig. 04).
I changed bitmap format to jpeg for optimization(Fig. 05).

As for a quick test, I've exported outputs as a bitmap using targa format and composed material with these bitmaps and then I could get shadow with this set up.

BUT I don't really want to make an exceptional case of work flow. What I want is using Substance for every mesh in my project.
I strongly guess I missed some key processes about opacity masked mesh so I need help for that.

Thanks for reading:)

43

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: MY symmetrical mesh shows seam line on the border.

 on: July 03, 2016, 01:09:08 am 

The seams that you see in the viewport is in fact related to our reflection computation. If you change the quality setting in the shader parameter from 16 samples to 64 samples the problem become almost invisible. 16 samples if often enough for most use-case, it's a good middle ground between quality and performances.

Hi Mr. Froyok~

I've changed the quality setting to 64 samples and then the problem disappeared.

16 - sample, however, seems to be even more productive as you taught.

Thanks for your kind explanation:)

44

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: MY symmetrical mesh shows seam line on the border.

 on: June 25, 2016, 03:19:43 pm 

Do you mean that left and right UVs overlap?
Pretty sure that would confuse the baker.

Epi

Hi, Mr. Epithumia.
I've made left and right UVs perfectly overlapped before bake.
Can doing that cause problem?
Though the normal map itself seems to look not bad.
Thank you.

45

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: MY symmetrical mesh shows seam line on the border.

 on: June 25, 2016, 03:00:45 pm 

Can you attach the meshes (low and high poly) ?

Hi, Mr. Froyok.
I've attached high and low poly meshes and .spp file also.
Thank you very much.