Messages

1

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Re: Normal map compression artefacts

 on: February 10, 2021, 11:04:02 pm 

Thanks for the quick investigation and reply.
The reason I started this topic is precisely because:
1. Changing the compression settings has no effects at all.
2. Changing the compression format (from ie DXT5 to userinterface2D) has no effect at all.
under the hood the plugin will always stubbornly revert the normal to BC5 Format whenever sync rendering is called.
I believe this is quite a major a bug, and I'm seriously surprised that didn't show up in your investigation.

For what it's worth the plugin is set to using the GPU engine in the settings.
Let me know how I can assist in providing further detail or information if needed.

Thanks a lot for looking into this.

Hi,

Thanks for the follow up. Our dev is looking into "under the hood the plugin will always stubbornly revert the normal to BC5 Format whenever sync rendering is called." He said this was indeed a bug. I wasn't testing any runtime components. I am sorry I overlooked this.

For me, changing the compression format does update in the Editor. Are you not seeing any change in Editor? Using userinterface2D seems to get rid of the artifacts for me. 

Cheers,
WEs

2

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Re: Normal map compression artefacts

 on: February 10, 2021, 09:59:12 pm 

Hi,

We did some investigating and the plugin seems to be working correctly. The output displayed in Substance Player will show as uncompressed and is not the same as the default compression settings in Unreal. Comparing Designer or Player outputs will not give a 1:1 comparison. Any compressed texture will show some artifacts. 

We switched the UE4 plugin to use UTexture2D at 4.24. The generated textures from the Substance material are using UE4's compression settings and all of the texture settings for an output are controlled via UTexture2D. You can change the compression settings for the textures. By default, we use the Normal Map BC5 compression scheme. However, if you set the compression to UserInterface2D (RGBA), this will essentially be uncompressed. 

I believe the Lossy Compression Amount and Quality settings are used when the project is built. I am not 100% sure on that. Those settings do not affect any textures in the Editor, so it's not specific to the Substance plugin.

Another option is to set the GBuffer state in the Project Settings > Rendering category to Use High Precision Normals. This will   encode the normals at 16 bit per channel.

Cheers,
Wes

3

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Re: Normal map compression artefacts

 on: February 04, 2021, 11:50:17 pm 

HI,

Which version of the UE4 plugin are you using. Our latest iteration that natively supports UTexture2D allows you to change the compression settings for the generated textures.

Cheers,
Wes

4

Substance Integrations - Unity - Re: URP texture workflow, channel packed textures

 on: February 04, 2021, 11:46:14 pm 

Thanks for the reply.

I'm aware the HDRP template includes occlusion. What I'm asking is if the template correctly correlates to the setup necessary for Unity URP.
Right now the template has a MetallicSmoothness texture output but Unity URP asks for a texture with a specific channel mapping (red = metallic, green = occlusion, blue = none, alpha = smoothness).

I guess I could create a custom template, but I don't understand why the presets for URP are set up in this way.

Hi,

I am sorry, I was thinking you were referring to HDRP. I misread your first post where you mentioned URP : ) Our export template doesn't pack the AO channel as you mentioned. The URP shaders do not pack the AO. They use the Metal and Smoothness in the Alpha channel. Our URP template in Painter is packing an RGBA map with Metal and Glossiness in the Alpha. We convert roughness to glossiness. The glossiness map is the same as the Unity Smoothness. It's just the invert of roughness. We also pack the opacity in the A of the base color (albedo).

The URP shaders have a separate input for AO maps. The AO is not packed.

Cheers,
Wes

5

Substance Integrations - Unity - Re: URP texture workflow, channel packed textures

 on: February 02, 2021, 09:15:44 pm 

I am having trouble understanding the correct integration of textures outputted from Substance Painter for Unity.
If I'm not mistaken Unity's URP workflow requires Metallic Occlusion Smoothness to be channel packed as follows:
Red = Metallic
Green = Occlusion
Blue = None
Alpha = Smoothness

Substance Painter offers a template Unity URP Pipeline (Metallic Standard) which I presume to be the correct preset to use but it doesn't seem to implement Occlusion or smoothness.

Is there a step I am missing?
Any help would be appreciated.

Hi,

The Painter HD Renderpipeline template does include Occlusion. The Green channel is using the Mixed AO which is a combination of Baked AO as well as any AO data created in the AO channel of the layer stack.

The Smoothness (invert of roughness in Painter) is the Alpha channel.

Please see the attached image. It shows the packed maps. The .$ will omit UDIM if you are using a non-UDIM project.

Cheers,
Wes

6

Substance Academy - Substance Academy - Beginner - Re: Getting started series - Substance Painter

 on: January 25, 2021, 04:17:28 pm 

Hello,

We are working on a new getting started course to replace the current. We have had a lot of UI changes and I apologize for all the confusion. The new course is being recorded now and will will remove the out data course.

The shader setting is now listed on the Texture Set Settings. You can access the shader drop down and choose New Shader Instance.

Cheers,
Wes

7

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Re: Constant Crash on Project Setup (file import) !!!

 on: November 23, 2020, 03:50:34 pm 

So apparently after uninstalling "Chitubox" everything seems to be running fine again. May I ask why that is??? In any case, glad I got things working.

HI Tom,

Checking with QA, Painter has a known issue with custom thumbnails from Windows and Chitbox is also working with these thumbnails and causing a conflict. In the settings for Chitubox, you should be able to disable the thumbnail preview to resolve the issue.

Cheers,
Wes

8

Substance Academy - PBR Theory, Guidelines and Application - Re: In which color space are textures exported?

 on: November 19, 2020, 03:40:54 pm 

If it's a color that you see then it's sRGB. Everything else is linear.

Not sure if I misinterpreted this but doesn't normal map need raw color space? Quick test of raw vs linear

Also, I'm a bit confused why there's 2 separate "color space" settings (Output node and on export setting). I noticed the node has Passthru, SNorm, and DX/OpenGLNormal which isn't present in the export setting.

HI,

You do not need to set the colorspace for these outputs. This color space is for use with the internal substance engine and at this time, we do not have an integration that will read it. It's best to leave it blank at this time. The substance plugins will set the interpretation correctly. If you are exporting only textures, you will set the interpretation for the color space in your rendering package.

Cheers,
Wes

9

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Re: Arnold for Maya Documentation Issues

 on: November 09, 2020, 03:40:56 pm 

I was trying to locate a specific thread for Documentation issues and found this one. However, it seems quite old, so I'll try it but not sure if it's going to get any attention.

This is related to the documentation for Substance Painter, Arnold for Maya: https://docs.substance3d.com/spdoc/arnold-for-maya-143720756.html

I noticed on the page multiple times there was mention of the "Arnold Standart Shader". I assume that should be "Arnold Standard Shader"?

Also on the same page, step 2 of exporting mentions, "In the Export Tab, select the Arnold Configuration and Click on Export". This is perhaps outdated since when I go to the Export Textures window, there is no Export tab. There is a Settings tab that seems to be what the Export window was referring to, but there are other tabs in the window that do not reflect the same workflow.

The instructions also seem to end after the 2nd step, with some explaination of the Arnold Standard Shader, but it does not mention how to make any connections to the standard shader in Maya.

HI,

Very sorry for the confusion. The docs listed above are old and out of date. Please check our new updated docs for Arnold in the Ecosystem and Plugins pages. https://docs.substance3d.com/display/integrations/Rendering

Here is the page specific to Painter and Arnold.
https://docs.substance3d.com/display/integrations/Arnold+-+Substance+Painter

Cheers,
Wes

10

Substance Academy - Substance Academy - Beginner - Re: Creating your first Substance Material Training Course

 on: September 30, 2020, 10:55:50 pm 

Hi Wes,

I'm new to Substance Designer and I'm running into the issue where my materials aren't showing in the 2D view. I dropped in the 3D Perlin Noise texture but my 2D view is showing up as a flat gray. 

Hi Matt,

In this case, you are using a 3D noise. The 3D noises require a position input. You could bake this from a mesh or use the Cube 3D GBuffer node's position output to visualize the node. Instead of the 3D noise, you should use the 2D perlin noise.

Cheers,
Wes

11

Substance Integrations - Autodesk Maya - Re: Base color from substance doesnt look the same in maya 2018 arnold 5.4.0.2

 on: September 22, 2020, 06:32:17 pm 

Hi,

I you exporting from Substance Painter?

Cheers,
Wes

12

Substance Integrations - Unity - Re: Painter to Uniiversal Render Pipeline

 on: July 06, 2020, 11:14:01 pm 

could some one tell me how to export correctly from substance painter to the universal render pipeline in unity? is there a tutorial or documentation any where?

I assume the hdrp export won't work for the urp?

thanks

Hi,

In the latest version of Substance Painter we added URP output templates. The packing is the same as the Standard material so if you don't have the latest version of Painter, you can create a packed map preset in the Output templates.

Cheers,
Wes

13

Substance Integrations - Unity - Re: New substance designer nodes - sbsars won't import into unity

 on: July 06, 2020, 07:32:11 pm 

Hi Wes,

Just tried your sbsar and comes up as broken archive in Unity 2019.2.20f1 using the latest plugin from asset store (download a couple of weeks ago).



Thanks,
James H

Hi James,

I tried the sbsar with 2019.2.20f1 and it works on my end. I see from the screen shot you are using a very old version of the plugin 2.3.2. I think this is the issue. The latest version on the asset store is 2.5.1. I think you need to update the package in the asset store as its probably downloading a cached version.

Cheers,
WEs

14

Substance Integrations - Unity - Re: New substance designer nodes - sbsars won't import into unity

 on: June 17, 2020, 02:57:26 pm 

I checked this node and it seems to be working with multiple directions. Can you please try the sbsar file I have attached here.


Cheers,
Wes

15

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Re: 8k textures in substance painter

 on: June 15, 2020, 03:19:07 pm 

Over 4 years later and I'm Googling this issue.  I found a solution to straight edges (if using Maya make sure the chamfer option on the bevel tool is turned OFF), but angled edges are horrible.  How is it that you all have not fixed this yet?  I'm scratching my head at how much is missing in this app (can't make a selection = ridiculous!).  To be real here, if Mari were the same price as Sub Painter, I think we'd see a major shift.  If you can't fix an issue like this.....?

Can you post some screen shots of the issues you are having. Are you talking about needing to straighten the edges of the UVs for the bake?

Cheers,
Wes