Messages

46

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: Material Layering VS Previous Workflow Performance?

 on: July 25, 2016, 01:06:51 am 

While I understand why you limited it to 4 Materials -- this probably being the limit for realtime content - it would be great if in the future we could add additional layers -- so go beyond the 4 materials.

I see this as a useful tool for offline rendering.
For example on the Hobbit movies we did entire cities the same way -- tiled and triplanar materials in shaders and just creating masks.
But our uber-shaders had more like 25 layers

I think there might have to be some logic of caching stuff out so not to exceed texture units (which I guess is another reason why you limited it to 4) but for non-realtime stuff 4 is definitely tight.

47

Substance Painter - Feature Requests - Re: Export all channels into a single one

 on: July 25, 2016, 12:59:03 am 

You can already use Channel Packing in the Export Presets. You can pack them anyway you like.

Or are you talking about multiChannel exrs ? So Exrs with more than the usual Red, Green, Blue + Alpha Channels ?

48

Substance Painter - Feature Requests - Increase UVProjection Scale Maximum

 on: July 14, 2016, 08:02:39 pm 

I often find that the maximum 128 for UVProjection Scale is not enough.
It would be great if the manual typing of values would allow me to set a higher value.

Especially with higher res maps but small uv shells the scale of materials might be quite visibly off (wood grain too large etc.) because I am unable to set a higher repeat.

49

Substance Designer - Feature Requests - Re: Node bypass

 on: June 16, 2016, 10:00:18 pm 

For reference I attached a video showing how mari handles bypassing.
Quick Explanation:

- Mari nodes generally don't have multiple Outputs. However when it does, it will pass the active 'noodle'/connection to those outputs
- By pressing CTRL+D you will cycle through the inputs that are passed directly to the Output (Output = InputA, Output = InputB etc.) . The active Input is marked in bold, deactivated inputs are crossed out.

I think it is important to remember where the usage cases for this are. You want to often turn off some sort of layering via a blend mode.
Sure, SD can have rather complex nodes with a lot of outputs but the vast majority of nodes where you want to use this feature have only one output.
So in general I would just make an assumption and pass the currently active Input to all available outputs instead of leaving this feature out completely,

50

Substance Designer - Feature Requests - Re: Node bypass

 on: June 15, 2016, 09:44:27 pm 

Or even simpler, just dynamically copy the channels --- so if it is a Grayscale Output feeding into a RGB Input shuffle the Grayscale into RGB Channels internally then map it to the existing RGB Output on the Node that is bypassed.
Vice Versa on an RGB2FLOAT just use the Red Channel.
The bypass would need to artifically smarten up the bypassed Node's Output Section by inserting a copy channel if necessary before its Output but it seems less invasive to the code base this way. The inserted Node could be tagged with Metadata indicating that it was inserted automatically so it can be easily found and removed again once the bypass is turned off again or it could be a nodetype that only the program is allowed to create.

Where there is a will (or a buget ...) there's a way

51

Substance Designer - Feature Requests - Re: Node bypass

 on: June 15, 2016, 09:23:41 pm 

Gotta admit I do miss this as well. But the grayscale vs rgb conflicts are a conundrum.
Maybe the 'Output' of the Node internal Output could be made dynamic ?
Correct me if I am wrong but the system already seems to exists for Inputs - there are some that can take both datatypes.
If the Output-Variable of the node could dynamically accept Floats and vec4s (so a dynamic struct depending on input) depending on what is fed in then the bypass is as simple as
OUTPUT = INPUTA
OUTPUT = INPUTB

etc.

I recognize that this is not an easy coding thing but in an ideal situation the way Outputs are defined are global variables in substance (so just called as 'Output = blala;' at the end of the fragment instead of explicitly saying 'float Ouput = Blala; )
As soon as the Output Vars can dynamically be constructed to accept both datatypes due to a change in the global variable no node would be broken as the result of the code change. Maybe I am thinking incorrect but I don't see a reason why the Output-Struct can't change and needs to be hardcoded.

52

Substance Painter - Feature Requests - UI Revamp Mask Editor

 on: June 14, 2016, 09:27:20 pm 

Hi,

I don't have too much of an issue with the SP UI. Except for the Mask Editor - its UI is actively making things hard.

The UI is a completely unreadable and I find myself making mistakes and spending time dissecting things because of it:


Number 1:

Currently on first glance for example the 'Curvature' Slider looks grouped under the 'AO' Group - I honestly have to look each time consciously for it.

There are two improvements that could/should happen here.

- Please add a separator between the different types of masks -- AO, Curvature, Grunge etc.

- Currently a collapsed group occupies an entire row. Please add the ability to expand a group as a small arrow behind the main slider.

  So for example the Curvature slider itself has a button at the end to go to advanced options.

  This saves an entire row and makes things immediately more readable


Number 2:

Please group things together logically. The custom Grunge Inputs should live directly under the Grunge Group to have everything related to it accessible at a glance.

Number 3:

Please copy Zbrush and add automatic collapsing of Subgroups when another Subgroup is opened.

Thanks,
Jens

53

Substance Painter - Discussions - Anyone using alSurface (Arnold) with SP Maps ?

 on: June 07, 2016, 12:12:36 am 

Hi,
is anyone using the alSurface shader for Arnold with maps out of Substance Painter ?
I would be curious to know

a) what channels you are using in sp and what shader model
b) how/if you are doing any conversion on export

Especially the way you are handling metalness vs dielectric would be of interest to me.
Do you do layered Shaders with one set to dielectric the other to metallic ?
If so do you use a metalness channel in SP to handle the blending of materials in Arnold ?

Thanks,
Jens

54

Substance Designer - Technical Support - Re: FXMap only updates after Designer restart

 on: June 06, 2016, 12:30:29 am 

Regarding UPDATE-1 - I thought I had ? (see scrnshot)
Regard UPDATE-2 - is there a way maybe to throw an error in the future instead of killing the engine

55

Substance Designer - Technical Support - Many gaps in documentation

 on: June 05, 2016, 09:11:52 pm 

There are a number of topics marked 'to-do' in the online documentation.
Some of them have been marked this way even in the 4.x documentation.

Personally I am a strong believer in written documentation as I don't like sifting through hours of videos just to find information by chance about the node I am looking for.

Please, if the technical writers could take pity and fill in the holes that would be helpful to the small percentage of people who still like written user guides

56

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: UDIM import ignoring materials?

 on: June 05, 2016, 04:55:47 pm 

Interesting.
I an used to from Mari having the Patches just named by udim but then having an export template that used $ENTITY (which is the Objectname) and $UDIM.
So for example by setting an export template $ENTITY_$CHANNEL.$UDIM.tif on export it would get filled in with the necessary data.

I don't 100% see the benefit of fully resolving the texture set names with Object or material Names all the time since it is very pipeline specific but since texture sets are the only way to distinguish between the original materials atm I can see why it is necessary to have the option.

Maybe the concept of Metadata could be added so you can have access to the original MaterialName during Export ?

57

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Re: Way to save layout and shelf button size ?

 on: June 05, 2016, 02:48:39 pm 

Here is my current work env.
It's a low priority, I can always just quickly move the shelf off the main monitor on the right.
The Thumbnail size change issue is something that is a bit more annoyance though
I run a small shelf monitor on the side and the Large thumbnails are easier to see so I switch back on every SP restart

58

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: Importing existing UDIM Textures

 on: June 05, 2016, 02:41:46 pm 

Going forward I think that UDIM sequences should be handled as a single item in the shelves.
Not just for easier API access but think Objects with dozens or more UDIMs and multiple channels. The shelves will get flooded otherwise.

I know the current texture set solution is a stepping stone (a good one) to a full solution at which point importing
udim sequences onto a single Texture set will become even more of an issue and probably should be a one click solution of 'importing into shelf, importing into layer'.
In Mari we quite routinely rebuild old assets (from previous projects for example) just by pointing to a mesh and scanning and importing udim sequences.
It saves us from having to keep work files around indefinitely after a project finished.

59

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Way to save layout and shelf button size ?

 on: June 04, 2016, 07:37:18 pm 

Hi,
I have some floating palettes on my second monitor however when I restart SP the Palettes are moving to the main monitor again.
In addition I have a setting of 'Large' for the Shelf Icons however on restart they default back to Medium.

60

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Re: Lost the ability to click select Texture Sets in SP 2.1

 on: June 04, 2016, 07:32:21 pm 

I have the same issue.
The shortcuts keeps disappearing and isn't saved when I reset and close painter.

I start a new project and it works but then I do something and the shortcut is gone
Then I reset it in the shortcuts and it works but it randomly disappears and definitely is gone the next time I restart painter.