Messages

31

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Vector displacement maps

 on: March 17, 2018, 03:10:16 am 

A vector displacement map seems to use the RGB values of the each pixel to represent a 3-axis vector.

Since it's just pixel data, it would certainly be possible to read it in and manipulate it in 'Substance'.  It would also be possible to create a custom pixel processor to extract (pseudo) mesh information from a vector displacement map.

However, without a shader to view the result inside 'substance', I'm not sure it would be very pleasant to work with.  I don't know how technically difficult it would be to create this.

What use case do you have in mind?

AJ

32

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Help with creating edge wear

 on: March 13, 2018, 02:59:37 am 

The mask generators rely on having the appropriate maps fed into them - they don't have any intelligent understanding of your model's topology.

The particular mask generators you are talking about rely heavily on the 'curvature' map.  A geometry border (like a cuff) likely doesn't appear in your curvature bake if it's a single sided mesh - which yours looks like it is.

To work around this, I'd probably paint a 'fake' curvature map, with a narrow white band around the hem and cuffs.  This can be fed into the 'curvature' slot of your mask generator, and should give the effect you need.

Maybe also worth mentioning that you don't need to feed the named map into a named input in each mask generator - feeding in a 'thickness' map into the 'curvature' input can have interesting effects, for instance.

33

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Re: Exposed parameters not being affected by blueprint

 on: March 06, 2018, 05:25:55 am 

Hello Keston;

Thanks for the reply.

My blueprint is almost identical to the one in the allegorithmic documentation:



It also works with a substance that has identical exposed parameters. 

Many thanks for your help!  I can send through the unreal assets or the mesh if needed.

AJ

34

Substance Integrations - UE4 - Exposed parameters not being affected by blueprint

 on: March 05, 2018, 02:04:36 am 

Hello all;

I've created a substance with 3 exposed parameters.

Editing these parameters has a visible effect on the outputs in substance designer, in substance player, and in 'Unreal' if I edit the substance graph instance directly.



However, what I'm trying to do is control the parameters using a blueprint.   

A substance with exactly the same named parameters DOES work in blueprint, and I've copy/pasted the nodes to ensure I didn't make a typo - several times, since I was sure that was going to be the problem.

I still can't get it to work, though.  The sbsar is here:

http://www.aj-concepts.net/internet_uploads/Sword_fern_v007.sbsar

Any chance someone could try it in blueprint, and see what I did wrong?

Tested in Unreal 4.18.2, Substance Designer 2017.2.3, Latest substance plugin.

Any assistance appreciated!

35

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: UDIM in 3d Software

 on: March 01, 2018, 04:25:34 am 

It's possible to do a workaround for what you are asking, it just requires accepting some limitations, and some forward planning.

1.  Make sure your UDIM tiles perfectly match on the borders.  Pixel perfect.

2.  Create a tiling substance you are happy with, and export it with your required parameters

3.  Import it twice into a new graph

4.  Freeze the seed on one of them (by changing the seed to 'absolute')

5.  Create a mask for the centre of your tile - either a procedural mask, a simple gradient, or a height blend

6.  Add the second version of your substance using this mask


The outcome should be a substance that is always the same at the edge of each tile (so fully tileable) regardless of the seed in the centre. 

You can then apply this to each UDIM tile of your terrain - the edges will always match, but the majority of each tile will be unique.  With some tweaking, this can give the impression of an infinite surface across multiple tiles.


Hope that's what you had in mind

AJ

36

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Overlapping tape

 on: February 27, 2018, 04:33:33 pm 

Looks like your tape texture has a non-solid alpha channel, so underlying tape strips are showing through the holes.

To solve this, you'd need to change the alpha channel to solid white - the RGBA split and RGBA merge nodes should help you do this.

Hope that solves your problem

AJ

37

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: How to apply texture on to model?

 on: February 27, 2018, 06:58:39 am 

This isn't really a 'substance designer' problem, rather a UV tiling problem - and it's one that everyone who works with textures runs into all the time.

If your house only has one UV tile, and is in 0-1 UV space, then (as you figured out) you'll need to tile your brick texture.

You have 3 ways to do this:

- in the substance itself.  This would commonly be done using a 'transform 2d' node, rather than in the tile sampler.  The detail is limited by the resolution of your texture, and while Substance designer CAN produce up to 8k textures, even this might not be enough if you get very close.

- by scaling your UVs

- by increasing the tiling in your shader.  You can preview this in Substance Designer's 3D view by editing the 'tiling' setting of your material.  This doesn't change your actual substance, only the 3D view, and the effect would need to be re-created in your destination shader.


Each has advantages and disadvantages.  In production, it would be fairly common the solve these problems in other ways - such as using a UDIM workflow, or a set of modular assets.

38

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: AtlasMaker problems

 on: February 23, 2018, 04:07:01 am 

The colours of the pins would suggest that the 'neat' node from Wes had the graph set to collapse multiple material pins into one single output - it makes the graph much cleaner.

At the top of your graph area you should see a little orange icon that looks like a small dumbbell (two dots with a line between them).  Click on this, and see what the different options will do for you.

39

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: color table(or gradient)(like in PS) from image to use it with Gradient Dynamic

 on: February 22, 2018, 04:35:43 pm 

It's a bit unclear what you are trying to do (maybe why you haven't had any replies up to now?).

Could you post an image explaining what you have in mind?  On the surface it sounds like you are describing how the gradient dynamic node actually behaves already, so I think I'm missing something.

AJ

40

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: DOUBLE SIDED IN SD

 on: February 22, 2018, 04:33:30 pm 

I'm not sure how to get a double-sided shader working in OpenGL - but if you switch to iRay you should be able to accurately visualize your substance correctly.

Not the perfect answer - Be great to have double sided polygons in the regular viewport.

AJ

41

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: continues tiling instead of repeating tiling

 on: February 22, 2018, 05:50:28 am 

Substance designer has some basic building blocks - one of which is the FX-map node - which create all the procedural noises. 

Tiling is basically built it to the FX-map node, so at a very basic software architecture level, substance doesn't behave in the way you are suggesting.

There are possible workarounds - but substance isn't sampling from an infinite procedural fractal like WM, so it's probably not the best tool for the job if those are your requirements.

42

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Random gradient over custom pattern without Flood

 on: February 20, 2018, 03:52:29 am 

I don't know of any alternatives - but are you 100% sure it won't work using the CPU engine? 

Some scripts run faster under the GPU, but there aren't many nodes that HAVE to run on the GPU engine.

43

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Creating a gradient slope on individual cells?

 on: February 19, 2018, 10:51:55 pm 

This seems like an ideal use case for the new flood fill: gradient node.

If you're targeting a non-GPU friendly implementation (like the new Unity integration), or just have an old version of substance, this might get you there instead:

https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,22469.0.html

44

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Random gradient over custom pattern without Flood

 on: February 19, 2018, 12:03:14 am 

That's true - but that's all you need to do a crude version.

Use two 'greyscale random' nodes with different seeds.  Feed the output of one into the R channel of a 'merge RGB' node, and the other into the G.  Feed a constant into the B channel (I think you need 0.5).

This will give you a fake normal map with a different slope for each shape.

A normal -> height node will turn it into a random B+W gradient.

Some tweaking may be required, but that's worked for me in the past.

45

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Random gradient over custom pattern without Flood

 on: February 18, 2018, 02:03:54 am 

Pawel Pluta uploaded a node to substance share a year ago - it's called 'filter_random_greyscale_generator'

As I understand it, this filter was optimized by someone else, and eventually turned into the new 'flood fill' nodes.

Not sure if this one will run in Unity (not sure if it's GPU based or not), but this is the slightly more bare bones original.