Messages

1

Substance Painter - Discussions - Re: What's Possible with a Custom GLSL Shader in Painter?

 on: January 07, 2021, 05:05:48 pm 

Well I continued to try to play around with what's possible in the GLSL. Considering my goal is to add more specular BSDF layers to the material, I don't believe there's much I can do in Painter's Shader API to achieve this.

As a work around, I just created a new viewport shader which grabbed my custom MDL. My MDL sources the 'user0-4' channels to render the sheen and clear coat effects. So, my workflow right now is to author layers in those channels, then in order to view their effects, I have to switch to the Iray viewport renderer.

It's not the ideal workflow, but it may be the only way I can replicate the shader effects from my renderer without more access to the Fragment Shader through the Shader API.

2

Substance Painter - Discussions - What's Possible with a Custom GLSL Shader in Painter?

 on: January 02, 2021, 06:11:43 pm 

It's not completely clear to me what exactly is possible with Substance Painter's customizable GLSL shader. I understand that this is a GLSL API with limited scope, and a library of useful tools to help us achieve more advanced shaders in the viewport - but is it limited to just the basic Metal-Roughness and Specular outputs?

For example, in the Surface Shader API page of the documentation, a list of functions is provided that gives us some level of access to the BSDF/Fragment Shader. Is this list the only outputs we're able to send to the GL Frag?? So do I have a limited BSDF?

The functions listed are:

• alphaOutput
• diffuseShadingOutput
• specularShadingOutput
• emissiveColorOutput
• albedoOutput
• sssCoefficientOutput

There's only one 'specularShadingOutput' - so does this mean I'm only able to have one layer of Specularity in the BSDF? What if I wanted to add a second specular BSDF layer, say for clear coat or sheen? I know that Adobe has provided a Clear Coat shader - however, is this something I could re-create myself with the Shader API? Or is the API too limited?

Thanks in advanced!

3

Substance Academy - Substance Academy - Advanced - MaterialX GLSL Shaders for Painter - Standard Surface

 on: December 30, 2020, 06:34:55 am 

Tutorial I have a Question About: https://academy.substance3d.com/courses/GLSL-Shaders-for-Substance-Painter-with-MaterialX/youtube-5VLs9nRqOAA

I've got a question about the Standard Surface root node presented in this tutorial: It seems to me that the Standard Surface root node that one needs to use to export Painter GLSL shaders doesn't have a fully functioning suite of features. Specifically, when I was trying to test Sheen and Clear Coat I noticed a couple of things.

• Sheen: This input functions in Designer's real-time viewport. But when exported to Painter (utilizing the area of 'user#' inputs), Sheen no longer seems to have any affect on the rendered material.
• Clear Coat: This input seems to work in Designer's real-time viewport - however, it looks weird, half the model gets consumed with black color for some reason. And in Painter's viewport, Clear Coat appears to have no affect on the rendered material

I understand the MaterialX plugin is still work in progress, I'm just curious which features of the Standard_Surface shader root node work and what features don't work.

However, I'm really liking MaterialX's implementation in Designer, though - especially for building Painter viewport shaders. I'm looking forward to seeing it expanded upon.

4

Substance Painter - Discussions - Custom GLSL - Sheen & Clear Coat?

 on: December 30, 2020, 06:21:16 am 

Goal:
To build a GLSL Shader for Painter's real-time viewport which renders cloth Sheen and Clear Coat effects.

I recently built an MDL shader which has a Sheen and Clear Coat layer, and I wanted to create a Painter viewport GLSL shader which replicates that MDL shader in the viewport.

Problem:
I'm a novice when it comes to writing GLSL, and the language is a bit strange looking to me, so this has been challenging. I'm familiar with coding with C# & Python, and I'm also very familiar with building custom shaders in various renderers using Node Graph Schematics.

As a beginner in GLSL, I've found Substance Painter's documentation for its implementation of GLSL to be a bit sparse. And of course looking online for information on GLSL can get quite expansive - there's so many different implementations of GLSL, from low level to high level. All I want to do is make a simple shader for Painter's real-time viewport. Would anyone have any suggestions for where I might be able to go.

I tried building the shader I need with the new MaterialX plugin through Designer. While that appears promising and I'm glad to see it being built, it doesn't seem perfect right now. The Standard_Surface shader has some areas that don't seem to function at all in Painter - such as its built-in Sheen and Clear Coat inputs (they work in the Designer viewport, but not in Painter's).

Any help would be appreciated. Even just pointing in a direction would be great! :-)

Thank you.

5

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Shape Splatter - Vector Map w/ Position?

 on: June 24, 2020, 01:19:40 am 

Hey, thanks for your reply!

I discovered it was actually too intense of a distortion, even in small decimals. And since it was throwing pixels off the screen at such low values, I didn't even notice any effect at all.

6

Substance Designer - Discussions - [Solved] Shape Splatter - Vector Map w/ Position?

 on: June 16, 2020, 04:09:51 pm 

Hey all,

Was experimenting with the Shape Spatter node, trying to learn some of the advanced uses of this particular node, especially in relation to how it uses a Vector Map.

I came across something odd with the Position section of the node, there's a Vector Map Multiplier value in there that doesn't seem to do anything. Yes, I do have a Vector Map plugged into the node, and the other Vector Map Multiplier values work fine (Displacement and Scale).

See the attached image for the exact parameter I'm referencing.

Am I using this correctly? Does anyone else have the same problem?

Thanks!

7

Substance Painter - Discussions - Generators include Painted Layers in Calculation?

 on: October 19, 2016, 10:40:24 am 

Hey Allegorithmic community!

I've been using Designer and Painter for quite some time and recently have been working on a project that will have me returning to Painter for a lot of detail work.

This is a hard surface sci-fi model, and like the last time I did a project like this, I decided to save most of my tedious detail work for Substance Painter. I have a large library of hard-surface sci-fi style alpha maps and this makes Painter a great place to quickly add detail to a game model.

HOWEVER!! I love Painter's generators. It's one of the reasons why I use the software. Though the last time I did this type of project, I had to re-export all my maps and re-import them - essentially collapsing all my layers down into the original plain baked texture maps. I did this so that the Generators would consider all the details that I painted in its process for doing things like paint scratches, dust, dirt, etc. etc.

This worked well; once I re-imported the textures, once I use the Generators, it even includes all the details I manually painted in with my Alpha maps are effecting the appearance of the generator masks.

But this is a very destructive way of working. After I do this, I'm essentially collapsing all my layers - just the same as you would do in Photoshop.

I don't know if there's another way to get Painter's Generators to also consider my manually painted layers as well as the original baked texture maps. Does anyone know if there is?

Thanks so much!
-Alex

8

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Re: Question on gloss/spec...

 on: July 31, 2015, 04:00:01 am 

Thank you! I was not aware that palette in the upper left was a global parameter palette. Thanks so much.

I noticed that lot of people ask questions about the gloss/spec workflow in Substance Painter - since it isn't easily supported in the software as it is in Designer.

There doesn't seem to be one single place to go for documentation on how to quickly setup Painter to work with Gloss/Spec materials you have created using Designer. The process to setup Painter for this is simple, but if you do not know where to go and what settings to change, it can be difficult to figure out without going to forums somewhere.

Whenever I would google my issue, I found if people got replies then they would get vague answers with spotty directions, or they would reply that they fixed it but they're vague about the solution, or they didn't list out everything they did to fix it.

I know Algorithmic is working on a solution for this, but in the meantime is there a place that lays out this workflow plainly??

I could not find it. So now that I've got it fixed up, I was thinking I would write up a quick doc and/or do a video to explain this simple process.

Because right now, it doesn't look like there is a clear explanation and the only way to find out is to piece together information from various forum posts or to post yet another thread in product support forums asking or help.

9

Substance Painter - Technical Support - Question on gloss/spec...

 on: July 30, 2015, 10:27:45 am 

I know questions on this subject come up quite a bit. I do have the latest version of the GlossSpecNormal shader and I am loading it into my viewport settings.

Now, I originally created a couple of materials in Designer. When I load my material (created with gloss/spec intentions) into Painter, and use a fill layer to apply it to a model, it doesn't look quite like it should, relative to the Designer viewport which is using the Gloss/Shader setting.

I noticed that the only available channels in Painter for the materials is Diffuse, Height, Metal, Rough. And obviously the outputs in my Designer material is Diffuse, Normal, Spec, Gloss.

So where do I plug in my Spec Gloss? If I plug them into the Metal and Roughness shader, it doesn't seem to make any difference in the way the material is displayed in the viewport.

Am I missing a step in the conversion process? Should I be doing something to the Designer settings outputs to prepare it for Painter?

I'm grateful for any help. Thank you.