Messages

1

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Controll 2 parameters on 2 different nodes with one slider/float?

 on: May 17, 2017, 03:36:49 pm 

When you expose a parameter, if you know that you will always want other nodes to use the same values, you can tell them all to use the same exposed parameter. so say for example I have a Material that can blend between clean and dirty, rather than create 3 exposed opacity parameters for the Diffuse, Roughness and normal blend nodes, I will expose the first (say diffuse) and call it Clean/Dirty Blend, and then when I expose the other 2 blend node opacity values, I simply choose the original parameter from the dropdown list, now all 3 will use that one parameter and always be set the same.

This can be done for any exposed node, so for tiling like you wish it to be. I hope I have understood your question correctly, and hope it helps.

Regards
Joel B.

2

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: A problem with Unreal Engine 4

 on: May 16, 2017, 10:29:11 am 

Hi Bers,

I Could not locate the images that where meant to be linked in your OP, so I am not sure on your set up, but starting with the obvious (apologies but I often miss the obvious myself so its always the first thing I go to), did you Link or Import your bitmaps into designer? Obviously Linked resources are not saved with the .sbsas file and can be lost.

I my self like to use an input node instead of hard wiring the map into the substance, I then expose this node and actually add the image inside UE4, this means I can change and update the image without having to go into SD and re-export the substance each time I make an edit, it also means that any images the substance depends on are always with your game level too.

Finally you might want to try the Export with Dependencies option to pull everything into one place. This can be found by right clicking on your package name in the explorer window. And can be a good way of making sure all of your content is together before exporting the substance.

Hope some of this helps.

Regards
Joel B.

3

Substance B2M & Substance Player - Substance B2M - Re: Watermark on Bitmaptomaterial 3.1

 on: May 15, 2017, 10:01:47 am 

B2M stand alone is essential just substance player that automatically loads the Archive file for B2M3, it might be that it is loading the demo or lite archive instead, try going to file open and making sure it is loading the Bitmap2Material_3-1 Archive file, which if you used the default installed, goes to C:\Program Files\Allegorithmic\Bitmap2Material\3\data.

I will boot it up later today as I have just had to re install it myself and I will do some testing for you.

Regards
Joel B

4

Substance B2M & Substance Player - Substance B2M - Re: Watermark on Bitmaptomaterial 3.1

 on: May 13, 2017, 11:49:24 am 

Hi, may I ask what application are you using? Are you using the B2M standalone or are you using it inside another application such as UE4 or Substance Designer?

Regards
Joel B.

5

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: grid in substance designer

 on: May 10, 2017, 11:05:43 am 

As far as I know there is no way of doing this as of yet, not unless its hidden by some keyboard shortcut that I do not know about. If you go to the help menu (Inside the Designer application) and click give feedback, it will take you to a how can we improve Substance Designer page. Look on their to see if anyone has requested this as a feature and up vote it, the more votes the more attention, if nobody has, you can create one yourself.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Joel B.

6

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Help on shape making

 on: May 08, 2017, 12:33:05 pm 

I have a graph that is going to be used for Lynda.com course (see image below) and I use the tessellation method on the rounded cube for that, it does work on the other Geo types in SD, below I am using a Tessellation factor of 64 with a scale of 1 in the height controls. The height node is set to a intensity of 0.005 but that's because the normals for this particular graph produce almost black and white height maps.

To create the details I would recommend making each of your shapes in their own flow and then running them shapes into the splatter circular and then combining each of the splatter nodes together to create the final piece, then you can go back and adjust the radius controls on each of the splatters till they all line up to where you want them too. As a tip you can use the centre orientation option and then rotate them to get them to face from the centre out.

Hope this helps.

7

Substance Designer - Showcase - Re: Bioshock Art Deco Substance Tribute

 on: April 27, 2017, 12:21:42 pm 

Beautiful work! And with relatively few nodes, thanks for sharing. Would love to see an oxidisation transition of this like the BS logo in the games!

Regards
Joel B

8

Substance Designer - Showcase - Re: Organic/Alien Growth

 on: April 27, 2017, 12:19:05 pm 

Looks brilliant! can't wait to see your next version, I've always found doing a substance from scratch again you always find easier/better ways of making it so hope it all goes well for you!

As a small bit of crit if you don't mind, I would add a little more random breakup to the small veins, as you can see the shape they follow quite clearly (not sure if that is intentional). Good work!

Regards
Joel B.

9

Substance Designer - Showcase - Re: My first real material

 on: April 27, 2017, 12:16:23 pm 

Well done on doing something original and pushing yourself! Keep up the good work.

I think with a bit of colour & roughness variation you are onto a winner, keep producing more, look forward to seeing them.

Regards
Joel B.

10

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: How can I improve my texture ? It's flat/dull? What do you think?

 on: April 26, 2017, 04:11:06 pm 

Hi Harry,

Looks like your off to a great start, some nice details in there keep it up! There are a couple of things I would keep in mind when critiquing your own textures. First off, it looks like you are applying the rust to the whole object, and while this might seem like a good idea to get a sense of how it is looking, it means your eye is looking at problems that might not be present in its final form. For example when a texture covers a whole surface (when you know in real life it rarely does this) your eye will tell you it looks wrong.

Try blending it with other materials, such as the beat up metal to get a better sense of how it is actually looking.

Next, environment is everything in my personal opinion, it looks like you have a very broad specular highlight that is making your texture look a little flat. This can be tackled with lighting as well as environment maps which will help show off the detail. It does look like the lighting is showing up the fact that there appears to be very little roughness variation in the material, you might want to look at breaking up its roughness map, again this could just be down to the lighting/reflections.

Try layering up 4 detailed sets of defuse colours (the gradient node's colour picker is brilliant for showing you just how varied the colours are in a map) again its difficult to tell in the images but it looks like a little more breakup and variation in the diffuse could help.

Finally I noticed that the images you are looking at are from the titanic VR, I would strongly recommend not using 2nd hand reference. What you are looking at is somebody's interpretation of a material, then if you add your own interpretation of that interpretation, well I'm sure you can see how you start to move further away from the actual material you want to create. I'd use 2nd hand reference (so shots of games and/or renders) as inspiration, but for actually texturing try and use real world reference (whether your own or someone else's) and then after you have done that, come back to the images that you like and try and tweak yours to look similar.

Again these are just my personal opinions, but hope that helps

Regards
Joel B.

11

Substance B2M & Substance Player - Substance B2M - Re: Bitmap2Material to Vray

 on: April 26, 2017, 03:34:49 pm 

Hi,  

If you are using B2M, the best way (IMHO), is to use the Metal/Rough outputs (if you are in 3ds Max 2017 or higher) and rather than the Vray material, use Max's Physical material (as Vray can render this), and pipe the maps into there given that the Physical material uses a Metal/Rough approach by default. 

I can't give specifics for contractual reasons, but I do know there is a course coming to Lynda.com (not sure of time frame as it is not my course) that covers using SD, SP and B2M with the Vray engine in 3ds Max 2017. 

If you do use the Physical material, you will have to use a composite map to blend the AO map on top of the diffuse as the Physical Material doesn't have an AO input slot. 

Hope this helps. 

Regards 
Joel B. 

12

Substance Integrations - Autodesk 3ds Max - Re: 3ds Max Plugin Update - Beta plugin

 on: March 04, 2017, 03:17:45 pm 

A quick question, how does the plugin handle gamma? It appears to be bypassing 3ds Max's gamma controls, causing everything to look lighter inside max than it does in Designer.

Regards
Joel

13

Substance Integrations - Autodesk 3ds Max - Re: 3ds Max Plugin Update - Beta plugin

 on: January 24, 2017, 02:38:36 pm 

The plugin works just fine for me in 2016 & 2017, thanks for the hard work. However, it does seem to be a little light on features, a lot of games and there cinematics are made in 3ds Max and options that Maya has, would greatly speed up the substance workflow. For example, Export images to disk is missing, granted we can right click and save manually and reload but this will take quite a bit of time per texture. We also do not have the workflow switcher to change from classic, PBR or custom. There is no option to switch the normal type from Direct X to Open GL as well. Are these features that will be added to the full release please?

Thanks again for the plugin!