Messages

1

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Pixel Processor - scale pattern by input map

 on: March 23, 2018, 12:46:17 pm 

@pimhendriks

Thx, that helps a lot.

2

Substance Designer - Discussions - Pixel Processor - scale pattern by input map

 on: March 22, 2018, 12:16:09 pm 

Hi,

I want to drive the scaling of a pattern/noise/grunge by a greyscale mask or by a vector map.

F.e you got a gradient map/texture..one the light values the scaling of the pattern is bigger and on the dark values the scaling is smaller.
How can I achieve this within the Pixel Processor?

Thx

3

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Operating Substance in SP with custom channel.

 on: April 19, 2017, 06:40:05 pm 

And I also set the drop down option next to channel name to L8. I'm not sure if it really matters. I just did it like that because Mr. Smith did it so(Actually I'm not familiar with such technical terms. I'm learning little by little).

Speaking of the usage of custom channel in SP, it seems that I still need to work with it no matter how my project policy would be. I mean even though my project doesn't need me to export the custom channels out to the game engine, I think using custom channels looks very handy when it comes to combination with mask generator or brushing.

What I couldn't get is of the paint blistering filter, especially the way how I organize the nodes for purpose of conjunction with custom channel in SP. Where should I feed the input node to?

The key question is why do you need a custom channel, what's a custom channel at all or what do you think could be the benefit from it ?

You can't feed mask layers (generators, smart masks etc.) with channel data - there is no technical link between the channel and a mask layer. Afaik the Devs are working on it for future releases - it's a highly requested feature.

Try to create a custom channel like "age" as a dedicated custom mask > create a layer mask with a smart mask. The stuff you paint in the channel doesn't affect the layer mask or vise versa!
You can't create own mask channels to paint over layer masks, because the default shader doesn't know, that you want a filter with a custom cutout mask in particular.

So, why would you waste a lot of time to create a filter, if the creation of a material is much easier?
Why would you create a mask exporting pipeline (filter) for unreal, if you don't need a exporting mask pipeline at all?

That's why I said the presentation is a bit misleading.

You can achieve the "blister effect" with a material (substance), you don't need a (complicated) filter for that. You can find examples here in the forum.

P.S: The "heat" filter affects the base color channel (gets blended), because the "base color" is part of SP's default shader, so it also can be used for general purposes.

4

Substance Designer - Feature Requests - Better FX-Map debugging?

 on: April 19, 2017, 11:45:42 am 

Hi,

Is it possible to integrate a better FX-Map debugging to SD?
The topic was already mentioned here:

https://forum.allegorithmic.com/index.php/topic,10203.msg48589/highlight,pattern+offset.html#msg48589

Would be cool to get error messages/warnings, instead of a memory overload or function loop, which kills the engine (node computing).
It is a bit tedious atm to close SD, kill the app in the task manager and restart SD.

Thx

5

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Operating Substance in SP with custom channel.

 on: April 18, 2017, 01:46:27 pm 

Hi,

The presentation itself may be a bit misleading, because it supposes you can affect the mask layers with custom channels, but that's not possible atm (the blister filter also uses a green key color for further masking).
Also, there is almost no documentation regarding custom channels, which leads to some confusion.
The "age" channel is just a custom channel with a custom name (string) done is SD.

These custom channels have no effect (only on the default in and outputs) on the default shaders in SP, unless you create your own plugin + shader.
If you look at the other presentations, the main purpose of these custom channels is the ability to export masks, stored in these channels, for the use in unreal engine.

Regarding the blister effect itself - it's not that complex. You can achieve this with (exposed) histogram scan and some additional height map blendings.
You can find examples on substance share or here in the forum -> "peeled paint/metal".

So, if you don't need a dedicated pipeline workflow for exporting custom masks for you engine, you don't really need this kind of custom channel filters, a material/ substance is sufficient.

6

Substance Academy - Substance Academy - Beginner - GDC 2017 - Paragon Filters/ User Channels

 on: April 01, 2017, 06:04:44 pm 

Hi,

I was pretty amazed by Brad Smith's presentation regarding filters in SP:

(27:38) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJrH2n1_bI

There is no documentation or a tutorial regarding custom channels affecting filters etc.
I really would appreciate, if you guys could make a tutorial due to this topic.

Thx

7

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: "Visible if" for inputs?

 on: March 31, 2017, 02:01:25 pm 

Just a thought, but when an input node is present, does it have RGBA values associated with it? (0,0,0,0). If so, if you could say, read the alpha value and it's larger than 0 then show the input parameters.

Thx, I did think of something similar (played around with greyscale conversion and boolean as a hack).
Issue is, that the input node is for external purpose like painter or player, not for intermal graphs in designer.
The input node has no exposeable parameters and I don't know how to read the value of an input which has no content (material or texture).

8

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Is there a way to get the size in pixels of an Input Image?

 on: March 31, 2017, 12:48:21 am 

Second this. I also asked for this feature in another thread a while ago.
Especially this feature would be very helpful for tools made for substance player.

9

Substance Designer - Discussions - "Visible if" for inputs?

 on: March 31, 2017, 12:35:50 am 

Hi,

is there a way that "visible if" works for input nodes?
If a substance or textures gets loaded in the input slot, certain parameters should be visible.

I could use a switch node and use the boolean as an enable/disable button, but that's no automatic detection of an input/content.

Thx

10

Substance Designer - Discussions - Dynamic mask input for Painter?

 on: March 21, 2017, 06:36:10 pm 

Hi,

let's say I got two materials blended with a procedural mask and I want to use this as a substance in Painter.

Within Painter I want to break up the procedural look of the the substance with a second hand painted mask.
Is it possible to create an "input" in Designer, which detects the mask in painter - thereby I had dynamic access to the two blended materials of that substance?

Thx

11

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Float2 and Random

 on: January 24, 2017, 05:28:34 pm 

Yeah, exactly what I wanted.

Thx a lot Vincent.

12

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Float2 and Random

 on: January 24, 2017, 05:06:27 pm 

Hey so you want to generate 2 random numbers which sum makes 3 ?
Something like this should help:

Hi,

I've attached an example *sbs file. Within the FX Node -> last quadrant, I want to randomise the "pattern" size.

What I actually want is a "scale random" function like in the Tile Sampler Node.
I've tried the Tile Sampler Node, but the FX Node gives me a better pattern distribution within the mask.

My current problem is, that I can't uniformly scale the input shape, I can only scale it in a non-uniform way with the given "random function" substance designer provides.

Thx

13

Substance Designer - Discussions - Re: Float2 and Random

 on: January 23, 2017, 11:28:32 am 

It sounds like what you want can be done by randomizing a Float1 and feed that value into both contacts of the VectorFloat2 node, and use that.

Hi,

If I use this method, it will still randomise the x or y  scale value (?).

Atm I'm just playing around with the FX map to scratch the surfache of substance "coding".

I had no issue with randomising the rotation value, but atm I'm stuck in order to get an uniform scaling of a shape input.

14

Substance Designer - Discussions - Float2 and Random

 on: January 21, 2017, 11:27:24 pm 

Hi,

how can I randomise float 2 values (f.e x and y) and lock the values of x and y, like x and y = 3.
If I use "Random Uniform Float 2", it will randomise x and y as individual values.

For scaling, f.e the shape gets stretched, but I want to have an uniform scaling (x,y) of the shape.

Thx

15

Substance Designer - Discussions - Position Map - add non baked details?

 on: December 07, 2016, 01:29:22 pm 

Hi,

how can I add non-baked details to the position map?

"Non-baked details" = height/normal shapes generated in substance designer.

I've tried to extract the blue channel from the normal map and tried to blend it (also tweaked with the levels node) with the blue channel of the position map, but I still get distortions with the "tri-planar node" on the non-baked areas.

Thx