Topics

61

Substance Designer - Discussions - Cutting down my .subsar file size (again)

 on: June 11, 2015, 01:51:38 am 

I know there are several posts on this already...

I downloaded some free subsar files off Unity's asset store and they were amazing. My favorite was Sci Fi 003, really great. Even after I tweaked it for a metallic workflow, it was still only 11 KB.

It inspired me to create my own "super cool" sci fi element. I wanted it to be small and read some things about subsar optimization. I opened the Sci Fi 003 to look at how it was built...

But alas, in the end my subsar file was 1.3 MB. Is this due to using mask generators (and a few bevel nodes)? My graph isn't nearly as complex as 003 but the file size is comparatively huge, and I would very much love to learn how to cut it down in size. Are mask generators bad in a .subsar?

I've supplied the .subsar file to look at and would be very grateful for any advice on this.

Thanks for reading,

Allen

62

Substance Integrations - Unity - Simple glass substance?

 on: May 25, 2015, 08:55:44 pm 

I've been having trouble setting up a good procedural glass texture in Substance Designer, to work in Unity 5. Which outputs do I use? Is there an easy way to control the transparency? I am trying to design a room with a lot of windows and all I need is a very basic understanding of simple glass for a window. I'm new to PBR and Allegorithmic in general and was hoping for some advice on which outputs to use/ how to set up a very basic glass material.

I'm sorry if this isn't the right place for this question, i'll move it elsewhere if necessary. Any help on this topic would be very much appreciated.

Allen

63

Substance Painter - Showcase - My new love for smart materials

 on: May 21, 2015, 08:50:02 pm 

My endeavor to make custom smart materials in Painter After following Wes' tutorial a few times, I was able to make a few of my own. This one is my "Space Marine" series. I was going for a moisture-tarnished green metal. I am now in love with smart materials.

64

Substance - Purchases & Licenses - Issues with license

 on: April 07, 2015, 09:42:01 pm 

My subscription to Substance Live was charged to my account two days ago but the license didn't update. The license download on my account only gives me the one that's already expired. I can't use the programs please help me out!

65

Substance Painter - Discussions - [SOLVED] Is it possible to use a stencil overlay in Substance Painter?

 on: April 04, 2015, 12:40:06 am 

This is my favorite thing about Mudbox (overlaying a stencil onscreen and projecting through it to add letters/numbers). I'm still getting a handle on Painter and was curious if this is possible (or might be in a future update).

66

Substance Painter - Showcase - USMC knife (FIXED)

 on: March 26, 2015, 10:44:28 pm 

This was a much higher resolution model done by Yanire Delgado. Her model is really amazing. It had to be cut down for use in the Unreal engine. I was able to get the topo down to 804 polys and painted it in Substance Painter.

67

Substance Designer - Technical Support - Trouble with the PSD exporter

 on: March 15, 2015, 05:08:59 am 

Hello,

I've loaded a PSD file as a resource and have it plugged into my normal map, so I can just press 'Export' in the PSD exporter to update my viewport.

It's very finicky and very frustrating. Sometimes it works and sometimes I get an error, "Failed to export PSD file". (I just dropped screen and pressed the export button to copy the error message exactly, and it worked... lol). Anyhow, this is a frequent dance and I'm wondering if this is a bug or just some setting/procedure i'm unaware of.

Thanks

68

Substance Designer - Discussions - Hard Surface Designs in Subtance Designer

 on: March 09, 2015, 08:42:02 am 

This topic became interesting to me from the post in the features section of the forum, on how to create clean and detailed normal maps for hard-surface/sci fi settings and models. Here's an idea:



That map was made in NDO and it only took about half an hour. So the question arose, "Can we duplicate this sort of thing in Substance?" Not only that, but can it match the speed of NDO? This one was made by MorePolys in Substance:



I loved this, but the problem was the pipes and wires didn't look like they were going underneath the metal plates. Also note that the above image was done entirely without curve control. Very impressive.

Here's what i've managed to put together so far as an experiment for overlapping the normals. This proved for me to be the most time-consuming part of making these designs... making the pipes and plates look like they actually overlap:



This topic led to a lot of experimenting with the bevel node and custom curves in an attempt to refine a fast, powerful workflow to produce awesome hard-surface normal effects. Can it be done as fast as NDO? So far, no. Can it be done as clean? Yes, With more options for variation (and NDO has a LOT of options). So I thought this forum topic should be moved out of suggested features and try to get more artists on the case, to expand our knowledge on how to create awesome hard-surface effects in SD.

The main goal of this post is to gather and refine a fast, easy workflow to create these sort of effects, quickly and with really nice detail. One thing NDO has is (easy, ridiculous) speed. SD has a lot of flexibility with its curve control in the bevel node, but is a lot slower, especially for overlapping pieces.

I would really love to hear more about this and hope anyone who has had success will share some of their workflow and tricks. Please post your experiments!

69

Substance Designer - Technical Support - All textures 1x1 (am I missing something?)

 on: March 07, 2015, 04:28:31 am 

I can't change my texture sizes/node sizes at all. I create a new substance, I go for 2048 x 2048. Everything in the node window is 1x1. Nothing can be changed, whether I set textures to absolute or relative. I drag a new bitmap in, it's a solid color 1x1 texture.... I get the feeling I'm missing something. (?)

70

Substance Designer - Feature Requests - Drawing hard-surface normals in the SVG node like Quixel's NDO

 on: March 06, 2015, 02:28:48 am 

Normal map drawing using the SVG node would be really awesome. I've been playing with SD's nodes for awhile just trying to get close to the neatness and depth of an NDO hard-surface normal. I can't seem to do it, and even if I get close, it's still a huge time suck compared to NDO... so why not just use NDO?
     I think some ability to make some very distinct hard-surface depth (quickly and with options) with variations that I could draw right over a UV snapshot, would be a massive upgrade in SD. Unless I'm missing something!! (IF there's already a way to do this, please, please let me know!)
     From an NDO normal map I can generate a lot of cool things in SD. Having a similar in-house tool would be a dream come true.