substance engine

[3Dski7059]

Great summary, YouGroove! I actually sat down and went through SD's "Getting Started" series and saw this. I can see where you might be able to come up with a similar node based workflow inside Blender, but SD may be more user friendly. For instance, I know that you had to tweak a lot of settings in Blender to create a normal texture, but they may have streamline this and similar texture creation features. Both routes will be a learning curve for me. As a side note, I played with Houdini a bit, but I don't have a version that will export to usable formates. It, too, is procedural based, where parameters can be set to affect characteristics as needed. You could build a chair, then parameterize lts height, or whatever. I never really stuck with if for the fact that I only had one usable exporter, but it didn't work as expected and was hard than hell to build anything in it for a game environment that would export as desired..

[YouGroove]

Sometimes you can make crazy amount of nodes for a final texture that could be done in some painting software and using layers simply, but i like SD for making tileable textures quickly.

Otherwise for custom textures, like painting a robot or some character, i use a 3D painting program like 3D Coat or Substance Painter, i work faster painting different colors directly , also using layers (a layer for scratches, one for color variation etc ...) and painting with alpha brushes and masks to paint details.

[AnthonyPython]

I have Fuse and it uses/can use custom SD materials but it export's in normal textures when you get it autorigged/ output in .obj great program for creating character's.

[SlipperyBrick]

I have learnt a huge amount in SD and SP since my last post in this thread. I still would love Substance integration into the engine as well.

 

Reading back at what we posted near the beginning of last year Substance has made a massive impact in the texturing scene. I would say that it has nearly (I may be exaggerating a little here) replaced the old 'traditional' method of texturing game art. I think that in itself would be a pretty good reason to bring it into LE.

 

The terms have changed as well. Allegorithmic have now upped the price for indie dev's to $100,000, if your game makes over this annually then you will need a pro licence. They also sell the 'Substance Indie Pack' for very cheap as well so now 'bedroom dev's' like myself can afford these awesome tools (even though I bought the package when it was the 'new stuff').

[YouGroove]

Reading back at what we posted near the beginning of last year Substance has made a massive impact in the texturing scene. I would say that it has nearly (I may be exaggerating a little here) replaced the old 'traditional' method of texturing game art. I think that in itself would be a pretty good reason to bring it into LE.

It's your point of view only.

 

I work faster with material brushes and tools like fill shapes, and faster with layer and selections.

Like some people i don't like the mess of nodes system.

The susbtance engine itself costs processing, each node as a millisecond cost, the mode nodes you have the more expensive your substance will cost for the game compared to a fixed Pbr shader using bitmaps that have a constant and optimized processing cost.

I tried UE4 demo with substance engine, the pre processing time was really too long and it was not running so good : try google to have feedback on it also.

 

I'm among people not hypped about substances, the only thing i like with substance and i use sometimes , is to be able to produce textures in an easy way, but again substance designer don't have all photoshop tools for example if you want to make quickly fast drawings on normal map.

Its' not as good and as fast as DDO workflow on normal maps for example.

 

For example having to bake or deal with parameters , baking and substances things to make some erosion on corners is more complicated and not as good when you paint manually with a corrosion material on corners yourself and with pressure tablet in a way it won't look uniform as substances do.

 

I work faster in a similar way to DDO and photoshop but in 3D coat :

 

This was to express my opinion and how i work in a practical and faster way.

[knocks]

99% of the time you simply bake the textures first time an application runs/installs. The biggest benefit of substance is the nondestructive work flow simply impossible with raster images.