Substance and Sketchup Workflow
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I am definitely a CG Baby... I thought you guys knew this. I am not a professional renderer by any definition of the word. I have never sold a render, I sell house plans, but I really enjoy rendering things, I do not go to anywhere near the length that people like those in this thread.
Now JQL, as for Awesome Bump, Thea and "SD/SP-Converter" and then separately, the SD/SP suites. Let me clarify.
Awesome Bump - AB cannot do procedurals in as much as I can tell, by what I have described as thinking procedural is. And that being a continued randomness in application of effects on a material. Yes, it can create AO's/Bumps/Normals etc... But not the moss, dirt, grass randomness of spacing and look that does not repeat in some form or fashion noticeably. Perhaps I'm wrong? But I believe that it cannot. Perhaps I'm wrong?
Substance Designer - True procedural materials, node based creation, map generation, baking etc. Everything in the candy store you ever wanted.
Substance Painter - application of SD materials on your mesh with editing of those materials live, on the fly and an incredible degree of control over materials, with effects, particles, raw paint... etc. BUT... SD creates those procedural materials.
Substance Converter for Thea - allows simple editing of SD materials. and it allows import of the separate importing of maps from your own library. things from Awesome Bump, like normals, bump, AO, roughness, basecolor, metallic, height map, glossiness, specular, emitter, alpha or displacement.
not all can be used at once, but no more than these can be use. AND... Most Importantly. You CANNOT EDIT your personal library materials in the Substance Converter for anything but size. NO SNOW, NO ICE, , NO DIRT, NO GRUNGE, NO SEEDS... NO PROCEDURAL EFFECTS Editing is allowed on your personal materials imported into Substance "CONVERTER". All it does with your materials that you made some where else or bought is combine and import all your maps simultaneously. And while bringing all my maps in at one time is nice, it does not offer me any expanded features that I do not already have in Thea.
Thea Material Editor - Allows me to add any thing that is made in Awesome Bump, Has layer, effects, emitters, scattering, procedural effects albeit somewhat limited... Just not to the extent that Substance Designer/Painter does.
In my opinion, the Substance Converter does not add any extended usability to Thea without Substance Designer. However, if you have Substance Designer or the subscribe to the rather massive Substance Library Database? You can use procedural effects like Moss, Grunge, Dirt, Aging, edit stone/mortar patterns on the fly. etc... To your hearts content and render it right in SketchUp.
And the "Indie" pricing options that allegorithmic.com offers with greatly reduced price and payment plans for small businesses like mine... It's a great deal.
Now, as I said when I began... I have no idea what I'm talking about, so if I misunderstand any of this, please let me know.
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As far as apples and oranges... I don't see where this doesn't go the full distance to the market and fill your basket with fruit.
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In addition -- to clarify what a Substance is:
It is simply a collection of image editing commands (XML based) that are dynamically performed on raw base imagery. The base imagery can be Vector (in the form of SVG), Procedural (internal to the Substance Engine) or Bitmap (either imported or baked from the geometry)... or any combination thereof.
When you as a user see the various Substance altering sliders in something like Thea, what you are really seeing is certain portions of the image editing command chain that have been "exposed" to the end-user.
Substance Designer is the full authoring package for Substances -- with it you can import or create base imagery, set up image editing command chains (via nodes), and choose what you want exposed to the end-user of your Substances.
Substance Painter will allow you to paint directly on your mesh (a very ZBrush-like experience) using Substances (basic Substances can be created inside Painter, but usually you would create more complex effects in SD). These can be applied in a typical layering workflow with standard brush types, or particle simulations. Substance Designer is not required, and awesome work can be done in Painter without it... mostly because there are already tons of existing Substances you can use, and more to come.
Allegorithmic is the company making all of this. They are a dynamic, fast paced company that IMO always pushes forward toward new ground. I bought my first license for Substance Designer back in version 1 when it was nearly twice as much as the current pro pricing -- and I considered it to be a great deal even then. They have not disappointed me in any way -- I highly recommend their products if the type of work you are doing fits what they designed the tools for. Their main target market is video game creation, where the nature of Substances can give many advantages to streamline in-game user driven texture customization, and reduce bandwidth consumption.
To use a SketchUp analogy -- Substances are similar to Dynamic Components/Ruby Scripting... but with textures instead of geometry.
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Really impressed with them myself... I think I'm going to be a user. And they even allow you to pause payments. They really seem to be of the industry and know what users want.
I'm finding some uvmapping and unwrapping in Designer, but not a full unwrap suite. Between AC3D, 3D Max and Blender... Hmmm... Max is more powerful, but the learning curve is much steeper. AC3D is easy, but more manual. I'm looking now at Blender's mapping.
That being said is seems the procedurality of Substance Designer would negate the need for uvunwrapping anything but the more detailed objects. like people, cars etc. If you want to make something and actual substance... I don't think you would need maps.
P.S.
I posted on their facebook page and they answered back in like a few minutes... That's the kind of company they are.
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Yes, the new tri-planar projection negated the need for unwrapping UVs in some cases -- perhaps enough to simplify a SketchUp workflow.
I cannot say enough good things about Allegorithmic -- I don't get the chance to use their products as much as I would like, just because my work keeps me stretched pretty thin (software-wise). But in dealing with various software companies I never see the type of laziness at Allegorithmic that most others display... these guys are serious about continually pushing the envelope. Frankly they are an exciting bunch.
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Guys, Your combined five last posts really confirmed all I thought on this matter.
You even gave me good expectations towards that unwrapping, wich is the only thing holding me back, by talking about unwrapping inside Substance Designer and Triplanar projection (wich I believe should be something like projecting textures into the model from XY, YZ, XZ planes...?)
Jason, your objective description of both software and company is really saying it all.
Kris, your full description of your experience so far is really really helpful. I can't thank you enough! The only things I think you're not sure about or you are missing are the following:
@krisidious said:
Awesome Bump - AB cannot do procedurals in as much as I can tell, by what I have described as thinking procedural is. And that being a continued randomness in application of effects on a material. Yes, it can create AO's/Bumps/Normals etc... But not the moss, dirt, grass randomness of spacing and look that does not repeat in some form or fashion noticeably. Perhaps I'm wrong? But I believe that it cannot. Perhaps I'm wrong?
1 - I'm absolutelly sure you can't generate procedural maps inside Awesome Bump! However you can have regular bitmaps for grunge effects wich I actually have used and works greatly (as long as you are willing to edit stuff in bitmaps and reload as you work with AB).
The final Thea material will behave exacly the same wether it was generated from Awesome Bump or from a Substance because as soon as you convert it, all substance procedurals turn into bitmaps and are merged into the material bitmap textures. So the only difference is that you can control procedural effects of your created substances inside Thea Substance Converter and that is the thing you are missing...
2 - As long as you EXPOSE those procedurals when creating a Substance, you can see and manipulate those same procedurals inside Thea Substance Converter. This is just like Jason briefly but objectivelly pointed out when describing Substance Designer here:
@jason_maranto said:
Substance Designer is the full authoring package for Substances -- with it you can import or create base imagery, set up image editing command chains (via nodes), and choose what you want exposed to the end-user of your Substances.
So I guess this is good news for everyone. You've dowloaded SD, I'm flying through all tutorial videos.
Now I only have one more doubt! LOL always just one more...
Jason, you obviously know what you're talking about but I think you might be missing the point in just one thing:
@jason_maranto said:
It is simply a collection of image editing commands (XML based) that are dynamically performed on raw base imagery. The base imagery can be Vector (in the form of SVG), Procedural (internal to the Substance Engine) or Bitmap (either imported or baked from the geometry)... or any combination thereof.
For what I could tell until now there's a small detail you're missing on your substance definition that might make all the difference here.
Though a substance only creates images and image editing commands it is in face a collection of resources and those resources include a 3d model wich is used by substance in several ways.
I'm saying this, because Sketchup doesn't do triplanar texturing, or texture unwrapping, but it can import objects textured like that. So, if in a substance pipeline the model would be loaded into the substance instead of linked to it, that model could possibly come out of the pipeline, Unwrapped or with a Triplanar projection...
Then it would be a matter of importing the model to sketchup again, fully textured and with all procedurals in the right place! Then we would use the substance converter and would change the material inside sketchup, for the Thea material. We could even turn that model into a Thea proxy and replace it when rendering if Sketchup doesn't assume it right...
That thought is making me shiver...
What do you feel guys?
Is this possible to achieve with substance?
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The easiest and fastest way is to not map textures in SU.
I know you love SU but there are times when you can't tighten a nut with a hammer.
But if export only mesh data to another app that handles numerous uv methods then your better placed.
I mention Blender only because it's free. You can use anything mentioned already.
But to come back to the dilemma.
In SU you paint a seamless brick material 1024x1024. This for obvious reasons can't target edge wear or grime.
So to target those in SubStance you need to unwrap everything that inherits that texture. To maintain texel density you could end up with an 8kx8k texture.
Now you need to factor in the resource cost this texture has on your rendering app.
Designer is an amazing tool. So is Filter Forge and Knald.
Different horses for different courses.
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First of all I love it when the pros come here and enlighten us. I really do think this is what makes a community strive!
I deeply appreciate every advice you gave so far, including this one.
If I find out that I can't run away from a 3rd party unwrapper I will use blender for all the reasons you pointed out and because that would make me have a strong reason to simply try it and learn some potentially useful stuff.
@rich o brien said:
Now you need to factor in the resource cost this texture has on your rendering app.
For sketchup, I would use a very low texture wich is enough for my needs, even if it get's blurred as it can be.
I see no software problem with Thea that could make that texture hard to handle.
Hardware wise I've gotten myself a Titan X with 12Gb and that should handle that kind of textures well enough...
For interactive work inside substance I could work with low resolution most of the time and what I aim to do seems simple enough so I don't expect to waste much time there with a hanged computer when resolution raises...
Considering it all, I see no failing in your argument, but I'm expecting it will work in my case.
@rich o brien said:
So is Filter Forge and Knald.
So will I investigate those too.
I'm concerned about Substance Designer just because I heard great stuff about Substance B2M, that was the first app I considered buying from them, for creating my materials. When Thea Substance Converter preview came out, I found out about how the added procedurals would enhance Thea materials. Then I found out what Designer could really do. Then I thought about posting a thread here to see if it was possible to use it along with sketchup anyway. Then all this mess of a discussion came up and me and Kris got in the same boat though with different aproaches.
This seems to have potential to turn out quite well and just because of that I already feel very close to substance.
Why the hell would you have to bring those two apps!?
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I think you are suffering from an overly simplistic idea of how things work regarding UVs. You must have UVs to apply a 2D texture to any standard polygon-based 3D model (we are ignoring voxel and poly-painting techniques which require high polygon resolutions, and are technically part of the geometry itself). SketchUp creates UVs (as it must) -- it just does not do a particularly efficient job with them, nor does it allow the user direct control of UV space. SketchUp also can support models which have UVs externally unwrapped (via plugin), however it can sometimes cause a big slowdown in SketchUp performance, and bloat SketchUp file size.
Substance Designers Tri-planar projection can resolve seam issues regarding how your model UVs are set up, but it does not UV unwrap your model for you. What this is doing is using the existing UVs to bake World Space Position and Normal Maps (2D textures), which are used to eliminate seam issues. But the UV's still must be in place to bake the 2D texture in the first place.
Now due to the seam compensating nature of Tri-planar projection, SketchUp default UVs may be workable in some instances. You will most likely find SketchUp UVs will result in resolution issues (and other possible issues). Part of unwrapping a model is about packing the UVs in such a way as to make efficient use of the texture resolution. But you may be able to at least bypass the seams as an issue using Tri-planar projection. SketchUp does odd things sometimes, and just because something can work in one instance does not mean it will always work in every instance.
That is assuming you can export your model in a format that Substance Designer can bake from without issues. Substance Designer will not make any changes to your model, so the idea that you can use it for any modeling operations (including UV layout) is fruitless. It is a one way export from your package to SD. You will only be bringing the 2D/texture portion of the Substance back to SketchUp/Thea.
So what I am basically saying is you are going to have to resolve yourself to setting up your UVs before you go to SD -- whether that be inside SketchUp or otherwise (some Ruby plugins might be helpful here). Substances do not free you from worrying about UVs, in fact the opposite is true. At the very least you will need to use some of the UV helper ruby plugins, and will most likely need to use an external UV unwrapper at least part of the time.
Frankly I am getting a bit tired of playing with "what-ifs" -- you are just going to have to use the software's together and work out for yourself whether this pairing can become a usable workflow for you or not. Nobody else can answer that for you because only you know how far you are willing to go to make it work. The only thing I can say for sure is: compared to more robust modeling packages you will definitely find a SketchUp based workflow to be problematic. So you will need to be willing to potentially put up with alot of workarounds/plugins to find a usable workflow. Which is not true in the Substance supported modeling packages, where the workflow is straightforward.
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Thanks Jason, that clears it all. I'm still watching tuts but for what I seen I totally understand everything you're saying.
I had also set my mind to that jumping in aproach wich I feel it's fundamental!
However, I really appreciate your willingness to help me see the broader picture before I waste too much time with something that clearly will never work.
In a matter of fact I thrust what you guys are saying here so much that I've started by blender and UV unwrapping and how to fit that in my workflow as seamless as possible.
If that doesn't work for me though, what I seen about the materials that can be created from a substance by itself, wich I clearly know I can simply use straight forward in my current workflow and toolset, might be already enough to justify using substance designer.
I'm sorry for being a pain, but I can only say thanks for bearing with me!
Best regards and I wish I could retribute somehow, someday...
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FWIW -- IMO the "jumping in" approach will serve you best. There really is no need to fear UV layout, or even using other packages. It is a pretty straightforward process once you get into it. And in the end you will be better off for understanding it... even if you come to the conclusion the workflow doesn't suit you.
Also, help will be easier to provide once you are dealing with actual issues rather than rhetorical concepts.
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True!
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I've found that Substance Designer is retarded when it comes to movement... I don't know why these companies cannot let me determine the uses of my mouse and navigation.
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@unknownuser said:
I don't see where this doesn't go the full distance
I'll be sure to keep an eye open for anything that comes out of this conversation.
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Yes, I was overly excited and mistaken. I've been experimenting all weekend, as well as breaking the importer. and... Yes, I think I got lucky on that stone and concrete. They happened to wrap the corners very nicely. My other tests have not had that result. UV's are indeed a wall that must be mounted and climbed before you can have any good result, not only that. but normals don't even seem to read correctly in SD. While this works well on flat surfaces and simple shapes, 90 degree corners and rather simple topography does not do well in most cases. Grass and Dirt hides the imperfections in SU's normal creation.
Now, I'm going to see what Thea's procedural mats and see what can be done with it.
And I'll be damned if I didn't install Blender...
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@krisidious said:
And I'll be damned if I didn't install Blender...
That's the only thing I did so far.
I managed to import a perfect model into blender using blend up (wich I highly recommend...);
I managed to create an Unwrapped UV layout very easily;
I managed to import it back to sketchup as DAE and the geometry was perfect. The thing is I can't seem to bring the UV unwrapped Material back with the model... -
@jql said:
@krisidious said:
And I'll be damned if I didn't install Blender...
That's the only thing I did so far.
I managed to import a perfect model into blender using blend up (wich I highly recommend...);
I managed to create an Unwrapped UV layout very easily;
I managed to import it back to sketchup as DAE and the geometry was perfect. The thing is I can't seem to bring the UV unwrapped Material back with the model...I've managed after all, it was a simple matter of ticking a box in the Export Collada options: "Include UV textures"
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Awesome. that's why I installed Blender, not for this but for my Simulator Mod. Some guy over in that forum made a blender plugin to import and export the models, so I was testing it to replace Max... as I hate Max. next on my list was testing Blender's UV mapping & unwrapping.
Though, in the mean while I found something else... and it's kinda awesome. 3D Coat.
It also does some fantastic "re-topology"...
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These guys are very good...although I have not started, the curriculum looks really thorough and the approach seems to be for dummies like me.
!Looks like a great way to get to know the entire "Substance" science and application.
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Roland I've been following Substance Videos and although my own substances are still bitmap based, I really can tell this is big!
Nothing you can't do with it.
I'm taking advantage of Thea's Substance Converter so the simplest workflow for me is as follows:
- Sketchup Model;
- Export to Blender using Blendup (free for up to 1000 faces wich is not much so better buy it);
- UV Unwrapping within Blender with Smart UV Project (wich is automatic, fast and easily tweakable);
- Export as Collada;
- Import collada into sketchup and run Cleanup3 to merge faces keeping UV;
- Import into Substance Designer and work your texturing;
- Publish your substance as high as 16k textures (If you have enough GPU ram, I have a Titan X)
- Convert Substance to Thea material using Thea converter;
- Apply material in Collada model using Thrupaint to keep UV modes.
- Render!
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