Substance and Sketchup Workflow

Krisidious · 27 Jul 2015, 18:16

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"...

roland joseph · 13 Aug 2015, 21:11

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.

JQL · 13 Aug 2015, 21:46

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!

Krisidious · 14 Aug 2015, 01:26

@jql said:

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!

roland joseph · 14 Aug 2015, 06:31

@unknownuser said:

Roland I've been following Substance Videos
The link leads to a new set of videos available as of yesterday so you haven't followed theses ones.

JQL · 14 Aug 2015, 09:15

I can tell you Kris, I can predict this becoming big at our office.

Materiallity is a big deal in architecture, there's no hatching or physical model that can replicate it!

I'm thinking of conceptual creative work based on procedurally generated textures with sketchup basic shapes and, in the future, maybe even blender...

jason_maranto · 17 Aug 2015, 09:48

I am glad you found a workflow that will allow you to incorporate Substances -- they are worth it IMO.

JQL · 17 Aug 2015, 12:13

@jason_maranto said:

I am glad you found a workflow that will allow you to incorporate Substances -- they are worth it IMO.

Thanks Jason,

Some procedural only work well at 4k, as they have to be upscaled for 8k or 16k. That is the only limitation I'm aware for now.

roland joseph · 24 Aug 2015, 08:18

Gee, I never thought I'd see an SU/Substance workflow but you guys are breaking ground....

Krisidious · 24 Aug 2015, 08:31

Well, we know we're not breaking ground, we may be able to use some substance outputs, but we're under no illusions that we're using true substances or that we will be able to. But, like with most things in Sketchup, it may not be top end, but it's good enough. I don't need live rendered substances, I just need good looking textures for on the fly renders. If I can take it out and take it to SD and get a better look and it doesn't take too long? I'll take it. But, I'm not selling renders... Pro Rendering guys may not think this passes the sniff test. And they're probably right. I'd call it a shortcut.

kaas · 16 Sept 2016, 11:10

Anyone using Substance ever tried making overlapping wood planks? Something like this? http://www.textures.com/download/woodplanksoverlapping0030/46418
Can it be done or should I better model it in 3d instead. I would be using the output in Unreal Engine (normal map / ao map / heigth map / roughness map).

Rich O Brien · 16 Sept 2016, 11:14

The guys over at gametextures.com have a wood siding material...

JQL · 16 Sept 2016, 12:42

@kaas said:

Anyone using Substance ever tried making overlapping wood planks? Something like this? http://www.textures.com/download/woodplanksoverlapping0030/46418
Can it be done or should I better model it in 3d instead. I would be using the output in Unreal Engine (normal map / ao map / heigth map / roughness map).

That is rather basic to make with substance designer, Specially if you don't need knots.

If you need something as grungy as what Rich showed, it will be harder to make it realistic.

kaas · 16 Sept 2016, 16:38

Thanks for the suggestions. Learning Substance is on my to-do list but I'm reluctant to start learning another complex program because I'm short on time. Went back to AwesomeBump and did some manual tweaking of maps in Gimp.

applemango85 · 23 Mar 2017, 18:33

Does anyone here use substance designer or b2m to create a material then bring it over to sketchup to render with the vray /indigo plugin?
(Still figuring out if vray or indigo is best for me)

I'm figuring out how substance could help me in my workflow so any experience from other members would be great to read about

Thanks

JQL · 24 Mar 2017, 14:13

Substance designer creates textures and these textures can be used in any render engine if they are exported as bitmaps.

I don't know about vray or indigo, but Thea has a Substance Converter where you input a substance .sbsar file, edit all available parameters of the file and create a Thea material with a click of a button.

I use Designer for all material creation.

juju · 24 Mar 2017, 14:47

@jql said:

Substance designer creates textures and these textures can be used in any render engine if they are exported as bitmaps.

I don't know about vray or indigo, but Thea has a Substance Converter where you input a substance .sbsar file, edit all available parameters of the file and create a Thea material with a click of a button.

I use Designer for all material creation.

Exporting / saving the various kinds of files for a texture created in Designer, you can compose this in Indigo AFAIK. So, no, not a converter available but still usable in Indigo with a little more effort.

Rich O Brien · 24 Mar 2017, 14:51

it is easy set designer to convert maps. but there's no correct roughness/metallic to spec

that needs some extra work to get right. the thea converter matlab is your friend in this instance.

JQL · 24 Mar 2017, 16:16

@rich o brien said:

it is easy set designer to convert maps. but there's no correct roughness/metallic to spec

that needs some extra work to get right. the thea converter matlab is your friend in this instance.

But you can use the Spec workflow if needed, instead of the Roughness/Metallic.

Rich O Brien · 24 Mar 2017, 16:46

I find the viewport display for that in designer to reflect the render output in Thea.

And because of the difference in how metal appears in SD spec/gloss as compared to Thea it's an uphill battle.

For straight up non-metals it's fine though.