Substance and Sketchup Workflow
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I'm happy just using Substance painter/designer in Thea/SU.
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@roland joseph said:
@unknownuser said:
how to take a model out sketchup and into substance designer/painter
I am guessing that you are just kidding
. The answer is of course rewrite SU entirely so that it has a multi-layer UV and an engine/algorithm to drive the substance materials. Goodluck with that one. 
Nope Roland, for what I can tell, and for what Rich told here, the only thing stopping us is UV unwrapping. And also, again for what Rich told here, that shouldn't stop us anyway, because we have the ability to use Blender (well I have no ability to use Blender
but I could learn or at least spend some time with it... I've got it installed for ages anyway)The thing is you can create a substance and that substance wich might be a mix of textures procedural effects/materials that are created on specific places based on your model. So it's a model specific material based on multiple generic materials and procedurals and masks that help you position your materials and effects in the model.
Inside a gaming engine that complex stuff can be directly applied in a model as a substance file wich is dynamic and might change accordingly to actions taking place in that app, for instance, game actions like getting burned, or being fired at, or whatever...
Inside applications that don't support substance, like Sketchup, that can't be done dynamically, but the substance can be converted into a static material that fits that model alone.
This material is not a single material like wood, or steel or whatever, but it is in fact a multimaterial, with all the materials that you've created and applied to the model inside substance.
This means that it has several maps for those materials combined into one. Those maps correspond mainly to 4 things for PBR (photo based rendering):
- Base Color Map (similar to diffuse or a color/texture sketchup material)
- Normal Map (wich is the same);
- Roughness Map (wich controls how smooth the surface looks)
- Metallic Map (wich has to do with metallic effects wich are the only materials that can't be created with the above maps alone)
In this multimaterial you can also have other maps like Height, Emissive, Clip maps, etc...
This means that you can easily translate this multimaterial to any render engine and render it.
Thea as launched yesterday a converter that speeds up this material creation and works really well.
After the materila is created, you only have to fit it back into the original model, in this case Sketchup and you can render it perfectly from inside Sketchup.
The only things missing here in the gaming workflow are:
- Sketchup files are not supported but you have stuff like collada and 3ds or obj;
- By what Rich says you have to unwrap the model wich sketchup cannot do so you have to use blender or another UV unwrapping software;
- You then have to import the model back to sketchup so it get's also unwrapped in SU;
- Then you can import it to Substance and work there;
- Then you can turn your substance into a multimaterial based on textures instead of procedurals;
- Then you apply that multimaterial into your unwrapped model
- Then render it and every effect and material falls into place.
Teorically it's simple but the workflow is not direct and that is the only thing giving me doubts...
Substance Designer has a 30 days trial though, so...
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3Dsimed will import directly fro sketchup, into 3D max or other programs for unwrapping and then export right back to Sketchup.
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@unknownuser said:
Teorically it's simple but the workflow is not direct and that is the only thing giving me doubts...
....forgive me but I still think you are dreaming.
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@krisidious said:
3Dsimed will import directly fro sketchup, into 3D max or other programs for unwrapping and then export right back to Sketchup.
Didn't Whaat UV tools did that too?
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@roland joseph said:
....forgive me but I still think you are dreaming.
You're forgiven but I'll keep dreaming a bit longer...
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Well lets start at the beginning...lets first make SU map one single diffuse texture effectively and do something tricky with it like ad depth.
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I'm still following tuts I'l download Substance designer and try that later...
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For the types of effect you want to achieve it is all reliant on great (not just "good", you need great) UV unwrapping -- which is something I pushed for with SketchUp for a long time, but ultimately realized was fruitless. For this, and a couple of other good reasons, if Substances are a part of your workflow (and as time goes on it becomes more and more clear they should be for any type of video game work) SketchUp should not be.
The bottom line is Allegorithmic is a company that is always pushing the technical limitations, and SketchUp is a software firmly stuck in the technology of over a decade ago -- the two are not compatible. My best advice is to move to an modeling application that already fully supports Substance integration like Modo, Maya or 3DS Max. Time (and money) spent learning the new software will ultimately save time (and money) as compared to suffering through a tortured and broken SketchUp-based workflow.
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Roland I think you're focusing on native stand alone sketchup. JQL and I are using Thea which renders live in sketchup and uses multi layered maps with all kinds of options. Although I think the full substances are a step beyond with procedural textures.
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@jason_maranto said:
...if Substances are a part of your workflow (and as time goes on it becomes more and more clear they should be for any type of video game work) SketchUp should not be.
Jason,
I can clearly see your point and in what concerns your perspective I must agree with you totally. However my objective is the opposite. I'm totally into the sketchup workflow and I'm just considering tools that would enhance completely secondary but very interesting enhancements to the product I currently output from my workflow.
I'm on the AEC industry where visuals are secondary but VERY useful product. On the opposite side with gaming and the rest of the entertainment industry, visuals are everything while model documenting is absolutely secondary though it could also be useful.
Sketchup is neither perfect for one nor the other and we can agree with that. But it's good for something...
Sketchup is very good at many things fundamental to my work and can also manage those things secondary but VERY useful to the architectural process.
As we sell paper and ideas only, having some beautiful images documenting those ideas and paper is really appealing to my clients and people I work with, but it's not key.
What I mean with this is that if SU+Layout could be improved to a more fluid workflow and interaction with AEC software, I'd be much more happy than if it went towards things fundamental to the entertainment industry.
@unknownuser said:
The bottom line is Allegorithmic is a company that is always pushing the technical limitations, and SketchUp is a software firmly stuck in the technology of over a decade ago -- the two are not compatible. My best advice is to move to an modeling application that already fully supports Substance integration like Modo, Maya or 3DS Max. Time (and money) spent learning the new software will ultimately save time (and money) as compared to suffering through a tortured and broken SketchUp-based workflow.
My persepctive is that Sketchup is a company that has embraced most of the tech it needs already, wich as assumed that most of the new tech is way over most of their user's needs, and is really concerned in getting tools that fit the needs of their users.
Do I think personally they always nail it? Not for me!
Do I think they always nail their market? Definetelly!
I NEED sketchup and I've got the patience to wait for stuff that I believe will happen.
Would some of that stuff include texture unwrapping, yes it would! But there is more, like better DC system, interactive solid tools or even any kind of modelling that could be non destructive (like node based)...
Do I NEED allegorithmic? NOPE!... I can manage without it.
However I would want to improve on my image output and it seems Substance would easen a lot of the stuff I currently do and could eventually lead to me wasting less time with my secondary job at Archviz.
That's what I'm trying to achieve here... waste less time at archviz so I can focus more on architecture, yet get better output so I get better tools of communicating my ideas, develop my concepts and sell my work, and build or even sell work that will never be built wich happens a lot in an Architect's life!
Bottomline, Sketchup and Layout, might be hammer and nail compared to all the software you suggested, but I'm not in need of an incredible CNC machine as I build simple wood stools...
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You have lost me totally. I thought the thread was all about native SU to Substance. There was no mention of Thea until I pointed out that Thea was introducing a Substance editor which would get SU a pipeline to procedural emulation at least (which I think may be the underlying theme of this post). I don't see much chatter about this new Thea feature but it is going to make a lot of texture factories obsolete and bring texture creation inside Thea to a new level of quality for all. That is all about exploiting Substance (an already ground breaking product) but nothing to do with the theme of this post.
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@unknownuser said:
AEC industry where visuals are secondary
Man...that statement takes the cake. I think I better go have breakfast this is making me weak.
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Certainly, this is why I specified video game work. For ArchViz work Substances are still not very well suited (and may never become so)-- the biggest boundaries existing with texture rendering resolution. For Substances to render very large textures (and rendering still images requires larger textures than moving images) you need a top of the line video card or the Substance workflow is very sluggish.
Two very different workflow priorities -- and, as I said, they are not compatible.
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Have you used Thea's live rendering? Their GPU based Presto system? I think it can tell you what you're going to get before it bakes for more than a few seconds.
And with procedural are we not talking about fabrics and mosses and dirt and such? so that while it covers various mesh it's going to change as needed?
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@jason_maranto said:
For Substances to render very large textures (and rendering still images requires larger textures than moving images) you need a top of the line video card or the Substance workflow is very sluggish.
Thanks Jason, that is indeed something I was worried about as it seems a substance can only go as High as 4096 and to wrap an whole building with that, might lead to low quality.
I do have a Titan X. Do you know if it's possible to have bigger textures than 4096 with substance? Even if the workflwo would be sluggish?
Also, it seems that resolution can be dynamically set inside substance. Perhaps that whole workflow would be done with lesser resolution and then the final export could be set at maximum resolution...
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And I have to agree with Roland thoughts on that "Visuals don't matter to ArchViz". I've always considered ArchViz to be rendering and material presentation. And what I do is more documentation of my models for plans... Shame on you JQL!
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@roland joseph said:
@unknownuser said:
AEC industry where visuals are secondary
Man...that statement takes the cake. I think I better go have breakfast this is making me weak.
It's possible to design a project without a 3D generated render ever being produced. It's being done for thousands of years and that didn't stop some of the most magnificent buildings from being built.
I'm not going to argue about the importance of CG visuals in an architectural workflow.
Though I consider them secondary, they are, nowadays very useful. That is why the original question is aimed at knowing how to improve my CG visuals workflow...
@roland joseph said:
You have lost me totally. I thought the thread was all about native SU to Substance.
It wasn't!
It was about the possibilities of a successful "Substance and Sketchup Workflow", as stated on the topic title and on the first post.
Thea Substance Converter is a tool that covers a few very important aspects of substance designer. But there are other aspects that it doesn't cover.
I'm seeking guidance as to cover most aspects I can and I'm honetly expressing my personal experiences and opinions on the subject wich evidently are different than other people's.
Thanks for your productive input!
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@krisidious said:
And I have to agree with Roland thoughts on that "Visuals don't matter to ArchViz". I've always considered ArchViz to be rendering and material presentation. And what I do is more documentation of my models for plans... Shame on you JQL!
JQL walks away with his tail between his legs and feeling bad about existing!
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we should run some tests and see what kind of live results we get and results overall.
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