An angry rant (but not exactly at DAZ)
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,507
I have HAD IT with textures created in Substance Painter looking completely different in Studio, had it to the point where I'm ready to relegate Studio to strictly a figure-posing program and moving to other software for rendering. How can a PBR setup with the SAME FREAKING RENDERING ENGINE give such different results? - and trying to get skin textures looking the same is a complete exercise in futility. Skin and it's underlying layers aren't 80-90% translucent, why do almost all textures from this store require a weird combination of a dark diffuse map and a lighter translucency map along with separate SSS settings for it to look right? Substance Painter doesn't have the same material options (despite both using mother-freaking Iray), so as far as I can tell, it's impossible to replicate how skin textures look in one program to the other.
..so yeah, if anyone knows something I don't about how to get similar results between these two programs, PLEASE let me know before I start considering something with native Substance support like Octane or even Maya (edit, huh, seems Maya doesn't even have an option for live connection to Substance Painter, only Unity and Unreal Engine seem to). Thanks very much.
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Comments
I feel your frustration, not necessarily because of Substance Painter (eff that noise, I'm not renting any software), but in general, I can make a great looking texture work anywhere else, but once I try to convert it to iRay it looks completely lame.
Even though both programs use Iray as a renderer, I think the Uber shader is something Daz themselves invented, based on the MDL specs. The official MDL documentation doesn't contain any hits for "uber".
Never used Substance Painter, so I don't know how Iray works in that, but if Daz is feeding all the texture maps through a non-standard, custom shader, they wouldn't come out the same.
If you're not selling this character, you could just discard the Uber shader and make your own, following Substance's own implementation of MDL. I assume it has a node editor or something like that?
McGyver: Where are you making your textures that doesn't require a subscription? An old Photoshop?
Margrave: Yeah, the Studio shader has many more options than what's available in Substance Painter's renderer. There are almost no settings there, just a few for general strength of all AO and SSS, and HDRI rotation. No node editor, not even a fraction of the rendering settings that Studio has. I guess it should probably surprise me more that an industry-standard texture creation program doesn't have more options for previewing how your textures will look in various programs. Unreal Engine seems to be able to preview your Substance Painter texturing work in real-time, so I'm going to have to experiment with that - but it's not really what I need because I want to use a true quality path-tracing renderer. Blender will import and build nodes automatically for Substance textures using Node Wrangler, but as soon as I started a test render, the GPU fans kicked in hard and memory usage went up. It wasn't the first time I've had trouble with higher-res meshes and 4K textures in Blender.
I suppose I need to look into how Octane handles Substance work now. Part of what is so frustrating about this is that I might want to use Zbrush in the future, and I'll have to make textures for those creations in Substance Painter - which then won't look right when brought into Studio. There doesn't seem to be a lot of smooth workflow between programs other than those in the Adobe suite and Maya and it's expensive plugins.
Do you have Substance Designer as well? Because the nodes being used in this tutorial look like the exact same nodes in the Shader Mixer, under the "Default Modules" header. I presume those are the basic building blocks of the MDL standard, which Daz's Uber shader is built atop.
I have access to Substance Designer, but have never used it. That's interesting, and should probably be something I look into at some point. I think for the time being, I'm going to experiment a little with UE5 and see if the Substance plugin works with it yet. Thanks for that information.
I think both Daz Studio and Substance Painter try and "simplify" Iray's MDL standard for the end user, but they do it in completely different ways and thus erode the strengths of standardization. To answer your original question, I think it is possible to make them look identical--since they have the same rendering core--but you need to discard the "simplified" parts and instead familiarize yourself with the MDL standard and how it's implemented in both Daz Studio and the Substance suite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI4w5IVpujA
Haven't watched it yet, but it seems pretty thorough.
How does Substance Painter compare to freebie Quixel Mixer:
https://quixel.com/mixer
when one work with materials for Daz Studio?
Anybody has tried both of them, while working with materials for Daz Studio?
Quixel Mixer doesn't have the gigantic library of textures that Substance Painter has through Source, but I haven't actually tried it with any DAZ content (just within Unreal), or sending textures back to Studio. I guess I'll try it again, or at least after I finish a full system scan because my antivirus caught four infected files while repeatedly trying to download Unreal 5 unsuccessfully (maybe false positives, but it still quarantined them).
Thank you for the help so far Margrave, but writing my own MDL shader for this seems out of my league. Worst case scenario, I just won't even attempt to set up SSS or translucency in Substance Painter and only work on the actual texture details.
Same issue, I think.
Daz uses its custom Uber/principled shader for Iray materials. You would need to bypass it and re-implement the materials using Nvidia's default MDL nodes to get "true" cross-application compatibility.
Yeah after reading about Quixel's features and the fact that I already know Substance Painter well enough already, I probably will stick with it. Like you said, it's not going to do anything related to Studio's shader that Substance can't.
Ok, so is it hopeless with the creating Daz Materials with any of these programs?
For the longest time, understanding the Shader Mixer was out of my league.
Then I buckled down and did it.
Now it feels like a whole new world has opened up.
But I understand if you have other areas you want to focus on instead.
Either way, good luck.
For your own use you can export MDL from Substacne and place the files (including their proprietary code) in an MDL directory in DS, then import the rtesult as a single brick into Sahder Mixer adn apply to your models.
Iray uses a shading language called the "Material Definition Language" to create materials.
All three--Daz Studio, Substance, and Quixel--implement MDL.
But Daz Studio (and presumably Substance and Quixel) builds on MDL to create its own custom materials, like the Uber shader. You can't export the Uber shader, but you can--theoretically--export the MDL functionality underneath the Uber shader to other programs, and import it from other programs.
For that, you would need to understand MDL itself and Daz's Shader Mixer.
Artini: No, you can make great textures with it, I'm almost positive that the best texturer here in my opinion (Strangefate) uses Substance Painter, and I retextured a lot of old DAZ products in it for my most recent images. However, it's very frustrating not knowing exactly how your textures will look in Studio without going back and forth way too much. I also know now why skin textures aren't often made in Substance Painter, for all the reasons I ranted about above.
Margrave: I'll still think about it if nothing else works, and I'm glad you're making progress so quickly. Thanks for posting your findings in those other threads.
Richard: uh, wat? Can you explain how to do *any* of that?
No problem.
Besides, if other people contribute their findings too, that's less work for me.
Ok, but what about exporting just PBR materials from the other programs and incorporating them into iray Uber Shader in Daz Studio?
There is a Map Master Pro, that suppose to help with the transfer of the maps:
https://www.daz3d.com/map-master-pro
Thank you for the link to Quixel, downloaded the 27GB material right now and will try to use it with UE5 and probably later with DS as well if it's possible in a useful manner.
Hi,
I am no expert with Iray, but will attempt to explain.
The combination is to try and mimic how light behaves with the model (character)
The diffuse map will reflect (scatter back) light from the surface. But you need to allow light to pass through the model, so translucency is added. That then brightens the surface, so the diffuse texture is made darker to allow for than. The SSS settings are controlling obsorbtion/scattering of the light as it passes through the model. The obsorbtion (Transmitted measurement distance) controls at what distance light is changed into the "Transmitted color". The "Scattering measurement distance" controls the distance of when light is scatterd by the scale set (SS amount).
So for example.
When rendering a characters face that is backlit, you would expect to see thin parts of the ear to have a redish color. You have the diffuse map with surface color, translucency to allow light to pass through. "Transmitted measurement distance" set low, so it quickly changes into the "Transmitted color" (set to light red(ish). To stop all the ear being the "Transmitted color" you set the "Scattering measurement distance" by a scale (SS amount) so it scatters that color to stop the thicker parts of the ear from changing to that color.
One of the main problems is the fact that light passing through a real person is not constant due to the body having bones/muscle etc. So an attempt to mimic that is to try and contol the amount of light allowed to pass out of the surface is to use a translucency (SSS) map.
Hope I explained OK.
Great, please post your findings - especially with Daz Studio materials.
@SnowSultan
I updated my Shader Mixer thread with some info on using the default MDL nodes in Daz Studio. It should help with cross-application compatibility.
Great work, @margrave. The information about this topic is very important for me, as well. Thanks.
There should, as I recall, be an option in Painter to export to MDL (unless it's Designer only) - you plink the files ina folder, then in Shader Mixer in DS Edit>MDL Directory manager (that's the Edit menu in Sahder Mixer, not the main Edit menu), set the folder you exported to as an MDL directory. Open the folder normally and alt-drag the MDL shder exported into the Shader Mixer pane, that should set it up ready to be applied via the button at bottom-left to any seelcted surface on selected objects.
Human skin is actually very translucent. The pinks, browns, and other colors and patterns you see in human skin is almost completely below the skin surface. That it's so inconsistent between the different PBR render engines shows that too much of the criteria used in designing PBR human skin materials are personal artistic choices rather scientific exactitude. Were it scientific exactitude all those render engines we are using, then you'd not be having your problems.
Artini: It's no problem loading maps created in other programs into DAZ Studio and into the Ubershader (or any other shader), the problem is the unpredictability in what they will look like when the shader's settings are applied.
Stem: That is a very good explanation, thank you. Could you explain what the chromatic SSS color is for? I understand the transmitted measurement distance determining when the color changees, but when would the secondary color be applied?
Richard: Thanks, but only Substance Designer can export MDLs.
Nonesuch: Yes, and that lack of consistency in this field is something I've never really understood. Font sizes, paper sizes, color charts of all types, they're all standardized. I thought PBR would do the same, but even that's different between programs.
Here's an example of what I mean. I know they're going to look different because Substance Painter doesn't have the same SSS settings, but how is anyone supposed to accurately edit this texture and have an idea how it will look back in Studio? With Substance's SSS on, it doesn't look nearly so bright, but the skin looks like candle wax and even after many adjustments, I cannot come close to replicating the SSS/translucent settings in Studio. Even the Glossy Roughness map gives completely different results, which frankly, makes even less sense. Also, forgot to note that the bump map in Substance Painter needs to be set to 5 (out of 100) or the skin will look like concrete.
None of this is of any surprise, like Margrave said, they have different shader settings and won't be identical. I'm just looking for possible solutions that don't involve anything ridiculous like needing to compile my own shader to have an idea of what exported textures will look like or having to use a game engine for artistic rendering because it's the only program that will show me accurate previews.
Could it be a difference in light intensity?
Nah, Substance Painter has some postwork filters for exposure and such, but these are the defaults. I lowered them a bit and while it made some example textures look closer to the DAZ Studio versions, it also affected texture color, made AO look darker than it should, etc. The primary reason the Substance render looks so much brighter is because it has no SSS or translucency.
I guess the only solution is trial and error. I got this work-in-progress edited V8 face by using some SSS in Substance Painter, maxing translucency in Studio, and then adjusting the values of the SSS settings. The glossiness map is all screwed up for some reason and there's no real bump (Substance didn't export those correctly, don't ask me why), but the ears have good SSS and it looks better overall. Who knows if this will look good under different lighting, or if the SSS settings will even remotely work on another skin texture, and that's probably what's so frustrating. If I didn't mind having to redo every single setting in every image I made, I'd draw. :)