A Few Questions for Substance 3D Painter Users
COMIXIANT
Posts: 260
Just hoping to pick the brains of any Substance 3D Painter users on here, cause there's a couple of things ...
The first quesiton is regards compatibility with Daz Studio, which of course I know it is capable of doing perfectly, but I'm just wondering if there's some sort of Daz Studio configuration preset to import into the project and export settings to set it all up perfectly for working with Daz Studio. Basically, something that sets-up Substance Painter specifically for using material workflow and channel formats expected by Daz Studio. At the moment I'm still just playing around with getting used to the program itself, but eventually I'm going to have to look into this stuff and thought, well, no point me trying to figure it all out if it's already being done a million times so there's no doubt a known set-up and procedure for it.
The second question is regards working in Substance Painter itself. To be fair to myself here, I think I'm picking it up pretty quick, and for the most part it all works as I would expect it too (which is nice). But there's something very basic that's puzzling me! Say, for example, I drag the "3D Voronoi" texture into the Layers area. It asks me which material channel I'd like to use it in, and indeed it then effects that channel. So I first off all drop it into the "Base Colour" channel, and then repeat the procedure, this time dropping it into the "Height" channel. It does exactly as expected, and I dropped it into those channels because I want the exact same texture to effect both the "Base Colour" and "Height" channels.
But the problem comes when I then start adjusting the parameters for the texture (in this example 3D Voronoi). Obviously, if I adjust the parameters of the "3D Voronoi" that is sitting in the "Base Colour" channel then it does effect it, but the problem is that the "3D Voronoi" that is sitting in the "Height" channel is not following those same parameter changes. So what I'm getting at is, how on earth are we meant to maintain parameter sync of the parameters between the channels, so that when, as in this example, I want exactly the same "3D Voronoi" texture parameters in both the "Base Colour" and "Height" channels.
It seems like something that should be very obvious, but I have to admit it's got me really baffled that one has!
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Comments
Got a little further with this, although still far from ideal. If you right click the little material preview after changing the parameters, it gives you the option to save the settings as a material preset. If you then drag the saved material preset into another channel, then sure enough you get the same parameters in multiple channels.
So it's a workaround I suppose, but while it gives the same parameters in both channels, it still doesn't auto-sync the parameter changes between the channels. In other words, I can now get identical parameters in multiple channels, but I have to save a preset and re-drag, so there has to be a better way of doing it than that.
I don't understand why it should be any different to, say, a painted brush stroke. Because if I paint a brush stroke, I can toggle it on and off in any combination of channels I wish, and it does exactly as expected, you can actually see it effecting those channels live without needing to do anything other than toggling the channels.
Regarding your first question: you can perhaps have a look at this product?
https://www.daz3d.com/substance-painter-assistant
I hope it's useful to you.
That utility looks very useful for setting things up between the two progams, so I'll take a closer look when I come to needing to import/export etc. Looks handy although it wouldn't have helped in my case since I refer to the internal way it works, not just the setup,.but thanks for the suggestion, much appreciated.
Thankfully I've figured-out the second issue. I was making the mistake of trying to sync across layers, not just channels.
For Daz Studio Iray materials you use a metallness based workflow, I have my own output template which include: Base Color, Metallic, Normal, Roughness, Glossy, Height, Opacity (and Emission, used rarely).
You won't always need all the maps, but you can easily disable them when they not needed. Use this format to export as it makes for a clean export and easy setup in Daz Studio easy: $project_BaseColor_$udim
If you follow along Substance Painter tutorials by Wes McDermott you will be a pro in no time :).
I'll take a look at his videos over tea tonight, and thanks for the heads-up on the corrrect workflow type being Metalness!
Cheers Aeon, it's much appreciated.
You're welcome, it's a great software, I hope youl'll enjoy your learning!
I think you should only look at using that product if you need it. Generally speaking, setting up a project in SP and bringing maps in Daz Studio is pretty straightforward to do manually and not a major time sink. I would see that product as a quality of life improvement for people who are setting up SP projects often or setting up surfaces in Daz Studio often (with SP or other software). Certainly I have never felt a need to use such.
You might be over-thinking this. Some version of a basic PBR export preset should be fine for most cases in Daz Studio. I dont think there's a rule that says you have to use a metalness workflow. You can make any map for any workflow you want, iterating it until it renders appropriately.
By default, a new project in Substance Painter usually adds a few texture channels you dont really need for most projects, like Emissive, Opacity. You can turn them off entirely under Texture Set Settings, or instead turn them off on a layer-by-layer basis, and of course you can also choose to include/exclude them at the export stage in your export preset.
Anyway, Daz Studio uses OpenGL Normal Maps, not DirectX Normal Maps, so ensure you change that in Project Settings. If you are importing Normal Maps into Substance Painter, and using them for example on a Fill Layer, you may want to enable the color space option and change the normal map from DirectX to OpenGL under there also. (This second step might not be needed though.)