/3/ - 3DCG

[Anonymous No.787581]

Is substance designer worth it for texturing or as Henning/morten from flippednormals (a former AAA texture artist at various AAA studios) said, he just learned it and then forgot everything and never ever used it?

[Anonymous No.787582]

It is worth it if you want to make your own materials.

[Anonymous No.787584]

Just pirate it and try it out, you don't want to give money to Adobe anyays, right?

[Anonymous No.787586]

if you play a new game and look around 75% of the screen area will just be substance designer.

[Anonymous No.787588]

>>787586
henning says he uses painter for everything vidya and mari for everything film and doesnt touch designer. Why would he say this and not mention designer?

[Anonymous No.787589]

>>787581
It's worth it if you know how and when to use it, but for the average 3D artist it might not be necessary. Knowing Substance Painter and Mari is much more important.
I would only really recommend it to some generalists and environment artists.

[Anonymous No.787598]

Heres what I dont understand bros. I see this recent course for Substance Designer on a model (Tie Fighter) and they say ohh its so procedural. But, the thing is, everything has to be lined up to fit the shape of the model. In the end i presume its just doing what you could do in painter with a layerstack, but with a nodegraph. If you change the model from a tie fighter to a tie bomber, it wont translate. Am I confused?

https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/r7bv/tutorial-creating-a-tie-fighter-with-substance-designer

[Anonymous No.787600]

>>787588
Because Designer is mostly used for environments in the (gaming) industry and he isn't an environment artist.

[Anonymous No.787604]

>>787598
>Am I confused?
You're not and it's a really stupid approach to texturing unique models. Substance Designer should be used mostly to create base textures - variations of metal, grass, fabric, wood, plastic, etc. Then you can use those in Designer to paint a model.

When you want a T-Shirt you don't weave the fabric in T-Shirt shape. You weave some generic sheet of fabric and then make a T-Shirt from that by cutting and sewing the plain fabric (or you use a machine to do it).
Designer is the machine making the generic fabric, Painter is the machine cutting & sewing a T-Shirt from it, and that's how they're meant to be used.

[Anonymous No.787605]

FlippedNormals is a brainlet who doesn't understand the capacity Substance Designer holds for potential mass texture libraries, which to any solo/indie developer is crucial to have at your disposal. I wouldn't expect a highschool dropout to extend his workflow beyond that of a singular artist, to that of a one man army. Substance Designer is superior when it comes to mass production, and the more textures, sets, and collections you make, the easier it becomes to utilize quick merging for entirely new, but flawless materials. If you couple this with the Quixel asset library, Substance Designer is the key to creating your own games single-handedly. There are too many workflows, too many pipelines that require mass textures, and FlippedNormals are a bunch of idiots who has never achieved anything substantial, let alone create their own games.

[Anonymous No.787606]

>>787598
>If you change the model from a tie fighter to a tie bomber, it wont translate. Am I confused?
The point is not to build one procedural master shader for ALL imperial spaceships, but for one Tie Fighter so that you could create many different Tie fighters.
If you had to do 12 distinct looking Tie Fighters from one model, using Substance Designer over Painter makes sense.
One model + Designer = many different material variations.
Think of Designer as the Houdini in the texturing/shader world. It makes no sense to use it If you don't need the procedural power.
Actually you can tie the substance designer engine into Houdini and use it in combination for maximum procedural power.

[Anonymous No.787607]

material artist is literally a job position at large studios nowadays. aka substance specialists. so it's highly specialised. don't think every 3d artists needs it but it certainly helps to familiarise oneself with the workflow and concepts, just to stay in the loop because substance designer is most definitely having a big impact on the industry.

[Anonymous No.787646]

Are yall ns saying that designer eliminates and replaces zbrush in texture work? Whatever happened to sculpting high poly and baking normals?

[Anonymous No.787651]

>>787646
>Are yall ns saying that designer eliminates and replaces zbrush in texture work?
There is so much wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to start.

[Anonymous No.787657]

>>787651
you dont have anything worth posting my man

[Anonymous No.787663]

>>787646
it still exists and some artists still sculpt height info in zbrush and then bring it into designer for coloring. But a lot of that can be achieved in designer now as well, so if you're good enough at it you can do everything in designer. + It's procedural so it's much easier to change things when necessary.

[Anonymous No.787675]

>>787606
>Think of Designer as the Houdini in the texturing/shader world. It makes no sense to use it If you don't need the procedural power.

but painter already has designer materials built in and included as stock. This is what flippednormals was talking about. They say that almost everything you need is already included in painter and its just procedural elements arranged vertically in layers, like programming a HLSL shader in notepad is still procedural even though its arranged up and down vertically in the text editor as compared to the spaghetti node view of houdini/blender

[Anonymous No.787680]

Btw, if you pay for a subscription you get both Painter and Designer, so in that case you don't have to worry about is it worth it. You can make some procedural materials in Painter as well, but Designer is just a better tool for that. All in all, if you don't plan on focusing on becoming a material artist, but want to create models and whole scenes, start with Painter because you're gonna need that for sure. You can get base material from some free websites, your own photos or Megascans. One day you'll realize the benefits of Designer on your own anyway. But as others have already said, you can do professional work with Painter only, Designer is not 100% a necessity.

[Anonymous No.787715]

>>787675
>but painter already has designer materials built in and included as stock
Yeh bad ones.
Designer lets you create your own.
Also its useful for painter you can create your own filters procedural alpha masks and other nifty tools to help you speed up your work.

[Anonymous No.788104]

Are you supposed to drag your fbx file into designer and texture IN designer or are you supposed to use it somehow in conjuction with painter by still dragging in the fbx file and creating a "material" which you then add to in the vertical layer stack and 3d paint on in painter?

[Anonymous No.788106]

>>788104
You can texture a model directly in designer, but you would usually use painter for that. In designer you make a tileable material you need (and you just use default primitive models in designer for visualization), and then export it and use it in painter. You can also expose some parameters in designer which you can tweak in painter. That way you can change things like amount of rust or how "old" a material is. You can see examples of those parameters in some smart materials in painter.

[Anonymous No.788110]

>>787581
Substance Designer is a one man army sort of program.

Of course he didn't require it at AAA studios, they had an actual army at work instead of one guy.

[Anonymous No.788153]

Did they ever get around to multi-threading designer? That really killed it for me, among other things.

[Anonymous No.788157]

>>787581
It has a enormously high skill ceiling and can allow you to build a huge library of reusable surface types and tools. But it also comes at the penalty of being highly front loaded. That is to say, getting all those benifits requires a highly skilled AND organized person and even then it takes a long time build stuff. Compared to default smart materials in painter where you can decent get results in minutes but it's going to have limited customization. It's best served on really large teams where you can spare a few dedicated surfacing artists but there are definitely cases for its use on smaller projects. I don't know much about flippednormal people but if they are doing a lot of contract work, it may not be worth their time depending on their job demands. If they need to just crank out bespoke assets and don't need to think about long term project goals or project wide iteration then making surfaces in painter is probably a better choice for them.

[Anonymous No.788158]

>>787598
These are just "flexes" but are incredibly impractical uses of the tool.

[Anonymous No.788159]

>>787581
fuck I have a hard time to comprehend this workflow
I'd rather paint shit by hand in photoshop

[Anonymous No.788173]

>>788157
what do you think of Daniel Thigers tutorials?

[Anonymous No.788189]

>>788173
Not him but they are great.

[Anonymous No.788205]

>>787581
I got asked to learn this for a job and the only thing i ever used it for on the job was to generate random colours per uv shell, which you can now do just inside painter lol....

[Anonymous No.788271]

>>788173
Sorry, I haven't seen any but I've heard from other artists they are quite good.

[Anonymous No.788300]

>>788189
>>788271
I ask because I just bought all of them and skimmed all of them to see if they lined up to what yall are saying. I recognize that he is very skilled with the program. However, across 10 tutorials he doesnt use painter once. When he does his "pillar" room scene, his royal crown scene and his tie fighter scene he works directly on the model in SD. Only on his SD fndamental series does he work on primitives and like I said, he doesnt show any painter application at all. I will still go through them though because I think if I can get over the initial hump and learn the program I can become employable.

pic related is him loading up his royal crown and working on it in SD

[Anonymous No.788324]

Is there a reason nobody has mentioned Mixer in this thread yet?

You have access to Megascans and millions of material combinations and pattern combinations, easier UI, what does substance designer offer that Quixel Mixer doesn't? Or is it just because people have spent years getting used to SD that the move to Mixer would refute all of that time spent learning an overly complex program.

[Anonymous No.788325]

>>788324
>You have access to Megascans
Quixel is for people too lazy and/or unskilled to source their own textures.

[Anonymous No.788327]

>>788325

Work smart and hard. If I need a very specific texture I'll do it myself, no point in reinventing the wheel though, that's just wasting time and energy. As for authenticity, you can easily get authentic results from Megascans and Mixer, and nothing is preventing you from uploading your own textures/patterns into the program and mixing them together, I've done that myself and it doesn't really take skill desu. The tools and UI are much easier to use as well.
I don't see why I would use SD anymore. It's overly complex, though maybe I'm just missing something but as far as I've seen I can do everything you'd do in SD with Mixer and probably get better results in less time.

[Anonymous No.788333]

>>788327
Other anon here, I see it similarly. While I praised the software for its usefulness - I personally don't see the need to use it. This might change since I am learning Houdini and the combined power of H & D is probably a pure joy to use, but so far I am not in a need to use it.
I too have used Mixer with other texture sets and the tool is very promising and easy to use.
>>788325
>Quixel is for people too lazy and/or unskilled to source their own textures.
Lazy, yeah I am lazy, but unskilled can quickly become a problem. Unless you build your whole scene from Megascans, the difference in quality is very obvious if you combine megascan assets/textures with unskilled done assets/textures.
I have found that working with Quixel assets actually pushes me to up the quality of my own stuff so that it meshes well the quality of Quixel (not that my quality was shit before).

[Anonymous No.788368]

Mixer is great as well, you can use it to paint unique models like in painter, and create some procedural tileables with it as well. A huge library of materials and textures you can mix and match is great too. That being said, it still isn't nearly as complex as Substance, there are features lacking, like baking maps, anchor points etc.

>>788327
>I can do everything you'd do in SD with Mixer
Eh, can you e.g. do tile sampler magic with it? Doubt it. SD still has more nodes and control, but hopefully Mixer will become a powerful FREE alternative to both painter and designer.

[Anonymous No.788373]

>>788327
last time i used mixer it was soooo bad. Un freakin believably bad

[Anonymous No.788392]

>>787581

I would not make a game without Designer. It's a fucking spaghetti mess but it's so good. However, don't waste your time using the polygon tools to make complex shapes, make those in illustrator and import them inside designer. You'll save hours and your project will consume way less memory because it takes dozens of nodes to make shapes you'd do in 5 secs in illustrator.

[Anonymous No.788401]

>>788392
im paying a lot in subscription fees - you want me to pay $21 more per month now? you're saying that illustrator is this good? I cannot get any pirated software. What are the alternatives? Im hestistant to even try affinity designer because affinity photo is so terrible

[Anonymous No.788408]

>>788333
If you do not currently see a reason to use Designer, using Houdini is only going to reinforce that position.

[Anonymous No.788419]

>>788408
I am currently not doing any projects that have a demand for tons of textures with variations - I am doing mostly hero assets. But this might change so I might gonna use it in the future.
>>788401
Inkspace, Photoshop, Krita, doesn't really matter if anything you need is a greyscale mask or an B/W alpha

[Anonymous No.788424]

>>787598
>>787604
But making a whole TIE as just a single prop uniquely textured is retarded.
SD would be useful for pumping out some tiling textures you could use to fill most of the surfaces, a good cockpit glass material (that would need a material ID split in-engine anyway for a specialist shader), etc... then dedicate a material ID on the mesh for a trim sheet of details, etc..

[Anonymous No.788760]

>>788327
>no point in reinventing the wheel though
You'll start being a good texture artist when you realize that there are hundreds of "gun metal" textures IRL an not just the 5 or so Megascans gives you. YOu spent hours on making the model, why skip on good texturing? To save time and make it look samey and unoriginal in the process?

[Anonymous No.788762]

>>788760
It's not like you just apply a tileable and call it a day. Shouldn't the existing ones be good enough as a base material you continue working on?