To all readers
It seems that I have been forgotten about my blog and have left it a bit dormant for the last 2 years. I think I shall try to rectify from now on with at least a weekly or bi weekly post from now on in (using lunch times productively like a boss =) ) .
Things have had a bit of a shift around since I last posted as I have been through 2 jobs since then. I now reside at a small digital agency in Derby called 5 Lamps Media ( Here's a link for people that are interested http://www.5lamps.com/design.php ) creating real time models and high poly models for arch viz rendering and games engines. I have also had to adopt another 3D program, Lightwave, for this jobs but I will cover that a bit more in a future post.
Today I want to show you a bit more about another piece of software that has become more and more apart of my pipeline since I bought it in a steam sale. This of course is Substance painter (as the title may have given away). Many of you will have heard about this piece of software if you are heavily into 3D or realtime modelling so I just though I would get down here what I thought about this software.
In short Substance is a great tool to get great looking thing very fast, down side it its probably a bit ahead of its time with its PBR substances. Great looking objects can be created in a few hours not days so it significantly optimises your workflow in creating exceptional textures for models. All the textures that it creates are all procedural, so what this means is that at any point you can decide to down size or up size the document you are working on in a completely non destructive way. This also means that you can reconfigure the UV's if you need to change the model and it will automatically update your textures to the new UV's. I mean this is incredibly powerful as a tool to use with its non destructive pipeline alone, before considering what else the software has to offer. The problem most people will encounter with using substance is that it uses PBR textures, This means it uses metallic and roughness as its main values to power reflectivity, shininess and light dispersion. A lot of software such as 3ds Max and Lightwave don't really have proper inputs for this yet (this is changing rapidly however) so it can be very hard to replicate the look of what the renderer is doing in Substance in your local rendering program. Most modern games engines have started to adopt this so most in the real time sector are not having this problem.
Pretty much every designer is familiar with Photoshop and how the layering system works and Substance seems to adopt the style of this within its own program once you learn where everything is located. Creating whole substance's materials within Substance Designer means you can layer materials with their own unique property's in Substance Painter and work in a layered fashion to create realistic looking metals and painted objects and work into them with masks to give a realistic weathered effect. Check the video above if you don't know what I mean.
One of the most powerful and unique features of Substance is the ability to paint with particles. This is amazing as these particles can be told to emulate certain properties of things like fire, water and smoke to paint over the surface on your model. There is something quite satisfying about clicking a particle and using it and watching it walk over the 2D window of your model, not caring about UV seams or crevices. I have had some experiments myself on a home project after making and baking a gun which I will get up here soon so you can see what substance can do.
I highly recommend if you are serious about games modelling and PBR materials to look into Substance, as it really is a market leader for 3D painting. If you can spare time to learn and get spend some time incorporating it into your current working pipeline it can only benefit you with its speed and efficiency at boosting your model details to the next level.
Gaetan Lassagne
Nick Quackenbush
Cki Vang
More Images for you to see are in the gallery of the Substance painter Gallery so I highly recommend checking that out.
Thats all for now so till next time.
