Substance Designer/Painter and CS:GO (Some Questions)

[wylde]

Guys, I apologize for how basic these questions are, but I recently got the student license for Substance Designer and Painter. As I am starting work on my second CS:GO map, this time I wanted to create some custom textures from scratch, and these programs seem like the new industry standard for texturing and skinning models.

Before I delve too deep into either, I just want to make sure I understand the basics. Do these tools work in such a way that SD is used to create "materials" (like brick wall textures and grassy textures), while SP is used to apply these materials to models (with some overlapping features between SD and SP)?

For example:

If I wanted to make CS:GO textures, would I use SD to create substances which I then export as bitmap and convert to VTF?

If I eventually make my own models (or want to re-skin a Valve one), would I do it in SP? Using substances made in SD?

Or am I way off base?

Alos, if there are any CS:GO specific guides with SD and SP I would love to know about them.

Thanks for any help!

[Skybex]

Since I am not as familiar with SD as some on this forum, ill just answer your examples. I'm sure someone else can go into more detail for you.

Yes you will need to export the substance as a TGA to then convert into a VTF, source doesn't support substance materials.

For models it depends on what you want your result to be. SD is good for all the procedural variations you can get, but since source doesn't support substance materials you are probably better off with SP or a combination of both. Main issue you will have here is models need to be high poly or have a normal map, something you wont get from the valve models. Substance uses the high poly of models to generate a lot of other textures so the procedural generation knows what to do. Without the high poly, substance isn't very useful. 

I imagine there are no substance to source guides out there as source doesn't support substance, but there are a lot of general tutorials around.

[cashed]

You can use both. You just need to export the right textures and models after. (csgo supports fbx)

Remember Source only uses Diffuse, Specular, Normal. (All other params like phong are added) So using the PBR settings isn't quite useful. I believe standard works fine, but you don't get the nice parallax like you do with the PBR shader.

I've made a few textures in SD and brought them into Source. Just how you put in the example. You're basically not using Photoshop and instead using SD

Edited August 11, 2016 by cashed

[Motanum]

I used substance Designer during the creation of my map. @Yanzl can probably provide better info, but from what I gathered during these past 8 months. For source you create the diffuse and noprmal maps. You can create specs, but thoe are a bit tricker to get into , as model and bsp shaders work differently. 

Here is some info on Wall Worm about specular maps. http://dev.wallworm.com/topic/34/alpha_spec.html

What I did was to create a normal shader, so diffsue, normal, specularity and glossyness. I could be wrong, but fiddling with the levels and grey values for textures got me the results. Glossyness is phong in source. I didn't create any phong maps, only added the value to the VMT for phong. I did create specular maps for models, so for example, hanging clothes, where the hook would be metal, but the cloth wouldn't be metal. Again, lots of tweak to get the correct metal values in source. 

What substance designer shows is a great start, but to get the same results in Source you will have to fiddle around with the levels. At least in my short experience. 

For my workflow, I made the substance files and the textures. Then I saved the png for diffuse, normal and if needed specularity. Then in 3ds Max using Wallworm I would bring in the model and it's textures into source. If you don't have 3ds Max, then you can use vtfedit to import the png's and save them as vtfs.

About Substance Designer VS Substance Painter

I haven't used much of Substance Painter, I am in the prosses of getting it into my workflow. But from what I understand, you use Substance Designer to create the basic textures, like bricks, concrete, grass, sand, rocks, etc. Then, in substance painter you bring in the sbr, the substance designer materials and paint them into your model. 

However, in SD you can bring in your models, bake various maps, like AO, World Position, Curvatures, etc. ANd SD has many generation maps, where using the baked maps you can create various effects. Like sun burns, edge wears, metal wear, etc. very usefull. So what I used to do was that if I had multiple models that have the same base textures, for example, a stone wall. I would create the texture for a model, where it has some inputs, the baked maps from the model. Then at the end, I simply save the pngs, then change the inputs of the baked maps, and save those for the next models, very quickly. 

This also means that I could change out the UVs, change the model's polygons and I wouldn't lose any work in SD, as all I had to do was to rebake the baked maps, and SD would recalculate the textures.

Sure, there are things SD won't do. If I wanted text or decals, I had to make those on photoshop, transform them in SD and apply them, which is a bit od, and there were times where I wish I could simply paint over the model some effects, like scratches or so, which is where SD would have been welcomed to know before.

Edited August 12, 2016 by Motanum

[biXen]

Would be very interesting to find out the right values for the materials in source for different things. Maybe I'll try to document it seeing as I probably have to find out soon.