Invite Thoughts on Substance Painter as Part of Work Flow?

DUDU

OK:

Color: no problem...

AO: ?

Curvature:?

Disp: Displacement channel?

Metalness: ?

nmap: Bump channel?

Rough: ?

What is the texture channel for each one?

Thanks.

MarkIsSleepy

AO is ambient occlusion. You don't really need it in Carrara, but if you want to you can multiply the color by it to artificially darken the color in some of the subtle shadows an object casts on itself. You'll have to experiment with how much of this effect you want, or if you like it at all.

Curvature by itself isn't all that useful but you could use it as a mixer between two shaders in the color or reflection channel  Curvature shows how convex or concave the model is at any given point, so you could use it to add grunge/dirt in grooves or add scratches to "high points" on your model.

Metalness is a black and white map showing where there is metal and not-metal. You would use that as a mixer: in the non-metal areas, you would use the color in the color channel and the rougness (inverted) in the reflection channel and in the metal areas you would put the color in the color channel, but with the brightness turned way down, and the color in the reflection channel (because the color map will drive both the intensity and the color of the reflections for metal).

Disp is basically a normal greyscale bump map (close enough anyway). You can probably use it either as a bump map or to drive actual displacement.

nmap is probably a normal map. You can use that in the bump channel.

Rough is roughness and is how sharp the reflections are. Something like mirror glass would be 0/black/sharp reflections and something like rubber would be nearer to 1/white/very diffuse and blurry reflections. There isn't really a direct equivalent in Carrara. I usually invert it and use it in the glossiness channel. I also use the inverted version in the shininess channel but you need to play with the brightness on a case-by-case basis.

For a slightly different method, see @TangoAlpha's post on the prior page https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2864286/#Comment_2864286 showing how he uses similar maps from Substance Painter.

Oso3D

I find Curvature and AO incredibly useful to build effects.

For example, AO is great for having grime in crevices or weathered exposed surfaces.

Curvature can do similar, but the layout is a little different.

You can save out maps baked in SP, or change the Export to include them.

I mention this mainly for Thickness map, which is great if you want a subtle effect that changes from a thick body to thinner limbs.

 

DUDU

He, thank you for your responses but in any case, it's the same eternal problem: UV mapping!!!

I tried also SP a few months ago but I think that 3DC is more compatible with Carrara.

Good evening (9PM here)!

 

 

magaremoto

very first test with substance PBR maps, unfortunately 1024x rez only

more to follow

Diomede

Thanks for posting these tests.

Philemo_Carrara

That's funny. I've been working on the same subject for a week now, and I'm more or less at the same point.

magaremoto

another try with low res substance maps; in my brief experiece apart form displacement all the maps work fine in carrara but at least 3k res are needed; hard to find a map good for carrara displacement channel as yet

TangoAlpha

What maps are you generating, and how are you assigning them in Carrara?

magaremoto

well, typically to start I've been using this scheme and see what it comes out and eventually make adjustments:

PBR albedo or diffuse > color channel

PBR glossy or metallic > highlight channel

PBR roughness (in some cases AO or both) > shininess channel

PBR normal > bump channel (as a simple texture map too)

PBR specular or reflection > reflection channel

PBR displacement or height  (in some cases AO) > displacement channel

as you know very important to tweak are the fresnel slider in the reflection channel (very low for metals or glass, up to 80% for very opaque materials) and the blur slider: you can use it with ease in presence of color reflections (i.e. gold), for specular maps I suggest to blur in prework to speed up render times

of course I'm working on it only recently so any suggestion is welcome

 

magaremoto

I find this guide very useful and clarifying: https://academy.allegorithmic.com/courses/b6377358ad36c444f45e2deaa0626e65

Philemo_Carrara

It's very useful indeed ???? By the way, I'm working to implement Disney BSDR into Carrara. It's working quite nicely, except for diffuse Fresnel. There, I've got issues with the way Carrara is computing self shadow. In Lambertian diffusion, grazing angles are dark, so imperfections in self shadow don't show. With Fresnel diffusion, grazing angles are light and there it shows... I'll start a WIP thread about that new plugin.

magaremoto

as stated in the guide too, the fresnel effect is related to IOR and in some cases to transparency and absorption (only metals behave as they can absorb only a little portion of light wavelenght); maybe you should try to play with refraction and transparency for lambertian diffuse materials

Philemo_Carrara

Please have a look to section 5.3 of this document, you'll see what I mean by diffuse Fresnel for rough surfaces.

magaremoto

the Oren Nayar model could be useful? if I recall it points out that a sss layer could help  for retroreflective roughness, dunno how

anyway can you post a sample?