Textures workflow - Substance Painter and Neosis

[koojinn]

So I'm new to this texturing stuff but learning a lot in the past week. While waiting for nifskope to update I have been trying work arounds.

 

I want to see what I'm editing on the diffuse map without going into game every time I change something.

 

Substance Painter is what I want to use. The problem is the .nif format. I discovered Noesis will open and let you export as .obj (score!) And it looks great (see image).

 

Noesis- everything is right, feet on the ground... mesh lined up with all 3 maps (diffuse, normal, spec)

 

I export the .obj and convert the maps to bitmap since that's what SP likes.

 

THEN it gets weird. I import the .obj with the maps and bam, model is on it's back, and normal map is not aligned. Most likely because the model is on it's back.

 

Like I said I'm new but a quick learner. Please tell me what to try and I'll do it :smile:

 

Noesis-

 

 

Substance Painter -

Edited December 22, 2015 by koojinn

[FlaconOil]

Hello koojinn :)

here you got two big problems. For the orientation problem, it's just because painter invert the axis of your model.

You need to import the obj in a 3d application like 3dsmax, maya or blender or any other you like. When it's done, adjust your model and then export it as obj with "flip axis" option check. (According to the software, you need to or not).

Then just import your obj in substance painter and you'll see. If it's not correct, do it another time with "flip axis" unchecked.

 

The other thing is because in this model, there's a lot of different texture used for different part of the mesh. You can see it in the 2D view of painter, there's some uv's island on the others. In fact it's complicated to tell you exactly how to because i'm not a english speaker (french) but you need to import your model into separate part. There's some video tutorials on the allegoritmic website.

 

Hope it will help you ;)

[koojinn]

Ok I found out how to flip the textures so they line up. SP does not want to let me paint on it. I read that the UV needs to be between 0 and 1 to work in SP but I can't find how to do it. I have blender for 3d but have not used it much. I figure the reason I can't find anything on setting the UV to 0-1 is because it's so basic that nobody else has a problem with it.

 

So far my workflow is this:

 

Open .nif in Noesis and export as .obj with 'flip UV' box checked.

Open .obj in blender and rotate so the frame is standing correctly. Export as .fbx

-.fbx because obj takes the 3 objects and UV and combines into 1 which is not useable.

Open .fbx in SubPainter and I can't paint on it. Normal map aligned correctly but the 2D view has a grey box and UV is below the box.

[throttlekitty]

The UVs for that power armor frame are in 0-1 space, i just checked. (if you look in blender, nothing goes outisde that 'box') Except like two stray verts in the upper right stick out a little way. I don't know if SP just refuses or if that's a best practice kind of thing.

 

You can use NifSkope to export as obj by the way, but currently only for all objects in the nif. You may be better off deleting the hands and inner suit and then exporting the frame. I just read a couple threads that SP doesn't support multi materials, which is the situation with your fbx that has the three meshes in it. I don't have SP, so I can't say if that's old news or not, the thread was a year old. hope this helps.

[koojinn]

Ok cool thanks! I have been working on a test and with SP I'm not sure how to filter stuff out that wont translate to FO4. So in the export I made a custom preset for the Normal, Color, Specular maps.

 

It sucks because the metallics don't transfer over. I tried putting a gloss map in the _g file and specular in _s, then swapping and the results are not even close.

 

 

Result:

 

 

 

Maps used:

 

 

Metallic placed in the _m

Base map placed in _d

Specular placed in _s

Normal placed in _n

I see the spec is really dark (matte instead of gloss) so something is really wrong. Could it be as easy as inverting?

 

 

[Kalten1979]

First of all, Fallout dont support one of the common PBR workflows.

It wont use glossy/spec nor metal/rough, it is more like metal/glossy.

 

I am not sure about your setup.

You use specular in your map setup, but the pbr materials are based on metal/roughness.

I am not sure if you could take full advantage of the pbr materials.

Anyway, specular is wrong, because it is nearly the same as the metalness map did.

If you paint everything by hand, and make no usage of the material or smartmaterials its ok how you work.

 

As far as i see.
Fallout works with glossy/spec in the _s map.

But you cant work with glossy/spec PBR.

You have to work with metal/roughness and use the metalmap as specular for you export.

But metalness is no longer for metal only and black and white / yes or no. It depends on the speculary of your material now.

So it could be gray, too.

 

And it is possible you have to darken your metal material color.

Fallout dont support correct PBR color values for metal.

 

Sure, your viewport material could be wrong in Substance Painter.

Not sure if there is a correct shader for this. But for ingame it works.

 

Export options are easy.

Basecolor and Normalmap (OGL) as usual,

For the _s

Put the metallic into the red chanel and the Glossy (from the converted maps) into the green chanel.

After that, I get this result.

 

In Substance Painter
http://www2.pic-upload.de/thumb/29043272/SpPipboy2.jpg
And here Ingame
http://www2.pic-upload.de/thumb/29043268/PipMG.jpg

Maybe i am wrong, but thats how you could take full advantage of Substance Painter.

Thats all what i see from my testings with Substance Painter.

Edited December 7, 2015 by Kalten1979

[koojinn]

Thanks Kalton! I tried to do what you said and this is the result. Seems like the _s isn't working. Even tried to make the specular all white to force gloss and nothing. So flat you can barely see the normal map.

 

I did not use any materials as you said. Just painted red and used the Roughness and Metalness sliders. _d and _n are set to export RGB. For _s I split the RGB and placed them Metallic-RED and Glossiness -GREEN both from grey channel.

 

Exported maps look like this:

_n

_s

_d

 

[throttlekitty]

Something definitely wrong there, either in how you're saving you dds files (_n/_s should be BC5), and/or you're not matching the shader defines in the bgsm. (as if you were trying to use an invalid path for an enivronment map or something, hard to say what's breaking here)

[Emomilol1213]

I just got super excited to use Substance tools now for Fallout modding, been sitting with photoshop :(. Just gotta get my exported normal maps from fo4 to work. Thanks for pointing out the PBRish maps. Fallout 4 sure got some strange PBR system, hybrid as you say.

[koojinn]

Something definitely wrong there, either in how you're saving you dds files (_n/_s should be BC5), and/or you're not matching the shader defines in the bgsm. (as if you were trying to use an invalid path for an enivronment map or something, hard to say what's breaking here)

 

I looked for a BGSM for the Holo Tape but could not find it in textures. I got textures to work using the Unreal 4 (packaged) preset in export but the specular map is off. I use to be able to force it by filling it with pure white, but that does not work on the Holo Tape. That trick works on the Power Armor Frame though.

 

I'm also not 'baking' anything. That process is confusing me, or maybe it's the article writers confusing me. I'm confused. lol

 

EDIT: .dds files are saved in DXT5 if it has an alpha other wise DXT1. Then I run DDSopt on the folder to make sure everything is ok.

 

In SubPainter is there a way to turn off effects that wont show up in game? I don't know what works, and don't want to spend time on metals etc if they don't show up in game.

Edited December 8, 2015 by koojinn