Is it necessary to learn Substance or DDO ?!

Development Architectural and Design Visualization
1

Hi , I’m a 3D artist and I’ve started learning UE 4 for Arch viz . (using 3ds & C4D)
I want to create Realistic Material Library for myself , but I just wanted to know what’s the best workflow to create materials ?!
is it enough to know how to make Materials inside UE 4 ? or using Substance Designer (or even DDO) gives more control over Materials and better look ?!

2

For arch viz you are fine with the ue4 material editor. We don’t use texture baking much. Just make your uv maps of your diffuse textures in 3ds or C4D and export it. In ue4, recreate materials with the same diffuse textures and adjust the other settings to make em look nice!

3

thanx for your response . I was wondering I might need to learn a texture creating software to generate Ambient Occlusion , Normal or cavity maps …

4

You may want to use something to make normal maps… I use https://developer.nvidia/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop a filter made by nvidia for photoshop.

5

If you are looking for a way of taking a texture and converting it into normal, ao, metallic, roughness, height etc, I would take a look at Bitmap2Material 3. It is a great program for converting an image into a multiple channels, which you can then import into UE4 and create a material. I highly recommend it, it’s super easy to use and works great, exports textures up to 4k.

6

You can also generate them in your 3d program :slight_smile: -> otherwise use tools like: ://ssbump-generator.yolasite/

7

thanks for suggesting that ! I used to work with Pixplant but one looks more powerful …

thanks every1 for great tips .

8

Maybe also check the following video tutorial series on UE4 PBR texture workflow with Photoshop, nDo, Substance Designer 4 from Glenn Gartner.

Some of those Photoshop tricks are pretty cool, I have to say: https://www.youtube/playlist?list=PLhETrb3DSTaW15pI9xcbCZqOmp0_t6ms3

9

I have been using Substance Designer and Painter for a couple months and I will say that if you follow node based workflows, designer can do some very powerful things and has a solid workflow.

Substance Designer can also create a lot of maps that save a very large portion of your time for more interesting things like modeling or texturing. :slight_smile:

If you are just looking for normal map creation and such, Designer could be way to much horsepower for your needs. As well, all the other products listed do the same thing, really it comes down to some research and what you actually need to see what product will be the best tool in the long run.

Again, if you do things with Substance Designer expect to have a learning curve at the beginning.

10

designer for me is awesome tool not only for creation textures from prebaked data but also i use it to tweak and preview maps outside unreal engine, especially stuff like roughness and albedo maps so is can keep stuff consistent